Wednesday 30 July 2014

Heroic Modes

Naxxramas' second wing was launched yesterday. I beat all three heroic bosses with a total of about 12 attempts between them. Last week I started posting my decks because I thought my Maexxna deck was interesting and the fight was interesting. This week, though, I don't think my decks are really much to look at.

Noth has a passive ability that gives him a 5/5 every time one of your creatures dies so I built a Mage deck with virtually no creatures and only played creatures on my last turn to kill him with battlecry abilities and haste. This was one turn before I died of fatigue. The only interesting thing about the fight was that because I don't have Pyroblasts the only way I could get the 45 damage in was do get some fatigue damage in, so I use his acolytes of pain to make sure he drew lots of extra cards.

Heigan does 3 damage to your creature on the left for just one mana. Well that means you get to choose which creatures it happens to, so you can drop Nerubian Eggs and Haunted Creepers in the way. I used a Priest so that I could benefit from the regular damage to draw cards off of a Northshire Cleric, and so that I could keep a Gurubashi Berserker alive a long time. The game I won I had a berserker up to 14 attack.

Loatheb is really dumb. He has this gimmick where he has 99 health. He even has 75 on normal. To allow you to counteract this, he has spells that summon a Spore on his side. The spore is a 0/1 with a deathrattle that gives all of your creatures +8 attack. Pop a spore onto three or four creatures and 75 health doesn't last long.

But the health gimmick isn't really the issue. On heroic his hero power deals three damage to you for zero mana. He starts with a Fen Creeper in play. His deck is full of quick attackers including a 2/3 charge creature for one. So he can easily do eight to you on his first turn with the promise of another eight or more the turn after.

Basically this fight is usually over in the first two turns. If things go badly then you are just dead. I built a Druid deck with lots of very cheap creatures, Moonfire, Naturalize and Healing Touch. I played a few times and finally got a lucky start where I cleared his board with 9 life left. A Healing Touch bought me a few turns and then he played two Faceless Manipulators to copy his own spores for some reason. With four spores on his side I Inervated out a Razor Fen Hunter and a Soul of the Forest then when to work killing one spore a turn with my hero power and hitting his face for large amounts. He managed to kill the hunter and boar but that left me with two treant and he was killing my creatures with more spore-creating spells, so I finally got him with a 34/1 treant and 3 life left. It wasn't actually a razor thin win because I had a Healing Touch in hand and 1 armor, but still, if he hadn't inexplicably clones spores I certainly would have lost.

I think this fight was basically moronic. I'm sure I would have won without rotten play on his part but it would have taken me more tries. I can't imagine that a deck could possibly exist that would avoid being overwhelmed almost immediately most of the time in this match so it's always going to be a slog to wait for a perfect draw.

I could post these decks but honestly my versions just weren't that great. Unlike Maexxna and Faerlina where I felt like it was mostly having the right strategy, with these bosses I felt it was more about having the right cards and hoping more if you didn't. If I had all the cards I would try to build a reliable Loatheb deck to use as a guide, but I don't have them.

For me, though, Naxxramas got a special extra boss. Last January I wrote about setting parenting to hardmode. Well, you can't do that on the fly and right about the same time the Plague Wing was coming out, my difficulty change finally came through.


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