The final wing of Naxxramas opened on Wednesday and many eager players jumped straight in, hoping to complete the final stretch of Hearthstone’s first expansion. I was among them, taking on the two final bosses live on the station’s Twitch channel.
As if to make up for last week’s four bosses, the Frostwyrm Lair has only two bosses in it; Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad himself. And both of them can be fairly challenging, even if Kel’Thuzad is the more challenging battle of the two as the final boss of the entire thing.
Sapphiron’s Hero Power is a 0 mana cost ability called Frost Breath, which destroys all minions who aren’t Frozen on your side of the field and he will use at the start of every turn. Sounds bad, but you do have a lifeline. A 2/10 minion who you start with on your side of the field called Frozen Champion. As his name suggests, he is forever Frozen but also shelters minions placed on either side of him from Frost Breath’s power. So this is a battle of consideration and careful placement and perfectly doable in a few battles if you play your cards right.
Kel’Thuzad though… well, Kel’Thuzad cheats and I’m not just saying that because he’s difficult: he literally does cheat. He starts off with 30 HP, 10 armour and has another 0-cost ability that causes your Hero 2 damage and freezes it. He’s also programmed with different responses to each Hero’s entering phrase as well as all 6 of the emotes, which can be quite amusing if you’re bored. When you’ve removed all his armour as well, that is when he will cheat. He will end your turn automatically and then summon two 3/3 Guardian of Icecrowns with Taunt and change his ability to Chains, an 8-cost ability that allows him to take control of one of your minions for the turn. He will also do this if you let him carry on too long beating you down without removing all his armour. My advice is to smack down his armour quickly, being aware of the auto turn-end when it’s all gone (try to do more than 10 damage during the ‘armour’ phase to give you a little headstart on his health), then just play cards and deal with him. Eventually you will win.
The final Class challenge is that of the Paladin against Kel’Thuzad with all his tricks. Use the Echoing Oozes in a similar way to how Grobbulus did last week – they help enormously.
Also, I discovered an Easter Egg. Play a Hunter deck, and use Animal Companion against Kel’Thuzad – see who you summon. 😀
As an ending the Frostwyrm Lair was certainly good enough, but maybe lacked some little touch that made it perfect. Not that I cared when I finally beat Kel’Thuzad (that NPC misplay! He had fatal on me and missed it!) and then saw the rundown of all the boss coins being counted to confirm that yes – I had entered Naxxramas and made it out the other side the victor, many cards richer and with new skills and experiences.
I entered Curse of Naxx excited but doubting whether I’d be able to actually beat it. I am a skilled Hunter player, but not so much the other classes. But the expansion made me sit down, play with the mechanics of cards both old and new, learn new tricks, made me stop to consider the best ways to exploit a weakness in my computer opponent or how to best to use their abilities to my own advantage. I’ve also been frustrated to great heights and shouted “That was bullshit!” once or twice during livestreams when usually I just stew. The class challenges have let me learn a little of how to play other classes, even if only in certain circumstances and I’ve learned that if you know a deck well enough and have a great amount of drive and determination, eventually you can win. I entered a decent, if slightly doubting card player and left knowing that Hearthstone is a game that I can play well, that has earned its place high up on my mental top games list.
GG Blizzard. Can’t wait for the next expansion.
