Silver Vanguard

Silver Vanguard Card

Silver Vanguard is a 7 Mana Cost Common Neutral Minion card from the Kobolds and Catacombs set!

Card Text

Deathrattle: Recruit an 8-Cost minion.

Flavor Text

Float like a Faerie Dragon, sting like a Hivequeen.

Silver Vanguard Card Review

Continuing Kobolds and Catacombs’ trend of “powerful but cautiously costed” cards we have Silver Vanguard. Obviously a huge tempo loss when she is played, you are hoping to make up for it by Recruiting a powerful 8-cost minion, such as Tirion Fordring or The Lich King, which is like… ramping by 1 mana, kind of? First off, you won’t have that many 8-cost cards in your deck, so any one of them that you draw makes Vanguard’s ability worse, or potentially even fizzles it out. Second, it is an entire card you put in your deck in order to ramp out an 8-drop one turn sooner, conditioned on her Deathrattle triggering at all. The only question remaining is “Why?”

To start, you can potentially trigger her ability multiple times with cards like Play Dead and the like. It’s good that she doesn’t care that the 8-cost minion is other than how much mana it is, meaning it can be used for Tirion just as well as to summon Charged Devilsaur. We have already seen a plethora of tools apparently aimed at a slower, “big” hunter deck and this might be one if them. In all fairness, when you are not playing a 7 mana 3/3 for that Deathrattle, it becomes quite good. However, other than Seeping Oozeling, it’s hard to get her ability copied without getting her into play. Since you don’t want to be paying the full mana, you might be looking at how to cheat her out earlier, with either Barnes or another similar effect, but at that point… you could simply cheat out the 8-drop instead, eliminating the middle woman.

Card Review by Chimbarozo

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47 Comments

  1. Robbus
    November 30, 2017 at 2:04 PM

    Put it in rogue,
    Put Kel’thuzad in deck,
    Silver Vanguard dies and summons kelthusad wich summons another Silver Vanguard,
    gang up Kel’thuzad and when Van Guard dies get more Kel’thuzads on the board…
    profit! 🙂

    • LuciferSix
      July 27, 2018 at 3:13 PM

      Skelemancer is better tho.

  2. BuddyBoy
    November 27, 2017 at 2:56 PM

    This is really bad….. 7mana 3/3 …….8 mana for an 8 cost that you get as a deathrattle which is delayed at least a turn or two if not silenced. So its a free 3/3 with a net loss of tempo and huge risk to be exploited.
    Not seeing any potential here haha.

  3. Imaloony
    November 26, 2017 at 2:35 PM

    This card isn’t quite as bad as people seem to think it is… but it’s still pretty bad. There are cheeky ways to cheese it out or abuse it, but most of those ways are too inconsistent to be worth risking just playing a vanilla 7 mana 3/3. Just here for the memes.

    In arena, this is a very swingy card, but most of the time it’s going to be REALLY bad.

    Standard: 1/5
    Arena: 1/5

    • LEETHELIVER
      December 1, 2017 at 8:04 PM

      I think this has a rating of 8/5 in terms of meme potential, just think, silver vanguard recruiting that 8 cost 4/8 that cast random spells in your deck like yogg, Its a double meme…

  4. Mrthejazz
    November 26, 2017 at 9:44 AM

    Alright guys so here’s the dream.

    1) play the new Hunter ooze. Copy this deathrattle.
    2) kill ooze.
    3) deathrattle pulls grand archivist
    4) at end of turn, grand archivist pulls either crushing walls or the card that summons all three animal companions.

    5) profit!

  5. KaihatsuJai
    November 26, 2017 at 5:03 AM

    Fits well into Big Druid which is a top tier deck.
    That alone makes it a 5 star card, but you may not want to run more than 1.

  6. Deesmo
    November 25, 2017 at 2:05 AM

    How about big hunter. This card + guy who copies death rattle and new legendary which have battlecry and death rattle: recruit beast.

    • Vlad
      November 25, 2017 at 7:12 AM

      Silverhands deck… This on turn 7, your opponent ignores it, turn 8 tarim, kill a big minion with this recruit tirion, next turn you have tarim + tirion on board.

  7. Mitpaul
    November 24, 2017 at 3:05 PM

    Could be potentially good in a wild priest deck, use barnes, use Shadow Essence, Revive cards, N’zoth and then put valuable 8 drops in the deck like Ragnaros, Kel’thuzad and Litch King, fill the rest of your deck with stall cards. The only weakness I see is drawing all your late game cards early or repeatedly pulling Barnes and N’zoth out with your copy from deck effects, maybe add 1 Sylvanas to decrease the chance of pulling out something bad? I mean she works with Shadow Essence, Barnes and revive cards pretty well! Im defenitely trying this out.

  8. Scrublordgayrosh
    November 23, 2017 at 7:14 AM

    I have an urge to make this card work

  9. CD001
    November 22, 2017 at 5:04 PM

    Could be a chuckle in Wild – pulls Kel’thuzad who then resurrects it at the end of the turn… without you spending any mana that turn. So you could play a Sludge Belcher, Earth Ellie or some other useful Taunt for Kel’thuzad to resurrect every turn.

    However, you will have had to have just basically wasted turn 7 – which will probably loose you game. I’m pretty sure this card only exists to give a bad evolution.

  10. Arjan
    November 22, 2017 at 2:37 PM

    You can play “Seeping Oozeling” and get this deathrattle effect. Seems fun. 🙂

    • CD001
      November 22, 2017 at 5:14 PM

      But what 8 drops do Hunters run that would make it worthwhile? You’re not really going to chuck a couple of Giant Sand Worms into a deck just so you’ve got a potential pull from the Deathrattle (Lich King maybe) and if you’ve already drawn the Silver Vanguard when you play the Oozeling it’ll not be able to clone the Deathrattle anyway.

      There _might_ be a niche slot for it in Paladin – but it’s otherwise a pretty terrible card.

      • Arjan
        November 23, 2017 at 11:31 AM

        We’ve got the “KATHRENA WINTERWISP”. But yeah, its pretty hard to pull it off indeed. You don’t want to take these cards to fill your deck with. But keep an open mind, anything can/might happen.

  11. Dontfeedtheemu
    November 22, 2017 at 2:17 PM

    Control Paladin

    Turn 6 you Spikeridge so your not going to die when you turn 7

    Play this card

    Turn 8 you equality consecrate clear the board plays Tirion

    Turn 9 so control stuff

    Turn 10 N’Zoth plays Tirion and this card which dies into Lich King

    Seems pretty good, because it guarantee pulls a strong taunt.

    • kento3285
      November 22, 2017 at 10:18 PM

      Kinda memey though, if you draw your 8 drops this card is dead, and few decks can include enough 8 drops to make it reliable

  12. Ertje
    November 22, 2017 at 1:32 PM

    Evolve into this minion with no 8 cost minions in your deck :S

  13. MockRock
    November 22, 2017 at 12:52 PM

    Pretty gross. You can think of it as cheating Tirion out a turn early, but you’re giving up turn 7 in order to do it. In a world where Bonemare exists. Really can’t see any use for this card unless some crazy combo springs up. If there’s “Recruit a Deathrattle” or something along those lines, then we’ll see. Not high hopes for this one.

  14. TardisGreen
    November 22, 2017 at 12:10 PM

    Maybe it could fit into some weird Tonen/Ramp Druid hybrid that played Pilfered Power with 3 tokens up on turn 3.

    But probably dust, LUL.

  15. BiggityB
    November 22, 2017 at 11:32 AM

    Barnes into Vanguard pulls Tirion (or Lich King, etc.)

  16. mayorcheez
    November 22, 2017 at 11:20 AM

    This card is slower than my great-aunt Thelma

  17. Henceforth
    November 22, 2017 at 11:04 AM

    Recruit , activates the battlecry? or it is like summon…

  18. Crapcrack
    November 22, 2017 at 9:49 AM

    TIRION!!!

  19. Henceforth
    November 22, 2017 at 9:48 AM

    Not a good card, and i have Umbra…

    • Muzek
      November 22, 2017 at 10:35 AM

      great card, not to put in your deck but great as a nerf to evolve since at the moment they don’t carry 8 drops

  20. Name (Required)
    November 22, 2017 at 9:47 AM

    Jeez I really liked the artwork for this minion but the states are really bad I don’t see why people would play this over Bonemare
    I guess for 9 mana as a Hunter you can play Silver Vanguard + double Play Dead which could pull out two Charged Devilsuars or Yank out a Lich King

    • Name (Required)
      November 22, 2017 at 9:52 AM

      On a second thought I wouldn’t want to pull out my Kathrena by accident if I’m playing Big Hunter

  21. Rick
    November 22, 2017 at 9:36 AM

    What about Paladin with Tirion & Ragnaros?

  22. Only Hunter
    November 22, 2017 at 9:32 AM

    Only big hunters (if that will be a thing.) Could use this in combo with their spel aktivate deathrattle.

    Then for 8 mana they get a 3/3, a 8 mana minion that’s drawn from thier deck. And one more 8 mana once the 3/3 dies, but other then that, mjeee

    • BonoMagno
      November 22, 2017 at 9:38 AM

      What about this + King Krush??

      • Opal736
        November 22, 2017 at 9:48 AM

        King Krush costs 9, but it might work with charged devilsaurs instead. Anyway other than big hunter and MAYBE paladin (Tirion/Ragnaros, just give it taunt or a good buff) this is probably useless for now, but let’s wait for more cards, I mean recruit is the main focus of this expansion so there will be a way to get a better value out of this I guess…

      • Crapcrack
        November 22, 2017 at 9:48 AM

        King krush costs 8 mana tho’

  23. Chimborazo
    November 22, 2017 at 9:20 AM

    Why does the rating system force is to give at least one start? Sometimes it’s a 0/5 and there’s nothing we can do about it.

    • Nope
      November 22, 2017 at 12:19 PM

      This card can have long term consequences if it becomes possible to cheat it into play. They should not have printed this; it limits the design space.

      • Chimborazo
        November 22, 2017 at 1:28 PM

        Yea because let’s cheat that into play instead of the actual 8-drop. Like how Tirion limits design space, right?.

        #This_is_what_Blade_Flurry_died_for

  24. MorbidArtist
    November 22, 2017 at 9:18 AM

    Only usable with Umbra/Play Dead/Feign Death. Not even arena-worthy.

  25. Wow
    November 22, 2017 at 9:09 AM

    This is so bad. The only good card for this is Lich King, and I don’t see any reason to do this since you can play against priest and he shadow word: death the lich before even giving you a card in hand.
    And in wild is total 0, there are better options than this.
    I give it 1/5 stars.

  26. emanuele
    November 22, 2017 at 9:07 AM

    evolve nerf

    • Wow
      November 22, 2017 at 9:10 AM

      True, the only reason of this card is nerfing evolve.