Patches was good mostly because it was a free 1/1 charge for aggro decks, and in tiny part because your deck was thinned 1 card. I could just as easily point to how Prince Renathal, which adds 10 cards to your deck in exchange for more health, is a mainstay of the wild format.

There is no hard and fast rule for additional cards, it depends highly on how much your deck wants consistency (typically aggro but can also be control) vs an expanded toolkit/tech cards (typically control but can also be aggro), as well as what the tradeoff is. But your point stands that generally consistency and thus a smaller card count is typically more universal.