Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas – How to Beat Gothik the Harvester

By this time, you probably cleared the Arachnid and Plague Quarters of the Curse of Naxxramas Hearthstone expansion. What you’ve played up until now was mere child’s play. The Military Quarter (released this week) features bosses more challenging than almost every creature you’ve faced up to this point. That doesn’t mean you’ll fail, but it does mean we’re here to give you a helping hand. We have strategies to defeat Instructor Razuvious if you haven’t already done so, and this article covers Gothik the Harvester.

The biggest issue when fighting against Gothik is that he has quite a few cards with Deathrattles that summon minions to your side of the board. The Spectral Trainee, Spectral Warrior and Spectral Rider are all summoned by various minions upon their death. These minions then deal one point of damage to your hero at the start of every turn. As you can probably imagine, the damage adds up quickly if you don’t get rid of these minions as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the minions all have zero Attack power, which means you can’t simply use them to trade with Gothik’s minions and gain board control.

Your best course of action against Gothik is to use a deck that slows down the pace of the game. A Freeze Mage deck is great against Gothik because you delay killing his minions while still maintaining board advantage and inflicting damage directly to Gothik. Placing several cards with a Silence ability in your deck is also an effective strategy against Gothik, but it won’t be enough to win the match.

If you don’t have a Freeze Mage deck, you can use a late-game deck and plenty of healing cards to help fend off the minions summoned to your side of the board. Any attacks that clear the entire board are also great against Gothik because they clear the bad minions on your side as well. Gothik  uses Abomination, which helps with this, but you can’t rely on those minions to clear the board for you, especially when you need it most. Of course, you can always attack these minions with direct damage cards, so if you have a few of those, make sure to put them in your deck.

Gothik’s hero power draws a single card, so he’ll always have cards to play (until he runs out). You won’t be able to simply wear him down to gain board control. You’re going to have to take board control by force and do your best to limit the damage inflicted by Gothik’s minions. The Spectral minions have two, four or six health, so keep this in mind when you’re creating a deck that can clear them off the board.

Any cards or minions that take control of an enemy minion also work well against Gothik. Mind Control or Mind Control Tech work very well to take control of one Gothik’s minions with Deathrattle, then use the Spectral minions against Gothik. Even something like Faceless Manipulator can help in this battle if you don’t have any other options.

You need to slow down the battle and avoid recklessly killing Gothik’s minions, or have multiple ways to clear the board or remove the Spectral minions. Once you have defeated Gothik you will earn two Spectral Knight cards. These are five-mana, 4/6 minions that can’t be targeted by spells or hero powers. They come in handy for almost any solid deck arrangement.

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