Hearthstone: Witchwood Monster Hunt – Hagatha

Hello everybody, Geek Generation here with a review on the Witchwood Monster Hunt’s finale, Hagatha.

The finale is a straight up boss fight with Hagatha, with no deck building or intermediary bosses. You start of as Houndmaster and get Toki, Darius and Tess as Hero card board clears in your hand. The finale is nice in that all the monster hunters are present for the fight, quite a thematic finale, i would say.

There’s no way you can win as Houndmaster without transforming the hero. The Houndmaster’s deck is only a couple cards. With every hero you transform into, a chunk of cards gets added to your deck. Toki and and Darius is only useful as a board clear. To win the value game against Hagatha, you’ll definitely need Tess’s ability to Scavenge.

Passives

Houndmaster
– Crystal Gem (+1 mana cyrstal)
– Lunar Signet (trigger minion’s deathrattle upon play)
– First Aid Kit (heal 2 health to all friendly characters at end of turn)

Lunar Signet is the worst as you didn’t get the build your own deck to fill it full of deathrattles. Crystal Gem is not that good either, because in the long value game, it didn’t matter whether your started with 1 or 2 mana crystals. As long as Hagatha’s start is not too explosive, a normal start for you is fine.

First Aid Kit is the best in my opinion. It helps to keep your health pool high so your don’t die to any Al’Akir shenanigans.

Toki
– Double Time (extra cast for every first spell)
– Expediate (minions cost 1 less)
– Robe of Magi (+3 spell damage)

Expediate is generally good, but outclassed by the other two passives. Mainly because you’ll eventually morph into Tess and both Double Time and Robe of Magi complements very well with Scavenge.

Personally, i feel that Double Time isn’t that good in this fight. With Tess, you tend to be Scavenging up Polymorphs and Jade Lightning. The unreliability of the second cast makes playing spells difficult. You don’t want to turn your Mukla’s Champion into a frog. Which in turn results in hand size management difficulties. My hand tends to be choked full with high cost minions that i simply do not have the time to play and spells i cannot play as the first one for fear of destroying my own board.

Darius
– Tactical Reinforcements (reduce cost of card in hand by 2 after firing cannon)
– Pillage the Fallen (replace weapon with a new one whenever it is destroyed)
– Entrenchment (minions have +2 health)

Tactical Reinforcements is easily the worst choice, the cannon goes away after you transform your hero. Unless you’re using Darius as the final champion, but Tess has way too much value to do give up on. Still.. for some reason, i chose Tactical Reinforcements -_- 😀

I didn’t think Pillage the Fallen was good in Darius’s personal hunt, i don’t think it has changed in the fight against Hagatha. It might work with Houndmaster’s First Aid Kit, but Hagatha’s minions are all usually giant size. You won’t be hitting minions with weapons very often.

Entrenchment is the only choice left, it’s not very strong, but it’s not terrible also. It can help your minions to survive a random Volcano.

Tess
– Cult of the Wolf (hero power costs 1 and can be used twice)
– Sticky Fingers (cards cost 1 less if didn’t start in deck)
– Cloak of Invisibility (minions have stealth)

Cloak of Invisibility might be useful for Antonidas or Questing Adventurer end game. But that’s only 2 minions out of so many cards, i feel that Cloak of Invisibility is not the best in slot for Tess passive.

Both Cult of the Wolf and Sticky Fingers are strong choices. Personally, i think if you picked Double Time for Toki, it’s better to pick Sticky Fingers. Mainly because, alot of the time, your hand would be so full that you can button twice without milling yourself. And if you chose Robe of Magi for Toki, then it’s better to pick Cult of the Wolf to make up in value.

Tips

As a general tip, try not to play the heroes on curve. Keep them for a turn later to hit one more minion. Toki on 4, Darius on 6, Tess on 9. And always keep in mind not to overcommit starting from turn 8, until Hagatha has played Almagamate. Always keep in hand some variety of answer to Almagamation until it has been dealt with. Though i don’t know if Hagatha has more than one Almagamate.

Hagatha has a pretty op weapon which i don’t remember the name. It has 3 attack, lifesteal and can increase its durability. It the weapon becomes troublesome, don’t forget that you can destroy it with Blingtron 3000. That said, don’t play Blingtron for tempo. Keep it for Hagatha’s weapon, unless she milled her weapon during the early turns.

All in all, Hagatha is not too difficult to fight as long as she does not do any Al’Akir shenanigans or Hadronox recursion with Lich King in the graveyard. Survive the early game, survive Almagamate, and eventually you’ll outvalue Hagatha with Tess’s Scavenge.

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In terms of balance, rng plays too big of a role. I’ve had games where Mute tears Toki apart in the early rounds of the Hunt. There’s one boss that can play a spell that fill its board with gnomes on turn 4. And gnomes are not small little things. Rin is a gnome! Deck building is less forgiving. You can’t build a fast aggressive deck as the end bosses are all value grind.

Personally, i think Witchwood Monster Hunt is pretty well made in terms of thematic experience. I like Toki and Tess alot. The extreme value from card generation is an awesome experience, even at the risk of encountering Troggzor.

Darius is fun in a way too. He makes the Inspire mechanic good. But.. the Inspire mechanic is not a Witchwood mechanic. It’s not even in the Standard format..

Houndmaster is.. uninspiring. I didn’t even see that many variations to the upgrades of Houndmaster’s hero power. I think Houndmaster is reminiscent to Hunter’s weak identity. What Hunter’s identity? Vaguely something to do with beasts. Face decks, because hero power. But i digressed.

If you haven’t played Monster Hunt, give it a chance. It’s so much better in quality than than the previous Dungeon Run. Ok so much for now, Geek Generation out.