Hearthstone: Noth The Plaguebringer Heroic Guide for Priests

So as I promised last night here is my short and basic strategy I used for heroic mode of Noth the Plagubringer. Noth is the first boss in the second wing of Hearthstone adventure mode Curse of Naxxramas and he is a boss that has caused me nightmares ever since I first killed him on level 60 in vanilla World of Warcraft. I am pretty sure that taunts failing on his skeletons and thus healers ending up dying would do that to any proud tank....

Normal version of Noth is fairly straightforward. He has 30 health and a passive ability to summon a 1/1 skeleton whenever YOU lose a minion. However, his heroic mode has 45 health and his passive ability increases the stats of his skeletons to 5/5! So losing a minion will have devastating effects.

                        

So anyway unlike World of Warcraft at least Hearthstone version of Noth is surprisingly much easier and ironically one of the key to win is to FAIL AT TAUNT! The reason behind this is that Noth has one of the best legendary cards in the game, that is Black Knight. As you know Black Knight destroys a minion with taunt. So the idea is to not have any taunts on the board so he won't get value from it. AI also mostly ignores your minions on board. So basically the more Noth attacks your face, the lesser the chance to give him a free 5/5.

However, Noth also has an incredibly annoying AoE called Plague that destroys EVERYTHING on the board that is not a skeleton. So if you are going aggro with 5 minions on the board, congratulations because you just gave him 5 5/5 that you will have to deal with so you might pretty much want to concede immediately.

When I killed Noth on my 3rd attempt I was lucky enough not to face this card. However, even if I did I had the means to handle it easily with a single Shadow Word Death as I only had 1 minion on the board anyway so he wouldn't get a good value from it and I still had minions to play afterwards and buff so I was still in a good position.

Anyway enough with the introduction this guide was supposed to be short but again I managed to go full out. I used a priest deck to take down Noth. So my guide will be based on the Priest class. The cards I used are fairly basic with a couple of uncommons and two rares so it's pretty cheap or even almost completely free.

Mulligan: You need to fish for any 4 mana minion to play on turn 4 preferably Snapjaw. This is pretty vital otherwise you will be down to too low health in order to make a good comeback but of course it is still possible. Then you just hope to get Divine Spirit and Inner Fire on later turns to buff up your 4 mana minion. Having 1 Shadow Word Death and Pain is also important but the cards you want are 4 mana minion, Divine Spirit and Inner Fire. If you get Mogu'shan Warden, you have merits to fear trading and Black Knight so make sure you have Silence in hand and Circle to test for Counterspell before using Silence.

Strategy: The idea is to put down a 4 mana minion as soon as possible. You just heal yourself up as long as you need until you can play your minion and buff it up as much as you can. Noth didn't use Plague on my 3rd attempt but even if he did I had Shadow Word Death to handle that 5/5 and then Holy Fire for him so I'd still win anyway. Due to Plague, I suggest not trading at all with your buffed minion. You might want to go full face because if Noth decides to use Plague his board will be wiped clean with 5/5 for as many minions as you had on the board so you can easily come back after a board reset and I'm pretty sure you don't want to lose your buffed minion a turn after trading as you would be getting 0 value from it. 

Another key element to consider is that Noth has TONS of secrets and I means TONS of them. He will use Duplicate, Ice Block and Counterspell. He will also play Mad Scientists that put a secret on the battlefield when they die. The most important thing to look out for is obviously a Counterspell. So I put 0 mana cost free spells to test for Counterspell. Silence is pretty effective here, even if you lose your silence to Counterspell you won't lose much. So if Noth has a secret up and you are about to use Divine Spirit and Inner Fire on your minion, think twice and use Circle of Healing or Silence first to trigger it because you can't afford to lose your buff spells as they are your kill conditions. In order to handle Duplicate, just think "Which minion I wouldn't mind for him to get twice of?". In my case it was Undertaker. I avoided killing Mad Scientists because I didn't want to give him extra secrets and if I had to Silence a minion, it would definitely be those Mad Scientists.

I'll tell you exactly how it went down in my game. I healed myself until turn 4 when I put down a Snapjaw. Buffed him with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire on turn 5 so he was buffed to 14/14. From then on I didn't even try to clear the board as Noth had minions with 1 or 2 attacks anyway so I decided to rush him. One turn I had to use Holy Fire to heal myself a little more to be on the safe side to handle a big threat in case of him having Ice Block. But of course in order to test for Counterspell I used Silence first and then Holy Fire. I went full face with my minion and healed myself as much as possible. Noth had Ice Block on my lethal so I waited for the next turn to kill him off. I still had my second Holy Fire, Holy Nova and some cheap spell to trigger Counterspell if he were to get one so it was GG for me no matter how it played out. So even if he used Plague to wipe the board I still had lethal next turn unless he got another Ice Block of course. If there was an annoying minion I wanted to clear I used Shadow Word Pain on it. This encounter is pretty basic for priests. You just need those 3 vital cards early on then the chances of you losing are pretty slim.

So basically I only used 1 minion to kill Noth, I didn't need to play any other minion but the deck is strong enough to finish off especially with buffs even if Noth for some reason decides to trade minions or use Plague. And if you can't have lethal with a minion after bringing him down to 5 or 2 health range, you still have enough cheap spells to trigger Counterspell (if he has it) and Holy Nova, Holy Fire or Holy Smite to finish off. Good luck!

Ps 1: Don't mind the name of my deck. My standard Priest deck has Thoughtsteal, Mind Vision, Shadow Madness and Cabal Shadow Priest so the name suits that play. I didn't change the name for different deck variations for Naxxramas bosses.

Ps 2: Heigan the Unclean heroic guide is coming up later on today. I still haven't tried Loatheb at all though.