A Warlord's Best Friend

>- Part 1 ->

Written By - Thomas NeilsonJanuary 7th, 2024

Your Warlord is the defining aspect of any deck, and the first thing your opponent will see at the start of a game. Your Warlord's abilities and exclusive cards are the cornerstones of archetypes and signify what decks can and cannot do. Before your warlord can do anything however, your Guardian is the card that starts the game off for you, often creating a pivotal decision point before turn 1 can even start. With a start of game ability that puts your gameplan into motion, and a consume ability for repeatable value, your Guardian is a key component of your arsenal and gameplan.

So when your opponent sets their Guardian face down at the start of the game, what should you prepare to see and play against? If you're trying out a certain Warlord, what Guardian should you run and why?

Whilst the EOR Warlords released alongside their intended Guardian, which are usually crucial for their archetype, most of the original warlords are much less reliant on the Ravaged Lands Guardians. For some of the original Warlords, their RVL guardians are important for gaining access to certain key pieces for their archetype, but many of the rest turn to the plethora of Bounty options. Amongst these, Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer is the most powerful, but Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight and Viviana, The Festival Royalty fill important niches, and allow for different styles of gameplay, or better access to certain packages of cards.

Alero, The King Of Kingdoms

The Mystic Druid, Leader Of The Hood

Other Guardians have been tried for Alero, but The Mystic Druid remains the strongest option. The Mystic Druid's start of game ability tutors for a "Hood" card. This ability usually grabs Help From The Hood which helps setup three armaments in your discard pile, many of which can be equipped from the discard pile like Elorian Longbow and Gailion's Golden Gauntlets.

The Druid's Consume ability can be helpful to buff up a board state, especially since it's linked to the destruction of a warrior and not to your special ability, but the real strength of the Mystic Druid comes in the form of it's exclusive cards: Anti-Magic Resistance Force and Hood Protection Cloak.

Both of these cards are incredibly powerful negation pieces that give Alero a lot of his controlling power. Anti-Magic is an expensive negate at Bloodbourne 10 and Consume 10, but more than makes up for it's cost in providing additional Void Hollow effects, locking your opponent out of Unifieds for the rest of the turn. Hood Protection Cloak is slighly more vulnerable and telegraphed, being attached to a warrior, but provides a unique advantage as a negate for both Unified and Fortified cards, which can allow Cloak to get through other unified negates which target Fortified cards.

Sharn, The Orcbane Bloodmaiden

Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer + Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight

The orc realms options for Sharn are unfortunately unappealing, as Visceria, The Vicious Vixen's abilities don't pack enough of a punch, and the cards exclusive to her aren't powerful enough to warrant her inclusion. Stinknar's start of game is an interesting piece of utility, but the activated ability only synergizes with Duxvox cards.

Due to this, Sharn turns to the bounty Guardians to fill the slot.

This pairing of Serenasada and Galterius is a common one for many warlords, especially in the original 8. For any Warlord without an impressive Guardian in their realm, Serenasada provides an incredible amount of selection right of the bat with her start of game ability. The ability to use a special ability multiple times in a turn, or repeatedly over the course of a few turns is also universally fantastic. For Sharn, this ability isn't particularly appealing, as letting multiple warriors directly attack a warrior can be unnecessary thanks to the Rampage keyword already helping to push damage through a board of warriors, but the ability to better sift through cards to find a perfect opening 6 is incredibly relevant.

Galterius is a recent campaign promo release which offers an immense amount of card advantage at the start of the game if you're the second turn player. If you won your first game, subbing in Galterius helps to shore up the disadvantage of going second with increased access to resources.

Onoskelis, The Fallen Angel Priestess

Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer + Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight

Starting to feel some Déjà vu? Similarly to Sharn, the Demon Realm Guardians don't offer enough for Onoskelis to warrant their inclusion. Vendetta's abilities are decent, and access to healing in The Paradise Lost certainly isn't bad, but unfortunately doesn't do quite enough.

Serenasada again takes center stage, with her start of game ability being especially useful in a deck with a focus on early hand sculpting to build a powerful and restrictive board state and backline.

Galterius again provides an additional three cards for the second player, and his activated ability is especially useful for retrieving powerful fortified cards like Treasury Of The Fallen Priestess and Fall Of The Fallen.

Michael, The Divine Wrath

Alexandria, Protector Of The Pure

Returning to the Ravaged Lands Guardians, Alexandria offers both a powerful start of game tutor, in addition to card access.

Alexandria's start of game lets you grab any small warrior from your deck, usually letting you find Qaphsiel, Great Seraphim Faithful to immediately start generating card advantage and loading up Holy Counters. This ability is however especially useful in it's flexibility, also being able to grab Helios & Luna, Chaos Divine Lovers against more aggressive decks, or Cerebral, The Bound Seraphim Mind in matchups where turning off certain keywords can be backbreaking.

Alexandria also gives you access to Pure Seraphim Power, one of Michaels main ways to flood the board with warriors, crucial for draw power off of Chaos Divine Reconnaissance, and loading Holy Counters off of Sanctify.

Mortis, The Grimm SHadowhand

Meg'Saria, Princess Of Lost Souls

Similarly to Alexandria and The Mystic Druid, Meg'Saria's usefulness largely comes from Guardian exclusive cards. Her start of game ability is useful however to start your warrior based engine, tutoring for Sir Grimm Crimson, The Undead Prince, Esmerelda, The Grimm Necromancer, or any other warrior to start reanimating and destroying. Grimm midrange lists generally want a selection of Warriors for looping value, so being able to find a piece and immediately set it up for reanimation is incredibly useful.

Denial By Doom Fire isn't locked to Meg'Saria, but to an undead Guardian, and Belladonna's abilities aren't relevant for a Mortis Grimm build. As a negate that can be fired off from the board or the discard pile, Denial By Doom Fire gives Mortis easy access to a powerful and needed control tool.

Other burn centric Grimm builds have tried out using Viviana, The Festival Royalty to tutor out Alburdunn's Mayoral Announcement and break parity on Death Awaits Us All, although these lists haven't yet seen as much popularity.

Prometheus, The Eternal Spirit

Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight / Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer

Whilst Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight is a popular sideboard swap, in Prometheus the list can easily take advantage of the immense card advantage that Galterius provides immediately. His consume ability as well can help to fight out grindier games with replaying negates or treasury.

For game one with Galterius you'll want to go second if you can to take advantage of his start of game ability, but for games two and three it can be worth swapping to Serenasada in the sideboard to help fight through hate pieces such as Concrete Catacombs, or Mists From The Fata Morgana. Against these decks, finding the right cards to fight through these pieces can be key, which makes the card selection of Serenasada more valuable than the straight card advantage.

More aggressive versions of Prometheus also still prefer Serenasada for helping to shape aggressive opening hands and find early kills, so your Guardian selection can mostly come down to preference.

Sh'Lara, The Mystic Fire Phoenix

Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer / Raginmund, Exile Of The Ashborne

Once again, Serenasada finds a home with the Mythic Beasts, helping to find Mystic Fire Arena, Mystic Fire Awakening, and Phoenix Flames Conflagration as soon as possible. Copying Sh'Lara's ability with Serena is also nice, although at Bloodbourne 10, it can be a touch expensive.

Serenasada having 80 AP is an obviously powerful aspect in any deck, but Sh'Lara specifically can make good use of the extra AP with cards, especially if you can't find Revelation for the AP discount.

Raginmund, Exile Of The Ashborne is another solid option that also helps with a bit of card selection off the bat, and potentially value depending on what card you eradicate. The activated ability can help rack up destruction triggers for Mystic Fire Dragon Clash and Mystic Fire Beast Power, which can be helpful in situations where your destruction effects are situational or require additional setup.

Ultimately Serenasada is slightly more impressive than Raginmund at the moment, but Raginmund certainly has some utility that can make him more useful at times, and the decision largely comes down to pilot preference.

Quartzheart, The ARcane Runemaster

Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer + Viviana, The Festival Royalty

Rounding out our original 8 warlords, Quartzheart again turns to Serenasada, where the hand shaping can be crucial to find early control pieces or combo pieces, and her activated ability is fantastic with Quartzheart's special ability letting you dig 5 cards deep every turn to find cards, or to look at up to 10 cards to fish for a kill.

Quartzheart can also find a lot of value in Viviana, The Festival Royalty. In Burnforge lists, Viviana is your key Guardian for finding your mist pieces in Welcome To Alburdun, but in standard Frost Tempo lists, Viviana is a fantastic sideboard card against aggressive lists, where Alburdunn's Mayoral Announcement and Welcome To Alburdunn are key pieces for surviving against early threatening boards.

Galterius is another option solid option for Quartzheart, but is less crucial compared to other Serenasada decks, as with Quartzheart's special ability, Serenasada can generate more card advantage over time than Galterius.

Serenasada easily takes the cake as the most powerful Guardian, with half of the original Warlords turning to her for her powerful hand shaping ability. With many decks relying on certain combinations of cards, or relying on a strong turn one out of the gates to setup, being able to take a selective mulligan can be huge for finding an explosive first turn that can immediately turn the game in your favor. In addition to this powerful start of game ability, Serenasada also boasts 80 AP, more than any other guardian, which can be helpful in Consume heavy archetypes. Her Consume ability is also powerful, albeit more useful in some archetypes than others. For a deck like Quartzheart Frost Tempo, being able to dig 5 cards deep every turn is huge, and absolutely warrants the inclusion of Serenasada.

Ultimately, none of the RVL Guardians are bad, and many provide access to powerful and underrated cards. They can also be fantastic sideboard options when your gameplan shifts in games 2 and 3. Although I've given you the most popular options for each Warlord, this is a guidebook for what to expect from your opponent, and recommendations for the most popular Guardians, not a hard rule. Depending on the deck or archetype you're building or brewing, you may find success with a different Guardian, and I'd of course recommend trying to build around the various powerful guardians the game has to offer.

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