Hearthstone: Naxxramas - Military Quarter, Razuvious, Gothik, Baron Rivendare

The Heroic bosses of the Military Quarter aren't quite as tricky on paper as those you encountered in the Plague Quarter, but you'll still need to have a fair amount of luck on your side if you want to destroy them all with cheap decks. If you're struggling to send any of them packing, take a look through our round-up of the most effective decks and strategies for finishing this tricky third wing.

Instructor Razuvious

Hero Ability

Normal - Deal 3 damage (2 Mana).

Heroic - Deal 4 damage (1 Mana).

Instructor Razuvious strategy - Normal

Using the completely free control Warrior deck posted over at Hearthpwn, you should find the Normal mode fight against Razuvious pretty easy. Just make sure you don't throw away your Acidic Swamp Oozes too cheaply. He can use his weapon to deliver ten damage straight to your face if you're out of taunts, and you only want to deal with that kind of problem once.

Instructor Razuvious strategy - Heroic

The good news is that there's a pretty simple strategy for beating Razuvious with a very cheap deck in Heroic mode. You need a little bit of luck in your opening hand though, and you absolutely must start the game with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire available to you.

Once you've grabbed his taunts from him, you can start causing utter chaos by buffing one of them up using these cards. The icing on the cake comes from taking his weapon out of his hands using Mind Vision or Thoughtsteal. It's gimmicky, and it might take you a few attempts until you get the lucky start you need, but this is a very easy way to finish an otherwise quite tricky boss.

Reward

Dancing Swords provides a much-needed shot in the arm for the three-cost card category, but that Deathrattle adds enough pause for thought to keep things interesting.

Gothik the Harvester

Hero Ability

Normal - Draw a card (2 Mana).

Heroic - Draw a card. Gain a Mana Crystal (1 Mana).

Gothik strategy - Normal

We didn't even have to optimise our standard cheap Mage deck to take Gothik down on Normal mode. If you ignore the noise on the board and treat the fight as a straight DPS race, you'll beat him to the finishing line with ease.

You've got tools to get at least some value out of the ghosts he forces you to acquire, but your main objective is to gather spells and throw them straight into Gothik's face. Flamestrike is your - temporary - respite from an overwhelmed board, but make sure you've got the finishing spells in your hand. If you've cleared a big board on the seventh turn, the damage from those ghosts can quickly stack up. Keep your focus on his face, however, and you'll blast through this encounter.

Gothik strategy - Heroic

We wouldn't say that Gothik is the toughest boss of the expansion so far, but you do need quite a bit of luck to take him down. On Heroic mode, he will always take advantage of his Hero Ability, which means it's possible to force him to mill through his deck and suffer at the hands of the Fatigue system. That will help to chip his health down somewhat, but surviving through his onslaught is not easy.

The main threat from Gothik lies in those ghostly minions that are summoned over to your side of the board when his minions die. These dish out damage to your hero at the start of each turn, and so making some kind of virtue out of them is essential if you're to survive the encounter.

We eventually settled on a variation of the popular Druid ramp deck. Here, you ramp up towards your more powerful minions by using Wild Growth in the early days, then Innervating into your beasts. Once you've assumed some kind of control, you then turn your traitorous spectres into treants using Poison seeds, and nullify some of Gothik's threat at the same time.

It took us several attempts to beat Gothik in this way, but we found this particular deck offered up the most solutions to the many problems he represents, while providing some essential healing options as well. That it's a pretty cheap deck to knock together only seals the deal.

Reward

The Spectral Knight will cause all kinds of headaches for classes like the Mage, who rely so heavily on spells to keep the board under control. Note, however, that the Spectral Knight is only safe from those spells that need to be targeted at a creature to take effect.

The Four Horsemen

Hero Ability

Normal - Draw 2 cards (5 Mana).

Heroic - Draw 2 cards (5 Mana).

Baron Rivendare strategy - Normal

To complete this fight on Normal, we simply used a slightly tweaked version of the Heroic deck outlined below. You won't be able to make use of those Deathlords until you've beaten the Baron once, however, so swap them out with Silverback Patriarchs until you have the more powerful card available.

Baron Rivendare strategy - Heroic

The final fight against Baron Rivendare and friends is actually a bit of a pushover if you take the right approach. The key to making this Priest deck work is to make sure you have the right opening hand. Specifically, that means getting at least a Shadow Word: Pain and a Shadow Word: Death for the start of the game. Mulligan until you can start a game with both of these essential cards.

On the second turn, use the Pain card on one of his warriors. This will likely trigger the buffing of one of his other horsemen. The next turn, use Death to kill the more powerful creature. Now deal with the third creature by whatever means you have available, and slowly develop your board.

From here, simply make sure you keep yourself healed as best you can, and you should eventually get the Baron down safely.

Reward

The Deathlord looks set to do a good job of holding back the weak minions favoured by more aggressive decks. It can only actively take down one minion at a time, however, giving the opponent time to dig for a solution.

Class challenges

It's the turn of the Warlock and Shaman classes to get a taste for their new cards this week. Neither fight is particularly difficult (and sadly, neither is as fun as last week's Hunter challenge), but you'll want to keep a few things in mind.

First of all, make good use of your Nerubian Eggs and Reincarnate cards to keep the Shaman's damage output flowing very nicely indeed. In the Warlock challenge, try to use taunts to chip away at the horsemen's health in equal measures, and keep a demon or two in your hand to get the most out of the Voidcallers you put into play.

Military Quarter reward

Kill every single Military Quarter boss on Normal mode and you'll unlock Baron Rivendare himself. Given the Deathrattle theme of the Naxxramas expansion, it's not hard to picture the kind of anarchy this card's about to unleash upon the community.

There's much more to our Hearthstone strategy guide via the first page of this article.