Gilnean Royal Guard
Gilnean Royal Guard is a 8 Mana Cost Rare Neutral Minion card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
Divine Shield, Rush Each turn this is in your hand, swap its Attack and Health.
Flavor Text
Admittedly, they kind of dropped the ball with Prince Liam.- Mana Cost: 8
- Attack: 3
- Health: 8
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Neutral
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: The Witchwood
- Mechanics: Divine Shield, Rush
Gilnean Royal Guard Card Review
It’s probably the most powerful of the swap cards revealed so far, but is it good enough? You obviously don’t want to play it in any kind of Aggro or even Midrange deck, because it costs 8 mana. That’s a lot for a removal. But what about Control decks?
Again, I actually think that this card would be stronger if it was constantly in its 8/3 form. So late into the game, you rarely need the 3 damage to clear something. Divine Shield is much better on the high attack/low health minions too. With 8 damage, you can clear stuff like The Lich King or Mountain Giant or almost clear Voidlord and still have an 8/3 on the board. Even though the 8/3 will be rather easy to clear off, it might still be a 2 for 1 case for you. The 3/8 form might be more useful against Aggro decks, but usually if you’re losing on the board so late into the game, a card like that won’t really help you.
Anyway, I think that this might actually fit into some of the slower decks. Especially those with weak removals. Like, I don’t see Control Warlock or Control Mage wanting to use this, because they have lots of way to remove stuff more efficiently anyway. But how about, for example, some slower Druid deck? Druids have struggled with removing big stuff, and the ramp might make them take advantage of the 3/8 form too – if your opponent is still in the mid game, you might have a good target for the 3/8 Rush.
This is also one of those cards that MIGHT see play in a Lady in White deck. While it might not be the best card ever printed by itself, it’s definitely usable and after Lady in White, it’s going to be 8 mana 8/8 with Rush and Divine Shield – absolutely insane, as it should be able to remove almost every minion on the board and still leave the 8/8 body behind.
The main problem with this card is, again, that you can’t pick the form. It might be 3/8 on the turn your opponent drops The Lich King and 8/3 on the turn you have some 3/3 minion to clear. That’s the reason I still can’t rate it too highly, but I’m quite sure that so far it’s the best “swap” minion revealed.
P.S. And this card looks really busted in Arena. Charged Devilsaur is among the best Epics and it looks as good or maybe even better, and it’s Rare, so it will appear more often.
Card rating: 6/10
The Worgen mechanic of swapping Attack and Health each turn is NOT good. 50% of the time you have to wait for a whole turn to drop a minion with the desired stats, and that is too inconsistent. That said, these are not bad minions in Arena, when you can usually play other minions until you wait for the desired form, and the stat-distribution is pretty vanilla. The only way we are going to see these in constructed is in a Lady in White deck (which highly boosts these minions, not just by stats but also they become consistent minions that always have the same attack and health), or when summoned by random minion generators. Many of these rotate out (Portals from Karazhan), so we may not see this minions practically at all in Constructed.
This minion is not necessarily bad, but for 8 mana you almost always have better options. Sure, removing an 8-health minion and leaving behind a minion that the oponent has to remove is not bad, but it doesn’t cut it in Constructed. In Arena it will be more powerful. Also, we’re going to see this often being summoned from a Spiteful Summoner casting an 8-drop from Free from Amber. In that case it’s summoned as a 3/8, which is usually good for the opponent because it’s only a 3-attack minion. The Priest won’t be able to complain about luck because he could have gotten a Bonemare, which is the worst 8-drop being summoned.
All in all, 2/5 stars.
lady in whiteeee.
8 8 divine shield and rush. seems we have some replace for dragons.
so much syrengy with lady in white
These types of cards are gunna be so op with lady in white
Oakheart would be able to pull this right out of your deck with rush and divine shield ready to go. Would also be great in a Lady in White deck.
Awful mechanic.
Agreed. They should’ve made these minions have unique stats and abilities when they switch forms, that would’ve been way better and cooler.
Example of this could be a 1/4 with spelldamage +1 and when it changes it would be 4/1 “deal 1 damage to all other minions”. This is just one of the various versions there could be and it wouldn’t have to be switching powers and healths. But nahhhh instead we get a boring power switch ability that will always have a downside (not being able to choose the form always) and meaning that the minion is pretty much always a weak meh minion or a suicide bomber.
Blizzars needs to step up their game. MTG was able to make the transform ability work on literal paper cards and Blizzard can’t think of anything better or cooler than this on a virtual game? Ugh.
Remember when Wizards made the creatures that transformed into planswalkers. It would be cool if a card transformed from a minion to a hero card or something like that. Just an idea.
kytheon was so badass, humbled by the god of death to become gideon jura. totally know what you mean, would be sick to see something better for worgen than stat swaps… hearthstone doesn’t want the turn interface to become cluttered so they’d rather hedge on the safe side and make lukewarm mechanics like this.
So biggest impact this has is to Shaman Unstable Evolution. Hmh. So as 8 drop you get 3/8 with rush that has divine shield. Doesnt seem too strong, its better than evolving into bonemare at least.
Lady in White – Genn Greymane – worgens
don’t quite understand you
He made a puzzle for you…Come on ,solve it
OMG you’re so right!
As long as there no no-text neutral minions, Im fine with this.
These kinds of cards are actually pretty good in arena, but in constructed, you probably make these deck styles for memes.