Hearthstone has a new RNG king

As we noted when the first cards appeared, Bizzard essentially doubled down on RNG with Hearthstone’s Goblins vs Gnomes expansion. Of those new cards, I don’t think any is more fun, or potentially swingy, than Sneed’s Old Shredder. Its text reads: “Deathrattle: summon a Legendary random minion”. Essentially it’s a pumped up Cairne Bloodhoof strapped to a slot machine. There are 62 legendary minions in the card pool, and though you might draw something useless like a Nat Pagle, chances are you’re going to pull another decent minion. (In fact, the popular streamer Trump calculated that the average result was another minion with 5/6 stats.) The dream scenario, though, is landing Kel’thuzad.

If your Sneed’s summons KT, as he’ll hereon be known, then because of the way his card text works, (“At the end of each turn, summon all friendly minions that died this turn”), you also get your Sneed’s back plus any other creatures you traded that turn. It’s a devastating tempo boost that usually locks your opponent out of the game. It’s also pretty unlikely—a 1 in 62 chance—but not unlikely enough to warrant a video. Unless of course, you manage to pull it off three times in a row during a high profile pro match, much to the utter amazement of everyone watching, not least yourself, the casters, Twitch chat, and your poor opponent.

The match took place this weekend between Kitkatz and Thijs, as part of the ESL Legendary series, and according to the number crunchers on the Hearthstone subreddit, the odds of triple consecutive KTs happening are 0.00044%. As the mathematician notes, Kitkatz was 19 times more likely to be hit by lightning. What’s most glorious about it, and the reason for sharing here, is the reaction on both players’ faces each time KT pops. Unfettered fist-pumping joy from Kitkatz, wry resignation plus slight panic from Thijs.

It’s also clear that while Kitkatz might be best known as the Warrior God, he must have an intimate relationship going on with RNGesus. But then, as the guy who invented the no-lose YOLO Armosmith/Brawl, we knew that already. Admittedly, in terms of impact the first two KTs arrived in a game Kitkatz was well placed to win anyway. But the third was definitely clutch. That’s the thing with Kel’thuzad. You play around the second, but nobody expects the third.

We’ll have an updated list ranking the best legendary cards in Hearthstone later this week written by PVDDR. I wonder where KT will rank? Let me know your luckiest RNG moment in the comments. Mine would be that time I used Thoughtsteal to nab Equality and Wild Pyromancer. That night we drank delicious, salty, Paladin tears.

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now.