Zandalari Templar
Zandalari Templar is a 4 Mana Cost Rare Paladin Minion card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!
Card Text
Battlecry: If you've restored 10 Health this game, gain +4/+4 and Taunt.
Flavor Text
YOU WERE A TEMPLAR, JONDAR!- Mana Cost: 4
- Attack: 4
- Health: 4
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Paladin
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: Rastakhan's Rumble
- Mechanics: Battlecry, Buff Minion, Taunt
Zandalari Templar Card Review
Well, this is Hooked Reaver 2.0. Both are understatted 4-drops that become big Taunts after you meet a certain condition. However, while in case of Warlock, the condition is pretty easy to meet eventually (I mean, most of the decks WILL damage you at some point, especially Aggro/Midrange which will try to kill you as soon as possible), this requires you to build a deck around it.
At first I thought that you can just slam it into Even Paladin and call it a day, but it’s not that easy. Healing for 10 in that deck is definitely possible, but not very probable in a timely manner, making it just too slow. I mean, yes, you can Corpsetaker + Blessing of Kings, which would in theory heal you for 14. But only in theory, because keep in mind that healing only occurs when you’re missing some health. Which might not be the case so early in the game. Heck, against Control deck it might not be the case until late late into the game when you’ve already went through most of your healing cards, and you’re forced to drop this as a 4 mana 4/4, which is not great. And even against Aggro, I don’t believe that you have enough consistent ways to heal in order to include that. You would need to revamp your deck heavily, but that doesn’t seem like the best idea.
So all in all, for me it seems like another push towards Control Paladin. The archetype is usually quite heavy on healing (although lots of the good ways to heal have rotated out of Standard this year), so healing for 10 wouldn’t be that hard… against faster deck, that is. But once again, my main issue with Control Paladin is that it doesn’t have a consistent win condition vs slower decks. It’s not like you will be dropping 4 mana 8/8 Taunts on Turn 5-6 – they just deliberately won’t damage you so you can’t heal, so by the time you deal that damage to yourself with weapons and then heal up, the card will no longer be that relevant. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that this card is bad. On the contrary, if a slower Paladin build with lots of healing is viable, this should see play in that deck. The thing is, is it really worth to run a deck like that if it doesn’t have consistent win condition vs Control and Combo?
Card rating: 7/10, but again, might not find a deck to fit into
If Heal Pally becomes a thing 4/5, if not 3/5.
This could help enable the Heal Pally dream as a mid-range/control deck, which has actually got a load of support in the existing card base and some of the new cards revealed so far. Think Kangor, Lesser Pearl Spellstone, Benevolent Djinn, The Glass Knight, Blackguard, and the DK, alongside some regular neutrals.
For the deck to work the first step to gaining value is to take damage in a controlled way. With the paladin board clears and damage limitation options that’s fairly achievable, as you can afford to wait for the best time to clear, and/or turn a giant into a 1/8 and leave it for a bit.
Then you can generate value through the heal synergy cards, but so far this has been where the limitation to the deck is though, as 1. there haven’t been enough cards that draw on this effect, those that do are far from game-winning, and they are situational, i.e. they need to be in your hand or on the board, which kills of consistency. And 2. once you have fully healed your hero and/or minions you can’t generate more value until you take more damage, which ruins your tempo swing. Zandalari Templar is a strong addition to this and addresses the consistency issue. I can’t see it being enough to make it truly competitive though without the Legendary troll champion having really powerful synergy and another card or two that gain value from healing.
Outside of a Heal Pally deck it could realise its value in a deck with a couple of Benevolent Djinn’s, Fungal Enchanters, or shroom brewers but I wouldn’t say its that powerful a buff to justify including those cards. Maybe it supports the DK OTK deck, but I haven’t played that.
Zandalari Templar does take a lot more work to make it function than Hooked Reaver, and the way of making it work also seems to be a way of rubbing salt in your opponent’s wounds more so than as a defensive option to stabilize.
The ten health requirement can be met easily with Crystalsmith Kangor + Blessing of Kings or a Corpsetaker will all keywords. Plus, Fungal Enchanter can also contribute to the ten count.
It’ll have a place in Even Paladin. Granted, that’s not difficult to figure out.
Potentially very good against aggro, although I think we need to see at least one more really good, relatively low cost Paladin healing spell (which seems likely given the direction this expansion is taking). Against control, it’s obviously going to generally just be a 4/4/4, which seems fine. It’s okay to have cards which excel against some decks and are perfectly playable against others.
This will be dependent on a few things: A reasonable aggro presence in the meta, Paladin being given some new healing tools, and silence/Sap (Even Rogue might be a thing) not running around everywhere. Those all seem reasonable, and if it pans out that way, I could definitely see this card in Constructed decks.
Silence doesn’t hurt this card because any deck that wants to run it is going to be running other cards that demand silence a lot more. An owl spent to nerf this down isn’t getting used on Tirion.
The problem with this card is you need to have taken 10 damage and healed that amount, That maybe happens at earliest turn 7 and then the opponent probably have an answer or silence and it is just a 4/4 at turn 7 which kinda sucks. But can be good. But it will be a struggle to complete the requirement
Pretty sure healing your minions counts towards this. It doesn’t say that your hero has to have been healed.
Auto include in OTK Pally until the rotation in the spring.
+5 lifestealing sword from DK activates power in 2 swings (or one swing with with Crystalsmith Kangor) and this makes an 8/8 with Taunt to hide and stick your horsemen for the win condition
Probably auto-include in Even Pali as the most popular builds often run 2x Corpsetaker which can get to +10 health fast with Windfury and Lifestealing + 2x truesilver and Kangor to speed it up.
5/5
Your reasons are so optimist I can’t do anything but smile
I have run both of these decks at Rank 5+ and getting +10 healing from cards is fairly common but often wasted as over-heals in the early game in even-pali with Corpsetakers, and sometimes only used to offset the damage taken from killing minions with DK sword. I don’t see where over-healing won’t count towards the 10 necessary, so I think this should proc fairly easily with either deck.
It’s pretty clear when you look at northshire cleric that healing is only healing if the target isn’t at full health.
this card will stand or fail by how easy it is to heal your face and minions in Paladin, which is always been a problem for heal synergies. I really want heal pally to work but based on the card pool so far I think it will be very difficult to activate this consistently. In fact, the best hope might be for a package similar to heal zoo that uses crystallizers as well, but who knows.
I crafted the Glass knight so you know my opinion is biased
Love your comments, dude. Literally loling
Did they really just give pally an easy 4M 8/8? Seriously? No red flags here?
It has a restrictive condition. It’s not in your control if you can heal. In control matchups especially this card will be bad.
That’s where you’re wrong kiddo. It doesn’t say “heal your hero”. Healing minions should be easy in control matchups.
True, but paladin doesn’t have a lot of ways to heal minions. Sure, it can be done, but why would you put cards for that in your deck aside from using this card? There’s a reason heal cards aren’t used, and I don’t think a card like this alone will be reason to.
Better (?) than the warlock 4/4 that becomes a 7/7 taunt for being below 15 in that you’re going to be on high health when you play this as an 8/8. Two triggers in Djinn and a Truesilver make this. Good card.
Its worse… oh so much worse…
Its like it says: “you need to go to 20 life, and then back to 30”, it would be so hard to activate that right now (unless other good healing cards pop up)
No. You can heal in increments. You don’t need to heal all of it at once. “Go to 20, back to 30″… pff, how about down to 26, back to 30, down to 24, back to 30? That works too and easily accomplished by truesilver and djinn, as well as DK weapon, or even Holy Light. And Kangor exists, so it halves your needs. This can go in even paladin.
And Even Paladin will be the fullest extent of where this card will see regular play.
So? Does the fact that a card can only go in one deck, but is amazing in that deck, mean it isn’t an excellent card?
To Piterno.
Yes, it can, but only when that deck has a restriction on it that lowers the average quality of the cards in it. I don’t think people are saying Raid Leader and Stormwind Champion are suddenly excellent cards because of their usefulness in Odd Paladin or Voodoo Doctor and Lightwarden in Heal Zoo Warlock. The are excellent only in the context of their respective decks.
Even then, I’m unsure if Even Paladin would want to play this over anything involved in the Corpsetaker package. The two would conflict with each other at least with the current logic behind Even Paladin.
Not to mention the other healing synergy even paladin has beyond that.