Hearthstone: The Four Horsemen Heroic Guide for Priests

The Four Horsemen are the final boss of Military Quarter and they are arguably the easiest in the 3rd wing of Curse of Naxxramas. A lot of classes can easily defeat them in at least a couple of attempts if not on first.

On normal mode Baron Rivendare starts the fight with 7 health and 3 of the other Horsemen members already on board, Thane Korth'azz, Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek with 1/7 stats. These Horsemen give immunity to Baron Rivendare. On heroic version, Baron Rivendare has 14 health and the Horsemen stats increase to 2/7. On both normal and heroic versions, The Four Horsemen have the same hero power; draw 2 cards for 5 mana.

In order to defeat Baron Rivendare, you must first get rid of his immunity provided by the 3 Horsemen on the board. There are multiple ways to do that. Baron Rivendare doesn't play any minions at all so once you take care of these 3 Horsemen, you won't have to worry about anything.

The Four Horsemen is formed of multiple classes so you will have to look out for Mage spells like Frostbolt, Paladin spells like Consecration, Priest spells like Shadow Word Pain/Death, Silence and Mass Dispel and last but not least Warlock spells like Drain Life, Soulfire, Shadow Bolt and Mortal Coil. Apart from these spells Baron also uses a lot of Paladin secrets. He uses the new Paladin secret called Avenge alongside Repentance and Redemption. However, Noble Sacrifice secret is not used. Baron also has a weapon that gets a significant attack increase if the 3 Horsemen are dead as well as a spell to buff them up.

I defeated The Four Horsemen with a Priest; however, as I mentioned before any class can easily defeat them provided they have the key cards in the deck. Priests have more means to handle the minions so that's why I decided to take that route.

Here is the list of my Priest deck I used to defeat The Four Horsemen on heroic difficulty.

Mulligan: Shadow Word Pain on turn 2 is heavenly. If you get 2 Shadow Word Pain, keep them in hand as you will clear two of the Horsemen by turn 3. We have a Shadow Word Death in case of Avenge. When a Horseman dies, Avenge will buff another random Horsemen to 5/9 and our Shadow Word Death will easily take care of that. Keeping a single Acidic Swamp Ooze can also buy you more time as you can destroy Baron's weapon.

Strategy: Use Shadow Word Pain on one of the Horsemen as soon as possible, preferably on turn 2 before Baron gets a chance to use Avenge or Redemption secret. Baron usually uses Repentance secret first but you never know. There are a lot of different ways to approach the rest of the game.

Stampeding Kodo will destroy one of the remaining two Horsemen on turn 5. If Baron has Avenge secret; having your Shadow Word Death at hand will greatly help you in the next turn. If it's Redemption you can use Shadow Madness to kill off the resurrected Horseman. Cabal Shadow Priest can grant you immunity for one turn (it's usually one turn as Baron will use all of his removal spells to kill off the Horseman you just stole) and get a Horseman killed. So Cabal Shadow Priest is a big power card for this encounter.

If you want to be on the safe side and keep one Horseman alive in order not to increase the attack of Baron's weapon, you have Owls, Silences or Mass Dispels to remove the Immunity buff. Or you can even do that early on in the game and put pressure on Baron with Charge minions and offensive spells like Mind Blast, Holy Fire etc. As I said, The Four Horsemen is the type of encounter that can be approached with a lot of different strategies.

In my game, I killed off all the 3 Horsemen but whatever minion I put on the board, Baron had all the removals needed to kill them. So I simply waited until he hit fatigue because I didn't draw a single minion for a couple of turns. He had also used up all his weapons as well so I had absolutely nothing to worry about. I wouldn't exactly call it a clean kill, but it's a kill nonetheless. 

I admit that there are a lot of changes that can be made to this deck. For example Northshire Clerics are completely useless. In fact, replacing them with Deathlords can be great. As Baron doesn't have any other minions to play, Deathlord will give him 0 value so you won't have to face some bad surprises. The Four Horsemen was an encounter I sort of rushed into so I didn't think too much on the deck list. So listen to me now and definitely include x2 Deathlords in the deck!

On a side note, I was told that Doomsayer doesn't work on this encounter. I didn't get a chance to try this out myself as I don't have a single Doomsayer, but if you decide to try one out, don't be shocked if it doesn't work.

Good luck and have fun!