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Mending Mondays TGT#3: Bolf Ramshield

by - 8 years ago

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my competition-based mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Just ignore the fact that some bad cards do have their purpose design-wise, ok? Still, I believe the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.


bolf-ramshield

Bolf Ramshield has a very interesting ability, as it redirects all incoming Hero damage to himself. It is designed to protect your face against both minions, and spells alike, but in his heroic quest to defend its master, Bolf has left his own defenses wide open.

Why is it so bad?

Would you play a 6 mana 0/9 taunt minion? Yeah not, really. What if it also forced the enemy to target his spells at him? Probably still wouldn’t see play. That’s the biggest problem with this card, Bolf is often just that, a 0/9 Taunt minion. If you are playing from behind, stick Bolf into the table will just make your opponent go all face, likely killing your 6-mana legendary minion for free, or at least reducing its toughness to point where his body is not longer worth that 6 mana. When playing from behind, Bolf is basically a stall mechanic that will continue to bury you behind on both tempo and card advantage, so Bolf is a very situational card.

Antique Healbot

Bolf excels closing games against aggro decks when you have retaken the board and would only be victim to spells gunning you down. But the problem is that a Healbot will often achieve this just fine, for one less mana. To truly get value out of Bolf, you need to be able to protect him with taunt minions. Better yet, you can use Defender of Argus, Sunfury Protector, or even Sparring Partner to taunt up Bolf, and make a bit better use of that extra Toughness.

Defender of Argussparring-partner

 

12 Stats for 6 mana is ok, but not impressive. But when you consider that Bolf’s ability is more often than not a liability, the stats are just not good enough to warrant inclusion into decks.

Summary of Badness:

  • Ability too situational, often detrimental.
  • Better cards share the same role.

Finding this Card’s Heart

Bolf Ramshield is here to protect you, he should be the ultimate defensive legendary minion. Lets try and have him achieve that without changing him too much.

Possible Improvements

GIVE HIM TAUNT! Giving Bolf the taunt ability would solve the annoying problem of your opponent killing him for free, that would immediately make this unique minion worthy of his legendary status. Other than that, is really hard to add to Bolf, since his text box is quite full as is.

Another idea would be to give Bolf a functionality similar to that of Noble Sacrifice or Spellbender, have him become the target of your enemy’s attacks and spells.

NobleSacrificeSpellbender

The Results

MMTGT3Card1

As we’ve said multiple times already, Taunt increases Bolf’s value by a ton. I docked one point of Health to make up for the Taunt ability, but I’d have to do some testing to try and see what the proper statline for this card should be.

MMTGT3Card2

Because Taunt is not unique enough. This version of Bolf is ready and willing to protect not only your Hero, but also your other minions, even if they have Taunt. And this doesn’t just prevent damage, it will also tank spells such as Polymorph, Hex, Sap, etc.

In all, this ability is probably even better than the previous one, which means that I should’ve docked one health on this one too. My bad!

Do you think these versions of Bolf would see play? Let me know using the comment section below.

 


Can’t get enough of Mending Mondays? Check out all past editions here! Want to give your Hearthstone Brain a workout? Maybe try my weekly puzzles. Just want to laugh to funny stuff? Take a look at these hilarious Lifecoach reactions.


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “Mending Mondays TGT#3: Bolf Ramshield”

  1. SuperUai says:

    I really liked the second version and would still be a fair card and could even see play, nice work!

    On a side note, when does the “card guess” come back?

  2. Spirit says:

    I think that the original one is the best card in Reno decks, bolf saved me a lot of time in the late game, he doesn’t need taunt and i don’t mind if the opponent attack me directly, he works as a +9 HP for your hero, you can easily drop him in fatigue and he really does the game.
    this is just my opinion, i think that people just ignore his true power.