Unidentified Shield
Unidentified Shield is a 6 Mana Cost Common Warrior Spell card from the Kobolds and Catacombs set!
Card Text
Gain 5 Armor. Gains a bonus effect in your hand.
Flavor Text
The kobold stared at the bundle for a long time. “Ah hah!” he said. “It’s a shield.”- Mana Cost: 6
- Crafting Cost: 40 / 400 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 5 / 50 (Golden)
- Rarity: Common
- Class: Warrior
- Card Type: Spell
- Set: Kobolds and Catacombs
- Mechanics: Gain Armor, Unidentified
Cards Relating to Unidentified Shield
| Runed Shield Type: Spell - Cost: 6 Gain 5 Armor. Summon a 5/5 Golem. |
| Serrated Shield Type: Spell - Cost: 6 Gain 5 Armor. Deal 5 damage. |
| Spiked Shield Type: Spell - Cost: 6 Gain 5 Armor. Equip a 5/2 weapon. |
| Tower Shield +10 Type: Spell - Cost: 6 Gain 5 Armor. Gain 10 more Armor. |
Unidentified Shield Card Review
Iron Hide for 6, WOW…
Iron hide + Arcankte Reaper (1 + 5) = 6 Mana worth
Iron Hide + Bring it on without cost buff (1 + 5) = 6 Mana worth
Iron hide + 5 damage (1 + 3) = 4 Mana worth
Iron hide + 5/5 minion (1 + 5) = 6 Mana worth
They all have great value but the 5 damage, which isn’t worth the cost
5 dmg 3 mana worth? WTF!? Compare it to… lava burst or fire ball
Solid card, pretty good for control warrior
Tower Shield +10, that’s a good reference. Lol.
Being the only one here to mention dark souls, you deserve a cookie. 😉
The Card and all variations of it, is ok for Control Warrior
Lets take a look:
Gain 5 Armor + Arcanite Reaper: As Control Warrior you want to live and remove minions. We get both effects. Arcanite Reaper would cost 5, Iron Hide would cost 1. Price seems OK for this one.
Gain 5 Armor + 5/5 Body: Control Warrior played Shieldmaiden, that is exactly the same. Seems OK.
Gain 5 Armor + 5 Dmg: Bash was 3/3 at 3 mana and also was played in CW. A bigger Bash for 6 mana seems OK
Gain 15 Armor: In the old Meta, where no one would play Ressources and every minion was removed , this card would be good. But today, you are in real trouble at Turn 6. Gaining 15 Armor maybe only works against Priest I think?
Overall it seems quite good and CW loves to have different Options to stall, so it shouldn’t be a problem that the card is always random … but here comes the big BUT:
CW is in a weak position now, you can’t just let a guy live from Turn 5 to 7. You fight for removals and if you don’t have the answers to a Scalebane or a Cairne, you will get Bonemared. Because of this, even Brawl, which was one of the strongest removals in old CW, isn’t that strong anymore. Most of the time only 1 single copy is played today.
If the meta slows down, this card will be good. I can see good use against Mages, Priests and Jade Druids. But against every Bonemare, Pirate, Scalebane Deck this shit will be much too slow.
For me effects of this card are: very good (5/5 body) good (5 dmg or 5/2 weapon) and questionable (15 total armor). Right now this card has good spot, because CW doesn’t have 6 card. One question, effect is choosen once when card is drawn or it changes every turn?
chosen when its drawn
I don’t think this card will see play. This is basically Iron Hide + 5 mana for an additional thing, and I don’t think those things are very good. The options are:
-a 5 mana 5/5 which is okay but not great, a worse fireball (or a one-charge gladiator’s longbow which sees no play)
-an arcanite reaper which only really sees play in aggro decks and I definitely wouldn’t play this card in aggro
-two extra castings of Iron Hide which is a waste of 3 mana
I’m pretty sure this card will see a little play just to test it out early on, but there are so many things that would be better than this for any warrior deck.
Two extra castings of Iron Hide isn’t exactly fair, Iron Hide is bad because it’s not card efficient, not because it’s not mana efficient. Control warriors don’t care about five extra armor from one card, however they do like to gain 5 armor and one card draw from a card (shield block), because it’s card efficient, even though it’s not even that mana efficient.
I still don’t think this card is great though, just saying that you can’t always straight up compare cards the way you do.
I know that combining multiple card effects into a single card increases the cost because of card efficiency and that has to be taken into account, but I stand by comparing things in this way. Iron hide gives us a basis for what 5 armor is worth, so comparing this card to iron hide + another card gives a better estimate of how the card will perform instead of judging it in a vacuum. It’s not a perfect system, I know, but it’s the most realistic way to judge new cards before we get the chance to try them out. And I was trying to not bring up shield block while giving my thoughts on this new card because I would run shield block over the new card any day. Not because it’s card efficient, but because it’s card draw. The armor is nice enough, but it’s the draw that matters with that card, and that’s why it’s usually the first thing removed and the last thing added when making a control warrior deck. It’s just there because it lets you draw a card that matters and it happens to keep you from dying while you spend a turn not developing or removing anything. I would honestly compare shield block to iron hide + draw a card for two mana because it’s really not that good of a card, but draw that keeps your health somewhat stabilized is nice to have when you have a 28 card deck and you need filler.
Sweet! Kazakus potions in warrior
Except the Kazakus potion always has an armor effect, which is one of the worst choices most of the time. Not to mention you don’t get to choose the second effect.
All the shields are fair quality by themselves. You’d consider playing this in a control warrior with Geosculpor Yip, Shield slam and Medivh, but for a controldeck it kinda sucks that the effects are so random. If amor synergy gets pushed a little bit further, i think this could see play.
In terms of arena this card might be a little bit too expensive, since the amor gain doesn’t really matter in a tempo match up, and the 15 Amor gain makes this almost worthless 3 out of 4 times. I don’t think it’s absolute garbage in Arena but it’s below Average.
CW making a comeback! Kappa
Shieldmaiden, hello.
Why not keeping the 5 damages one and the 5/5 golem one, add a draw 5 cards and make it a card with all of these for 10 mana? Oh wait…
Cause Blizzard isn’t stupid enough to make a card that op.
Yeah true, really good idea, but it should stay at 6 mana.
Seems preety god