A full Hearthstone Standard collection could cost you nearly $2000 dollars

A redditor has run the numbers to work out how much it’d cost to get a full collection of Hearthstone’s cards.

According to IComeBaringGifs, who has done a frankly terrifying amount of research, you would need $1700 – $1900 to complete a Hearthstone Standard collection. This doesn’t include the cards that have since been relegated to the game’s Wild variant, and shows what a massive barrier there is for a professional player to have a full selection of cards to draft with.

If nearly $2000 feels prohibitively expensive, you could get it for free by earning yourself 1500 packs, near abouts.

In fairness, only a selection of cards are useful in the meta, and it’s hard to get an exact figure on how much it’d cost you to have a selection of meta-approved decks, but as that meta constantly shifts and pro players are known often for trying to reinvent the meta and give themselves strong advantages with unexpected strategies, they might want to get hold of a few more cards than you might expect.

Of course, not every card is useful. “Obviously, some cards in each set are just bad, and these tests don’t account for them, but being just 800 dust shy of a complete set was within a reasonable margin of error,” said IComeBaringGifs.

IComeBaringGifs did a lot of his research using the pack opening simulator Packr, and his experiment followed the rule that he would disenchant any golden cards. “If you disenchant a golden card, you have enough dust for any card of the same rarity. That seemed a lot more useful to me than an animation,” said the redditor.

Factor in the three expansions a year that are added to the game, and if you’re a completionist you’re probably going to want to remortgage your house or something.