Everyone knows it, everyone plays it, everyone gets crushed by it, it is the BIG BAD GUILD ENFORCER.
Guild Enforcer's recent buff lowering its mana cost from 6 to 5 has rocket it into meta stardom and into every deck. It's a hard to kill beater for aggro decks, it's a big wall for control decks. Everyone needs an answer to Guild Enforcer in their deck.
2 armor and 4 health means that you need to deal 6 damage at once or invest multiple cards to to kill it. Below I have listed some cards under 6 mana from each of the Gods that answer GE efficiently.
Answers
Nature
Nature has big creatures and spells that can answer GE albeit randomly.
- Lightning Strike: 8 damage for 3 mana is a cheap way to kill big creatures, you need to keep your opponent's board empty before they play GE or be feeling lucky.
- Giant Pangolin: 6 attack with blitz and 2 armor for 6 mana can come down the turn after they play GE and eat it for breakfast
- Big Creatures: Any creature with 6 attack like Brazen Moose or a Big Moon-Crazed Cyclops easily runs over GE
- The Hunt: Deals 8 damage split among all enemy creatures, The Hunt can clear a GE from full health if the opponent has less than 3 health on other creatures
War
War relies on creatures for the killing making it hard to always have an answer to GE.
- Another Round: Gives +3/+3, buffing a 3 attack creature like Valka's Captain or Raid Reveller will have 6 attack enough get over GE
- Redfume Serum: Gives +5/+5, lets any creature with attack get over GE and leave a big body
- Archangel Bruiser: 5/3 Blitz does 3 damage to GE so you only need another 3 attack to finish off GE
- Hyrtacus, Brazen Hero: Gets bigger every turn in your hand, does deals its strength as damage to an enemy creature. A big Hyrtacus deals with GE and leaves a big body.
- Carnage Sweep: Destroys all creatures if you have a relic equipped, playing control war and your opponent gets too far ahead on board sweep them all away.
- Flank: Can't beat GE, going around him. Master Tactician and Viking Longship give your other creatures flank so you can ignore GE and go face.
Magic
Magic has a few big spells to kill GE and 1 armor removal spell.
- Wyrmbreath: Deal 5 damage, with +1 spellboost oneshots GE
- Epiphany: Deal 6 damage and draw a card, kill GE and draw what more do you need.
- Astric Implosion: Deal 6 damage and 1 to every other character: kills GE and finishes off 1 health creatures
- Ratify: Transform a creature into a 1/1 rat. Problem too big? Make it smaller. Ratify can get rid off any creature in your way.
- Magnetic Blast: Remove all armor from a creature then deal X+1 to all creatures where X is the amount of armor removed. Strips GE of all armor then deals 3 damage to all creatures. Keep in mind it can only target a creature with armor so it is dead if there are no armor creatures.
Deception
Deception is has the most armor removal tools although most of them are bad.
- Piercing Bolt: Removes all armor from target creature then deal 2 damage. Your best answer to armor in Deception, cheap, removes all armor, and flexible.
- Helm Hustler: Steals 1 armor from a creature then deals damage equal to its own armor. Needs to steal armor to do damage. Hustler will need to stick for 2 turns to be able to damage GE. Too slow to be useful and is useless if your opponent has no armor.
- Demolitions Expert: Destroys an opponent's creature with armor after this creature loses order. Play this before turn 5 and your opponent will hold GE. Expert isn't very useful, your opponent knows not to play frontliners while you have it, and it takes 2 turns to destroy making it very slow.
- Plate Pilferer: Blitz and steals armor after attacking. Becomes a 1/2 with 2 armor after attacking GE. Statline is too bad to be useful at 4 mana.
- Poisoned Dagger: 3 attack, deadly, blitz relic lets you deal 1 damage to GE and have the deadly kill it.
- Rapture Dance: If you opponent overextends and fills their board up, rapture dance will kill all their creatures.
- Cheat: Hide GE and ignore it.
Death
GE statline means all of Death's conditional removal like Blight Bomb or Mutual Hatred doesn't work.
- Ray of Disintegration: 5 mana, destroy any creature, deal 2 damage to your god. Unconditional removal to deal with anything your other cards can't
- Void Flash: Destroy a chosen friendly and enemy creature. Needs a creature on your side to kill so Void Flash isn't always live. Good in token decks where you have fodder to sac.
- Pyrrhic Incantation: 1 mana Give target creature burn +14. Deal 3 damage to your god. Cheap way to kill any creature. 14 burn means most creatures will die at the end of your opponents turn.
Light
Light infamously has few removal spells relying on attacks to deal with the board, making GE a huge problem
- Order: Order lets you ignore GE. Some cards that give order, Inquistive Informant, Watchful Hound, Sern
- Canonize: One of Light's few attack buffing card, buff a 3 attack creature to get over GE
- Light's Levy + Attacking Lowering: Levy only hits 2 attack or less creatures so you'll need something to lower GE's attack. A few cards that can lower attack Lysander's Honor God Power, Redemption, Sit Down.
- Imperious Smite: Destroys the strongest creature., if GE has the highest attack on the board Smite will kill it.
Thanks! I have definitely encountered this guy a time or 2
Great summary of the skills to help against a GE. Since I mostly play Deception, I just ignore it with Orfeo's Deception haha
Love this! Thanks for listing options for each God.
If placed at the right time and you cannot clear it out, you are f*****
Amazing article, thank you for consolidating this in one place.
Magnetic blast is a great low-level board wipe. It strips the target of armor and X(Armor Value of Target)+1 to all creatures. Great against nature decks with Spiny Porcupine, Giant Pangolin or Snapping Turtle as well. You can target your own armored creatures as well, good if you know your armored guy is dead next turn anyway and you can take out a bunch of X+1 health creatures on the other side of the board.
Yeah it is good at dealing with armor but I feel like being reliant on armor to be playable means it is dead more often then not.