Patches the Pirate

Patches the Pirate Card

Patches the Pirate is a 1 Mana Cost Legendary Neutral Minion Pirate card from the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan set!

Card Text

After you play a Pirate, summon this minion from your deck.

Flavor Text

What do sailors yell when Patches steals their treasure chest full of laws and other things being transported to parliament for a vote? "The Eyes have it!"

Patches the Pirate Card Review

Ever since its reveal on November 4th 2016, Patches the Pirate has been one of Hearthstone’s most controversial cards, loved by many and hated by at least as many. This is mostly due to the fact that this initially unassuming 1-cost 1/1 is one of the game’s most powerful and impactful cards. Its Charge ability makes it extremely valuable to aggressive decks, which the Pirate tribe already naturally favors. It turns every other Pirate in your deck into a tutoring card without any drawback AND it does so for free. In any card game, tutoring for specific cards and cheating the resource system are some of the most powerful or downright broken things you can be doing, Hearthstone being no exception to this rule.

All of the mechanics on this card interact with one another to produce a borderline overpowered minion that has dominated the early game since its introduction. Patches the Pirate allows aggressive decks to go wide onto the board from the very first turn. By adding not only more stats, but also spreading them out over more bodies, this makes dealing with the threat that much more difficult for the opponent. Adding the immediate impact of Charge on top of all that is just icing on an already sweet cake. Patches has seen play in all sorts of decks and quite literally every bit of text on that card has made it relevant in different ways, which speaks volumes for this unique design. Every class and deck being able to play pirates does so, from the aggressive Pirate Warrior, to Token Druid which appreciates having extra bodies to buff, to the classic Miracle Rogue which even uses Patches the Pirate DEFENSIVELY to fend off opponent’s early game threats. The one redeeming quality of this card is that although it’s oppressive in the early turns, it scales very poorly with time as the game progresses and the 1/1 (or sometimes slightly larger) body starts to become less relevant.

History

Everything started before Patches was even released, in the Karazhan era. Although that period is commonly referred to as “Shamanstone”, there were a decent number of competitive decks. Among the best – Dragon Warrior. This was a fairly aggressive midrange deck that scaled relatively well into the late-game, utilizing very powerful charge minions (such as Alexstrasza's Champion, Kor'kron Elite) and the best Warrior weapons (pre-nerf Fiery War Axe, Death's Bite) to dominate the early game and solid threats (Drakonid Crusher) to close out the game in case it wasn’t already over. (As a fun side note, this was also the last competitive deck to utilize King Mukla). At the end of the Kharazhan era, however, there were already Dragon Warrior decks that wanted to be more aggressive by including Pirates for extra early game due to weapon synergies and in fact, however fringe, there were actual Pirate Warrior decks that were based on winning the board early and going face with Upgrade!ed weapons to finish off the enemy.

So you can imagine that when Mean Streets of Gadgetzan came out, Pirate Warrior quickly became one of the best decks. Patches the Pirate and Small-Time Buccaneer (had 2 health back then) helped carry the archetype, as well as another aggressive Pirate class – Rogue, which would enable Buccaneer by simply using their hero power. Buccaneer was eventually nerfed by being made vulnerable to pings, Maelstrom Portal and most importantly, opposing Patches. This helped tone down Pirate Warrior and it was now only one of the best decks in the meta-game, as well as pretty much killed Pirate Rogue. Eventually, Reno decks were worked on and refined, given a big boost by Kazakus and the Kabal classes’ unique highlander legendaries, to the point where they could also compete, turning the meta into a Patches vs Reno standoff.

Eventually the Year of the Mammoth came around and brought a significant shift in the meta, with many cards leaving Standard (most notably Reno Jackson), however Pirate Warrior prevailed. At this time, Patches the Pirate, which was already adopted by Miracle Rogue as a defensive tool to help combat opposing Patches decks, found its way into another dominant archetype, Token Druid, as well as being crucial for the early game dominance of Water Rogue. After that point, Patches solidified its spot as a staple card in pretty much any deck looking to be aggressive and it will remain such until Standard rotates out of the Year of the Mammoth and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan goes away. The last new home Patches found was Knights of the Frozen Throne’s late bloomer Keleseth Rogue, which is the deck that perhaps best showcases the true potential power of Patches the Pirate, often pulling out a charging 3/3 or 4/4 directly onto the board for no cost.

Pirate Warrior in particular has proven hard to keep down in any meta and has in fact reigned over most of them, a real testament to the power of a 1-cost 1/1 minion.

Card review by Chimbarozo

Patches the Pirate Full Card Art

Patches the Pirate Full Art

Leave a Reply

23 Comments

  1. Birdmammal
    November 24, 2016 at 4:04 pm

    Are we all forgetting the other pirate legendary? OTK ROUGE WITH THIS AND THAT, OOOOHHHHHH BOY!

  2. King Norman
    November 18, 2016 at 8:12 am

    Literally gang up tho

  3. Anonymous
    November 18, 2016 at 4:48 am

    Essentially +1 +1 for half of your minions in a pirate deck ( when you draw it the effect expires ). Will be used in every pirate heavy deck.

  4. Anonymous
    November 17, 2016 at 11:06 am

    Worth putting in pirate / aggro Warrior, pirates give you weapon buff synergy and the deck has zero card draw so this helps thin it a tiny bit.

  5. Raemahn
    November 12, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    This guy should be played in a NON-Pirate deck with all of the “+x/+x to minions in your hand” cards. Drop a 10/10 Charge for 1 to end a game? Heck ya! Play him in Shaman to get two attacks, or Paladin for a bubble. I’m crafting this one if I have to!

    • Robert
      November 13, 2016 at 12:04 pm

      So basically you’re thinking of Stonetusk Boar?

  6. Brave
    November 10, 2016 at 11:33 pm

    gang up and buff this minion with another pirate turn 3 GG

    • Firewater
      November 14, 2016 at 4:38 am

      Gang up will go out very soon.

  7. Anonymous
    November 5, 2016 at 6:32 pm

    worth crafting, i don’t think so, yet if you get this from a booster, it should be auto include in any pirate deck, i mean, is a free minion with charge, and makes your whole deck a card smaller (meaning there is more chance for any other card to get into your hand).

  8. David
    November 5, 2016 at 3:32 pm

    Worthless in any deck besides Rogue with gang up or am I missing something?

    • Patrick
      June 24, 2017 at 2:10 pm

      Lol we were sooooo naive

  9. Hamoodi9721
    November 5, 2016 at 1:55 am

    I love pirates and I love rogue…… I hate this card cause of gang up and I never play wild so 1 11 for legendary 🙁

    • Hunturmion
      November 9, 2016 at 2:46 am

      Nothing will rotate out yet.

  10. BallaHalla
    November 4, 2016 at 9:34 pm

    In wild this card will be insane with One-eyed cheat. You will get stealth with the first one-eyed cheat every time.

    • lol
      November 18, 2016 at 4:57 am

      can´t belive you remembered that card. nice idea

  11. ThisGuy
    November 4, 2016 at 4:23 pm

    Does this mean that it summons a copy of patches or does it draw it out of your deck?

    • Monkey75
      November 5, 2016 at 7:53 am

      The Card is summoned from your deck, it doesn’t make a copy of itself. That would be too strong since that would mean you would have a Patches everytime you play a Pirate. You can only get Patches one time.

      • FunTimesAhead
        November 10, 2016 at 2:35 pm

        I dunno, wording in Hearthstone is always so convoluted and not very well explained, I’ve heard that the card “Dirty Rat” (which also has the wording “summon”) actually summons a copy instead of putting the card from their hand into play, the same could be meant here, but we’ll have to see really

        • Chamim4theWin
          November 18, 2016 at 1:00 pm

          No, dirty rat doesn´t summon a copy. It´s the actual minion. Same as deathlord (they will change its wording).

  12. JBERT
    November 4, 2016 at 3:44 pm

    LOL GANG UP

  13. Safari
    November 4, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    It seems an interesting pirate, however some tests need to be made, even in Wild format with the Cannon card.