New Warlock Hero - Galakrond, the Wretched

How is it that warlock, already the worst class in the game, gets the worst of the 3 Galakronds revealed?

so the effect is incredibly bad seeing how on average you're going to get some trashy imp while ocasionally highrolling one of the....4(?) actually good demons that have an impact on the board.

It all comes down to what the hero power does. If it's something that helps a control deck (healing or value generation) I could see it being used...if not than all I can hope for is that Warlock gets some sick control cards so i can play Plot twist Batlock

The current standard demon pool is extremely poor. Even if they add one or two really good demons the battlecry will still be far too inconsistent.

Here's to hoping the hero power actually helps slow warlock decks in a big way.

The battlecry is going to be highly inconsistent given the amount of weak demon cards available at the moment. And the Hero Power is just the Paladin's upgraded one (summon two 1/1). Is this supposed to be some sort of late game Zoo card? To be honest, i don't think this is bad but i was hoping for better support for Warlock's late game. Not very excited about this one.

Does anybody know what kind of heropower will be available after summoning?

The Galakrond Hero Power is in the invoke minions/spells too, so don't underestimate that quickly.

Invoke will trigger Hero power right away, and in this case two imps every invoke.

The cards revealed so far has "Invoke Galakrond" so this hero card might not be as useless as you think it is.

Remember the time people thought druids DK was bad and it turned out to be very good, I think this could be the same case.
if I'm right or wrong we will see that when the expansion is released.

Current Demons pool in Standard (to be uploaded with the remaining DoD reveals):

GOOD OUTCOMES: Jumbo Imp,Fel Lord Betrug, Siegebreaker, Aranasi Broodmother, Dread Infernal, Riftcleaver, Illidan Stormrage and maybe Lord Jaraxxus

DECENT OUTCOMES: Sathrovarr, Mad Summoner, Portal Overfiend, Pit Lord, Felsoul Inquisitor, Felguard and maybe Felstalker

BAD OUTCOMES: Witchwood Imp, Voidwalker, Blood Imp, Flame Imp, Void Analyst, Vilefiend, Void Terror, Nethersoul Buster, Doubling Imp, Witchwood Piper, Portal Keeper

So 8 good outcomes, 7 decent outcomes and 11 bad outcomes. I think we'll receive at least another 1 or 2 big demons (even neutral ones) in order to justify this effect

Only time will tell, but I think this dragon warlock won't shine, since its synergies are more aggro oriented, but they are too slow

I wouldn't be so hard on this card just yet. The hero power has a lot going for it. And right now, warlock has very little going for it. Card like Plague of Flames and Grim Rally become a lot more interesting when you are Baku Paladin.

I expect Galakrond Warlock to replace Zoo because Zoo has been underwhelming for a while now, and Galakrond gives it value.

i think is the worst so far... and the odds for good demons are against us

Random demons are not that great, but with full upgrade, 3 demons worth 7 mana i think.

Alright, so I've been thinking about this card a lot and it might not actually be as bad as I initially assumed.

So the Battlecry is still kinda bad and highrolly...but that's not actually the main selling point. It's the hero power...and I don't just mean the Invoke effect (although it's pretty neat as well)

Warlock hasn't really had the ability to infinitely generate tokens in a while...which makes sacrifice strategies so much better. You now have a reason to run Invalid Deck ID in a Zoo deck just as an easy out. At the same time stuff like EVIL Genius, Grim Rally and even Spirit of the Bat gets much more appealing and less clunky. To top it of you have the Invoke guy that draws 3 cards meaning even if you no longer have Life Tap you can still draw into stuff.

I wonder if we might not just run the minimum best Invokers and aim to play Galakrond as fast as possible just to get the hero power. Overall it probably depends on how many good invokers we actually end up getting.

It surely has to be for the hero power if this sees play, and I guess it's ok with zoo.  But who know a) what other zoo type cards we'll get and b) what random demons we might get?

Plus there will be a trolden video where it's played in wild and the first summoned is the deal 5 to yourself for each summon minion dude :P

Battlecry isn't very good (RNG rarely is) and neither is the hero power BUT I can see this fitting nicely into Shuffle Warlock considering the token generation allows Darkest Hour to pull the giant minions out of your deck very efficiently. 

Not very good card since the hero power and the battlecry are not great...

There is one archetype that always comes around super strong after each rotation: zoolock. And they usually do it using basic and classic cards mostly. Now, they are going to have an entire package dedicated to swarming the board that culminates in a cheaper guldan with odd paladin hero power. 

I pity the fool who believes this to be a weak card. Maybe not this cycle, but next one everyone will call for a nerf.

We should not be able to rate this card for Arena

Very high-roll card, because the demons vary all the way from great to worthless to actually some that you don´t even want to summon

I can definitely see a zoo build around with this card.

Based on current standard-legal cards and revealed cards (11/21/2019) demons have on average 3.6 attack an 4.6 health, so a fully upgraded version is giving 5 armor, a 5/2 weapon, and, on average, 14.6/18.6 stats. For 7 mana. Granted there's a sunk cost of 4 invoke cards, but those 1/1 imps are also good fodder for plague of flames, etc. I think people are sleeping on this one a bit.

If this sees play it’ll almost certainly be just to get the invoke effects working to flood the board, beyond that it’s too swingy probably

Battlecry is trash .. so many bad demons .. and the hero power? Weak and boring, even Veiled Worshipper is better than this LMAO

At First Look Warlock Galakrond seems not as OP as others howhever a full board of minions + a Weapon + Armor, is a good turn, is up to see how easy or hard will be to invoke him

Zoo Warlock is definitely getting pushed. I'm a bit skeptical though, as Zoo isn't in good shape right now. Might this fix the archetype? Veiled Worshipper is good enough to consider running this card imo.

What I expect;

Summons 3 random Mal'Ganis

What it really does;

Summons 3 random Imps. (I know, I know that's a token.)

The battlecry is trash, but it can be a good finisher for zoo if upgraded fully. Also, I think you run it in zoo warlock for Veiled Worshipper alone.

This card definitely suffers from direction issues. The hero power/invoke for this isn't great in control decks, though its not terrible, and its will be interesting to see if there is a version of Zoo that wants this in their top end. Right now Warlock isn't in a great place and this does potentially strength its best deck, but we need to see way more to know if this is actually good or not. 

Warlock is my favourite class, though it has suffered in recent expansions. 

I'm worried that looks set to continue this expansion. But I'm sure I'll be giving this card a try, and hoping for the best.

Best Galakrond Art paired with the worse Galakrond Effect ; does that makes for an average one?

I think they need to print some good demons for this one to be strong. Lets see what other cards they have for Warlock. #makeWarlockGreatAgain

Will definitelly use this in my Oddlock in Wild.

I like the dragon-deamon theme !

Agree - there is a lot of RNG here but some demons are very powerful.

I Hope this card could help warlock to return to the meta 

Personally I like this card. It's very aimed towards some sort of Demon Zoo, and that's going to be a useable deck in the coming meta I think. If there is going to be some Demon support, people might actually be surprised by this archetype.

Fully upgraded this is strong although the RNG could bite you. Hopefully other Warlock archetypes than Zoo (and Dragons) will recieve some support.

Zoo has always been a pretty consistent deck throughout Hearthstone history. And between this galakrond, Veiled Worshiper, and all of the 1/1 imps, I think zoo warlock will have enough fuel to be a pretty powerful deck. The 1/1's will be able to fuel a lot of sacrifice abilities, veiled worshiper will be able to refill your hand and give you tons of resources while also being a 5/4 body, and galakrond will refill your board and give you endless 1/1's just waiting to be buffed for lethal.

I don't think zoo warlock has ever looked more promising.

Maybe if the effect was "Summon 4 Voidlords". As it stands, no, your average Demon isn't good enough to make this worthwhile, unless we get some powerful stat-boosting aura minions in DoD. Something that gives your Demons +3/+3, maybe.

This feels like the top end of zoo either paired with rafaam or replacing it. I would like to see some small Aggro dragons and big demons to top it out.

It's too unpredictable. Worthless Imp floods the board. Other Galakronds outclass.

It's good, but Bloodreaver Gul'Dan was so much better... I guess for 7 mana it's nice...

depends on how good the demon pool really is. i personally don't like the randomness aspect on this card but invoke takes a lot of effort to be pulled off so i don't see it working as of now

not an immediate impact on the board other than potential taunts or doomguards. might be too slow and is prone to board clears. dependant on too many things to go right so i'd consider it on the weak side

I think this is a bit RNG..imagine getting wailing felhound and completely ruin your hand..

I see a lot of hate for this, but I honestly think this is the most meta defining of the four we’ve seen so far. Summoning two 1/1 imps every time you Invoke is pretty powerful. Also, the Battlecry is nothing to sneeze at. Summoning random demons is usually better than putting them in your hand, due to many of them having negative battlecries, and if I’m getting the fully upgraded BC, I’m not even going to be  too upset with getting 3/3s. I’m looking forward to Warlock getting a good Demon deck. 

I have to confess that initially I thought this card was weak, but I think it will pass okay in Standard, enabling Zoolock. This Galakrond packs:

1) Great Invoke effect - This is the most important aspect of the card. Free upgraded Pala power with imp synergy, Jumbo Imps and other demon cards can now easily be good. This and Warrior Galakrond power is really strong due to the tempo of Invokers.

2) 5/4 Invoker that provides great draw, even after transformation when you lose Life Tap.

3) 5/2 Claw and 4 minions of which usually one will be beefy, as finisher.

Overall, I like it.

This may be good but the deamon pool right now is not as exciting as it was last rotation given that Doomguard and Voidlord are both gone  . Still , it will do it's job in an agro-to-midrange deck .

4 stars

At first, I thought that summoning 4 random demons would be rather weak since you would get lots of imps. But I decided to look at all the standard demons and see which ones are bad, mediocre and good (imo):

Bad: Witchwood Imp, Voidwalker, Flame Imp, Void Analyst, Vilefiend, Nethersoul Buster, Doubling Imp, Portal Keeper.

Mediocre: Felstalker, Void Terror, Felguard, Witchwood Piper, Felsoul Inquisitor, Mad Summoner.

Good: Pit Lord, Riftcleaver, Portal Overfiend, Illidan Stormrage, Dread Infernal, Aranasi Broodmother, Siegebreaker, Fel Lord Betrug, Sathrovarr, Lord Jaraxxus, Jumbo Imp.

9 bad, 6 Mediocre and 11 good.

So not as bad as I thought. There will still be some heavy rng on your Galakrond, the Wretcheds battlecry. But since you'll probably be playing a zoo style of deck, the effect is still pretty good.

zoo warlock again? come on blizzard, make an effort with this

I don't think this is a bad card. considering every invoke will spawn 2 imps 1/1 I believe will be used for a control build, together with [Hearthstone Card (DAL_007) Not Found]

and then when you bring Galakrond you may be lucky with good demons :) I believe will be a solid T2

The hero power’s what you’d be wanting for this one, not really the battlecry (since a lot of demons are either small, or could end up screwing you over)

Man, when you compare this with the old Hero card for our friend, Guldan, it's pretty weak. I feel like it's to RNG based, sometimes you might land some big stuff but some other times you might land some very weak stuff like two Blood Imp's and one Flame Imp. Let's hope Blizzard improves the Demon pool.

Well, i think this card isn't good enough, the battlecry is too random for competitive decks.

Still it can be good in a kind of agro/zoo deck with those imps from hero power that you can make pop every turn. Kinda like those old school odd paladin decks that were running the ladder back in the days. And you know that those decks were very powerfull in early stages of the game versus control. 

Looks of less value than the other galakronds. The hero power is just average, while the battlecry is very RNG dependent.

i think is the weakest Galakrond, but probably will see play in a "zooish" deck thanks to "invoke" card

The board flood Zoo deck looks so far to be pretty powerful.

Quite a few demon synergies with cards like Jumbo Imp and other token cards the deck could see some play. I feel what the deck really needs is the demon equivalent of Soul of the Murloc in order to really shine.

The huge amount of variance to Galakrond's battlecry might be enough to ensure the deck does not see play. Although the hero power and Invoke cards do seem to be quite powerful token generators, so that might be enough on its own.

The battlecry at first glance seems terribly inconsistent at giving you any sort of decent swing, as there are a lot of mediocre demons you can get.
The Hero Power, on the other hand, looks pretty powerful.
This card definitely looks more like a card you'd use to apply pressure then one you'd use to control the board due to the nature of the hero power and Warlock's Invoke cards.

So the idea behind Galakrond warlock ( Galaklock ?? ) is to be a zoo deck, that it applies continue pressure to your opponent, and has this card as a huge tempo turn if the game goes a bit later.

The battlecry has a high variance and i'm not happy about that, it can screw you or win the game on the spot.

The invoke effect is pretty nice and works with this deck; the two invoke warlock cards being 3 mana and the fact that they don't sucks is a good thing too.

A deck like zoo really loves the card that draws 3 if you invoked twice, so there is that too.

After all i'm seeing this deck working, seems to have everything to apply pressure from the start thanks to the shell of zoo and a latey-game potential to try to close the game in galakrond 

Very very bad, but still better than the rogue one. I don't think this will be ever played in any deck, but who knows....

This should be called the RNGalakrond lol Don't like this very much.

This Galakrond pushes us to some zoo/demon direction. It's hero power might even make Siegebreaker playable.  So let's see. It's hard to predict the real power before release.

I think a dragon handlock deck is gonna be better but i stil have a lot of hope for zoo galakron

Looks like it's meant for an aggressive warlock deck, I think it's underrated. 7 mana for 5 armor, a 5/2 weapon, and 4 random demons would be great for an aggressive deck. And the hero power is great too, especially if we see some demon synergy in future sets.

The hero power seems super strong for zoo. Summoning random demons however has way too much variance. The average outcome should be rather underwhelming.

the hero power summons 2 1/1 demons i'm pretty sure?? it's like the odd paladin one

It's a Dark Knight Guldan, but much much worse :v It's one of the worst Galakronds

This Galarok have the least impactful battlecry, but the hero power can open the door to zoolock decks. I'm curious to see if zoo can raise again in standard...

Love the battlecry since I love RNG but I don't play zoolock so thumbs down to the hero power.

The summoning of the demons can be strong, but could also give you weak minions. hero power is just odd paladin, demon version.

Yes, demon RNG! Just what the doctor ordered to cure what ails me.

Will all Galakronds' tier 2 and 3 names will be the same? All show Galakrond, the Apocalypse and Galakrond, Azeroth's End.

Interesting invoke effect to synergize with the various "kill imp" synergies we've seen in the last couple of expansions. Could be pretty good.

well, guess the card's dead on arrival

You can only run a total of 8 Invoke cards, 1 of which is only valuable if you have a board and two other ones which just aren't good in a zoo deck (the neutral ones)

The hero power is the weakest overall to get after transforming, the battlecry is mediocre at best and can bomb spectacularly at worst. Can't really abuse Invoke as much as I thought so there's not point building a deck around summoning imps.

Veiled Worshipper is the only card that semi-justifies this, but looking at the invokers it's almost impossible to  Invoke twice before  turn 4, meaning that it's just a refill engine and doesn't really extend your tempo...and at that point, what exactly are you refilling into?

I don'T see Jumbo Imp becoming any better and I don't feel like a classic Zoo build will get improved by running 9 subpar cards just for the benefit of Soularium on a stick (essentially)

Looks like a good aggro card only problem is the demon pool is lacking might be a card that have to wait for rotation

This card is crearly designed to support zoolock. The hero power synergizes well with demon-based spells and, e.g., Knife Juggler. However, the battlecry seems rather weak, since random demons are rather bad on average.

very nice card to add to any zoodeck

The battlecry has too high of a variance, especially in wild where you can get two 5 attack chargers. Anyway, as always, Zoo will be a thing in standard at least for the first few days, so if I open this guy, I´ll play it.

4 Random demons has huge potential.  Great finisher maybe for the token archetype

This battlecry will be pure gold or a bunch of imps I don't really like it since its too random heck in wild you could roll a Kabal guy and kill yourself I can't say this is too good but it isn't awful either

Yea this seems like it will just be the top off card for an aggressive deck. Main problem I see with that is the default warlock hero power might actually be better in some cases 

Probably the weakest of all the Galakronds. The hero power of adding two 1/1 Imps isn’t fantastic and the Battlecry of summon random demons has a lot of low-roll potential compared to the relative consistency of the others. Maybe used as the high-end of some kind of Galakrond Zoolock.

Galakrond rating: 5^th best

This card may not be great, but in conjunction with Plague of Flames this is great to clear of some big dragons. If you add in a Cobalt Spellkin, Voodoo Doll and Mortal Coil, you have a cheap aggro way to deal with any opposing minions, or build a cheap token deck, where you need very few token summon cards.

This would be the worst version hands down, random demons include the blood imp. Your big swing turn becomes big whiff turn.

1 Star

People will play this Card just because of the Invokes. It reminds me of Odd-Pally.

BTW. Getting 2 1-1s for playing Zoo-support in a Zoo-Deck sounds REALLY GOOD. 

Interesting to see it being zoo based. Random demons are just not consistent.

underwhelming

I mean.. This is a Galakrond which makes it pretty good (If you get it fully evolved). It does however feel a lot weaker than the other due to the pool of demons. Despite that I do like the hero power. Even though it feels weaker than the other galas too, getting 2 demons every time you invoke seem like a useful thing for warlock to do. Warlock sure have some cards that synergize well with that and present a threat for a very annoying early/mid game leading up to putting down gala. 

On the other hand warlock already have cards with this putting down a lot of 1/1 demons effect, which haven't really been enough to compete with the meta. The zoo type cards in DOD sure dont feel like enough to make it better either. I could be wrong though. I'll be excited to see how the cards work together 

A zoo based Galakrond deck seems pretty good. You fill the board and next turn you can Grim Rally. In wild the RNG with the demons will be fun!

The Battlecry is too unreliable, but there's something about that Hero Power that might just make it not horrible.
We'll find out soon.

I think this is the worst Galakrond so far, I think zoo-strategies won't hold against the power of big dragons and value of the powercreep.

Weakest of Galakronds. Random demons are in most cases pathetic in comparison what have others to offer. Warlock zoo also doesn' t have enough steam to win early through invoked imps. I'm pesimistic about this.

Good addition in a zoolock focus on imp