Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas – How to Beat Thaddius

In the Curse of Naxxramas Construct Quarter of Hearthstone, Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Gluth and Thaddius are the four bosses. Of these, Thaddius is probably the easiest to beat, although you may still need to build a custom deck to increase your chances of winning. Let’s dive right in and cover the basics of this battle and what you’ll need to do to come out on top.

Thaddius has a unique hero power that swaps the health and attack of all minions currently in play. Expect him to use it every single turn, so be ready for it. Minions with high health and low attack, and minions with the same attack and health work very well against Thaddius. With these minions, you’ll either get a huge damage boost when Thaddius uses his hero ability, or it will have no effect on your minions (the ones that have the same stat for attack and health).

Luckily, this effect impacts the minions that Thaddius has on the board as well. Keep this in mind before you attack any minions, especially taunt minions. In some cases, in may be better to wait for the hero ability before attacking, and in other cases it may work in your favor to clear a minion before the hero ability is used on it.

Let’s take a look at some examples. If Thaddius uses a 3/5 minion early on, in most instances your minions will not have enough attack power to take it down in a single blow. However, if you inflict three damage to it, dropping the minion to 3/2 when Thaddius uses his hero ability, you only have to deal with a 2/3 instead of a 5/3. At the same time, if Thaddius uses a 2/8 minion, it’s best to wait until it’s an 8/2 before attacking. You may trade minions, but you should be able to take it down with a single attack.

Minions with zero attack are not very effective against Thaddius, so avoid using them unless it’s something like a Nerubian Egg, which summons a 4/4 minion upon death. Unfortunately, this hurts Shaman quite a bit, as many of the Shaman’s totem minions have zero health. You can use various cards to buff these minions, but it’s generally easier to run with a different class. Priest works well because cards such as Power Word: Shield end up significantly buffing your minions due to their increased health.

Keep in mind that any minion that survives through multiple turns will be impacted by the hero power multiple times. If you have a 2/3 minion, Thaddius will change it to 3/2 the first turn, then back to 2/3 on the next turn (assuming it doesn’t take any damage during that time). This needs to be factored into your strategies, as you may want to keep a minion safe until the next hero power so you can get a big attack from it before the minion dies.

While Shaman isn’t a very good class to use in this battle, Thaddius actually has quite a few Shaman spells in his deck. Expect several board-clearing attacks such as Lightning Storm, as well as single and multi-target spells like Forked Lightning and Lightning Bolt. In addition, Thaddius can buff his minion’s health and has two Unbound Elemental cards that will be buffed by any Overload card (most Shaman cards have an Overload effect). Do not over commit to avoid losing too many minions, and take out the Unbound Elemental as quickly as you can.

Defeating Thaddius will earn you a set of Wailing Soul cards, and having defeated all four Construct Quarter bosses, you will also be rewarded with the Stalagg and Feugen cards. Wailing Soul is a very effective silence card with a cost of four mana for a 3/5 minion. Stalagg (five-mana, 7/4 minion) and Feugen (five-mana, 4/7 minion) are very useful in that they summon Thaddius (10-mana, 11/11 minion) once both have been defeated in battle. If they both die on the same turn, you get two Thaddius minions to destroy your opponent with.

We’ll have more Construct Quarter tips, including heroic mode strategies and breakdowns of the Priest and Warrior class challenges!