You don’t often get to see Quest Druid in Hearthstone tournament play – or ladder, for that matter – but GhostASA brought a charge OTK version of the deck to HCT Sydney, and it provided one of the most memorable moments of the tournament. Let’s take a deeper look at how this board state can turn into a one-turn-kill.
Here is the OTK in video:
What exactly happened there?
The win condition of the charge version of Quest Druid is to make a number of charge minions cost nothing and combine them with Carnivorous Cubes for extra copies alongside Kun, the Forgotten King to refresh your mana crystals in case something still costs mana, such as Deathwing, which is used to both get rid of opponent’s Taunt minions and to pop the Cubes to get more Charge minions out.
In this board state, the Deathrattles of the two Voidlords are the problem: if they are alive when Deathwing is played, the board will be full of Voidwalkers. GhostASA does not have all the tools he needs to push through yet, but he has a Nourish in hand to give him more tools.
As his hand is full, he needs to start by playing some minions, in this case Leeroy Jenkins and Reckless Rocketeer that are able to kill the Voidlords together with the two copies of Barnabus already on the board. Now the board is vulnerable to Deathwing, but GhostASA has no charge minions remaining in hand!
Time to go digging with Nourish! Lo and behold, Nourish brings up a Charged Devilsaur, the very minion GhostASA was looking for.
Charged Devilsaur’s Battlecry prevents it from attacking the opponent’s Hero, but Battlecry is not activated when the minion is summoned, and not played from hand. Therefore, once GhostASA uses Carnivorous Cube on the Charged Devilsaur, the Devilsaur copies within the Cube are free from this restriction.
Odyssey has 34 Health, so it would take five Devilsaurs to kill him. GhostASA has two Faceless Manipulators in hand, and they provide the perfect answer: if you copy a Carnivorous Cube with a Faceless Manipulator (or Prince Taldaram), the copy retains the Deathrattle of the original, whereas if you summon new copies, such as by Cubing a Cube, the new copies lose the original Deathrattle.
By making two copies of Carnivorous Cube, GhostASA has six Devilsaurs ready to strike. All he needs to do now is to get rid of the Taunt wall and pop the Cubes wide open, and he can do that with Kun, the Forgotten King refreshing his mana crystals back to ten, which enables him to play Deathwing to simultaneously destroy the Taunt minions and the Cubes, unleashing the Devilsaurs for up to 42 damage to the opponent’s Hero.
That is how this eight-card combo was able to take the game!
Images are from the PlayHearthstone broadcast, used under fair use.