Immortal Prelate

Immortal Prelate Card

Immortal Prelate is a 2 Mana Cost Epic Paladin Minion card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!

Card Text

Deathrattle: Shuffle this into your deck. It keeps any enchantments.

Flavor Text

She protec.
She attac.
But most importantly,
she come bac.

Immortal Prelate Card Review

Oh look, it’s a minion version of Kingsbane! Of course, it being a minion means that it’s much weaker, since it’s vulnerable to effects like Silence and Transform.

In theory, a card like that can be really powerful. Every time it dies, if you buffed it, it gets stronger and stronger, getting shuffled back into the deck. It’s amazing if your deck is concerned about fatigue too, playing two copies of those should be enough to pretty much not worry about fatigue.

The card can get insane value over time, but the problem is that it’s super slow. 2 mana 1/3 is very weak, it’s something that you nearly can’t drop against Aggro on Turn 2, because it will get eaten before it does anything. Keep in mind that the first buffs you play on it also don’t have any immediate pay-off – you’re just buffing an understatted 2-drop. Only when it dies and you draw it again (or pull it out from your deck) it starts giving you value/tempo, and that might be too late. It’s a bit like Dire Frenzy in Hunter. In theory, having a bunch of overstatted Beasts shuffled into your deck sounds sweet. In practice, not enough immediate payoff makes it just too slow and unreliable (keep in mind that once it gets shuffled, you might not draw it in a while).

Another issue is Silence/Transform. If you want to use it as a massive late game threat vs Control decks… it probably won’t work. Because most of the slow decks run some sort of card that lets them deal with it. Odd Warriors have Ironbeak Owl, Even Warlocks have Spellbreaker, Shudderwock Shamans have Hex etc. And it’s not like they have to draw it early – they can Silence/Transform it after it gets shuffled and played again.

And finally, what kind of deck would want to play that? Quest Paladin – not really, it’s just too slow, you’d rather play the Murloc 2-drops that gives you the buffs back on Deathrattle (so you can finish the Quest quicker). Control Paladin? It doesn’t play enough buffs for it to be worth it. Maybe Even Buff Paladin? That might be a consideration, actually. The card would suck against Aggro, but it could be a great long term threat in slower matchups, as long as it would get Silenced…

The thing this card has going for it is the Call to Arms synergy. The fact that you can pull them out with CtA makes it a bit better, but the main problem here is that CtA can’t be played in Even Paladin, the most likely candidate to run this card.

It’s a pretty cool card, and it can find its niche, but I don’t see it being too good, simply because it’s soooo slow and it’s counterable. Kingsbane is also super slow, but there’s nearly no way to counter it completely.

Card rating: 4/10

Immortal Prelate Full Card Art

Immortal Prelate Full Art

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48 Comments

  1. brandon
    November 30, 2018 at 3:40 pm

    there are only 2 Neutral minions that have Silence 3 if you give this taunt and if someone is willing to give up 4-6 slots to take out this I guess it is a bad card would like to know how this works with Carnivorous Cube though

  2. Creepy TallKinGuy
    November 30, 2018 at 2:43 am

    The question with this is, how to give it Life Steal, just like kingsbane, when it gets lifesteal all becomes easier, but yeah, is cool unless you face a mage/shaman who hates you and run 2 owls, 2 spell breackers, and their respective polimorphs and just for fun the guy spark who can turn it into a squirrel.
    4/5.

  3. Cheesesteak
    November 29, 2018 at 10:12 am

    Why hasn’t anyone suggested Dollmaster Dorian? Combo that with Crystology and you have just added 2 more to your deck. You can even use Faceless Manipulator. Oh the endless shenanigans!

  4. Kevin :D
    November 22, 2018 at 10:17 pm

    Best combo with “draw the lowest cost minion in your deck”

  5. Mandrew
    November 11, 2018 at 10:18 am

    Huh, i feel like they forgot about desperate stand when they designed this card…

    • Tricklas
      November 13, 2018 at 6:30 am

      How does it work? Does it only keeps effects when the DR triggers? Otherwise this is nuts with DS or the resummoning minion (5 mana dont know the name).

    • DannyN
      November 21, 2018 at 5:20 pm

      Pretty sure it only keeps its enchantments if its shuffled into your deck. with Desperate Stand I’m willing to bet that it would come back as a 1/1 with no buffs.

  6. Nbardo
    November 5, 2018 at 11:36 am

    Other cards with synergy potential: spiritsinger umbra, faceless manipulator, augmented elekk, withwood piper, sword of justice.

    Makes me wonder if deathrattle spell pally could be viable with this and mechano-egg? Then this card becomes part of a broader strategy and not the only win condition.

    • Nbardo
      November 5, 2018 at 11:39 am

      Forgot to say this could also benefit from spell damage from tuskarr. Forgot about glowstone tech too

      • Warptens
        November 6, 2018 at 7:41 am

        If you play this with umbra on board, it triggers the deathrattle, which is “shuffle this into your deck”.
        So you just lose your prelate.

  7. Kaznov
    November 3, 2018 at 12:21 pm

    Anyone has any idea how will it work with “Corruption” warlock spell?

    • maelstrom
      November 4, 2018 at 6:03 am

      That is an excellent question. While you guys are at it how does guild recruiter work with it?
      Sry I’m feeling lazy at the moment.

    • sina
      November 7, 2018 at 6:01 pm

      curroption is not enchanment .its a debuff or something else this card only keeps buffs.when u buff a cards its almost glowing but debuff have something like death mark

      • Tricklas
        November 15, 2018 at 3:36 am

        Whats now a buff and whats a debuff? For example when i give the minion +1/-1 is it a buff?

        • AFlyinDog
          November 29, 2018 at 1:53 pm

          The same thing, text or stats added or removed from the card, corruption is cast by the enemy player so unless you Lorewalker Cho a corruption it wont work.

  8. Helioshadow
    November 3, 2018 at 6:41 am

    Seems REALLY fun. A minion-Kingsbane. Up until you realize it can be silenced, and then you’re just sad. Really tho, even if this card fits in a really good deck, owl/spellbreaker completely shuts it down.

    If we compare the card to Lynessa, it doesn’t recast the spell (meaning it can’t benefit from, say, Potion of Heroism’s draw effect) while coming with the benefit of recurring (well… Up until a silence hits it). That being said, let’s look at the wacky shenanigans you can pull off with this minion.

    As of standard, we have Spikeridge Steed (which completely shuts down aggro… outside of owl) and Dinosize (which makes the minion EXTREMELY resilient… outside of owl). Blessed Champion seems like a really good way to close out the game once you get a few more buffs up (you know… outside of ow.). Besides that, we have a bunch of smaller buffs, Ring the Bells, divine shield, etc. Blessing of Wisdom seems cool (IF it’s an enchantment, which I’d assume; however, if you’re only going by the key phrase “Give a minion” or “Set a minion’s [stats]); you get to cycle through your deck, punishing your opponent for not killing your minion, while keeping a giant recurring minion if they DO decide to kill it.

    And now we find a card that (while seemingly debatable) would be somewhat broken with this card… Val’anyr. The phrase “Give a minion” leads me to assume this is an enchantment, in which case it retains the “Deathrattle: Reequip Val’anyr” when it goes into your deck (and eventually back into your hand). Now it’s definitely debatable, since I haven’t run the card and haven’t seen much of it in action (what I DID see is fuzzy in my head), but I think it does give your minion a Deathrattle effect, which would imply enchantment. Even if it doesn’t stack Val’anyr reequips, it still stacks the buff bonus, allowing you to keep making the minion bigger and bigger (so long as you have a minion in hand when Val’anyr procs, which shouldn’t be too much of an issue so long as the opponent doesn’t ooze it).

    Keeping in mind the mechanics of Kingsbane, I’d kinda like to see how this card would react to, say, Desperate Stand or bounce (say, sap/vanish). Guessing bounce mimics the Rogue’s Doomerang in that it returns to your hand, keeping enchantments (since the enchantment line is independent of the Deathrattle line). Desperate Stand is probably not a good idea considering the minion retains the copy Deathrattle while the copy doesn’t retain the enchantments while clogging your deck with (somewhat useless) 2-mana 1-3’s (at least, IMO with mechanics in mind. I could be wrong, which makes the combo SO much better). But hey, for all it’s worth, it prevents fatigue! 😀

    Considering wild… Meh, you don’t really have much. Avenge needs you to get lucky (and even then, it’s only 3/2 worth of stats). Hand-buffs are nice.

    Rotation’s gonna hurt BADLY. But until then, we might as well have fun x3

  9. Nickname23
    November 3, 2018 at 5:25 am

    Yeaaaaahh. Slow Paladin could be a pain in the *** for proactive decks. Do you outclass Odd Warrior with it? It plays 2 Owls, 2 MCT, 2 Shield Slam, 2 Brawl, 2 Flurry. Without another win-con I doubt it. Maybe together with the clunky Uther package? Playable, but overall not better than Odd Warrior, for now.

    2,5/5

  10. SMOrc
    November 3, 2018 at 3:28 am

    Seems ok. It can be drawn with Crystology, so If a slow paladin sees play I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets added. It reminds me of Astral Tiger for Druids which hasn’t seen almost any play except out of a greedy N’Zoth deck. In my preliminary opinion, the only way for this card to be impactful is for it to gain taunt either through Spikeridge Steed, Bonemare or even Defender of Argus. Even then, It really all depends on how popular silence will be when the card is released.

  11. Belton
    November 3, 2018 at 1:22 am

    note enchantment means any form of buff weather it be from spell or minion.

  12. NIGHTxBLADE
    November 3, 2018 at 1:18 am

    Owl owl every where

  13. Soup And Salad
    November 2, 2018 at 9:44 pm

    I have as of yet to see a bigger silence target ever. While being able to get extra value out of buff effects is nice, this could be scary enough by itself to force your opponent to use their deck’s lone silence effect before you play a single buff on it.

    Maybe Buff/Quest Paladin will only be just good enough and playing Silence regularly won’t be very useful outside of that match-up that it could do well.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      November 3, 2018 at 8:13 am

      Lynessa might be bigger, but yeah, if this card gets popular, people would just tech in Silence and ruin Paladin’s day.

  14. LeonardoFRei
    November 2, 2018 at 9:02 pm

    Well this seems interesting

    trying to make Buffadin work again honestly is something I can get behind because it is a fun deck to play and anything to get Baku to show up less

    That being said, idk how this card would fare, Buffadin with Lynessa usually works by having a power balance and bait out silence and removal, you buff up your minions to deal great damage to the oponent and then in one late game swopp play Lynessa and buff her up to insane levels, if your opponent silences or hard-removes Lynessa, then they’d need to get rid of the buffed minions by using other means, if they wasted their silence/hard-removal on the buffed up minions, Lynessa would be neigh-unstoppable

    that never worked, it was too slow to work by generating value during the game to power up Lynessa regardless, tho it happened during the Cubelock massacre so everyone had their decks filled with silence and removal

    This card specificallys seems interesting because of the role as a secondary-weaker Lynessa, since the return mechanic doesn’t contribute to her battlecry, and serves only to help generate enough value during the game so that you can hold up till the big swing turn, this might be enough to make buffadin good granted they give a small buff to smooth out the curve

    And again, this card is good on it’s own without a dedicated buff deck, just one spikeridge Steed and/or one dinosize and this card is completely OP ignoring silence effects, will see play as long as we start playing with even cards again

  15. Freedon
    November 2, 2018 at 5:26 pm

    “Hello silence my old friend”

    But it is a serious threat, particularly in taking paladin to limitless control territory.

    There was the card previously that returned buffs to your hand, and that didn’t ever really kick off in a big way, so I’m more interested in the late game potential if your opponent can’t answer this, then its synergy with the Lynessa and the quest. Combining limitless late-game threats with the mid-game big-threats could be great however. And there’s only so many silences an opponent can realistically include.

    • TheActualBaker
      November 3, 2018 at 3:14 am

      At first I thought that this card was too vulnerable to silences and that it was really slow and just not good enough for every deck, but then I realized that this card makes a wonderful combo with call to arms! I think that quest paladin, or just a buff paladin with the immortal prelate would totally run call to arms. Think about it: if you have no buffs on them, there’s no problem because they just shuffle back in the deck and it’s not like you ruined your combos because you are gonna draw them again. But if you have buffs on them, call to arms becomes an enormous tempo swing and it’s just crazy.

      • Bob
        November 3, 2018 at 6:38 am

        The call to arms synergy was actually not something i would have thought off, but nicely spotted.

  16. Piterno
    November 2, 2018 at 5:03 pm

    This is sooooo goooood. I love it! It’s like Kingsbane, but every time it comes out it’ll be like a 2 mana Lynessa, while your Lynessa sleeps in your hand to be even better than this. Quest Paladin tier 1-2, at least until the 1st expansion of the next year comes, calling it now.

    5/5

    • Warptens
      November 3, 2018 at 12:21 pm

      It’s like king’s bane except it costs 2, does nothing the turn you play it, you can’t tutor it, and it can get silenced/transformed/returned to your hand or deck.
      And kingsbane is already bad.

      • For the Alliance and the Light!
        November 13, 2018 at 5:52 pm

        Not really, in some servers, kingsbane rogue is actually dominating the wild meta.

      • Wendigo
        November 17, 2018 at 8:20 am

        Why tutor it when you can Call to Arms them twice?

      • Wendigo
        November 17, 2018 at 8:24 am

        …And Crystology

  17. MockRock
    November 2, 2018 at 4:23 pm

    Ohhhhhh my god, Control Paladin is my favourite archetype of all time and this is the kind of card that makes me drool…or it would be, if Spikeridged Steed, Lynessa, Val’ Anyr, Potion of Heroism, Dinosize, Desperate Stand, The Last Kaleidosaur, etc weren’t all about to rotate out. As is, we’re gonna need to see some pretty impressive cards to make this do anything powerful, although it IS pretty cool that Paladin is finally getting some fatigue recursion.

    • MockRock
      November 2, 2018 at 4:31 pm

      Actually, I just checked and I’m mistaken, Rumble comes out in December which means we’ll have at least one expansion where you can play this with some pretty insane enchantments. Will that necessarily be insanely powerful? Not totally sure, but will definitely be trying it.

  18. TheActualBaker
    November 2, 2018 at 4:18 pm

    I don’t know if this card will be good straight away in the expansion, but I really love it. I loved kingsbane and of course I adore this one (I am a paladin main). In the current meta I could see this in a buff heavy even paladin, but probably not good enough. Of course in quest paladin this card is better than primalfin because of the better stats and of infinite potential value. There is already a lot of combo potential with Bok, Spidger Steed and also last stand, and I could see this hepling a lot Quest Paladin, but for now I don’t see much use out of this. I hope they print some new good buff card that paladin will need when rotation hits.

  19. Tuscarora87
    November 2, 2018 at 4:07 pm

    Shuffle this with Elephant and Banker.

    • Wendigo
      November 17, 2018 at 8:25 am

      And ease copy it with Zola as it is cheap

  20. Omnitarian
    November 2, 2018 at 3:19 pm

    If I had to imagine a card to push Buff Pally into relevance, it sure would look like this. It’s begging to be silenced, but then that’s a silence they can’t use when you drop Lynessa Sunsorrow. Both that card and this AND Primalfin Champion are pulled by Crystology. I think this is onto something.

  21. Xalik
    November 2, 2018 at 3:10 pm

    Minion version of Kingsbane for Paladin. This could be a sleeper broken archetype builder, Put one Spikeridged steed on it and after the first iteration you have a 3/9 with taunt that leaves behind a 2/6 with taunt for 2 mana. Add a Desperate stand and it’s a 3/9 taunt followed by a 3/1 taunt and a 2/6 taunt that possibly repeats for ever generating additional 2/6 taunts and shuffling extra copies into your deck… ?!?

    Depending on how it’s exploited I say possibly a 5/5 even without the quest and other shenanigans.

    • Nope
      November 2, 2018 at 4:09 pm

      I expect Desperate stand will reanimate this without and spells, the same way it works a la kingsbane.

      • Xalik
        November 2, 2018 at 4:19 pm

        Whether or not Desperate Stand keeps buffs, this also gets called out by Call to Arms, even after all the buffs are applied… and how does it work with Val’anyr?…

        I see broken combos

        • TheActualBaker
          November 3, 2018 at 3:10 am

          Desperate Stand is terrible with this card. If you cast it, the 1 health version of the minion won’t have buffs (it can’t be just because it would have desperate stand itself at that point, so it would be a loop and the immortal prelate would be immortal for real) but it would shuffle itself in the deck. In the late this interaction would shuffle a lot of 1/3 in your deck, and that’s really bad.

  22. Jed
    November 2, 2018 at 2:54 pm

    Quest paladin support.
    I’m not complaining, but this won’t be good when the rotation hits.

    4/5

    • Earthrouge
      November 2, 2018 at 3:06 pm

      THey will probably print out more buff support cards, i mean thats the direction they are going with the legendary and this one.

      • Jed
        November 2, 2018 at 3:10 pm

        But can they beat

        Spikeridged Steeeeeeeed

        • Earthrouge
          November 2, 2018 at 3:32 pm

          Yeah steed rotating will hurt like hell, its a really solid card. And im also kinda salty that the buff support is coming strong right when lynessa is rotating too.

          • Jonnymeerkat
            November 2, 2018 at 8:02 pm

            Ah fuck you’re right Lynessa is rotating too. Before they even gave her a chance!!!

          • Brenden
            November 11, 2018 at 9:26 am

            Just play wild!
            Be like me and give up on standard