Headmaster Kel’Thuzad
Headmaster Kel’Thuzad is a 5 Mana Cost Legendary Neutral Minion card from the Scholomance Academy set!
Card Text
Spellburst: If the spell destroys any minions, summon them.
Flavor Text
"You wish to know my secrets, hmm? I carry little bits of tuna in the sleeves of my robe, he loves that. Oh, you meant the risen dead? That was trivial, trivial."- Mana Cost: 5
- Attack: 4
- Health: 6
- Crafting Cost: 1600 / 3200 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 400 / 1600 (Golden)
- Rarity: Legendary
- Class: Neutral
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: Scholomance Academy
- Mechanics: Spellburst, Summon
Control decks died for this! Let’s see what Control Mage/Priest/Warrior/Warlock can do with this dude.
Summon them where exactly??
summon is always on your side unless it specifies “for your opponent”
A powerful card; not over the top, though. Luckily.
Clearly broken in Priest and Warlock, maybe in Demon Hunter. This card can swing the board on turn 7 or 8
Think of Kel’Thuzad as a Moat Lurker, back at One Night at Karazhan, but you gain your own Minion.
Not to mention that you cast a spell afterwards, becuase it’s propaply going to die rather quickly if you don’t do anything.
Unless you cheat out to Summon out Kel’Thuzad, this card actually sucks. (expect if you have a Wide AoE such as Brawl, or Bladestorm from Warrior for example.
You can go for a Kel’Thuzad into a Destory Card, and gain a Minion’s Stats, sure, but In Reality, It’s not really going to work. Warrior, And Mage Might Consider, but that’s about it. We’ll see what Heartstone can do for Kel’Thuzad, but for now, I’m giving it 2 stars.
Guess he wont work with any spell that kills him at the same time as the rest.
Still if you just want to steel one minion or many smaller once all classes have something good.
Other wise “SHADOW WORD: RUIN” 4 mana is great in priest.
“PLAGUE OF WRATH” 5 mana in warrior with some build up to it.
“SHADOWFLAME” 4 mana in warlock can also work if you already have a big minion on the board.
I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned the mage possibilities with Naga Sand Witch yet. You can turn a Malygos flamestrike into a 5-mana 8-damage AOE that can wipe most opponent boards.
Arena 4/5
Standard 5/5
Wild 4/5
Good card (3-4 stars) but definitely not great,
like the entire power level of this expansion so far..
Broken if it works with plague of flames, otherwise just pretty good
Does it work if Kel’Thuzad die ?
I have my doubts, if this card just cost 3 mana, it would be meta definitely.
Headmaster Kel’Thuzad… nice! The art looks cool. On a random note, human Kel’Thuzad looks very similar to Vargoth when you think about it. And actually, I think I will use this card in a somewhat similar way to how I use Vargoth; if you draw him in the late game, you can summon him and use his effect in the same turn, but if you draw him early on you can summon him on curve as a soft Taunt due to the threat this represents. I like the effect, but I’m afraid that as a Rogue player this won’t be the greatest option at all due to Rogue’s lack of AoE. Unless we get even more removal spells, which is not unlikely, I don’t really expect this to be very viable in Rogue.
Other than that, I’m admittedly a bit disappointed that Kel’Thuzad isn’t a Hero card. I get that Team 5 doesn’t want to repeat the Dr. Boom or Death Knights “mistake” over and over again, but if except for Reno we haven’t seen a new Hero card since Rastakhan Rumble and it was a LONG time ago now. If we don’t get a Hero card this expansion, then I really hope next one we will because even if balanced meta and Hero cards aren’t always the best of friends, they really add something to the hype of an expansion – at least for me.
(Not to mention, Zul’Jin was a pretty lame Hero card at that. He could just as well have been a spell…)
I feel the same way, man! I just love hero cards too and each new xpac I hope for some new, at least one, and I dont really care if they are kinda broken (guess what heroes supposed to be broken, if you ask me). So Headmaster Kel would have been really nice…
I agree wholeheartedly. To be honest, I feel like Reno and Hagatha are good Hero cards; they’re strong, but not overpowered. They weren’t an auto include like most Death Knights or Dr. Boom were. We need more of these. I’m really happy Reno is a thing already – I just wish we had a Hero card say, every one or two expansions. I liked the trend of each expansion featuring one Hero card of a different class every time.
This card on Gala priest with reduced cost via Fate Weavers + all priest removals (single target and aoe) can be kinda broken
You said the truth, I love this card using in the priest deck.
Also work on your own minions, can see this being played in cube/renolock with sacrificial/dark pact
Some Priest, Warlock, Warrior, Mage or Shaman, will surely exploit this effect. But as it seems, it isn’t the most versatile card nowadays.
Tempo is key, and you need at least 7 mana to trigger his effect. Playing it at T5 could turn out to be the way to go here. Because sticking a 4/6 with Taunt will force your opponent trade into it, or at least use resources wasting his turn.
It kinda remebers me of Sylvanas Windrunner, not as much versatile but ofc threatening as hell!
We should expect some dual-class cheap removal at this point…
Excuse me but why is this card not 5 stars in the rating? It’s a card that can easily break the game with any spell right now and with any spell that gets released in the future. Heck, there are already some really good spells that go with this and even if you kill just one minion it’s going to be more or less worth it.
The potential of this card is simply astounding, 5 stars.
This card is epic and works with any nuke card that costs 5 or less. Or you can use with a single target removal.
Could be amazing with Shadowflame in Warlock. Keep your minion, and get back any minions you kill with it. Maybe could even work with Conjurers Calling or Plague of Wrath
A card just for control decks that is potentially gamewinning with the right activator/situation, and you can even decide to use him “on curve” with a cheap Spell or save him with a boardwipe to yank your opponents whole board.
Some possibilities:
– Priest (Shadow Word Death/Ruin, not to mention he has other activators in Penance, Breath of the Infinite and Time Rip, this is actually pretty scary)
– Warrior (Shield Slam, Execute, Brawl, even Ramming Speed if the meta is right)
– Shaman (Torrent, Hagatha’s Scheme)
– Mage (Ray of Frost on weakened minions, Malygos Spells, Rolling Fireball)
Even classes without cheap hard removal like Druid (Bogbeam, Swipe, Starfall w/ quest) and Warlock (Nether Breath, Plague of Flames [it’ll resummon your dudes!]) might find a use, using him to snag a high-value minion who’s been weakened could still totally be worth it.
Hmm, I don’t think plague of flames would work, since it would kill Kel’thuzad.
Things that kill Kel’thuzad obviously don’t work. Ray of frost is also a terrible card with him as you only have one spell to go with it.
Shadow of ruin actually scares me alot now… Makes me wish Kel’thuzad was a 5 power minion just so it doesn’t work. If that ends up being broken then that’s a nice nerf to get rid of it. Shadowflame is interesting as it gives you back then minion you sacrificed and any it kills but I honestly doubt it will be easy to pull that off.
This is definitely good. Shadow Word: Death or Shield Slam could easily make this into a six or seven mana stats haymaker.
The primary issue though is that a big pile of stats is most of what this’ll be.
If you can manage to play this in the same turn as a board sweeping spell, that’s where you’ll get a lot of extra value, but most good board sweepers and this probably can’t be played in the same turn.
Control shells will play this, but it’ll probably be something that can be cut should budget be an issue.
I wonder how this would work with Soul Mirror?
Did their copies that kill them count as part of the “spell”…?
Same thing for something like Bees?
Also how would this work with defile – is the repeats part of the same first spell?
Spellburst triggers ‘After’ the spell is played so you would have to wait until defile stop dealing damage.
I doubt the minion kills count for spells like Bees, Soul Mirror, Nagrand Slam, or otherwise. Probably has to be direct damage/kill effect.
So Kelthuzad isn’t a skeleton anymore?
No, this is his form before he became skeleton.
Yeah, kinda weird how we went back in time.
This + shadow word ruin/death is mad. But then again… you would be playing priest.