The Military Quarter is the third wing in the Hearthstone expansion Curse of Naxxramas.  In it you will find three diabolical bosses that you need to deal with. This guide walks your through each boss’s basic abilities, what to expect, and what your reward will be for defeating them.

The bosses are as follows:

  • Instructor Razuvious
  • Gothik the Harvester
  • Baron Rivendare

Instructor Razuvious

Instructor Razuvious is the first boss in the wing, and apparently Blizzard does not believe in starting you off easily and ramping it up anymore.  Razuvious can be an extremely difficult boss to take down if you are not prepared for him, or lucky with your card draw.

There are two things that make Razuvious difficult to deal with.  The first is his hero power.  For 2 mana he can deal 3 damage to any target of his choice.  That means he can clear your minions fairly easily in the early game, and even in the late game it certainly helps him. The second thing, and probably the worse of two evils is his weapon, the Massive Runeblade.  He has 3 in his deck and they are 3 mana for a 5/2 weapon, that does double damage to heroes.  That means he does 10 each time he hits you to the face.

Instructor Razuvious counts as a Warrior and has Brawl and Cleave as well in his deck.  Making it dangerous to summon many minions at once.

When you do manage to defeat Instructor Razuvious, you will earn 2 copies of the Dancing Swords minion as shown above.

Instructor Razuvious Strategy

When you first start the fight Instructor Razuvious will have two tough minions with taunt protecting him.  However you will be given a card called Mind Control Crystal to help you out.  This card costs 1 mana and lets you take control of the two Understudies.  This certainly helps hold him off for the first few turns. Your first turn is therefore almost always, use Mind Control Crystal and end the turn.

Once you have the two blockers there are several ways to go about defeating Razuvious.  You can use a fast deck and try to burn him down before he gets through your blockers and can score 3 hits on you with his Massive Runeblade.  This can work, however he is very good at removing minions with his hero power and therefore you really need multiple minions to hit the table each turn so that some survive. 

Another strong tactic is to use a Priest deck to fight him to make the best use of his Understudies.  At 0/7 a quick Divine Spirit and Inner Fire on turn 3 on one of them will net you a 14/14 minion to slam into him with.  Add in all the other Priest healing and Removal abilities and it can be one of your best choices to fight him with.

No matte which class you use, cards like Acidic Swamp Ooze and Harrison Jones can come in very handy to get rid of his weapons.

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight in heroic mode a few things change.  First up, Instructor Razuvious’s hero power now deals 4 damage to a target of his choice and costs 1 mana instead of 2.  Secondly, his Massive Runeblade does 10 base damage, meaning it will deal 20 to you if it hits you!  On Heroic mode you deck must be tuned so that you can guarantee you will not get hit more than once.

Gothik the Harvester

The second boss in the Military Quarter is Gothik the Harvester. Gothik is essentially a Warlock and as such his Hero Power allows him to draw a card for 2 mana.  However unlike the Warlock class hero power, he does not take any damage.  This allows him to draw a significant number of cards throughout a match.

In addition to card draw making your life miserable, Gothik has several minions that cause issues.  These minions are Unrelenting Trainee, Unrelenting Warrior, and Unrelenting Rider.  Each of these minions has a deathrattle that summons a spectral version for you when they die.  The idea of getting a free minion is usually a good one, however each spectral minion deals 1 damage to you at the start of your turn, and they all have 0 attack.  Worse, Gothik has several of each in his deck.

The rest of Gothiks deck is varied between minion with deathrattle abilities and direct damage spells.  He also has multiple copies of Abomination and Unstable Ghoul, which have taunt and deal damage to all minions when they die.  This means he will happily kill off his own minions to stick you with 0 attack minions that deal you damage each turn.

By defeating Gothik you will earn 2 copies of the Spectral Knight minion card as shown above.

Gothik Strategy

Gothik’s specialty minions (the Unrelenting minions) are extremely cheap due to the fact that they give you a minion upon death.  Not that you really want that minion, but you get it anyway.  Because of this, you will need to deal with them in some way, but then also deal with them when they come to your side of the board.

Since you will end up with several minions that you do not want, having spells or minions that deal damage to everything can help you clear the board. 

Another way to deal with the minions on your side that are hurting you is to buff them and use them to either kill off Gothiks other minions, or to hit him directly to kill him before the constant 1 damage per minion kills you.

Priests, and Druids do pretty well against Gothik since they can silence, AOE, and heal in several different ways.  Druids also have big taunt minions that can help save being hit by Gothiks minions.

Freeze Mage decks can also do extremely well, by simply focusing on slowing down Gothik’s minions until you get to a point where you can finish him off directly.

The last way to deal with him is to simply stall.  Since he will generally be drawing 2 cards each turn he can run out of cards fairly quickly.  If you add in cards that increase card draw even further such as Coldlight Oracle then he will fatigue and die even faster.

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight in heroic mode Gothik’s hero power becomes even nastier.  It drops to 1 mana and grants a free mana crystal as well as a card! Gothik will use this ability on his turn before doing anything else each turn.  This means that in Heroic mode one of the best ways to defeat Gothik is to drive him to fatigue.

Baron Rivendare

The last encounter in the Military Quarter is against Baron Rivendare and his horsemen. This is an extremely interesting fight as the Baron only has 7 health in normal mode, but you can not hurt him until all of his horsemen have been defeated.  Each of the horsemen has 1 attack, 7 health and taunt.

Baron Rivendare’s hero power is Unholy Shadow which costs 5 mana but allows him to draw 2 cards.  This can really help him out in the late game to refill his hand quickly.

The Baron’s deck is rather interesting as it does not have any minions in it, he relies completely on the Horsemen, weapons, and spells. He has 2 cards of his own, Mark of the Horsemen and Runeblade.  Mark boosts his minions and weapon by +1/+1, while Runeblade is a 1/3 weapon that gets +3 attack if all of the horsemen are dead.  His spells are drawn from many different classes and include several different secrets.  He has Paladin, Priest, Warlock, and Mage cards, so be prepared.

When you defeat Baron Rivendare you will get two different cards as a reward.  Firstly, you will get two copies of the Deathlord minion for defeating him, as well as a single legendary card version of Baron Rivendare himelf for defeating the Military Quarter.

IMPORTANT: You will not be allowed to use either Doomsayer or Equality in this fight as it would make the fight too simple.  If you do try to use one of these cards, Kel’Thuzad will make an appearance and banish it.  You will then have wasted a card slot in your deck, wasted mana, and time.

 

Baron Rivendare Strategy

This encounter can be a lot of fun as well as quite frustrating.  The mechanics of the fight make it different than most other fights out there, however the number of secrets and abilities that the Baron uses can cause issues.

While Doomsayer and Equality are not allowed, some other cards that severely weaken the horsemen are allowed, for example Hunter’s Mark will drop a horsemen to 1 health, Hex and Polymorph both work as well.

Due to the Baron’s Rune weapon being able to do significant damage once you have killed his horsemen, minions like Acidic Swamp Ooze and Harrison Jones are again very useful.

Due to the various buffs that Baron Rivendare can play on his minions silences become very effective.  Priests can bring a lot of silences to the game as well as a lot of healing and some really nice instant kills like Shadow Word: Pain.  Hunters have Hunter’s Mark as discussed above, as well as having Flare to deal with all the secrets that the Baron plays, however since the Baron cannot be hit until all of the horsemen are dead, the benefits of those two cards are nullified due to your hero power being useless.

Lastly, to keep the horsemen from killing you off too early, or even later on in the game after they have been buffed, a few taunt cards can help.  Especially early cheap taunt cards like Shieldbearer, Sen’jin Shieldmasta, Void Walker if you are Warlock, or Druid of the Claw if you are playing Druid.

Heroic Mode - When attempting this fight on heroic mode the Baron starts with 14 health instead of 7. Also the horsemen are now 2 attack instead of 1.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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