Hearthstone Blackrock Mountain Heroic Guide: Garr, Baron Geddon, Majordomo Executus

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft's Blackrock Mountain adventure continues, and this week's wing explores the fiery depths of the Molten Core. You can collect all of the new cards by finishing the Normal and Class challenges, but to really secure your bragging rights, you need to finish each boss on Heroic. The Heroic bosses get ratcheted up with outrageous difficulty spikes and unbalanced hero powers.

Fortunately for you, we've rigorously tested our decks and found how to take them all down. With some strategy and a little luck, you can earn the Heroic card back for beating every Heroic boss in Blackrock Mountain.

This wing pits you against Garr, Baron Geddon, and Majordomo Executus. As always, these strategies are formulated for their Heroic incarnations, but you should be able to handle the Normal bosses with the same strategies.

Garr

Normal: 1 Mana - Deal 1 damage to all minions
Heroic: 1 Mana - Deal 1 damage to all minions

Garr's Hero ability, which pings all minions for 1 damage, may seem to lend itself to Warrior--especially since you just picked up the Axe Flinger with the Warrior's Hero Challenge. However, the real threat here are his seven Firesworn minions, each of which deal a certain amount of damage for each one that dies during a turn. That's just 1 damage in Normal mode, but it goes up to a whopping 3 in Heroic. Even if you managed to pick them off individually, that would be 21 damage. On top of that, they stack. If two die at the same time in a single turn, each one does 6 damage. You can see how easily this can get out of hand.

In short, taking them out isn't enough. You have to neutralize them and take advantage of them, which makes Priest the natural choice. Pack two Mass Dispel cards to increase your odds of drawing one, and you'll render his entire board useless in one fell swoop. He can refresh his side of the board with three Firesworns at a time, but they're much less dangerous in smaller groups and once you've had a chance to gain board advantage. You might want to bring along a few individual Silence cards or Ironbeak Owls to act as insurance.

From there, Garr becomes easy pickings. You can easily pick them off one at a time, or even use minions like Mind Control Tech and Cabal Shadow Priest to steal them and make their damage hurt him instead. Grim Patron will most likely be your win condition, since once you have one out it will constantly be spawning more to damage his face. 

Recommended Class: Priest
Recommended Cards: Mind Control Tech, Mass Dispel, Grim Patron, Cabal Shadow Priest

Baron Geddon

Normal: 0 Mana - Deal 5 damage to the enemy hero if they have any unspent Mana
Heroic: 0 Mana - Deal 10 damage to the enemy hero if they have any unspent Mana

Baron Geddon may be the toughest of this set, because his Hero Power demands that you have an absolutely perfect mana curve. On Heroic, the threat of 10 damage for spending mana inefficiently can and probably will be the major obstacle to your success. Fast decks like the zoo versions of Hunter and Warlock tend run out of steam with his high health bar, so you need something that can keep pace.

Even worse, he'll sometimes cast a spell that will turn one of your own minions into a 10-damage time bomb, and very frequently he won't play anything for you to hit it with to kill it before it goes off. That discourages you from playing minions simply to have them slaughtered, which means you won't use your full mana allotment and get punished for it.

The best answer to this is the Mage, with various spells and secrets to counteract his abilities. Ice Block and Antique Healbot will save your skin on more than one occasion, and you may want to pack some other helpful secrets like Counterspell. Since you'll likely be dancing against the edge of death, Molten Giant will be your win condition. You can use spells like Echo of Medivh and the Duplicate secret to gain more copies of your Giants and Healbots, which will help you continue spending mana. Once you get into a pattern of using and recycling your minions, you'll be able to handle his barrage.

Recommended Class: Mage
Recommended Cards: Ice Block, Echo of Medivh, Antique Healbot, Molten Giant 

Majordomo Executus

Normal: 2 Mana - Summon a 1/3 Flamewaker Acolyte
Heroic: 2 Mana - Summon a 3/3 Flamewaker Acolyte

Ragnaros 

Normal: 2 Mana - Deal 8 damage to a random enemy
Heroic: 2 Mana - Deal 8 damage to a random enemy TWICE

The Majordomo's Acolytes get upgraded in Heroic, making a pretty constant 3/3 threat on top of his other minions. Even with a hearty Control-type deck, you'll probably take a decent amount of damage to the face until you stabilize around turn four or five. You'll need to watch for some of his mid-range threats, and be careful to watch his health bar. We'll get to that in a moment.

The Paladin is great for Control right now, with cards like Aldor Peacekeeper for neutralizing big threats and the Muster-Quartermaster combo for producing a lot of 3/3s fast. Those can be used to knock off Executus' Acolytes, but more likely by that point you'll be going for the face. His steady stream of 3/3s get less and less useful as you introduce 5/5 minions with their own special benefits like Emperor Thaurissan and Sylvanis Windrunner. You want to plan your deck for a smooth curve with plenty of late-game minions for once you gain control.

Once he reaches around 15-20 health, leave him alone and establish sufficient board control. You need to be able to knock down the rest all in one turn, and you'll want plenty of minions on the board. The reasons are two-fold. First, his hand is chock full of Molten Giants, and as long as you keep him relatively healthy he can only play one per turn. If you put his health too low and let him take a turn, he'll absolutely flood the board with them, and there's not much you can do from there without a board-clearing combo like Equality and Consecration. 

The second reason revolves around what happens when you do finish him off. He'll summon Ragnaros, and the second phase of the fight will begin. Ragnaros' power spends 2 mana to hit an enemy for 8 damage, and in Heroic he does it twice. As long as you have plenty of minions on the board, chances are good you'll still have a passable board presence after he wipes out two of them. Paladin is very helpful here, because at this point cards like Muster for Battle and the Paladin Hero Power create extra threats for Ragnaros' random power to hit. By this point you should have established enough board control to handle whatever comes your way, so if you keep pumping out minions for him to target your others can beat him down.

Recommended Class: Paladin
Recommended Cards: Aldor Peacekeeper, Muster for Battle, Quartermaster, Tirion Fordring