Blessed With Suck / Shadowverse

Many Junk Rares in the game are Awesome But Impractical, where their effect looks great on paper but is counterbalanced with too many conditions, costs or drawbacks to be worth the effort. Some of the junk rares, though, have problematic or terribly weak "upsides". These are Blessed With Suck.

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Forestcraft

• Petal Fencer transforms every Fairy that the player summons into a copy of herself; if not dealt with, Petal Fencer is indefinitely self-sustaining. The issue is that she's a mere 2/2 for 4pp, so not only is she terribly overcosted, but she effectively only gives a small boost to the player's Fairies.
• Fairy Princess fills your hand with Fairies — Great for setting up a combo with Rose Queen, but terrible for most other situations. Not helping matters is her poor statline — playing her on curve just gives you a 4/4 and a clogged hand while you still have to wait to your next turn to commence any combo plays, and the clogging may cause one to lose out more valuable potential draws. To highlight how underwhelming this ability is, her retrain, Aria, Guiding Fairy has the same effect (albeit at Enhance 9) but nobody even uses Aria for that.
• Grand Archer Selwyn prevents an enemy follower from attacking next turn, or in the case that follower has low attack, returns it to the hand. All this generally does is buy time rather than actually deal with the threat at hand, and sometimes returning the target to the hand — often in the case of a mirror match — is among the last things you want to do.
• By evolving Tista, Wings of Mercy, the player is granted a leader effect that grants a +1/+1 buff to any follower added to their hand except by drawing. This includes tokens, so Fairies turn into a notable 2/2. However, Forest doesn't have too much in the way to make the most of her, so in constructed she'd be mostly buffing Fairies going into the hand. Soon after, Amataz came along and proved himself to be a better Fairy buffer without even needing an evolve, leaving Tista largely unused. That said, Tista has a moment of glory in the "Gems of Fortune Cup" game mode, where her ability can provide an invaluable buff to literally any follower the player gains.
• Bastion of Seasons may have a poor 1/1 statline but it gains a random stat boost based on how late in the game it is. It also never really goes away as it grants a leader effect that re-summons it. The issue here is that it gets re-summoned after 4 cards are played in a turn, a condition that is not frequently met in regular play, and it's still a payoff that doesn't really help you win the game unlike Alberta.

Swordcraft

• Rogue's Creed buffs all your followers with Ambush at the end of the turn. The issue is that there's very few ways for followers to regenerate Ambush to continue to enjoy further boosts. On top of that, it also imposes a rather tricky Sadistic Choice: use their Ambush follower to contest the board and lose further buffs, or don't do anything with their followers, essentially giving the opponent free setup turns in exchange for continued buffs. Even though Vagabond Frog has endlessly regenerating Ambush to help in this regard, one wants to play Rogue's Creed after playing Vagabond Frog, as end-of-turn effects are resolved with the latest card played going last.
• Noble Chancellor restores 1pp whenever you play a card at its Enhance cost. However, this boon is just too small to effectively offset the raised costs for Enhance, so under most circumstances he's effectively a vanilla 2/2 Commander.
• Jiraiya is a clumsy 9pp 8/8 that turns every enemy follower into a 1/1, and when Accelerated it does the same but only to one enemy follower. There's an issue with debuffing effects as it's often a lot more efficient to just outright kill the target with a removal spell. Jiraiya isn't a bad card in a vacuum, but in its debut format it simply could not find the right deck to fit into, especially with the rest of the Usurpation package already trying to squeeze into the preexisting midrange skeleton.
• Mars, Belligerent Flame is seen by many as a waste of a Sword legendary. 2/3 with Bane for 3pp is not bad in a vacuum, but her Evolve ability, which is what you'd be playing her for, greatly limits your deckbuilding options by asking for 20 or more Officers in your deck, denying you deck space to accommodate non-Officer powerhouses. This condition also pigeonholes your options in draft or Open Six and can also become dead if she's drawn too late. But if you do manage to pull it off, the token amulet she creates gives +1/+1 and Rush to your Officers but also takes up a board slot that contradicts the Zerg Rush strategy it's designed to synergize with. The running joke is that Mars is ass, both with her ability and her artwork.
  
  That said, she and her token would receive two buffs: First, evolving her would not consume any evolve points, so even in a vacuum she can still contest the board and destroy tough threats, and her token now affects all followers you play (not just Officers) and Clashing with them deals chip damage to the enemy leader. These changes (and the changes to Sword's card pool in Rotation as Academy launched) were enough to make Mars the focal point of an effective contender in the Academy Rotation format.

Runecraft

• Arcane Enlightenment costs 6pp and can be spellboosted to draw a massive number of cards. However, its static high cost also prevents the player from using most of what they just drew and missing out on board development or control, and boosting this card too much causes the player to overdraw — any card drawn past the hand limit of 9 is straight-up lost. In contrast, Fate's Hand is far superior because it has a lower base cost for constant output (meaning it still is reasonable without any spellboosts), and becomes cheaper with spellboosts, offering incredibly efficient card advantage when it turns totally free. Expel Soul is also terrible for the exact same reasons.
• Anne and Grea are notable for summoning the other and evolving them, despite each card belonging to separate crafts. However, they cost too much and have effects too weak to be worth fitting into most decks, and do very little to boot. Rune's synergy-reliant archetypes also make it very hard to make an argument to run Anne anywhere.
• Europa is a 3pp 1/4 that, when played for 5 mana or if evolved, gets Storm, Bane, and Ward, befitting her status as Zeus's daughter. Unlike Zeus, though, Europa remains at a pitiful 1/4 when evolved, and despite gaining these three keywords she's fragile as ever and can't pressure the enemy directly, making her at best a one-for-one trade-up. On top of that, playing her as a 3pp 1/4 without any other effect is terrible.
• Hulking Giant is a 6pp 6/6 that can't be targeted for effects, and it consumes your Earth Sigils in hand to become even stronger. This protection isn't foolproof, though, as it is vulnerable to any form of Bane and can succumb to randomly-hitting effects like those out of Lurching Corpse, and chances are you wanted to actually use the Sigils you've kept in hand.
• Truthseeker Faust gives the leader an ability that consumes an Earth Sigil for +2/+1 to a random allied follower, if available. The issue with this is that many Earth Rite decks want to keep their Sigils around for bigger plays like Levi or Grand Summoning, and the inability to choose who gets the buff can backfire.
• Transcendent Simulacrum, when evolved, has a curious on-attack effect: If the deck is at 20 cards or less, it creates a Golem Summoning token to get the player to pump out more evolved Golems, but if the deck is any larger it will randomly banish cards from the deck to force it to this size. The latter effect, depending on how early it triggers, can see the player losing about 10 cards worth of resources, and it's a very big turn-off when the whole "20 cards" strategy doesn't have a good enough payoff. That said, Simulacrum is much more valuable in Take Two or Open Six, where your deck can be as small as 30 cards and you can minimize the losses from its effects very quickly.

Dragoncraft

• Deathmist Dragon is a 4pp 2/2 unattackable minion that does 1 damage to all other followers at the end of your turn. Not only is it understatted, but doing just 1 damage to the whole board — even yours — is not good enough for consistent board control except against Sword and Forest's 1-defense tokens. Trying to field multiples of her is also counterproductive as the Deathmists will damage each other.
• Wyrm Spire not only costs a lot for an amulet, but it also demands that the player generates low-cost followers to transform. Given Dragoncraft's Mighty Glacier playstyle, it runs contrary to the design of most of its cards, and by the time it started getting notable low-cost follower generation, this amulet has been overshadowed by numerous other options.
• Dragonslayer's Price does 5 damage to the whole board for 4pp, which is great as a boardwipe. The downside is that you lose your entire hand. Even if you have Dracomancer's Rites to help refuel, you are likely throwing away several more usable cards to achieve this. And since it deals damage to all followers, you can't combo it with cards such as Wildfang Dragonewt to get in some extra damage in since they will get killed by it as well.
• Python banishes all but the high-cost cards in your deck. In theory, it dramatically thins out your deck and improves your odds of drawing your other heavy hitters if you're at the point where you can play Python. In execution, there's too few important high-cost cards a deck would want to run without exposing itself to the risk of an opening hand filled with those cards. Python having no other keywords to help a disadvantaged player stabilize doesn't help.
• Jabberwock, Nightmare Spawn somehow looks even worse than its Wonderland counterpart. Starting off as a 7pp 3/3, it devours low-cost followers from your deck each turn to build up its stats, and once it reaches double-digits it begins doing damage at the start of your opponent's turn. The problem? The very first sentence of its card text: "Can't attack." Doing nothing for 7pp is a pretty big deal (in comparison, Enstatued Seraph is an equally big do-nothing, but compensates with an Instant-Win Condition) and trying to race Jabberwock to 10 attack in one turn means forsaking low-cost followers, a deckbuilding decision that will debilitate your early game. So not only does Jabberwock take a minimum of two turns to begin affecting the board, there's nothing that can protect it from being slain by hard removal or a Bane follower.
• Tlaloc finds itself in a weird position. A 4pp 5/3 tends to die to a lot of removal, and the leader effect it bestows is situational and consumes your play points whether you want it to or not. Natura Dragon eventually proved to be the superior Damage Over Time deck which didn't need continual attacks.
• Bejeweled Dragon can replace a high-cost Dragoncraft follower that was destroyed earlier in the match and give it Rush. However, this only triggers in Overflow, and works only for 7pp or higher Dragoncraft cards. It's an otherwise unremarkable 1pp 1/1. Hiiro has used it to good effect in the anime, but most players won't benefit from The Magic Poker Equation like he did.

Shadowcraft

• Corpselord of Woe used to be a 4/4 that required a steep cost of 6 Shadows to automatically evolve so he could attack and revive himself. This Necromancy cost was way too high to fulfill by turn 5, forcing a player to spend an evolve point themselves to use on him most of the time. Half of the remaining time, Corpselord would just sit uselessly on the battlefield, taking up space. Corpselord languished as one of Shadowcraft's worst legendary cards and was eventually salvaged by upgrading him to his current state: a 5/4 that needs 4 Shadows to automatically evolve. This broke Corpselord out of this trope, making him a reasonable beater in Rotation Midrange Shadow decks.
• Rulenye was hyped during previews as his effect was a much-anticipated spell cost increase, which had players excited over how he would counter the much-maligned Runecraft decks. However, his effect was subject to a lot of Loophole Abuse: Newly drawn spells were not affected as they were not in hand at the time of Rulenye being played, and Enhance and Accelerate costs, being alternative costs, were exempt from Rulenye. This led to Rulenye being excluded from many a deck as, barring some very niche situations that could buy his player a much-needed turn, he would consume 3 Shadows for nothing.
• Gluttonous Empress comes off as a smaller version of Nephthys for the Rotation format, summoning and immediately killing only one follower. The fact that she picks randomly from your deck means she's very unpredictable with what she can pull out and kill, so it's really impractical for either high-value Last Words or Reanimate synergies. Not helping the matter that Shadowcraft decks in Rotation don't put much emphasis on having sticky boards or lategame board presence such as Mordecai and Prince Catacombs when compared to Shadowcraft decks in Unlimited and instead put more emphasis on Arcus lategame combos, making her relatively useless.

Bloodcraft

• Beast Dominator is a massively overstatted 6/6 for 5pp. However, if you're not in Vengeance, she deals 2 damage to you while also losing 2 attack, and so is an impractical card to play when you haven't quickly put yourself there. Within Vengeance, though, Blood typically has better plays to make in the 5pp slot to contest the board, like Dark Airjammer flooding the board or Squall Lancer killing up to three followers at once with the assistance of an evolve point.
• Mastema is a whopping 6/6 Bane follower for 5pp, but is held back by her debilitating drawback of only being able to attack enemy followers with Ward and the enemy leader. She's great for being a massive threat when her player has had a lot of early aggressive pressure, but when behind, her inability to trade makes it difficult to come back.
• Lethal Blade marks a follower with a debuff that causes it to take 3 damage whenever it attacks, causing it to self-destruct eventually. In Vengeance, it does this to all enemy followers. However, while it does prevent the follower from attacking ever, it doesn't actually remove it, and thus does nothing to help deal with Ward or eliminate dangerous passive or triggered effects. Nearly any removal spell, especially Hungering Horde, does the job more effectively.
• Getting good value out of Calamity Bringer is a Luck-Based Mission on par with what's seen in Hearthstone. As a Fanfare, it destroys three other random followers, which can be an incredible swing in advantage if you control nothing else, but also deals 7 damage to yourself if you're not already in Vengeance, which can be very dangerous if you're just hovering above 10 defense. On evolution, if you're already in Vengeance (something very possible given his Fanfare) he deals 9 damage spread randomly across all other followers and all leaders. The possibility of outright losing the game from Calamity Bringer's effects is too colossal a risk to take for most players, until new additions in Rebirth of Glory gave incredibly convenient access to Vengeance which removed a lot of risk associated with this card.
• Gluttonous Demon has a massive 8 defense for a 4pp follower, and can destroy enemy followers when its stats are raised, something that can happen automatically if you've been drawing a bunch of cards which Avarice Bloodcraft is specialized in. However, all this stat gain is pointless if its ability to attack is locked behind an evolve point!

Havencraft

• Devourer of Heavens is a 2pp 5-countdown amulet that spawns a 6/6... and does a measly 1 damage to enemy followers when it finishes counting down. This added 1 damage offers next to nothing in board control compared to its basic parallel Featherwyrm Descent. In fact, the latter may even be better than Devourer of Heavens due to summoning the Dragon a little bit sooner. It's only seen play in Skullfane decks, though, because it's a cheap amulet that can quickly discount Skullfane who can skip its lengthy Countdown and proc it immediately.
• Ancient Protector offers an astounding 6/6 Ward, but with its countdown of 1 and its Last Words removing that Ward, it's not going to protect you for long. For an evolve point, the Ward follower gets the ability to attack and also banishes the amulet it's tied to, but on turns where you've run out, the amulet more or less just delays the inevitable.
• Marlone generates a simple token spell for both players. Getting the opportunity to have a cheap cycle is nice, but giving your opponent the same isn't. Not helping matters is that Marlone is a downright hindrance against a Spellboost Runecraft. Marlone's lack of direct net benefit gets him sidelined a lot.
• Westmeunster Abbey... doesn't have a suitable niche. For a 5-cost amulet it summons two 1/3 followers and continues to churn out a couple of 2/2 followers over time. You can also Accelerate it for a 1/1 Flame Rat. The value it outputs is generally not worth the cost even if you play it at a point to give those followers Bane. Many players view it as a gimmick designed as a wink to the popular rodents in the game.
• Zahlhamelina is a beefy 1/5 Ward... but her effect triggers while she's got low remaining defense. Her poor attack makes it difficult for you to make trade well to get to that condition before you can start making the most of this effect.

Portalcraft

• Silver Cog Spinner is... decent. So decent that she doesn't have any use in a specialized deck, and is thus left unplayed due to Portalcraft's other decks having better things to do for 4pp.
• God Bullet Golem can't attack the enemy leader, but in exchange it sacrifices a friendly Artifact follower, doing damage equal to that follower's cost. The problem is that the more popular Artifact decks like to generate cheap Artifacts and spam them, so 1-damage chips are not going to contribute a lot to advancing the game plan. While it combos perfectly with the expensive and eternally-reassembling Prime Artifact, it's a very expensive combo.
• New Order replaces your deck with 30 artifacts: 10 Radiants, 10 Mystics, and 10 Primes. Unlike Prince of Darkness, this new deck isn't Purposely Overpowered, and you'll have to make do with whatever artifact support you had on the board or in your hand. On top of that, Prime Artifact is slow and costly, and not the best draw in an emergency: having an estimated 1/3 chance of drawing that in the late-game and in a pinch is very unappealing.
• Fearsome Fortress is astounding — when played while Resonance is active, it gets a whopping +3/+3, making it a titanic 6/6 Ward! So why didn't it see play? It wasn't an Artifact, nor was it a Machina, and it was a little too expensive to mesh effectively with the new "unspent play points" strategy. This situational stat stick was benched and hardly got out of it.
• Lunalu has a unique token spell that duplicates a follower that you've played. Problem is that this token spell is locked behind both an Evolve and a Last Words condition. There are ways to deny access to the spell, and without it Lunalu is simply a 2/2 with no other abilities.

Neutral

• Angel Crusher has solid 6/6 stats for 6pp, and he also grows stronger on Fanfare... by discarding your entire hand. Yes, a potential 14/14 for 6pp is impressive, but he has no innate protection and can die to a single kill spell, leaving you with absolutely nothing.
• Lucius, Goblin Slayer has a very bizarre Fanfare effect on top of having a subpar statline. Doing 2 damage only to 1-cost followers and 1 damage to everything else makes him a very ineffective boardwipe. Sure, he's good for countering Goblin Princess, but little else. There are even various other Goblins that he can't kill!
• Marduk causes you to draw cards by playing spells and damage the enemy leader by playing amulets. You also can't play followers, which is a very glaring downside. This effect disappears once Marduk leaves the field, but then again, so do the rest of his upsides. His high cost also is not very conducive to trying to make the most of his ability for the brief moment he stays in play, and if the opponent weakens him to the point where he can't reliably trade or pressure, you're left a sitting duck.
• Khaiza, Radical Gourmand differs greatly from his Bahamut version — he's a 2/3 now with no effects, but serves the player one of two dishes on evolution. Both dishes being mediocre spells, on top of Khaiza's reduced bonus stats on evolution, mean he doesn't see a lot of constructed play.