Al'Akir the Windlord

This article is using {{Card template v2}}.See Help:Style guide/Card for how to edit this kind of article.Edit this article

## Al'Akir the Windlord

* Regular
* Golden

Artist: Raymond Swanland

Artist: Raymond Swanland

Collectible • Elite

**Charge, Divine Shield, Taunt, Windfury**

## Availability

### Formats

Wild
Duels

## Flavor

*He is the weakest of the four Elemental Lords. And the other three don't let him forget it.*

### Card id:

`NEW1_010`

*You might be looking for one of these cards: Al'Akir the Windlord (Classic), Al'Akir the Windlord (Core).***Al'Akir the Windlord** is a legendary shaman minion card, from the Legacy set.

## Other versions

Core
Classic

## Sounds

Play
* ▶️ `VO_NEW1_010_Play_01.wav` Winds! Obey my command!
* ▶️ `Pegasus_Stinger_Elemental_Villain.wav` *<music stinger>*

Attack
* ▶️ `VO_NEW1_010_Attack_02.wav` Like swatting insects!

Death
* ▶️ `VO_NEW1_010_Death_03.wav` <death sound>

## Lore

*This section uses content from Wowpedia.*
*Al'Akir the Windlord was the Elemental Lord of air. He ruled over his domain of Skywall from his seat at the Throne of the Four Winds. He was once the foremost tactician in the Old Gods' horrific armies. Aligned with the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing and his fellow Elemental Lord Ragnaros the Firelord in their efforts to usher in the end of days, Al'Akir was defeated by the mortal champions of Azeroth, who were able to enter Skywall from the breach in Uldum and destroy the Windlord within his own sanctum.*

## Trivia

- The artwork for this card comes from the *World of Warcraft Trading Card Game* "War of the Elements" series, for the card Al'Akir the Windlord.
- Al'Akir ("الأخير" in Arabic, more correctly transliterated as *al-’akhīr*) means "The Last One".
- During the game's alpha and beta phases, Al'Akir was generally considered to be an extremely underpowered and undesirable card, widely named one of the worst legendaries in the game. However, as with the value of any card, over time a shifting meta game and new deck types has led players to discover the potential of the card.
- Ben Brode states that during the game's alpha he was receiving so much negative feedback regarding Al'Akir card that the team very nearly buffed the card, with even top players within Blizzard asking him "How come you made him so bad?!" and asking him to "make this guy good". With Brode having originally pitched the card as a 3/3, Eric Dodds later increased the minion's stats to 3/5, but this was not enough to counter the negative feedback about the card, with the developers eventually scheduling a further buff to 3/7.
	* However, when the developers examined the alpha's backend stats, Al'Akir was found to in fact have the highest win rate of any legendary in the game at that time. The developers therefore realised that the card was simply under-appreciated, and quickly reverted the planned changes to the card, avoiding making "a pretty terrible mistake". This was the first time the developers used "hard data" to inform balance changes.

## Gallery

* Al'Akir the Windlord, full art
* Al'Akir in *World of Warcraft*

## Patch changes

* **Patch 20.0.0.77662 (2021-03-25):**
	+ **2021-03-30:** Moved from Classic to Legacy set.
	+ Now has 6 Health (Up from 5).
* **Patch 10.0.0.22611 (2017-12-06):**
	+ Keywords rearranged in alphabetical order.
* **Patch 8.0.0.18336 (2017-04-04):**
	+ Minion type is now Elemental (previously: no minion type).
* **Patch 1.0.0.4217 (Closed beta, 2013-12-10):**
	+ Visual effect: Al'Akir the Windlord now rides into battle on the tempest itself!
* **Patch 1.0.0.3140 (Alpha, April or May 2013):**
	+ Added.
## External links

- PlayHearthstone
- HSReplay.net
- Hearthpwn
- OutOf.Cards

## References

 1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 ChanManV (2014-04-24). Value Town #27 w/ ChanManV, Trump, Gnimsh, and Ben Brode Pt. 2.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ben Brode on Twitter. (2015-06-01).