The Plague Quarter is the second wing in the Hearthstone expansion Curse of Naxxramas.  In it you will find three fiendish boss fights. This guide walks your through each bosses basic abilities, what to expect, and what your reward will be for defeating them.

The bosses are as follows:

• Noth the Plaguebringer
• Heigan the Unclean
• Loatheb

Noth the Plaguebringer

Noth is the first boss in the wing and can take a little effort to get past if you are not prepared for the encounter.  As with most of the bosses in Naxxramas Noth makes heavy use of minions with deathrattle abilities. Expect to see cards like Abomination, Skeletal Smith, and Undertaker.

Noth’s hero power is also pretty nasty and works in combination with many of his minions.  The hero power is a passive one ( meaning he doesn’t actually have to spend mana to activate it, it just happens) that summons a 1/1 skeleton minion to his side of the board anytime one of your minions dies.  Teamed with the multiple Abominations that he has in the deck and he can quickly clear your side of the board while filling his own.  To further help clearing the board, Noth also has access to a card called Plague which kills all non-skeletal minions in play for 6 mana.   

Noth also has access to several class specific cards.  These include Mage cards like Ice Block, Counterspell, and Duplicate, as well as Warlock spells like Mortal Coil.

When you do manage to defeat Noth, you will earn 2 copies of the Stoneskin Gargoyle minion as shown above.

Noth Strategy

Since Noth will turn the remains of your own minions against you in the form of skeletons, the best strategy is to use larger minions than you may normally use.  Decks that use small fast minions like murloc or zoo decks will often cause more issues for themselves than for Noth.  It is possible to win with a fast small minion deck but it is much harder.  A better solution is to use something like a Druid deck with multiple large minions with taunt, or a Warlock Handlock deck were minions will not easily be killed until later in the game.  Another option is a Priest deck with large minions and multiple healing spells and the Priests own healing ability.

AOE cards are also really good against Noth (at least on normal difficulty), since inevitably he will kill some of your minions and get a bunch of skeletons in play.  AOE helps clear those up quickly so you can worry about dealing with his health pool and the more powerful minions that he summons.

As with most of the bosses in Naxxramas, having a few ways to silence some of the minions that have nasty deathrattle abilities is bonus.

The main thing to keep in mind, is to not trade minions unless you really have to.  Make Noth make the trade.  Hit Noth directly as much as possible, and use spells or abilities to kill his minions instead of using your minions.

Lastly, Plague is a very nasty card, and there is no real counter for it, unless you are a Mage and have Counterspell.  The best way to deal with it is to play cautiously and only keep a few minions on the board at a time.

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight in heroic mode Noth’s hero power is significantly more powerful.  Instead of creating a 1/1 minion when one of yours dies, a 5/5 skeleton is created.  This means that using large minions and healing them to keep them alive is critical.

Heigan the Unclean

The second boss in the Plague Quarter is many a players favourite WoW raid bosses, the safety dance boss, Heigan the Unclean.  Many a raid wiped on this boss due to the inability of players to do the safety dance.  Now Heigan gets his chance at you in Hearthstone as well. 

Heigans hero power to simulate the “dance” is called Eruption.  This hero power deals 2 damage to the left-most of your minions for 1 mana.  This power while damaging can also be used to your benefit, and therefore most of this encounter is about minion placement.

Heigan uses mainly Warlock minions as well as spells.  He also has one of his very own cards (at least so far) called Mindpocalypes.  This card grants both players 2 cards and a mana crystal for 2 mana, greatly accelerating the game.

By defeating Heigan you will earn 2 copies of the Unstable Ghoul minion card as shown above.

Heigan Strategy

As mentioned above, a lot of this fights strategy is about minion placement.  Since Heigan will be hitting the left-most minion for 2 damage almost every turn, you don’t really want to put weak minions there or they will be destroyed before you can attack with them.  Instead you want to place your strongest minions on the left and your weakest on the right.

There are a few exceptions to the above statement though.  Those exceptions are:

• Putting a weak minion on the left to protect a more important minion.
• Putting a minion with a strong deathrattle ability there to die on purpose.

Decks that rely on larger minions seem to fair well against Heigan, however it is important to remember he has mainly Warlock cards, and therefore a lot of direct damage ability.  Large minions with taunt can help out a lot.  Healing powers also help so that you are not losing your minion on the left every few turns.

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight in heroic mode Heigan’s hero power becomes free to use and he will use it at the start of each of his turns.  In addition it deals 3 damage instead of 2.

Loatheb

The last boss in the Plague Quarter is against Loatheb the spore keeper.  The fight is particularily scarry the first time you enter it, as you notice Loatheb’s health pool, which is 75!  In addition to the large amount of health, Loatheb has a very nasty hero power which deals 3 damage to you for only 2 mana.

As you can tell, Loatheb’s large health pool is the key part of the encounter.  After all, how do you deal that much damage?  This leads to a discussion about Loatheb’s deck.  In his deck he has several cards that summon spores.  The cards are Deathbloom and Sporeburst.  Which in order, deal 5 damage and summon a spore, or deal 1 damage to all minions and summon a spore.   The spores that are summoned are 0/1 minions that have a deathrattle ability that gives all enemy minions +8 attack!

When you defeat Loatheb you will get two different cards  as a reward.  Firstly, you will get two copies of the Sludge Belcher minion for defeating him, as well as a single legendary card version of Loatheb for defeating the Plague Quarter.

IMPORTANT: When attempting this fight you need to make sure you remove Alexstraza from any deck you attempt it with.  If not, when you use it Kel’Thuzad will appear and destroy her, wasting your turn as well as the card slot in your deck.

Loatheb Strategy

The Loatheb fight is actually a lot of fun since you get to deal a lot of damage.  The main strategy in the fight is to be able to summon multiple minions quickly so that when a spore is active you can boost all of your minions attack power and slam into the boss.

Loatheb does however have many nasty minions that need to be dealt with in addition to actually dealing with his large health pool.  First up he has Flesheating Ghouls which will grow in power as other minions die.  Secondly and maybe more importantly are Faceless Manipulators which he will use to copy your boosted minions.

A strong strategy to get around a minion being copied once buffed is to get multiple minions in place and then use AOE to kill multiple spores at once.  In this way you can get several minions to get multiple +8 attack power boosts and kill Loatheb in a single round before he can react.  If you do not have a lot of AOE, cheap minions with charge or damage abilities like Elven Archer or Stonetusk Boar can help out a lot.  Also Wild Pyromancer can wipe all of the spores out with one spell.

Many different decks can work on the Loatheb fight, especially the normal difficulty version.  Shaman decks with lightning storm for clearing and totems for extra attack minions once buffed work well. 

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight on heroic mode Loathebs hero power is reduced to no mana cost and still deals 3 damage to you.  He also has 99 health instead of 75.