Silver Sword
Silver Sword is a 8 Mana Cost Rare Paladin Weapon card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
After your hero attacks, give your minions +1/+1.
Flavor Text
Silver’s malleability limits its utility as an edged weapon. On the other hand... SHINY!- Mana Cost: 8
- Attack: 3
- Durability: 4
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Paladin
- Card Type: Weapon
- Set: The Witchwood
Silver Sword Additional Information
- Card was apparently posted early by atomix.vg, you can see it via cache here.
Silver Sword Card Review
Well, this is a pretty expensive weapon. 3/4 for 8 mana is very, very expensive, actually. We have a weapon like that at 5 mana – Assassin's Blade – and it sees zero play, because it’s too slow. However, this one comes with an extra effect – your whole board gets +1/+1 (Mark of the Lotus basically) when you swing it.
The thing is, I don’t exactly understand what deck you would want to put this into, to be honest. Something like Control Paladin, which doesn’t mind a high cost, doesn’t go wide on the board, so wouldn’t utilize this effect to its fullest potential. On the other hand, for a faster deck like Dude Paladin, Turn 8 is usually pretty late. They rarely have a huge board at this point, because if they did, they would already win the game. Yes, there are some cases in which you could e.g. play this on 8 and then play Call to Arms, one or two more cards and buff everything. It COULD be good, but I don’t think it will.
That’s because I feel like Vinecleaver is just stronger. 4/3 is a better weapon than 3/4 so late into the game in a faster deck – you can deal the same amount of damage over 3 turns instead of 4. While yes, you get one turn of effect less, it’s not that relevant, as the last swing of Silver Sword would come on Turn 11… games would really be over by that point.
Vinecleaver is not only 1 mana cheaper, but it actually actively rebuilds the board instead of snowballing the existing one. From my experience with Dude Paladin and against Dude Paladin, you rarely have a big board so late into the game, and VInecleaver’s main advantage is that you can get back on the board with the 1/1’s you can further buff etc. And it’s important to mention that Dude Paladin plays only a single copy of Vinecleaver, because two would be too slow.
I could potentially see some kind of Midrange Paladin centered around Dudes (so a bit slower Dude Paladin) wanting one copy of this, but then again, Paladin has LOTS of weapons available already and you don’t want to put too many into your deck. Especially after Vinecleaver rotates out, if we don’t get another good, high cost weapon. Right now? I doubt we will see this card played. It’s not really bad, but we have a better late game weapon option and it’s just slow.
Card rating: 3/10
Considering what we know to this point, this card appears to be just too expensive. However like many pointed out, if there is a way to cheat out a weapon either by using a new mechanic or Ebon Dragonsmith, there is at least some hope of seeing play.
In concurrence with the dragon theme of Dragonsmith and the release of new paladin dragon synergy, I could see how this card could gain some serious value by using restore cards and clearing the board with the weapon then buffing minions and going face.
Realistically paladin will need to get more dragon synergy or ways to get this weapon at a lower manna cost for this card to be relevant. However, it’s still a fun idea. I like it! 3.5 stars.
I don’t want to pass judgment too quickly. It’s super slow, and generally won’t hold up against most decks. However, last expansion brought us Ebon Weaponsmith, which drops weapon cost by 2 when played. If there’s more ways for paladin to drop weapon cost, or sneak weapons onto the board, then it’s possible this can see play, and would actually be strong.
But, as it currently sits, definitely wouldn’t play it.
Not useless…. it’s no good for aggro granted, but this entire set is built around control archetype’s…
would’ve been better if it was +2/+1
First glance “Whoaaaah! The hell!”
Then I realised it cost 8 mana – meh.
So far only the Warrior weapon looks good. The Rogue and Paladin weapons are trash. This is waaaaay too overcosted. In big minions +1/+1 barely makes a difference. It would be fair at 7 mana, then you could do shenanigans with Odd Paladin flooding a board and buffing it more easily. As it stands, 8 mana is too much. Vinecleaver is much better. 1.5/5 stars.
terrbile
What about Sword of Justice?
This requires no board to be as efficient, but it doesn’t necessarily have the same potential value as the one here.
That one requires a board and if you want value, you’ll be holding those swings, if not, you’ll be attacking with a 8 mana Assassin’s Blade
I think that everyone missed the point of this card. In an even dude paladin you can’t run vinecleaver anymore , so I think that this could be the sostitution. I am not saying it is good, but it has a chance.
i think it is a solid arena card, not the best, but you will pick it and not auto loose with it. your hero and playing a minon per turn helps keep the board or get it back.
Wouldn’t play it. Would possibly discover it in the right circumstances.
I hate giving short replies on my opinions on cards, I don’t like doing it so I can not sound stupid and give a good opinion, but there isn’t much to talk about. Costs too much. Too late to make an important swing, and +1/+1 isn’t swing-y in late game. If it was 6 mana it would be better. Not even 7. 6. It would be more balanced. As it is… 2/5
I don’t like to see this as a bad card, but a very greedy *win more* card.
Having played several archetypes of Paladin, this is one of the lousier weapons. Thank god they have the decency to put it in the rare slot instead of epic or higher. I think this card is going to see as much play as WOECLEAVER, also means too little, too late.
I think generally weapons helps Paladin out tempo the board without sacrificing your own board. I’d much rather pick VINECLEAVER than this because at least if I’m behind on board, it gives me a chance to contest for the board again.
So in aggro decks, this piece of light infused metal would contest with cards like Unidentified Maul, which is a bit like a mini version of Silver Sword because at least one of the mode might spawn you recruits. Maybe if the meta has a lot of 4 toughness creatures, Truesilver Champion.
In control decks this gets much worse. I’d assume that Uther of the Ebon Blade is a staple. Ashbringer with lifesteal? Spawn 2/2 instead of 1/1 that your opponent are forced to kill? Sounds good. You wouldn’t want buff your minions for +1/+1 for 8. Besides, control decks typically wouldn’t have much minions to buff anyways.
With regards to midrange Paladin, Call to arms is currently too good of a card for effective midrange Paladin to exists. Unless you call spawning a bunch of weenies and hoping they survive until T6 T7 Midrange.
TL;DR Woecleaver vs Silver Sword. Both are flavour cards.
if it was 7 mana, maybe. Odd paladin has the double dude hero power which is good for these kind of stuff but
8 mana 3/4 weapons is really bad on itself and +1/+1 is not a good buff
Vinecleaver is better tempo and valanyr has more value. Why would I ever run this? On average you might get 8 mana deal 7 damage since having more than 3 minions on board on turn 8 as a faster paladins deck is a pipedream.
A lot better than people are making it out to be, they’re saying that Dude and Murloc will never use these cards, but those archetypes are most likely dead after the rotations. I see this in a more control/tempo deck, and Paladin has always been good at filling the board, so I think this has some form of being good.
People are underestimating this card in Silver Hand Paladin. One of the biggest problems for that deck is getting through Voidlords/Spreading Plague tokens, as well as playing around Defile. Buffing up all of your minions – not once, but four times! – counters a lot of control players by negating their board clears, allowing you to survive damage from taunts, and rewarding you for going super wide.
Sure, it’s slow, but so is Vinecleaver. A more midrange approach to Silver Hand seems like it could use this card.
warlock either has voidlords or gul’dan after the early game, and near 10 mana it will probably be setting up a lethal if it’s cube. Besides, this doesn’t mean defile can’t wipe your board, only that paladin needs a supplementary card for that to happen. Or they use hellfire. And this is assuming they aren’t the ones with a board that you desperately need to trade into lol.
I think this is pretty strong if you drop it on turn 8 and then sunkeeper the following turn so all your trades give you 4-1 minions. but its hard to predict how often you can play through this scenario
you are so pro, how can you still be rank 25
how deep do you have to dig into that meta…
Well, Vinecleaver has been sing play in the current Silver Hand Paladin deck, and that’s a 7 mana in an aggro deck. I doubt Paladin decks will be able to be as fast as they are now with several critical cards to both aggressive archetypes getting lost to the rotation. To be more precise, I think Murloc Paladin will no longer be viable and the remaining Silver Hand Paladin core will become part of a more Midrange Paladin.
Anyway, I don’t think this is better than Vinecleaver in most circumstances for a midrange deck. Summoning 1/1s is just more reliable and faster than giving everything +1/+1. Cleaver also front-loads the attack rather than the durability.
There is a lot more value in Silver Sword, and a Control Paladin would likely play it over Vinecleaver if it isn’t focused on winning through Uther of the Ebon Blade. However, without the healing offered by cards like Ragnoros Lightlord, Forbidden Healing, and Ivory Knight in standard, a control Paladin is unlikely to emerge during The Witchwood format.
I hate this card. 8 is ungodly slow for aggro decks, if you draw this early it hurts so bad. At turn 5 I can buff a board full of silver hand recruits by +2/+2 and give them taunt. This costs 8, I guess you could play it and then play a whole bunch of junk and buff it but it would be meh. If it cost 5 and gave +1/+1 to a random minion id be more ok with it.
It is bad in aggro, but with the substantial loses both aggressive Paladin archetypes will be experiencing due to the rotation, Paladin as a whole will likely slow down to more of a midrange play style as a whole.
Granted, even in that Vinecleaver would still likely be better in most cases, but a control deck would be more likely to prefer Silver Sword over Vinecleaver.
I dont think you understand. Aggro paladin (Not murloc or dude paladin) is not losing a single card.
The specific Aggro Paladin deck is still losing Ralying Blade. Furthermore, the specific Aggro Paladin deck is basically the third and worst choice of the “three” (It’s really two seeing as Aggro Paladin is seeing so little play and it’s winrate is rather low compared to them) aggressive Paladin archetypes.
Pirate Warrior was an aggro deck in its heyday in spite of it not being called aggro Warrior.
Spiteful Priest is still a midrange deck in spite of it not being called midrange Priest.
Freeze Shaman is still a crap deck in spite of it not being called crap Shaman.
A deck not outright named aggro can still be aggressive. The label of aggro, midrange, control, tempo, and combo are used to identify decks within classes that either do not have another deck that fits within that archetype (Midrange Hunter), or decks that use the same general strategy associated with that label but are different enough from another deck in the class using a particular package of cards (Cube Warlock vs Control Warlock, Murloc Paladin vs Dude Paladin vs Aggro Paladin).
It’s cute what they are going for but weapons like vinecleaver that put the tokens on the board are what you want to be doing every turn. The buffs require timing.
It’s a bit slow but brings massive lategame value, potentially +28/+28 and 12dmg – for 8 mana!!
This could make control paladin great again!
You bring this out at turn 8….. the potential value you seek takes you well into fatigue, where it’s more than likely you only have one minion on the board per turn. If your opponent can’t defend that one minion anyway, then the extra damage just wins you the game faster, doesn’t change the outcome at all.
The mana cost is too high for this to be even remotely playable.
There’s a huge space between turn 8(7) and fatigue.
paladin does refill the board quite fast since last expansion.
If you played token decks you may know the difference between 1/1 and 2/2 chips
Manacost are fine
If dragon paladin is to be a thing then ebon dragonsmith to cheat out this weapon, otherwise too expensive
Paladins have a lot of strong cards right now, I think make it this too much lower of a mana cost could cause problems. Although this card is bad, I’m not sure what you really want blizzard to do. This at 7 mana would still see no play though, so I believe it is still a little overpriced.
It’s a filler card. What do I want Blizzard to do? I want them to make cards that I will actually play, it doesn’t have to be competitive, it can just be fun, there’s nothing really fun about this card, the recently released new mage card that brings back old legends will never be used on ladder, but I’ll probably stlll use it in alot of my mage decks. But yeah, there’s no defending this weapon. It won’t see play at all. If I had to improve it, I would bring it down to 5 mana, make the card text into a battlecry instead with the stipulation that all the cards in the deck have to be odd. Following the Baku Odd Pally that many people have already began theorycrafting.
This blog post by Mark Rosewater of Magic the Gathering can explain why bad cards must exist: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28
Also, saying this card is outright bad is to assume Aggro Paladin will be the only way to play Paladin forever. I can see this being played in a control Paladin over Vinecleaver if such a deck comes around while it is in Standard.
Lol it’s very garbage,is just a fierywar axe+mark or the lotus plus 4 mana,that has very risk to be destroyed for a oozy,and you must to have atleast 5 minions in the board to it be kinda usefull,Tyrion Fordring cost the same,have taunt and divine shield,and give you a better weapon when it dies…1/5 star card!!
What the hell is this trash? In late game, +1/+1 won’t make much difference to massive minions that will most likely be on that board at that time. Obviously this is a replacement of Rallying Blade, but it’s just awful. 8 Mana for a 3/4 weapon is disgusting, but let’s say that you have lots of small minions on the board, that’s about as perfect as the situation can get for this weapon, the additional attack could admittedly, win you the game. or at least increase the value of the trades made in some form of Control Paladin. But it’s 8 F***ing mana, so it’s unlikely your opponent hasn’t dealt with the smaller minions to by that turn, if he hasn’t, the case stands that you’ve probably already won the game. But if you’re playing massive minions with massive attack and health, what the hell is +1/+1 gonna do?
This card is too slow for too little value for the late game, this will never see play, not even in decks like Buff Pally, 1/5.
Also, just unlike Rallying Blade, this weapon requires an action to be done before it activates, so if you get frozen, you won’t get the buff. In a meta where DK Jaina Elemage is very strong, that’s pretty bad. Also, as I said earlier, this would work in some form of control buff Pally, but Getaway Kodo is gone, Don HanCho is gone, GrimeStreet Enforcer and Smuggler are both gone. Buff Pally is dead, and this weapon certainly has no place in Dragon Pally.
Useless