Introduction
The One Night in Karazhan expansion continues with the recent addition of Medivh, the Guardian himself. Medivh is a mage who serves as the guardian of Trisfal. He has gone through several hardships, and has emerged victorious and immortal. He featured prominently in the recent Warcraft movie. He was also added into Hearthstone as a hero – Mage – last year. Now he proudly joins the ranks of legendary Hearthstone cards.
The Card
Medivh, The Guardian, is an incredibly interesting card. At first glance, he is simply too much mana for what he gives. But then you start really looking at the power behind Atiesh. Being able to summon a few four mana minions for free is quite valuable. Certainly valuable enough to warrant losing a bit of tempo. In fact, with proper circumstances, this could be the highest value card in the game.
Medivh Doesn’t Have a Home
All of the above information is correct, but I’m stuck on one point. This card doesn’t fit any deck. The decks that it fits best are obviously control decks. It doesn’t fit anywhere else because it loses too much tempo. If you give up an entire turn to play Medivh, you had better be controlling the board until this point. There are two major decks where losing an entire turn to play Medivh won’t simply cripple you. Control Warrior, and Renolock.
Control Warrior is able to play Medivh because of their ability to stockpile armour, as well as their cheap removal. It’s also the deck with the most threats in it to begin with, so replacing one of them with Medivh shouldn’t be too difficult. However, Medivh doesn’t fit this deck at all. First of all, creating a weapon that shouldn’t be removed or used in Warrior is awful. Secondly, almost every spell in the deck costs three or less. This provides extremely low value for the difficulty of actually playing the card. Plus, Control Warrior is already brimming with threats, it certainly doesn’t need another one.
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Renolock can play Medivh because of their ability to control the board and regain life. They can easily take a turn to play him, and then follow up with Reno or Jaraxxus to combat their opponent. They can also clear the board a variety of different ways. The problem is that they don’t have very many spells. The new N’Zoth Renolock deck only runs a total of six spells. Of those, two of them are one mana, and one of them would kill the minion it summoned. This leaves only three spells to get any real value, in an entire deck. And if you play Jaraxxus in this time, it replaces the weapon.
Conclusion
I see a lot of potential to Medivh. At this point, I don’t think there are any decks that he works well in. That being said, if Priest re-emerges then they could provide a good host. Or others may simply find a place to fit Medivh that I could not. At this point I believe he will simply be a fun card to try and build decks around. I certainly look forward to playing with him, and hope that in the future he may see some real play!
