Deathlord

Deathlord is a rare neutral minion card, from the Naxxramas set.

Deathrattle interactions
Like every other minion in the game, Deathlord's Deathrattle is not processed until after it has been killed and removed from play. Also note that when multiple deaths happen simultaneously, each one and all its consequences are resolved before moving to the next one. This means that if the Deathlord is played first and summons a minion that triggers on deaths, before then dying simultaneously to another minion, the minion summoned by the Deathlord's Deathrattle may react to the death of the other minion. In addition, if the Deathlord was killed by a spell, the spell will not resolve until after all deaths are processed, allowing newly summoned Flamewakers and Wild Pyromancers to immediately trigger.

Examples:


 * Your opponent plays a Deathlord first and you play a Bloodfen Raptor second. After damaging the Deathlord to 2/3, you use the Raptor to attack it. Both die simultaneously and a Death Phase begins where their deaths are considered in order of play. First the Deathlord brings out a Scavenging Hyena, then the Bloodfen Raptor's death is considered, and the Scavenging Hyena becomes a 4/3. Note that if the Deathlord was played second, the Scavenging Hyena would come out too late and it would be unbuffed.


 * You Pyroblast an enemy Deathlord. Its Deathrattle puts a Wild Pyromancer into play. When the Pyroblast resolves, the Wild Pyromancer sees the spell finishing and triggers its effect, dealing 1 damage to all minions.


 * If a Deathlord (played first) is destroyed alongside other minions and puts a Flesheating Ghoul into the field, the Flesheating Ghoul's triggered effect will always activate for any later simultaneous deaths, but may not activate for the Deathlord's death (it will only activate if the owner of Deathlord is the Dominant Player).

Fixed bugs

 * Prior to Patch 4.0.0.10833 or Patch 4.1.0.10956 (2015-12-04), Deathlord, like other put into battlefield effects, used to have a bug that made the minion put into play by its Deathrattle deviate from the expected order of play when it died simultaneously with other minions - it was usually considered the new oldest rather than new newest minion in such a simultaneous death (what actually happened was the summoned minion's relative order was determined by when it was generated (often the beginning of the game), rather than when it was summoned; therefore effects which summon newly generated minions rather than existing cards (Mirror Entity, Animal Companion, Hex, etc.) did not visibly produce this bug). However, in all other circumstances (such as order of triggering of end-of-turn triggers) they had the correct, newest order of play.

Strategy
As a 2/8 Taunt for 3 mana, Deathlord boasts the stats of a minion that would ordinarily cost 5 mana, with the obvious downside of the retrieval of a minion for your opponent from their deck. Though this will always give your opponent a free minion (unless the deck has no minions left), the Battlecries from the card will not trigger, making Deathlord a card that is valuable if it wastes an important Battlecry, such as that of Novice Engineer or Big Game Hunter.

Deathlord should be used primarily as a means to stall for the late game. It is particularly effective against aggressive decks, as they use many weak minions in an attempt to defeat you before they lose their control over the game. A cheap but powerful Taunt means several minions need to be sacrificed to kill it, granting both time and card advantage. It is however unwise to play Deathlord against control-style decks, as the death of your Deathlord may result in a very powerful minion appearing on the board, such as Ragnaros the Firelord or Deathwing, leading to a difficult-to-reverse swing into your opponent's favor.

Another less obvious use for Deathlord is in mill decks; summoning a minion out of the opponent's deck is essentially the same as drawing a card for them in terms of removing a card from their deck, and Deathlord's huge body helps survive against aggression, a common weakness in mill decks.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "War of the Elements" series, for the card Aric Stonejack.
 * Deathlords effect can be seen as a prototype of the mechanic later known as "Recruit", which was introduced almost three years after deathlord in the Kobolds & Catacombs expansion.

Quotes

 * Summon
 * Death does not scare me!


 * Attack
 * Death!


 * Death
 * No! Noo!

Patch changes

 * Added.