Every class in Hearthstone has strong spells.
Return to Naxxramus, the newest mini-set for Hearthstone, is a nod to the game’s first adventure, Curse of Naxxramus, which came out in 2014. It makes a lot of references to the first set and uses a lot of mechanics from earlier sets.
The mini-set in Hearthstone also came with a lot of new spells that were very strong. Most of them fit well into powerful archetypes, which means you’ll see them a lot on the Hearthstone ladder. Here are ten spells from Return to Naxxramus that you might want to add to your next deck.
Faithful Companions
It’s easy to see what Faithful Companions could be at its best. If you bring out two Beasts on turn 10, you can use cards like King Krush to do a lot of damage to your opponent or use cards like Mountain Bear to take over the board. There will be a lot of times when a swing like that wins the game right away.
The trouble is that it takes a long time to wait until you have ten mana. Most recent versions of Beast Hunter have focused more on getting big Beasts out quickly than on some kind of combo. So, it may be hard for Faithful Companions to find a place to live.
For three mana, you can deal three damage to the whole board. This is a good way to clear the board early in the game. The problem is that you have to throw away a card before turn three for that to happen, and throwing away cards isn’t a very good mechanic.
Even so, deal two to the whole board isn’t that bad, even if things go wrong. Volcanic Potion was a card that did exactly that, but since then, the other cards have gotten much stronger. If you have a Discard package in your control or combo Warlock deck, you might want to give Plague Eruption a try.
Cannibalize
Control Priest is a type of deck that tends to stay in the lower tiers of the metagame, and Cannibalize fits in well with its strategy. For four mana, destroying a minion and restoring your health sounds like the perfect thing to do in a deck where the goal is to kill everything and stay alive until the end of Slope Game.
You’ll also get a good amount of healing from it, since you’ll usually be casting it on a big minion. It’s just a bonus that Cannibalize can also heal your other minions.
Cold Storage
Cold Storage seems like a strong card at first glance. For one mana, you get a lot. You can stop your opponent and gain value. Most of the time, it is also Wind Chill, but it is worse. For those who don’t know, Wind Chill is another Shaman spell that costs one mana. It also stops an enemy minion from moving and draws a card.
Getting a card from your opponent is almost never better than getting one from your own deck, since you probably put those cards there for a reason. Cold Storage is strong, but you probably won’t play it much unless you want two Freeze effects that cost one mana each.
Zombeeees!!!
Zombeeees!!! is very similar to Snipe, another Hunter Secret that does four damage to the next minion your opponent plays. But in almost every case, Zombeeees!!! is better than Snipe. If your opponent is ready for the Snipe, they will try to use a small minion to get around it. Zombeeees!!! punishes them for it by giving you a presence on the board.
But being better than Snipe won’t get you very far because it doesn’t get played very often. Still, a Secret package usually ends up in one Hunter deck or another, and Zombeeees!!! could be one of the better choices.
Ransack
Thief Rogue was wiped out by recent patch changes, but Ransack might make you want to play it anyway. Dealing four damage for no mana is obviously very good, and in a Thief Rogue Deck, you should be able to do that fairly often. And because of Rogue’s Combo, any card that costs no mana can be useful, even if it only does one damage.
Ransack would be higher on this list if Thief Rogue was still a top-tier deck, but it’s still a strong card on its own. If you liked the other versions of the deck, you should try Ransack.
Mind Sear
Aggro Priest isn’t the most popular deck, but Mind Sear fits it so well that it could make it more popular. You can fight for the board and damage your opponent’s face at the same time with this card.
That extra bit of damage can be the difference between winning and losing, especially in aggro mirror matches where protecting your own life total can be very important. Mind Sear gives you full-on aggression, which not every player will like, but you can’t deny that it works.
Life From Death
Did someone say “draw three with one mana”? Any card that has a chance of being that strong is worth looking at. The ability of Life From Death does have some requirements, but there are many ways to meet them. Scale of Onyxia can be used in control-focused decks to summon a lot of minions at once and meet the Infuse requirement of Life From Death right away. However, it will probably be used more in aggressive, token-based decks.
They play enough small minions to make Infuse happen on its own, and a deck like that can always use more refill. Life From Death will still feel bad if you draw it late in Hearthstone game after you’ve already lost the board, but at that point you might be willing to pay six mana for a Hail Mary chance to win.
Nofin’s Imp-ossible
Soul of the Forest is a card that has been used in Token Druid decks from time to time. Players who have been playing Hearthstone for a long time will be familiar with it. It gives your minions a Deathrattle that summons a 2/2 Treant for 4 mana.
If your Warlock deck is focused on Demons or Murlocs, Nofin’s Imp-ossible is just a better version of that card. It gives you a better effect because the Implocs it summons will work well with your deck, and it only costs half as much. Recently, Demon and Murloc Warlock decks have been strong, and Nofin’s Imp-ossible fits right in.
Blazing Transmutation
Before this expansion, Evolve Shaman was already a top-tier deck, and Blazing Transmutation can make it even more powerful. In the early game, evolving your minions is a great way to cheat their stats, but you could always miss. Rolling a bad minion could put you at a huge disadvantage.
Blazing Transmutation gives you more consistency, both in the sense that you are more likely to draw an evolve card early on because you have more of them and in the sense that the evolves it gives you are more likely to be good. It also doesn’t hurt that this mini-set added Thaddius, Monstrosity, a powerful new minion with a cost of ten that you can turn your minions into with Blazing Transmutation.