Hearthpwn

Quote from beppe946 >>

Comparing different versions of Galakrond is a big mistake in my opinion.
People tend to forget that not all 5 of them are suited for the same gameplan: whereas Galakrond, the Unspeakable is designed for a Control/value oriented deck, Galakrond, the Nightmare shines in combo archetypes and Galakrond, the Unbreakable is perfect for a tempo deck.

Galakrond, the Tempest needs to be seen under the right light too: both its hero power and its battlecry summon minions that immediately impact the board. Given all the other cards of the set, I dare to say that Galakrond Shaman will be a Midrange deck, that will try to close the games around turn 7 using Galakrond, the Tempest as a final weapon.

See? Now it all makes a little more sense, am I right?

 A direct comparison is bad but a comparison of how effectively each reaches it game plan is fine.  Though it is a comparison none of us can adequately make quite yet lol.

Quote from Wishmaster333 >>

I feel like this card is pretty good but it might not be good enough to sneak its way into any deck. Fantastic arena card though.

 It'll make it's way into MOST dragon decks.  This card is actually extremely good.  One of the most aggressively costed cards for what it does. Effects the board when played, is essentially guaranteed to trade and live and can't be killed by spot removal making the likely hood of it trading with something else again very high.    It's a dragon and further more is a solid one to simply hold onto until it's needed making it an ideal Dragon to be an activator for you.

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

Quote from asteroidm >>

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

There is obviously synergy between the two, but that does not come without a cost. So let's say you do merge the two ideas. You are going to have to cut a lot of the value generating minions or your tempo based battlecry minions in order to make room for the invoke stuff. So you will either be cutting out your late game value generation, or your late game burst options via those battlecry damage minions. 

Lets say you cut the value and go all in on tempo. You're probably going to do very well with the board leading up to your massive galakrond turn. And yes if the 4 8/8s don't get wiped out that is probably the win. But if this fails, the deck has absolutely zero gas. 

Now let's say you cut your tempo, mutates, direct damage battlecry minions. You'll have a much better time again control, but your aggro matchup is going to become severely worse, and your burst reach will be much lower.

Dont get me wrong, I am no psychic. There may be some perfect balance of both that leads to some insane deck, but I feel people forget how small 30 card decks really are. There are going to be a TON of enticing cards to put into this galakrond hybrid shaman deck, and you won't even come close to fitting them all in.

 You don't have to cut tempo, you just replace it.  Literally Galakrond's invoke generates tempo.  I think the portion of the deck you cut is the evolve portion. As far as it not having legs, you can STILL run Shudderwok.  Who will also generate 8/8 if they do clear your board.  The only potential downside I see here is Obviously after you play Galakrond you don't have double BC anymore.  So you can't just slam him down when you want.  

I mean I think everyone here realizes you can only fit 30 cards in and that the end result isn't the same deck.  But I think the original point stands.  You don't have to choose one or the other, there is a lot of synergy between both.  

 I agree that there is a good chance the deck will work out, but there is also a chance it will not because it will be too clunky. Outside of this hare-evolve nonsense right now, the evolve package was basically 4 cards in the form of mogul and mutate. So that frees up 4 slots.  

So now we reach the point where something has to give. Whether it be lackey generators, direct damage stuff like lifedrinker, or your value generators, something has to give way to make room for new goodies. 

There is also risk of, as you stated, losing your double battlecry hero power. I totally appreciate that it is a tactical move to drop galak at the right time, don't get me wrong there. I actually like that it is a skill and timing based decision. But there is a certain clunkiness that can occur when you are including too many situational cards. The quest itself is a "dead" card for a time. And galak might just sit in hand for awhile due to the payoff of him not being worth losing double battlecry for the rest of the game. 

I want to reiterate once more that you could be absolutely right. I think there could be a deck with this theme that had a perfect combination of 30 cards that leads us to something as terrifying as what is being inferred here. I just don't think we can make that assessment as of yet because there are drawbacks to the strategy based on paper. 

 I agree it's difficult to tell at this point how good or not it'll be.  I'd also like to point  out that because of how strong the invoke card is for shaman though you could potentially stick Galakrond in with only 5 cards.  The real questions is whether or not it's "better" than the Evolve package at that size.  Personally I'd probably add in a few more Galakrond cards like the tutor for Galakrond, who also has a ridiculous battlecry.  Although you won't be able to utilize the quest hero power with it at least shudderwok can copy it.  

Lastly there is a real chance of this being too clunky.  The curve for it might be horrible and fixing it might cost the deck too much to function reliably.  

All I know is that at this point there is no need to choose.  Gotta experiment first.

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

There is obviously synergy between the two, but that does not come without a cost. So let's say you do merge the two ideas. You are going to have to cut a lot of the value generating minions or your tempo based battlecry minions in order to make room for the invoke stuff. So you will either be cutting out your late game value generation, or your late game burst options via those battlecry damage minions. 

Lets say you cut the value and go all in on tempo. You're probably going to do very well with the board leading up to your massive galakrond turn. And yes if the 4 8/8s don't get wiped out that is probably the win. But if this fails, the deck has absolutely zero gas. 

Now let's say you cut your tempo, mutates, direct damage battlecry minions. You'll have a much better time again control, but your aggro matchup is going to become severely worse, and your burst reach will be much lower.

Dont get me wrong, I am no psychic. There may be some perfect balance of both that leads to some insane deck, but I feel people forget how small 30 card decks really are. There are going to be a TON of enticing cards to put into this galakrond hybrid shaman deck, and you won't even come close to fitting them all in.

 You don't have to cut tempo, you just replace it.  Literally Galakrond's invoke generates tempo.  I think the portion of the deck you cut is the evolve portion. As far as it not having legs, you can STILL run Shudderwok.  Who will also generate 8/8 if they do clear your board.  The only potential downside I see here is Obviously after you play Galakrond you don't have double BC anymore.  So you can't just slam him down when you want.  

I mean I think everyone here realizes you can only fit 30 cards in and that the end result isn't the same deck.  But I think the original point stands.  You don't have to choose one or the other, there is a lot of synergy between both.  

Quote from Lyconik >>

Dragons deck needed cards like this to have good neutral dragons to include in every archetype while still being good on his own. Autoinclude in every dragons deck.

Outside of dragons deck I'm not sure which deck want to run this, since synergies matter a lot more than in the past. Yeah sure Azure Drake was HoF, but we are talking about many years ago, if Azure Drake will make a comeback nowaday, I don't see where it will be played.

 In any deck that wants card draw along with decent bodies.

Good lord this card is good.  Immediate board impact, amazing stats to cost, improves galakrond himself, just fantastic.  

Solid solid dragon here.  Run in most if not all dragon decks.  Very scary with things like Embiggen and fizzleroost.

This is a fantastic card that will see a lot of play in and out of dragon decks.  Even though power levels of cards have gone up considerably, card draw stays as valuable as day one, in part because the power of cards has gone up.  

It's easily on par with Azure drake, better in some scenarios and worse in others.  

Quote from Storm13 >>

Quote from asteroidm >>

Quote from hillandder >>

Opponent play a 5 manas minion + Ziliax in last turn?

You play a 8/8 for 8 manas + 10 manas value.

How this is bad people? You just wait for the best turn, without random.

 I don't think it's bad, I just don't think it's meta defining.  There are two board states where I see it's good to play this.  If you are ahead and they are on the backfoot trying to catch up.  So they flood the board.  This allows you to very efficiently return the favor.  But you have to be in a position to make sure you can't die to their board state on the following turn.  The second is if they used some sort of clear card then flooded the board afterward.  In cases like that this card could be devastating.  If you are too far behind and fighting for control of the board playing this guy might just get you killed as you aren't actually dealing with their board.  

Since you miss out on battlecry's and it's purely reactive to what you opponent does it is essentially delayed tempo.  It requires your opponent to have played something good enough to warrant playing this card but not good enough that they are able to massive take advantage of that delay.  

 I disagree. There is no need to get perfect value out of this card. This card is good anytime your opponent didn't play anything that could backfire on you when it has random targets which is gonna be most turns. I mean this is an 8/8 + whatever your opponent did last turn. It is always gonna be a huge tempo advantage to you in any case were the random targets don't backfire.

 Okay let me rephrase.  It is tempo, but it's generally not going to be a tempo swing.  They still can act with their board first.  This is why you have to be in a position to not die.  For example if a druid or shaman go real wide.  Sure you can play this out and go wide too but you have to be relatively certain that they won't blood lust or buff in an other way that will kill you.  

It's good, please don't misunderstand me, I agree that it's good.  I just don't think it's meta defining.  It's also efficient which is what Priest does.  But I wouldn't rate it on the same level as say shudderwok.  Even still it'll 100% see play.  

Quote from hillandder >>

Opponent play a 5 manas minion + Ziliax in last turn?

You play a 8/8 for 8 manas + 10 manas value.

How this is bad people? You just wait for the best turn, without random.

 I don't think it's bad, I just don't think it's meta defining.  There are two board states where I see it's good to play this.  If you are ahead and they are on the backfoot trying to catch up.  So they flood the board.  This allows you to very efficiently return the favor.  But you have to be in a position to make sure you can't die to their board state on the following turn.  The second is if they used some sort of clear card then flooded the board afterward.  In cases like that this card could be devastating.  If you are too far behind and fighting for control of the board playing this guy might just get you killed as you aren't actually dealing with their board.  

Since you miss out on battlecry's and it's purely reactive to what you opponent does it is essentially delayed tempo.  It requires your opponent to have played something good enough to warrant playing this card but not good enough that they are able to massive take advantage of that delay.  

Quote from FortyDust >>

Quote from Caro92za >>

Just think about it this way: 

Turn 1: Embiggen + Wisp

 So you have a 1/1 on the board. Color me impressed!

(Embiggen doesn't affect cards in hand.)

 Not to mention kitting your deck out with a bunch of crap low cost minions is just a quick loss if you don't hit embiggen turn one or two.  Course the same could have been said for Keleseth and people played that card so what do I know.  

Side Note: From now on I think we should call this card embigly lol

Quote from b1ak1ce >>

tempo mage obviously, but other decks can benefit from its effects.

Priest, Druid, and Shaman come to mind.

Also does this give quest spells, or are quests classified as their own thing?

 I do not believe it will get you legendary quests but can get you side quests.  I have absolutely nothing to base this on.  Take it with a large grain of salt.

Quote from VonBarbhoul >>

"the rest of the game" actually happened way before this can see the field

 Not really.  Druid's big bursty boards happens after turn 7 and Forrests Aid is 8 mana, making for a nice curve.   

Quote from AmazingSpiderman2001 >>

Token Druid and Dragon Druid if that becomes a thing are the only decks this card would potentially work in, but would it actually work I can see that it was meant to be combo'd with Frizz Kindleroost by decreasing the cost of the dragons so if you use this card twice some of your dragons will be reduced to their original mana cost and for token that might be too expensive you might run one though for later in the game when you can afford to increase mana cost.

Ultimately seems like a card that will dominate future expansions though but probably not this one.

 Doesn't work that well in token druid as much of token druid is generated minions.  But I like it in big druid in wild and perhaps dragon druid.

Big body, good cost, taunt and a battlecry which allows for floop or zola tricks.  Easily makes it worth a try.  It's a strong effect.  Even getting it off once is ALMOST like getting an extra 5/5 with Forests Aid.