Hearthpwn

I understand perfectly how Galakrond works and I wanted an answer to the same question (I’ll explain why). To everyone reacting with ridicule and implying or stating how stupid and obvious the question is, I think it is you who hasn’t thought enough about the question, not OP.

I’ve come up with a really cool and fun (at least I think it is) priest Shadowform OTK deck which requires Fate Weaver to discount all four of your combo pieces to make them collectively cost 10 mana i.e. playable as an OTK. I therefore need to play at least two invoke cards to be able to activate Fate Weaver’s effect.

I am currently running Galakrond, perhaps obviously, because the battlecry is quite powerful, but I am wanting to refine the list and feel that a) it desperately needs more card draw, and b) Galakrond is actually one of the most “cuttable” cards because it’s not a combo piece, is expensive, it doesn’t draw cards, and it creates some awkwardness because the OTK requires the shadowform hero power, so you can’t play Galakrond (which obviously replaces your hero power) if you have already played shadowform beforehand. On the other hand, it is incredibly cool to play shadowform after playing Galakrond, so that you can OTK as Shadowform Galakrond(!)

My point is that I don’t care about and perhaps would even like not having to run Galakrond; I only run invoke cards to activate Fate Weaver.

All of the answers I’ve read specifically say that you don’t get the benefit of the invoke EFFECT if you’re not running Galakrond. This misses the point slightly: I don’t care about the effect (upgrading Galakrond and getting the result of one Galakrond hero power). I only care about the actual counter of “number of times invoked”, regardless of whether or not an effect was achieved by those invocations.

I think it’s probably the case that the game DOESN’T register you as having invoked once if you play an invoke card with no Galakrond in deck, but I can’t be sure of this (I tried to test it but haven’t had much time and so I haven’t yet got to actually perform the test in a game). It’s not impossible for it to be that the game counts “number of times an invoke card was played” as opposed to “number of times an invoke effect was produced” for the purposes of activating cards like Fate Weaver.

THAT’S why I wanted to ask the same question, and why I still need to test the interaction despite the “correct answer” being “obvious”.

(sorry for the essay)

I presume in the wording of the card - “give THEM +3/+3” - the “them” refers to the specific two wolves summoned by the card?

What I’m getting at is that there’s a small chance that the “them” refers more generally to “your spirit wolves”, so would include any summoned by other versions of this card and by Feral Spirit.

It is nothing at all like Zephrys. I’m genuinely curious - what aspect of the card makes you want to compare it to Zephrys?

They didn’t say anything like that. This and platebreaker do massively hard counter bomb warrior and warrior decks which armour up a lot. There haven’t been many (any? I can’t remember) other tech cards revealed from DoD so the fact that these both can be seen as at least partially targeting warrior specifically might reasonably seem a bit odd to some people. The comment was to draw attention to this interesting, arguable, partial targeting of specific warrior archetypes.

Flamewaker. I agree, but thankfully Flamewaker will return to Wild when this card arrives in Standard.

Wow, thank you - great effort to put all of that together!

Your summary analysis is also very handy and pretty spot-on. I would add that 1-cost spells can be quite uniquely useful just by the fact that they are spells and cost 1, regardless of their actual effect and power level. The obvious first example would be cyclone mage: this card could give you 4 (or more) mage spells to cast and potentially more left over in hand if you're out of cards and topdeck this with a mana cyclone in hand. If you just play it out on curve to allow you to "stock up" on two 1-cost spells before a big Sorcerer's Apprentice + Mana Cyclone or Archmage Antonidas turn, your ability to perform your cyclone combo will be improved actually very significantly.

The other obvious use for 1-cost spells is with Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Any deck running auctioneer would naturally love to run a 1-cost spell generator. The question is whether a 5 mana 3/5 is too slow to be feasible, and whether there is enough room in the deck to run it over combo pieces and/or over cards which more directly progress your game plan. I would say that in my experience, combo decks typically have basically no midrange capability, so being able to play something not truly awfully-statted on curve for 5 mana might be surprisingly good in a combo deck. I especially like the idea of curving this on 5 into auctioneer on 6, although I suppose this would only be a viable combo in Druid because obviously if you play auctioneer on 6 you need to play Innervate and/or Biology Project to make it worth having played the auctioneer on 6.

Sorry - I got a bit carried away there lol. Thanks again for such a thorough look at the options for this card.

You draw a temporary ‘ethereal’ version of a card in your deck. AFTER you draw it, it is then transformed into a different card if you have transmogrifier on the board.

This should be how it works, which we can somewhat prove because this is how rafaam works with the soularium.

Because warlock have the best hero power in the game by a large margin. Blizzard have always had to be very careful about the power level of all warlock class cards because by default warlock's hero power puts them at an immediate advantage over any other opponent from another class.

Another potential reason is that healing is unusually good in warlock because so many of their cards (and also their relatively very powerful hero power) are balanced against HP loss. Many pros and streamers have said that whenever warlock gets strong healing tools, they dominate the meta (or some have said in the past that if warlock gets strong healing in future, they will almost certainly be a top meta contender). We can see this has been arguably proven correct with the reign of cubelock while Kobolds and Catacombs was in standard: Blizzard eventually nerfed Dark Pact from 8 healing to 4 healing.

It's hilarious how you think just making up a story about me which is entirely fictional and has nothing to do with reality is a valid way of presenting an argument.

It's sweet that you're trying to mimic my format but you haven't quite got it. If you say "second" then you should have said "first" at some point previously.

You're really struggling to remain coherent so I'm going to stop replying to you now.

Ok, first, why do you feel it was warranted when unprovoked to be rude to a stranger who simply stated their opinion reasonably?

Second, don't call me kiddo.

Third, you stated it's shit then told me to "assume" it, or, more specifically, you told me to guess without proof and/or confirmation that it will be good. You realise that's all you and me and anybody assessing this card are doing? We're guessing how good it will be. Your guess is as good as mine, but mine is also as good as yours, so don't try to make factual statements rudely to people you disagree with when all you have is a guess, just the same as them.

Fourth, I don't think a four word appraisal would constitute "over-hyping".

This card is insane. I can't believe how many "meh" or even negative reviews I'm seeing.

In other words:

Blizzard: "We realise nerfing Wild Growth and Nourish was a mistake and bad for the Druid class in the long term and we should have nerfed Ultimate Infestation and possibly Branching Paths instead. Now that Druid has been gutted and now requires overpowered expansion cards to make up for its core cards being gutted, let's just repackage an old OP combo for them. I know - how about Ultimate Infestation into Arcane Tyrant?"

To be fair, Druid does need more card draw. Druids haven't had good class card draw for a while now, which is a big part of why the only deck Druid has at the moment is token (and that is far from a top tier deck anyway).

In my opinion (and many others think the same), the nerfs to Wild Growth and Nourish destroyed both the identity of Druid and two of the essential pieces that kept the class from falling to pieces. It was an awful mistake to nerf them, which they made at a time when Druid was too powerful, admittedly, but the real culprits were cards like Ultimate Infestation and Branching Paths. It was those in combination with Druid's pre-nerfed ramp cards which made Druid a problem, not the ramp cards themselves.

Now Druid is too weak at a base level to do what Druids are supposed to do (ramp up, draw cards, play big things and combos/also alternatively play token, board-flood decks + savage roar), and finally we're seeing the problem swinging back in the other direction: druid is too weak at a base level to do Druid things, so Blizzard have forced themselves into a situation where they have to print overpowered expansion cards to balance the class, and oh look - we're right back at the exact same problem of Druid having overpowered draw tools.

It's funny how Blizzard's "solution" to previous overpowered cards has (arguably) been what caused this overpowered card to be printed.

... but then you have to replace two good cards in your deck with two very bad cards (Heroic Strike).

2 x Weapons Project alone gets you there, and control lists might considering running a Fiery War Axe for early activation and/or a Gorehowl for full quest completion in one card.

Very insightful point. I think that's a bit of a niche reason to print this card, but still that must have been one of the first thoughts Blizzard had when designing this. It's for sure possible that that is the reason they printed this card at all.