As Hearthstone grows and new cards get added to the mix, new deck strategies are formed and cards that at one time weren’t terribly overpowered become so and need a tweak. Now it’s the turn of Warrior favourite the Warsong Commander.

For those unfamiliar with the card it’s a Warrior-exclusive 3 mana cost Minion with 2 attack power, 3 health and a card effect that gives Charge to every minion with 3 or less attack that is summoned as long as Warsong Commander remains on the field. It’s quite a good one for a Warrior deck that relies on smaller creatures, but with the introduction of the Grim Patron it became part of a combination that could do 30 points of direct damage far too fast to be countered.

A Grim Patron is a minion that has only 3 attack, thus benefitting from Warsong Commander’s effect. Whenever the Grim Patron takes damage that it survives, it will summon ANOTHER Grim Patron to the field. Which will also gain Charge, and so on. When combined with another Warrior-exclusive card, the Frothing Berserker who gains +1 attack everytime a minion takes damage but starts at just 2 and also gains Charge from that… well it all gets ridiculous quite quickly frankly.

Because of this Blizzard have changed the Warsong Commander’s text to now read “Your Charge minions have +1 Attack.” which completely breaks the combination down. You can still use your Grim Patrons to power a Berserker, but not to such ridiculously high levels.

On the matter Blizzard community manager Zeriyah said:

“Going forward, we will continue to stand by our stance that we will only make adjustments to cards when we feel it is completely necessary and allow the injection of new cards into the game help our players define what the meta evolves into. In the case of Warsong Commander, we felt this change was necessary to help expand both future design space and to stand by our overarching game philosophy that battles between minions and fighting for board control is what makes Hearthstone fun and compelling.”

This is quite a substantial change, and honestly while I can see why the change was made, it really is QUITE the nerf. It eliminates a deck type for certain and while Warsong Commander might once again find its place within certain styles of Warrior decks, it might take a while to start seeing them a lot again – similarly to what happened with Starving Buzzard last year.

The patch to apply the nerf will release next week.