Hearthstone - Navi's adventures in the Arachid quarter of Curse of Naxxrammas

I know Hearthstone is supposed to be a social game but it's hard to play sometimes at work (OK OK quit the groaning I know how lucky I am to be able to play at work) or during a spare few minutes at home when you want a quick game and you don't want to arena or PvP.  So when Naxx was being released I was super excited because now I can play by myself for a little bit and experiment with different decks.

Naxx was released on Wednesday Australia time (Tuesday for all those other people) and I couldn't wait to get a look.  So I had fun playing my favourite decks with the Arachnid wing bosses: Anub'rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina and Maexxna.

I had sound off when I was at work, so when I was playing Sars was chatting to me and he told me Kel'thuzad was making him laugh, and I was confused because I couldn't see Kel'thuzad as a boss, and I didn't really see him chattering away at the bottom of the screen!  But when I got home and played, I heard him loud and clear!

Oh and I was super thrilled to see Faerlina's art pic - after all I am a Genzoman fan and I can recognise his art anywhere!  Oh and I never realised that's how you pronounce Maexxna (Mai-ex-nar).

I think you can play your favourite decks with these bosses and it wouldn't be much of a problem on normal. I had a little bit more trouble when it came to the heroic versions!  In the heroic versions the bosses have 45 health and all of their hero powers are friggin' OP!

So looking at Anub'rekhan on heroic, I went through a few shuffles before I decided that I was going to have to smash my way through and ignore those 4/4 Nerubians (his heroic hero power - on normal it's a 3/1 Nerubian) and after trying my Warrior agro deck and my Warlock control deck, I gave up and used a Priest Deck with Ancient Watchers, Ironbeak owls, Silences and Defenders of Argus to get some usefulness out of my Ancient Watchers, and then used my Lightspawn with Power Word: Shield and Divine Spirit to smash Anub'rekhan.  Didn't get to use my Faceless Manipulators but tried to pull as many cards as I could with Northshire Cleric and healing from Holy Nova and Circle of Healing to get what I needed.  Mountain Giants were in my deck too but didn't get to use them... though I'm sure there are better decks out there to use, but the healing really helped me with this one.

Grand Widow Faerlina actually gave me a lot of trouble - Priest deck was bad because her hero power (Rain of Fire - casts a missile for every card I had in my hand which costs two mana on normal and one mana on heroic) was smashing me because I was being a card hoarder.  So I was trying to use a Rogue deck with lots of combos and cheap cards, and trying to put out an early Shieldbearer. I gave up and looked up someone else's deck and they used a Warlock deck with all normal cards, which was really good.  They had Voidwalkers and Shieldbearers for the first play to soak up the Rain of Fire, and then got rid of annoying mobs with Soulfire and plenty of cards with attack power battlecries (like Dark Iron Dwarf, Abusive Sergeant, Defender of Argus and Shattered Sun Cleric). The rest of the deck was filled with Argent Squires, Flame Imps, Young Priestess, Amani berserker, Dire Wolf Alpha, Haunted Creeper, Knife Juggler, Nerubian egg (brilliant for this fight!!) and a Doomguard (which never got used). It was a great hand and I was annoyed I couldn't come up with that myself!

So for Maexxna, I was determined to do it on my own.  Her hero power was Web wrap which would return 2 random minions of mine back into my hand. On normal, it cost 3 mana but on heroic it costs 0 mana so she did it at the start of every turn.  Which meant that I needed minions that could charge or heal me because Maexxna would just try to overwhelm me with spiders.  Oh, and she started with 2 Haunted Creepers out already on heroic.  I used a hunter deck and let Maexxna put have 3 Haunted Creepers out and then used Explosive trap so when she put out her 4th minion (which seemed to be Shade of Naxxrammas or a Stoneskin Gargoyle) it would kill all the spiders and make the floor full of spectral spiders and she couldn't bring out anymore minions.  Then I was lucky because I had some good draws with another Explosive trap, and an Ironbeak Owl which dealt with the Sludge Belcher and made it to 9 mana crystals and just put out King Krush who smashed Maexxna - it was a close call but I haven't been able to duplicate the kill! I really want to try and do it without a legendary card in it - hopefully just common and rare cards so I have been trying again.  So muddling along with a priest at the moment to see if I can do it... but I haven't been able to outheal the damage yet!

So would love to hear what combos people are using - I am sure Dahakha has some expert tips to give me :P