Beating Rend Blackhand in Heroic and Normal
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
Rewards
Normal Mode
As you can see, he likes to summon a lot of 1 Health Creatures. Warrior is pretty equipped to punish it, Unstable Ghouls, Whirlwinds, Deathbites, Cruel Taskmasters, etc. Grim Patron based decks can really turn the heat up on him so you can certainly have a lot of fun with that.
Heroic Mode
Rends minions come super powered up the second time around, and our Warrior strats that were based on doing 1 damage to the board are no longer valid. In dealing 2 damage to the board you have great spells like Consecration, Blizzard, and Starfall. The problem is that those are a bit too expensive so we are required to use other tricks like the Explosive Sheep and Explosive Trap.
Hunter makes a lot of sense on this match up, because he likes to flood the board you can get a lot of value out of Unleash the Skill. Speaking about flooded boards, Mind Control Tech and Sea Giant are other cards that shine here.
After a few failed attempts I realized that I was getting out of steam too quickly. But since he uses a lot of Hero Power and doesn’t play that many cards, Coldlight Oracle became basically a draw two. With all the cards on his hand I decided to use the minions that are buffed when your opponents handsize is too big.
This is the deck I assembled which managed to get me a few wins over him.
Basically here you want to hide Giants and Sappers behind your your taunts, hiding a Grim Patron behind Taunts can also be a of help. I went with Double Belcher and Sunwalker, two taunts that can often take more than a single hit and stall out your opponent while your big boys wreck his face. I added a single Deathlord there if you need extra taunting either early or late, Deathlord is a bit of a two-edged sword as it can pull out some of the bigger minions that Rend has on his deck.The Explosive Shot was decent in some situations but I think you can find something better to put there. As I mentioned, Sea Giant is a good option.
The key to victory here is knowing when to turn the aggro up and start going face, you need to be smart about trading otherwise you are going to have a hard time.
Mulligan heavily for Explosive Trap, Mad Scientist, and Explosive Sheep. If you already have Trap, then mulligan for Coldlight Oracle. You might want to consider adding an extra Big Game Hunter to your deck if you feel like you can’t handle his bigger stuff.
JR used a very similar approach with a slightly different decklist, if you need a little extra help check out his video guides.
Why do you even post this crap unfinished? This is a useless post until updated with real information.
As opposed to what?
The first try with your deck I destroyed Heroic Rend Blackhand! I did not have Goblin Sapper or Clockwork Giant, so I used Sea Giant, an extra Molten Giant, and an extra Deathlord. Sea Giant was huge!