Bewitched Guardian
Bewitched Guardian is a 5 Mana Cost Rare Druid Minion card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
Taunt Battlecry: Gain +1 Health for each card in your hand.
Flavor Text
Amwitched. Beingwitched. Beenwitched.Bewitched Guardian Additional Information
Bewitched Guardian Card Review
This is basically a Twilight Drake for 1 more mana, which immediately gains Taunt. To be completely fair, I think that Twilight Drake is still better. Druid has enough Taunts anyway, it’s not like it absolutely needs one like that to survive. Since Aggro decks are running Silence in pretty much every build, this is also a very juicy Silence targets, more so than most of the other Taunts. Since this gains Health as the Battlecry, it will end up being a vanilla 4/1 after getting Silenced, unlike e.g. a Druid of the Claw, which would be a 4/6. That’s a huge difference – your opponent can just trade a 1-drop into it and you have no body at all to trade with.
That said, there are some advantages over the Twilight Drake. Most importantly, Oaken Summons synergy. Or rather, the anti-synergy with Drake – it would pull the 4/1 version, and this one dodges it, because it costs one more. And in case it can’t be Silenced, putting a big Taunt in the mid game against Aggro could work out quite nicely.
Plus, you could obviously run both if you don’t play Oaken Summons. If Hand Druid actually works, this would often be e.g. a 4/7 or 4/8 Taunt for 5, which isn’t that bad at all. However, I actually don’t see Hand Druid working at all. The concept might make some sense, but there are just not enough synergies or incentives to run it.
Card rating: Would be a 7/10 in a Hand Druid deck, but since that build looks weak, I’ll give it 2/10 in general.
Bewitched Guardian Full Card Art
The obvious comparison is Twilight Drake, which you would always run in a Handdruid deck. Is the Taunt worth 1 extra mana? No, it’s not. Hence why this is a much worse Twilight Drake. I believe for this to have been competitive, it would have to be a 4/2 Taunt instead of a 4/1, with the same text obviously. So I give this 2/5 stars.
This thing is compared to Twilight Drake repeatedly here and I can see where you’re coming from, but the only thing it has in common with Twilight Drake is its Battlecry and Attack stat. Twilight Drake does what this card does with 1 mana discount. And for the argument that “you can’t have too much of a good thing”, let me break it to you: Twilight Drake isn’t good. It’s viable, merely for its Dragon Tag which decks like the Dragon Priest have traditionally abused at times when good Dragons are lacking.
This thing is abysmal, it has a Battlecry that Twlight Drake does with one mana less and by sporting the powerful Dragon Tag.
What about the Taunt? Well, if it was 4 mana I could consider it potentially viable, but by turn five if you’ve got enough cards in your hands to make this a good 5-drop you’ve either made a couple of important mistakes or you’re very unlucky.
3/10
twilight drake was one of the two key card of handlock for years. If a deck can sustain a big hand, twilight drake sure is good. It is true tho that with the recent powercreep it became worse and got cut out of control warlock decks, to make room for the demon cheating package.
Now, a taunt tag is usually worth slightly more than 0.5 mana. But really, on a 4/10 minion, it’s worth more than that.
A 5mana 4/7 taunt is definitely playable, and this can easily be much better.
You’re right, Twilight Drake was a good minion in the Handlock builds. I hadn’t considered that, honestly.
Not good, not bad but niche. It needs other cards to be good and silence will kill this. Silence is going to be the bane of hand druid and this meta will be full of it I fear. I want to make hand druid work but this card will not be in the deck.
Can’t belive they are actually rotating all the archetypes, so that u have to craft all classes to play your favorite deck. Hand druid now…
Mage is gonna play zoo (?), hunter control and potentially combo…
Shaman is about to replace casino mage. Dunno whether this is all going to be viable, but there is definetely a scheme to this
I guess would very good have another twilight drake,there’s no problem have four cards do the same thing in a single deck,if the card is strong in the deck,of course makes sense do it!! Taking away the possibility to use it to reforce the new “hand druid” archetype,it would very good in any druid deck you need some taunts,druids keep so much cards in hand anyway…3/5 star card,cannot be used to so much things and won’t be essential in any deck,but will be very boring to your opponents
This isn’t a twilight drake because of its mana cost. In most cases it’s just an inherently worse card than Druid of the claw which is far more flexible and doesn’t see play. Playing nothing until turn 5 is unrealistic Druid already struggles with aggro. Not playing cards like wild growth to run this card would be incredibly bad. This card won’t see play because it’s awful against Aggro and mediocre at best in slow matchups and is already outclassed by Druid of the claw.
5mana 4/10 taunt is not worse than 5mana 4/6 taunt. It’s better. It’s actually OP, since it’s basically a 2mana discount on ancient of war.
It’s not a 4/10 taunt on turn 5 you’re forgetting that Druid does not have access to the warlock hero power or the powerful anti-aggro early game tools that Warlock does so they can’t afford to just sit and do nothing. Ancient of War is not op as a 5/10 taunt on 7 so why would this card be op as a 4/10 taunt on 10? It’s also even weaker to silence than Ancient of War is.
Splintergraft could make this become a giant copy if you have some cards in your hand….
very good if silence is not in the meta
I don’t see why it costs 5 mana. Twilight Drake cost 4 mana and is a neutral, hence you can use it in warlock which is a class that benefits the most from “for each card in your hand” effects. This card, unlike twilight drake, does have Taunt, but it doesn’t have the dragon tag and it’s also a druid class card. Maybe it will be a good 5-drop, but I think it wouldn’t have been too overpowered to make it a 4-drop. All though, maybe it’s for the best that it’s a 5-drop because you don’t want Oaken Summons to pull a 4/1. If you are running an Oaken Summons based deck (e.g. Quest Druid) then the extra 1 mana cost is not a handicap but an advantage. Overall, I think this is a good card. 4/5
Fair point to bring up about it. But i feel that at 4 attack it is slightly underwhelming on a 5 cost minion. Looking at all the hand-druid has been given, it is cool, and a fair mechanic, It does not seem overpowered or busted in any noticeable way, but i do not see a lot of killing power in it outside of getting a big board and putting a savage roar and branching paths in there. but then at that point, wouldnt you be better off just going with an agro deck and running living mana?
I think people are underestimating this archetype quite a bit now.. This could actually work out really well. Just go ahead and think about it for a while, don’t just see this card as a one card but think of it as a whole. Twilight card 2.0 or not, it has lots of synergies now.
My only complaint is what they did with Druid legendaries.. pushing this deck so hard yet not giving any proper legendaries to support the deck hard is pretty weird. One can argue that Aviana is the legend for this deck but no.. just no. That card sucks.
Splinter adds a card to your hand and it’s a big pyrosy minion in a midrangey big minion deck.
a 10 mana 10/10 with +1 hp for every minion in your hand. so at best, a 10 mana 10/19 taunt. is not AWEFUL. but there are stronger turn 10 plays and there are easy ways to deal with that singular huge minion
That’s why splinter comes with multiple bodyies like pyros. Sure there are better tempo plays but that’s serious value that is going to take multiple resources to deal with.
Oops my brain got caught between typing body and bodies.
Your magic will not save you!
They are literally printing a forced Hand deck with this for Druid, and I dont like forced decks, it reminds me of Jades (they literally slap every card with the key word Jade Golem in the deck)
Like seriously,they literally revealed 5 ish cards for Druid that has the “for each card in you hand” wording, its starting to become boring and lazy
You go first. Turn 2 Witchwood Apple (end turn with 7 cards). Turn 3 Ferocious Howl to draw a card and gain armor for lack of board presence (end turn with 8 cards). Turn 4 Whispering Woods, you just played a 4 mana 7/7 across 7 bodies (end turn with 8 cards). Turn 5 Bewitched Guardian is a 4/9 with taunt.
Seems good.
What I want to know though is: what do I do with all these apples? Hold them? Am I roleplaying a tree?
With apples and worgens, you can only be happy.
why tho?
this is just a twilight drake costing 1 more with taunt…
in the class with usually the worst card draw…
like… why?
1/5
What do you mean with class with the worst card draw?
Apparently UI, Nourish, and Wrath aren’t cards in his version of the game.
Also branching paths, ferocious roar. Yup, definitely no draw in druid. Oh and naturalize kappa.
Ultimate infestation is an exception, but nourish is just flexible, not necessarily a good card draw. wrath is pretty good tho. branching paths is not good card draw, just very flexible, again, druid is flexible, ferocious howl isn’t even out yet, so we don’t know yet if it’s good. naturalize is a joke
I guess they have better card draw than I initially thought when I wrote this comment, but I kind of expected this kind of reaction and wanted to see what would happen
Apparently his drunk thinking it’s a hunter card
na man hunter doesn’t deserve this bad a card
Witchwood Apple dude. If you go first, if you play 1 card (witchwod apple) and do nothing till turn 5, you can get this as a 4/10 taunt for 5. If you go second you don’t even need the apple. Sad it doesn’t synergize with taunt druid though. Should have been “has +1 max health for each card in hand”
Don’t underestimate how powerful adding taunt to a card can be.
Twilight Drake with taunt just for Druid! Pogchamp!
It even comes with one extra mana cost! OP!
Very OP! I see, feel, and smell a nerf coming on for this card. If anything, it’ll get the taunt removed at worse; at best, an increase in health and it’s ability removed. In either case, it’s going to get nerfed, and big!