Knapik said:

If you, as the Elves, don't play your Forest Guardian as your first creature, you're not playing correctly.

And if your opponent plays Stasis Rune as his first card in the combat, he's obviously a beginner.

Conclusion: shutting down the Stasis Rune with a Forest Guardian will only happen if either one of you (or both) is an unexperienced player.

Freeman said:

Except, of course, on the rare cases where your opponent holds just one Stasis Rune, or one Stasis Rune and one unit, and you have two Forest Guardians. Not like an advantage for you that will happen often.

Edit: repeated message.

Freeman said:

I think Knapik was suggesting that the Elves need to be the last player, not play Forest Guardian last. By being last player, they can get the most out of the Reinforcements event card and hopefully get the Forest Guardian.

Budgernaut said:

Yes, I understood that part, but I was not adressing the comment about profiting from Reinforcements, but the one I specifically quoted: "The trick to playing the Elves is to get Forest Guardian as quickly as possible, as it is the best unit in the game (if the best isn't Beastmaster). It's unkillable, it makes two very good units (Darnathi Warrior and Pegasus Rider) unbelievable, and it shuts down the ever-frustrating Stasis Rune (amongst other cards)."One of the listed advantages of the Forest Guardian isn't really working unless one of you (or both) is an inexperienced player, as I said, and for the reasons I mentioned. 

Of course every instance doesn't make Forest Guardian trump Stasis Rune, I was only stating that as an example of its efficacy. If your opponent has one Stasis Rune, and they know you have a Forest Guardian, it should rightly affect their play. There are myriad instances where you would both want to play Stasis Rune as your opening play and even more where you would want to play Forest Guardian after your first play (assuming you aren't head-to-head with the Orcs.) If you've played enough, you've already encountered these circumstances many times - especially the Stasis Rune scenario - but here is a bit on Forest Guardian vs. Stasis Rune:

Say you are playing Elves and have one Forest Guardian in your 10 card deck. Your opponent has a Stasis Rune in hand. The opponent has to consider the possibility you are holding the Guardian and will, of course, wait for you to play your Forest Guardian to play his Stasis Rune. If you lead as the defender with Forest Guardian, your next unit will die to Stasis Rune. However, if you read your opponent correctly (and have influence free), you can wait and neutralize the Stasis Rune. The best part of all this - you are altering and almost controlling how your opponent plays (specifically with Stasis Rune) by just having Forest Guardian somewhere in your deck. Awesome.

Knapik said:

Sorry to disagree, after more than 100 plays, I can't see a myriad instances where this will happen. In your example, you didn't adress a very important fact: which faction is your opponent playing? Does he have killing units in his deck? Do you know for sure he has a Stasis Rune in his hand? You can't advice any strategy withouth having all these things in account. If your opponent went heavy on killing units, playing any other thing but the Forest Guardian is giving away one of your units for free. Your only way to stall with the Elves is playing the Forest Guardian as your first unit (of course, you could also play the Pegasus, but then you're being not very clever, because stalling this way would be harmful to you)). If you played first a Leonx, and you target your opponent, you are actually giving him a better hand if he is the defender. If you target yourself, you are wasting influence. If you play first a Darnati, you are putting him into play without an interesting target. If you play a Pegasus, you don't know what you're doing. And if you play a Deepwood archer or a Sorceress, I would question why this two units are in your 10 card deck, lacking efficiency…

For the same reason, I, as the attacker, will wait to play the Stasis Rune, or simply save my killing units. There's no sense in playing otherwise.

I would also debate your statement about the Forest Guardian being the best unit on the game. It's not that good on coop., except if you happen to have both on your hand, and I can't find a lot of  situations where 2 Barrow Wyrms aren't even better, even on versus. For instance, if your first Barrow Wyrm gets killed by the Stasis Rune, not only it doesn't matter, because you can retrieve it with your second Barrow Wyrm, but you've actually stalled, giving you the edge; this won't ever happen with the Forest Guardians…