Guardians of the Ancient LoR Card Impressions: Malphite

Day 6 of Guardians of the Ancient Reveals: Malphite

We’ve only got a couple today but let me tell you these are doozies. I’m Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and if you thought yesterday rocked then you have got another thing coming.

The new Guardians of the Ancients cards will be revealed every morning at Mobalytics so be sure to keep up with the latest cards!

You can theorycraft new decks with these cards right now by heading to the Deck Builder.

Lastly, to keep up with our previous expert impressions, click here.

Here are the new cards from Malphites card reveal package from the Guardians of the Ancient expansion:

• Malphite (Targon champion)
• Ground Slam (Targon spell and Malphite’s champion spell)
• Unstoppable Force (Targon spell)
• Stonebreaker (Targon follower)

For more expert impressions, be sure to also check out Swim’s video!

Malphite

• Malphite (level 1)
  • 7 mana 6|10 champion
  • Text: When I’m summoned, or Round Start: If you have the attack token, create an Unstoppable Force in hand.
  • Level up: You’ve summoned 12+ mana of landmarks. When I level up, if you have the attack token, create an Unstoppable Force in hand.

• Malphite (level 2)
  • 7 mana 7|11 champion
  • Text: When I’m summoned or Round Start: If you have the attack token, create an Unstoppable Force in hand.

Ok, so before we all lose our collective minds at the awesome power of the immovable object over here let’s remember that seven is an awful lot of mana. Past that twelve is an even larger amount of mana that you’re going to have to have spent on Landmarks, which have generally proven to be rather subpar.

Finally, for this dream to work out we’re going to need the attack token, a sufficiently wide board to kill our opponent, and not to have any complicating Nopeify, Deny, Rite of Negation, Ruination, or perhaps even Vengeance or Freeze effects stop our fun.

Is this rock-head cool? Yes. Would seeing this effect go off with Yasuo in play be absolutely amazing? OH YEAH. Does looking at this over-costed clunky combo piece make me a little bit sad for the potential competitive future of the landmark deck….also yes.

Ground Slam

• Ground Slam
  • 4 mana Fast spell
  • Stun a unit. Deal 3 to it if you’ve summoned a landmark this game.
    • Creates a Malphite in your deck if it’s Malphite’s Ground Slam

Four mana for three damage that you have to work for is pretty underwhelming. Gotcha thinks that this spell needs to go home and rethink its life choices. But that’s only if we look at it from the damage direction.

The better comparison here is the Ionian powerhouse of Concussive Palm, and the question is whether we want a 3/2 blocker or a potential three damage on the stunned target.

I think that in most cases Palm is going to get the nod when both are options, but if we see a lot of important backline units with three or less health this could see use.

Also remember this is removal in Targon, which is rare and thus potentially at a premium even if slightly overcosted.

Stonebreaker

• Stonebreaker
  • 6 mana 6|4 follower
  • Text – Play: If you’ve summoned 4+ landmarks this game, deal 4 to an enemy and 2 to the enemy Nexus.

Looking at this card put me heavily in mind of Rampaging Baccai. When I initially looked at that card I thought it was absolutely busted. However, given the situation it got dropped into it was mediocre at best.

Adding an extra mana and taking away overwhelm doesn’t seem like the best way to take that concept and make it powerful. On the other hand stonebreaker has a few important things going for it that the Rampager was missing.

First, you will always have control over its situational effect. In a deck that wants to use this card it will be almost 100% to be active when it is in play.

Second, it will never have to trade if you are targeting a larger body, and will very often have more health leftover than the Baccai did.

Third, it will always do at least some damage to the enemy nexus. Never underestimate the power of a few points of burn. Doombeast this aint, but the connection is there and should not be ignored.

Fourth, this card is in Targon. I’ve said this before but it matters so I’m going to say it again. Targon is very low removal region. In most situations, this beefy boy is going to put something like Sunburst to shame. After Baccai Reapers failure I’m calling myself cautiously optimistic on this one, but I want to look into it.

Potential Deck Idea

Today’s card reveal deck idea is Invoke Landmarks. As said, trying to make a Malphite control deck work feels extremely clunky.

But it’s interesting, and could be worth looking into. This build of the deck is more of a place to start testing than any kind of recommendation.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask WhatAmI during his streams (around 10AM PST basically every day).

WhatAmI streams at twitch.tv/xxwhatamixx around 10AM PST every day