Forest Guide

Forest Guide Card

Forest Guide is a 4 Mana Cost Rare Druid Minion card from the The Witchwood set!

Card Text

At the end of your turn, both players draw a card.

Flavor Text

"Just sign this waiver, and we'll be on our way."

Forest Guide Card Review

So, I like seeing them experiment with different stat-lines and different effects. This is something we have never seen before. I like the art especially, but I feel like I will never see it in an actual game after the pack opening.

First of all, stat-line. Believe it or not, but it’s important even on minions with cool effects. 1/6 for 4 is TERRIBLE. It’s a worse Mogu'shan Warden, and that comes with Taunt at least. This will be either ignored or traded nearly for free. There is no chance that dropping a 1/6 will make your board scary or anything.

Then, the effect. This is the interesting part. Since it’s an end of turn effect, it will happen at least once. But you’re still in the losing position, since your opponent will take advantage of his extra card first. This card is straight up unplayable against Aggro – not only is it super slow and doesn’t contest anything, but giving them extra cards is not good at all.

So this card is trash, right? Well, maybe not. Right now it looks like that, but there might be something going on for it. First of all – Hand Druid synergy. It seems like it’s a thing they’re going for this expansion (Wispering Woods), and we might get more cards benefiting from a high card count. Still, given that you force both you and your opponent to draw cards, this won’t likely survive more than a turn if such strategy is really a thing, wouldn’t it be better to let’s say play some other card draw? I don’t know, Acolyte of Pain costs 1 less and can draw more than one. Even Gnomish Inventor seems like a better pick in such a deck.

But, another strategy this might fit into is… Mill/Fatigue Druid! While not good in Standard, it’s actually a thing in the Wild. As for Fatigue, I don’t think that it will work, because the deck plays a bit differently. But the Mill variant could actually use it. Druid gets another way to force the opponent to draw cards. However, I have another counter-point – Druid already has a card like that, which feels better – Grove Tender. Yes, this is not an ongoing effect, but it costs 1 less and has a much better stat-line for its cost. Can you afford to play both in your deck?

Those are all valid points, but… Right now, there is not much going on for Hand Druid yet, and the Mill strategy is not something viable in Standard (especially now that Coldlight Oracle will be gone), so right now this card looks bad. But I wouldn’t immediately dismiss it, because believe me or not, it actually has SOME potential to be played, even if in an off-meta deck.

Card rating: 2/10

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26 Comments

  1. ZEeoN
    April 3, 2018 at 5:36 pm

    I always hated jade and that it does not resemble a druid at all. So I am currently thinking about where druid will go and I am super happy that annoying mechanic is a thing of the past in standard.
    So when I saw this, I also wondered what that is supposed to be for. However, think about this, I haven’t tried it but I am going to craft a deck like that on day one just to see if I can make it work:
    Druid was always pretty much able to survive the whole game with jade. It could just refill the deck for them.
    At the same time, there is a lot of taunt going on. So my theory is that we could see synergy between ixlid and astral tiger, using all the taunt minions to stay alive. To gain mana for this plan, the druid weapon could finally see some more play. Taunt is used to stay alive and oakenheart can pull hadronox for that extra bit of protection. Hadronox happens to be a beast, so the new card that lets druid resurrect a beast is likely to offer or can even be abused to guarantee a revival of hadronox. So, after enduring until fatigue is reached with all the taunt, you drop this guy right here and your astral tiger. Double fatigue damage while you only draw your tigers over and over.
    There are already some more synergies I see to make this work but I am really interested if anyone else thinks this could be viable.

  2. OhlienUFZ
    March 29, 2018 at 3:19 pm

    How does ur opponent draw card if its not their turn?

    • BadWolf
      April 4, 2018 at 10:08 am

      You play this card. You end your turn. Both of you draw card, but then opponent’s turn starts, so he can benefit from the card first.
      If it would trigger at the start of your turn, you would be the first to benefit from that card, but then again it would not be guaranteed as your opponent could kill it.

  3. MagmaRagerEnthusiast316
    March 29, 2018 at 12:28 pm

    They seem to think that giving it alot of health with an “end of turn” effects will make it somehow scary.

  4. Crapcrack
    March 29, 2018 at 8:13 am

    No, just NO !

  5. Greg
    March 28, 2018 at 6:59 am

    RIP oracle. I like the balance card draw tools though. I’m excited to see where this hand druid goes. It has me… I’m going to make it work! Although, I think I said that about Moorabi

  6. Virilio
    March 28, 2018 at 5:57 am

    I could see this card as a standard version of Jeeves. Jeeves is cheaper and has a better effect but you are giving up that for a more stickier minion, and with the powerful arsenal of taunt minions aggro druid has I can see this surviving multiple turn.
    Still the card feels a little mediocre but it could also work with the “hand size archetype” they are making.
    3.0/5.0 can fall either way.

  7. CD001
    March 28, 2018 at 4:37 am

    Standard Mill Druid is about the only thing I can think of – it’s totally outclassed in Wild for Mill – but even in Wild, Mill Druid isn’t particularly strong.

  8. GlosuuLang
    March 28, 2018 at 3:49 am

    I understand now why they rotated Coldlight Oracle. Compared to this card Oracle is super OP.

  9. HotCola
    March 28, 2018 at 3:40 am

    Can’t wait for meme combo with Ixlid+Forest Guide+Drakari Enchanter

  10. aggro
    March 28, 2018 at 12:41 am

    jesus why does no one think of how broken some of the poorly rated cards could be in aggro? token druid would be okay with this addition

  11. Worcestershire
    March 27, 2018 at 11:29 pm

    This is probably another card to play into the hand size theme they’re trying to build for druid. I’ll be interested to see what else they have for it, as I think it needs some more payoff cards besides just the whisps.

  12. Xix
    March 27, 2018 at 11:07 pm

    Funny that druid is the class that gets a new heroe, but at the same time gets only garbage cards. Well we only need 10 wins to unlock that hero, I m sure we will run into players that just concede for us. XD

  13. RyHouYouDoin
    March 27, 2018 at 9:58 pm

    I can only imagine this making it into a fatigue druid. Alot of the pieces are there, except its losing coldlight (one of the best cards in the game, sad to see it go). But being able to recruit this card as a four drop means you won’t top deck it nearly as often. And otherwise it can be saved for fatigue after you opponent has run themselves out of removal. It’s a stretch though, especially with the loss of coldlight. 2/5

  14. Nebulonstyle
    March 27, 2018 at 9:36 pm

    Why are so many cards being rated poorly? This is a fine addition to mill

    • NIGHTxBLADE
      March 27, 2018 at 10:47 pm

      Bc there are really better 4 drops for a mill deck THIS is just a uslsess card
      This expansion (untill now) was really unbalance warlock and paladin (LIKE AWLAYS)GOT good above card and they only reaveled ONE rogue and mage card
      Something spooky while happen i can smell it

  15. af
    March 27, 2018 at 9:34 pm

    Its even difficult to imagine an other card that would make this one playable. This is just plain aweful unless they have a really brilliant combo for it.

  16. Dead Tinnyfin
    March 27, 2018 at 8:56 pm

    I feel sad for the guy who revealed this card, he had to justify it.

  17. Grim
    March 27, 2018 at 8:45 pm

    Forestcraft druid it seems more possible every day

  18. Anon
    March 27, 2018 at 8:36 pm

    Mill druid card. Idk if it’s auto -include in that deck, but they lost coldlights :/
    But god damn, is this so much slower…

  19. Soup And Salad
    March 27, 2018 at 8:29 pm

    This reminds me a Jeeves from GvG, and that card did see play in some aggressive decks at the time, but this can’t recur resources as fast as that did and is more likely to help out your opponent. Jeeves was also cheaper.
    The 6 health does mean it will stay on the board through most board wipes, and the low attack of the card does mean your opponent will usually allow it to live since it would be difficult to apply pressure with a 1 attack minion.
    I would have rather this card cut its health to 4 and only draw you cards. It would be little more than Druid’s own Manatide Totem, but unlike in that class, the card is more likely to live past the turn it was played in druid with all of the cheap taunts the class has access to.
    As is though, this is more underwhelming than bad and far from a replacement for Frandrel the class will be needing.

  20. DhaosLaser
    March 27, 2018 at 8:18 pm

    i hope the following cards for druid are a little playable… no? please?

  21. Matt
    March 27, 2018 at 8:05 pm

    Is there a class that wants this card less than druid?

    • Jonathan
      March 27, 2018 at 9:26 pm

      Uh.. warlock, Paladin, shaman… just to name a few

      • Matt
        March 27, 2018 at 9:51 pm

        Shaman would absolutely love card draw even if it gave the opponent the world.

        • LuKeAA
          March 28, 2018 at 3:03 am

          It already has Mana Tide Totem; not even Shaman would need something like this.