Hearthstone’s One Night in Karazhan: The Opera guide

Welcome to week two of One Night in Karazhan! In this wing, we continue our ascent up the tower to help retrieve Medivh and reach the Opera. If you haven’t yet had an opportunity, check out our full adventure primer and the list of all expansion cards. There are no new mechanics being introduced in this adventure (aside from cards like Curator which interacts with a Beast, Dragon, and Murloc or the various portals).

The second wing consists of the popular Opera encounters: Romulo and Julianne, Big Bad Wolf, and the Crone. Give the Opera wing a go on your own for now. If you need extra help, come back here for a guide along with a few recommendations.

Previous Wings

• Prologue and the Parlor

Tip: When building your deck, remember to toggle your deck type to Wild. You do not have to use exclusively standard cards to beat these encounters.

Defeating the three Opera encounters will unlock class challenges for Paladin and Warlock cards. Those challenges will award you with a Silvermoon Portal and Kara Kazham!

Romulo and Julianne

The first encounter is against Romulo and Julianne. Julianne starts off with a 4/2 Romulo in play that can be relentless — but more importantly, his presence on the board makes her immune to all damage. Her hero power (True Love) allows her to re-summon Romulo for 4 mana if he isn’t in play. Go for a deck that can reliably contain Romulo and you’ll knock it out easily. Priests can completely neutralize Romulo without even having to eliminate him by playing and applying Power Word: Glory so that his attacks will also cause him to heal you.

On Heroic

Romulo costs 0 mana to activate via True Love, and Julianne has an extra 15 armor on top of her usual 15 health. As an alternative, here’s a Priest deck that provides you with extra longevity and mitigation against Romulo. It should keep you in the game log enough. Kel’Thuzad will auto-revive some of your bigger minions to help keep Romulo in check. In my case, I opted for a typical Midrange Hunter deck. Nothing fancy or with any specific gimmick strategies. I just simply controlled Romulo every turn (and Unleashed the Hounds into him) and eventually overwhelmed her other cards.

Rewards: Pompous Thespian, Onyx Bishop

Big Bad Wolf

On Normal, Wolf’s Hero Power is Trembling. Our minions cost 1 mana, and their health and attacks are adjusted to 1/1. No matter what deck you decide to choose, you want to think about cards with lots of value added. Anything with Deathrattle is often a good choice, along with cards that can provide other benefits either via Battlecry or as a passive. N’Zoth and Kel’Thuzad decks shine here.

The deck I used here was a Druid deck, as many of the Druid cards like Druid of the Claw and Druid of the Flame don’t actually see any changes to their stats. What happens is the 1/1 effect gets applied right away, but you can choose the stat option you want after and it will stick. So yes, you can still have that 4/6 Druid of the Claw. Cards that can create tokens happen to also be excellent in this matchup, such as Onyxia or Dr. Boom. I used a Druid deck similar to this one for both Normal and Heroic.

For hilarity, play a Paladin deck with Steward of Darkshires. Get all those Divine Shields up and then drop a Blood Knight.

Heroic

On Heroic, Big Bad Wolf starts with with not one, not two, but three Kindly Grandmothers. I used the same Druid deck as above. The Wolf’s hero power changes to Trembling — our minions continue to cost 1 mana to play, and their health and attacks are adjusted to 1/1 stats. However, Wolf’s minions now cost 1 mana. If you can’t draw an answer against the three Big Bad Wolfs, you’re not going to be able to win this. You can also try using Silence effects so that their Deathrattle effects don’t activate. If you can get Kel’Thuzad out and protect it with Taunts, Wolf will have a hard time answering the constant minion resurrects going off.

Rewards: Kindly Grandmother, Arcane Giant

The Crone

The Crone is trying to get to Dorothee! Your goal is to protect her because if you don’t, Crone gets to use Twister, which will immediately inflict lethal damage to you. Thankfully, Dorothee isn’t entirely helpless. She starts with a decent sized 10 health. Minions you place on her left will receive Charge. Minions placed on her right will receive Taunt. The general approach here is you want one or two minions on Dorothee’s right to benefit from Taunt, which can run interference on any of her minions. Do this while applying damage to Crone right away by placing other minions on Dorothee’s left. On normal, she starts off at 30 health.

I picked a Paladin deck for this, just in case I didn’t have a minion handy. I could create a new Silver Hand Recruit which always gains Taunt. You’ll notice I have Fel Reavers in there, and those are completely optional for you. But whipping those guys out on turn 5 and going straight to the face with them helped ease the game tremendously. Another alternative strategy is to play a Shaman deck and add Twisting Nether insurance with Ancestral Spirit on Dorothee. Realistically, any aggro-based deck should suffice here. If you’re still struggling, there’s a Priest deck that has the strategy of using Divine Spirit and Inner Fire on Dorothee to put her up to astronomical levels of health and damage.

Heroic

You still have 8 turns to defeat the Crone before Twisting Nether gets cast and wipes out Dorothee, followed up by a Twister. The same strategy for normal can be applied for heroic. Keep one or two minions as Taunt bait. Everyone else needs to go left of Dorothee for the Charge and attack right away. You have to push a ton of damage in this game, because the Crone has 50 health. If you’re still coming up short, try using that Shaman deck above and cast Ancestral Spirit on Dorothee. If you have Loatheb, you can play him to stall out another turn right before Twisting Nether would be played.

Rewards: Wicked Witchdoctor, Moat Lurker, Swashburglar, Barnes

Personally, I found this week’s wing much easier compared to last week’s wing. How about you? Which classes or decks did you end up using?

Previous Adventures

If you haven’t yet, we’ve also released guides and walkthroughs for the previous two adventures. Check them out and polish off the rest of the bosses!

• League of Explorers
• Blackrock Mountain