Fel Reaver

Fel Reaver is an epic neutral minion card, from the Goblins vs Gnomes set.

Perspective

Some players consider the Fel Reaver to be a poor card, on the basis that it is almost guaranteed to cause you to lose several other cards. Seeing your most valuable cards burned before your eyes can be disheartening, and may seem like a catastrophic misplay. Additionally, for many players losing any cards feels inherently bad, and suggests the player is being placed at a disadvantage.

What is often not understood is that because the order of the cards in the player's deck are random, there is no actual difference between the Fel Reaver burning the top 3 cards of the player's deck, and it burning the bottom 3 cards of their deck. Since the vast majority of games do not see either player reach the bottom 3 cards of their decks, in most cases such a removal in fact has no impact on play. In essence, there is no practical difference between drawing a remaining card from a randomly ordered deck, and simply drawing a remaining card, at random.

As a rule: unless the player runs out of cards before the end of the game, any cards removed by the Fel Reaver will have no effect on which cards the player will draw.

This even extends to especially valuable legendaries - unless the very bottom of the deck is reached, the player is just as likely to simply not draw those cards that match as they are to have them removed.

Lore

Fel reavers are enormous war machines constructed and used by the Burning Legion.

This section uses content from Wowpedia.

It is said that the cunning mo'arg engineers of the Burning Legion pushed their gan'arg workers for weeks in the construction of the first fel reaver, a massive construct that could easily raze fortified towers or tear the wings off an airborne gryphon. The forge camps then began to mass-produce these fel reavers to smash the mortal forces of Outland.

Currently not much else is known about the reavers' construction or origin beyond that. The Burning Legion uses them as sentinels all around Hellfire Peninsula, including around their forges to the north (Rage and Mageddon) to oversee the work on their cannons. Much of what is known about fel reavers comes from observing the Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula, which patrol around the region, killing unprepared travelers that wander within range.

Trivia

• The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "March of the Legion" series, for the token created by the card Thundering Footsteps.
• Unsurprisingly, following its release, Fel Reaver's design was a common subject of misunderstanding by players, with articles such as Brian Kibler's Understanding Fel Reaver: Hearthstone Theory written to educate players as to the true nature and value of the card.
• According to designer Mike Donais in September 2016, the game stats for Fel Reaver are "almost" as "absurdly high" as Dr. Boom, at least in the Arena.
• The card's flavor text is a reference to the Doge internet meme.