Hearthstone’s Blackrock Mountain: Blackwing Lair

Blackwing Lair, the fourth wing in Blackrock Mountain is up and available! Hope you’re ready and equipped for dragons! In addition, the warlock and rogue class challenge cards are available here. This is also the first wing in which we get to take a crack at Lord Victor Nefarian himself.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to have video for all of the encounters on heroic. My streaming session Friday night did not prove fruitful and I was only able to defeat 1 of the 4 bosses. I’ll try to get videos of my takedowns as quickly as I can later on.

Razorgore the Untamed

Razorgore is the first boss of this particular wing. Much like the World of Warcraft version, the encounter is centered around eggs. Thankfully, no mind control orbs are needed.

Rewards: Revenge

Normal mode

On normal mode, Razorgore starts off with a lone Corrupted Egg. Every turn, his hero power (the Rookery) will buff all existing eggs by 1 health and spawn a new egg. When an egg reaches 4 health, it turns into a 7/3 minion. Keep the rest of his minions in check though, as he can surprise you in the late game with a Bloodlust which will grant attack to any existing eggs on top of normal minions. Classes with large sized creatures or board clearing spells should be able to breeze through this. I tried using a combo druid deck but discovered I wasn’t able to combat the eggs spawning quickly enough. In the end, I changed gears and went straight for a face hunter instead to see if I could both control the eggs and race Razorgore.

Matt’s deck: Hunter

Heroic mode

Heroic mode is just a touch tougher. This particular Corrupted Egg starts with 3 health and it will hatch once it reaches 5 health. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take it down on heroic. One method I wanted to explore was relying on the priest and using non-stop silences. Eventually, Razorgore will run out of room on his side of the board with the constant hero power use. All I’d have to do is avoid hitting the eggs and blow up any minions that do make it on to the board.

Matt’s heroic deck: Priest

Revenge is a dish best served cold. This reward card makes no exception. It’s a 2 mana Whirlwind for warriors with the added bonus of going from 1 damage to 3 damage if your health is below 12. It has a few uses here. It can function as a reasonable board clear in late game stages or it can help you activate certain cards such as Grim Patron and Acolyte of Pain.

Vaelastrasz

The old Vaelastrasz hinged on giving players unlimited mana, energy, and rage. The Hearthstone version of Vaelastrasz provides you with a similar turbo charged mechanic: Massive card draw from Essence of the Red.

Rewards: Flamewaker

Normal mode

Fast and aggressive decks are the way to go. His hero power will allow you to fill your hand up quickly so you want to unload your cards. Face hunter, Zoo lock, or Mech mage are both excellent deck archtypes to run with. Some of your cards will inevitably be burned due to the excessive drawing. Clockwork Giant might actually get some use in this deck, too. The Giant’s casting cost decreases based on the hand size of the other player (Vaelastrasz, in this case).

Matt’s deck: Hunter

Heroic mode

The additional drawback when you get to heroic mode is not only do you continue to get extra cards, Vaelastrasz will continue to gain extra mana throughout the encounter. I thought about using a mage or a priest to start with. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I ended up switching to my often less used class, the rogue. The cheap spells allowed me to unload spells quickly and I was able to take advantage of the extra cards drawn. You have enough methods to clear out the board while gradually chiselling away at Vaelastrasz’s health.

Matt’s heroic deck: Rogue

I have high hopes for this mage reward card. Flamewaker seems as if it would pair well with a freeze mage or a tempo mage type deck which relies heavily on spells to control the board. My initial thought is that Flamewaker is not a card you want to immediately use because it needs to be protected to really maximize its capability. Can’t wait to see it in action though!

Chromaggus

Hey! You classic Warcraft players remember having to gather up all that Hourglass Sand and then distributing it to the raid? Good thing you’re not going to need it this time around.

Rewards: Hungry Dragon

Normal mode

Chromaggus’ hero powers are annoying in the sense that they will fill up your hand and provide assorted buffs for him (and debuffs for you) unless you can ditch the cards. Emperor Thaurissan will come in handy here as the cards will end up being free on the subsequent turn allowing you to play your own cards without having to worry about them as much. If I were to prioritize it, I would recommend ditching bronze and blue Brood Afflictions fast so as to prevent Chromaggus from surprising you with nasty spells or minions. You can deal with the others. I went with Mech mage and drew into a lucky Archmage Antonidas while relying on Brood Afflictions to power the limitless supply of Fireballs. This is the perfect time to utilize those new Flamewakers.

• Brood Affliction: Green
• Brood Affliction: Red
• Brood Affliction: Blue
• Brood Affliction: Bronze
• Brood Affliction: Black

Matt’s deck: Mage

Heroic mode

I struggled quite a bit with the heroic mode version of this and tried different things from mage to priest but had a difficult time staying on top of the debuffs. Closest I came was with a priest deck running Divine Spirit and Inner Fire. Unfortunately, those Flamestrikes can ruin your day. There’s a Nozdormu in this deck and when he’s out, you have way less than 15 seconds to take your turn (and I found that out the hard way). Another idea I ran into was altering the previous mage deck slightly and including Sorcerer’s Apprentices to make the Brood Afflictions cheaper to unload.

Matt’s heroic deck: Mage

The Hungry Dragon isn’t a Pit Lord or anything, but it can summon a nuisance on your opponent’s side of the board. Could be a Leper Gnome, a Shieldbearer, or an Abusive Sergeant. If you can immediately remove their threat the same turn the dragon gets put into play, you’ll have a decisive advantage. Some neat tricks with the dragon also involve combining it with a Mind Control Tech (an example would be if your opponent has 3 minions on the board such as a Dr. Boom in play with active Boom Bots).

Lord Victor Nefarian

Rewards: Fireguard Destroyer, Chromaggus

Normal mode

Once Nef activates his hero power, he immediately transforms into the dragon version of himself. He gets 10 mana and 30 additional armor off the bat. It means he can whip out Drakonid Crushers early on. His actual hero power in this form allows him to put a random spell from your class into his hand. But luckily, good guy Ragnaros will step in and help you out. Looks like you didn’t actually get to finish him. He’ll send you some free cards like DIE, INSECT! and Son of the Flame. Ramp druid is what I eventually settled on for normal but there’s a few alternative druid decks out there. The one below isn’t the exact one I used but it should be a little more accessible for players who are lacking the more pricier card components.

Matt’s deck: Druid

Heroic mode

Oh sure, in normal mode Ragnaros will help you out. But in heroic mode, all you seem to get is one card. You’d think it can’t get any worse, but Nefarian comes with a total of 50 armor now. Judging by some of the decks out there used against Nefarian, priests and rogues are what you’re going to need to bring to the table. You’re going to want those Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death spells to help manage Nefarian’s minions as they hit the board. The rogue list I found has numerous legendary cards in it which might put it out of reach but I’ll include it anyway.

Matt’s recommended heroic decks: Priest, Rogue

Shaman everywhere will love the Fireguard Destroyer. Yes, it’s a little random in terms of it’s attack power, but the health on it allows it to absorb a good amount of damage. The lone overload drawback doesn’t seem like that much of a concern either. This is an excellent card for shamans in the 4 mana cost slot.

As for Chromaggus, I’m scratching my head a little bit because extra copies of cards are almost always beneficial. On the other hand, what would I cut from my decks to make way for him? He’s just out of Big Game Hunter range and he’s quite the tank to boot. Pray that you don’t face off against an opponent who plans to mill you because that would not be good at all.

That’s it for Blackwing Lair — you can catch the previous bosses from the earlier wings on YouTube!