The new adventure mode expansion for Hearthston, called Curse of Naxxramas, will be launching soon.  When it does launch it will bring with it 30 brand new cards to the game.  Those cards are earned as follows:

• 15 Cards, one for Defeating each of the Bosses
• 6 Legendary Cards, one for clearing each of the 5 wings and 1 for finishing the overall adventure.
• 9 Class cards, one for completing each of the Class Challenges

This guide looks at each of the new class cards, what they can add to the class, and possible combinations for them.

Naxxramas Class Cards

Druid – Poison Seeds:

This spell gives Druids even more removal and ways to get around some nasty enemy minions, as well as some new combo tricks.  At 4 mana to get rid off all minions and replace them with 2/2 Treants some players may not see the immediate power, but think about the opponent having something like Ysera or Ragnaros out, for 4 mana you get rid of them and then summon a Keeper of the Grove and kill them off.

It also gives you some added utility for sustained burst of resilience.  Think about a Force of Nature when you don’t have Savage Roar.  With this card you could still use Force of Nature, attack with the Treants that will die at the end of the turn, then use Poison Seeds to kill them off and get a more permanent version of them.  Follow that up with Savage Roar or Power of the Wild on the following turn and you have much more damage on the board.

Hunter – Webspinner:

This is a very interesting beast, especially when you realize that the ability is to draw a random beast card out of the ether, not out of your deck.  That’s right, when this little guy dies you could randomly draw any beast in the game to add to your hand including King Krush, Starving Buzzard, King Mukla, Savannah Highmane, or any other beast.  The draw is completely random so some times it will be a bad card, but other times it will be awesome.

There is no real need to pair this up with anything else as it is a great card even by itself.  It gives you a 1/1 for 1 mana and a free card when it dies.  Teamed up with other beasts though that grant other abilities like Starving Buzzard, Scavenging Hyena, or Houndmaster and you make it even better.

Mage – Duplicate:

More great control for Mages, this card just oozes power.  When you really want those key Mage minions in play this gives you the ability to keep them there.  Sure your minion will die, but then you get two more copies of it into your hand!  This means a lot!  Even simple low cost cards can become very powerful when you get more of them, never mind high cost cards. 

There are so many great cards to use this that I don’t even know where to start.  Bloodmage Thalnos is an obvious one late in the game, you can summon him, kill him yourself, get two more of them and a card.  That’s a 3 card advantage and extra spell damage next turn.  If you can keep it in play and then summon something like Ragnaros or Ysera you will have your enemy pitching fits.  Even simple things like Ethereal Arcanist, Chillwind Yeti, Water Elemental or Acolyte of Pain are all great.  Then start looking at Leeroy Jenkins, Cairne Bloodhoof, and others and it gets nasty.  At 3 mana it limits when you can use it sometimes, but that may just keep it from being completely over the top.

Paladin – Avenge:

This is an interesting card for the Paladins, but not really up to the same level as many of the other classes.  Sure it is an extra 3/2 to an existing minion for 1 mana, but if the opponent wipes all your minions at once it becomes useless. At only 1 mana though it could see some use.

One really great combo that comes to mind is using the Noble Sacrifice secret and this one at the same time, while you have some other minions out.  Your opponent attacks, the Noble Sacrifice 2/1 minion procs as the new target and dies, and then you get +3/+2 to add to an existing minion.

Priest – Dark Cultist:

A pretty solid new Priest minion due to the fact that it is essentially a 3/7 for 3 mana.  Even if it gets silenced, a 3/4 for 3 mana is a pretty good deal, add in that extra health as a deathrattle though and you are getting solid value from this card.  In fact it is arguably one of the strongest cards being added in Curse of Naxxramas due to its value at 3 mana.

This minion pairs well with many other priest minions, just a few include: Lightspawn (boosts health and therefore attack), Northshire Cleric, Acolyte of Pain, and so many others.  The great thing with the Dark Cultist as well is that you can either trade into the enemy to ensure you get that bonus health on another minion when you need it (potentially to allow another minion to trade against another minion but remain alive thanks to the extra health) or just use it to hit your opponent to the face and leave it as a threat.

Rogue – Anub’ar Ambusher:

A great tempo card for the Rogue deck that adds even more speed.  At 4 mana it is possible to summon this card on turn 3 with the coin.  Trying to deal with a turn 3 Chillwind Yeti is bad enough for most players, let alone a turn 3 5/5 minion that can trade against a yeti and live.  The downside is that a friendly minion must come back to your hand when the Anub’ar Ambusher dies, but since so many of the Rogue minions have combo abilities, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Some obvious minions that pair well with the ambusher are SI:7 Agent, Earthen Ring Farseer, Azure Drake, Big Game Hunter, heck even Leeroy Jenkins since you could summon him attack then trade the ambusher against an opponents strong minion, just to get Leeroy our of danger until the next turn to hit your opponent for another 6 without threat of death.

Shaman – Reincarnate:

This card is an amazing combo card once you really start looking at it.  It gets even better when you deal with minions that have Deathrattle effects that are beneficial to you.  Similar to other “return to play” type cards, it does not grant the use of a minions battlecry effect.

This card can be used to create some really strong combos and finishing moves.  A very simple, but deadly one, that comes to mind is a turn 5 (with the coin, or turn 6 otherwise) Leeroy Jenkins – Reincarnate combo for 12 damage.  If you have managed to do some damage earlier, that could almost finish an opponent off.  A few turns later you could do Leeroy, Rockbitter, Reincarnate, Rockbitter for a total of 18 damage on turn 7 (or 8 without the coin).  That is some serious burst, and just one possible use.

Warlock – Voidcaller:

Wow, a demon card for Warlocks that actually plays nice with other demons!  Better yet, it doesn’t even have a downside.  I think this is a first, well ok, not really there is Blood Imp.  There are some huge upsides for this demon and maybe even enough that you will see other demons being played more often.  The most obvious upside is that you can use this minion as a normal 3/4 minion and then trade it off against an enemy when you have another demon in your hand.

The other and potentially bigger upside is that when a minion is put into the battlefield it is like a “return to play” effect and the battlecry does not trigger.  This means that minions that have huge downsides like the Pit Lord, Doomguard, Felguard, Succubus, and even the Dread Infernal can all be used without worry.  This card may allow some of those cards to see more use.

Warrior – Death’s Bite:

This is a really interesting new card as it is a weapon with Deathrattle, which we haven’t seen before.  Essentially what it means is, when you use the last durability the card triggers the deathrattle as it goes away.  An interesting side effect of having a deathrattle on a weapon is that there is no way to remove it, since you can not silence a weapon like you could a minion.  This is really a 4/2 weapon and a Whirlwind for 4 mana.  It also fills the gap between Warrior weapons from the 2 mana 3/2 to the 5 mana 5/2 weapons.

Death’s Bite will offer some really good control against aggro decks as it can shut down most of them fairly early on.  Starting turn 3 (with the coin) you can have this weapon out, kill one enemy minion, then on turn 4 kill another, and then nuke all the small minions with the 1 damage deathrattle.  In fact due to that extra point of damage you can kill a 5 health minion in turn 4, that is a nice ace to have up your sleeve.