Has anyone beat Heroic Tekhan WITHOUT cheese?

Just beat Heroic Tekahn for the first time. After banging my head against him for like a week, I learned about the “Exodia” strategy where you draw out your deck (as Reno) and then play the shadow spirit thing twice on a sorcerer’s apprentice. I also got lucky enough to draw the Whip treasure by turn 2 and steal his Rakanishu, leaving all of his lackeys 1/1 for the whole game. A very easy win, but not very satisfying.

I was wondering – has anyone managed to beat Heroic Tekahn WITHOUT cheesing him? I know there are other cheese/OTK strategies, like the Gatling Wand OTK or the one where you build up a giant board with Finley and kill him in one or two hits. But has anyone beaten him by playing the “fair” way – ie, playing for value/tempo, going through all three of his phases, using your treasures for power swings but not to kill him in one shot? It seems like that’s the way the devs wanted you to play, but the way they built the boss’ deck it seems almost impossible to kill him “fairly.” (I can’t even find any guides for it online – all the guides are focused on normal mode, where it’s easy to play fairly and win.)

Has anyone achieved a “fair” win, and if so, how did you do it?

(PS I know that Sr. Tomb Delver is a thing, are there ways WITHOUT the broken hero power it gives you? Especially since I don’t have it.)

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The solo modes are all about cheese and pressing your advantages. No matter what you do you are cheesing in some way. A fair win is any win that is you wining in the end short of using third party programs. Calling it otherwise is discrediting the efforts of those that did it.

Furthermore even what you call “fair” is not non cheese as that also is using treasures and other effects to gain an advantage. Card games are all about playing your cards to create combos and get ahead.

If blizzard dint want you to use otk or otherwise they would of prevented them via making him immune on phase swaps and cleared the board. Claiming it seams like they expected otherwise is ludicrous. Blizzard knew exactly what we could do when they made those cards. The strats you are talking about are nothing super cretive or hidden. They knew players where going to do that and expected it.

For it to seam like them wanting you not to do them or do it another way would req them to prevent those methods or make them much harder to do.

You whip way is no less a fair win than any other way.

Is it possible to kill him going by all three phases most def and it has been done. Even doing that you are cheesing quite a bit. Blizzard expected you to cheese and made many ways to do that. Cheeseing as you call it, IS how they expected you to play they did not expect you to give up possible wins just to make it harder for yourself as you are suggesting.

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Ok, I probably should have phrased it as “has anyone beaten Tekahn without using OTK strategies to skip phases”?

I still feel like there’s different levels of “cheese,” especially in a mode as cheesy as this one – like, there’s the cheese of “I use my treasure to clear his board” versus the cheese of “I use my treasure to kill him immediately.” Comparing it other games, it would be like, “I fight the boss using a stronger-than-normal weapon,” versus “I stand outside the boss arena and shoot arrows at the boss until it dies.” Basically I’m wondering how many people are using the first rather than the second.

You do know that you switch explorers after the first one dies right? Giving you effectively 200 hp, and a new deck for each explorer. So you CAN beat him the “fair” way by playing the long game with all 4 explorers. But you’ll eventually get to Reno and his Gatling Wand will most definitely win you the game. But if you want to play “fairly”, you can choose to not play it.

I mean, I guess I managed to beat him without (intentionally) cheesing.
I had just gotten him to about 200 with Elise, and then went for my second choice, Reno. After playing Antonidus, he traded in a weaponized pinata, and got one of the worst classic legendaries. Millhouse. No setup, just a lucky bit of RNG.

You can but the big factor is you need him to have had a another beast somehow through RNG or its hadrox revived every time and that 10 spell thing for Reno to do a board clear because thats what you get first up. Three time I have had him about 20-30 health but he had a huge board with two massive cthuns and twice it just discarded my hand to get 10 mana crystals and the other nothing good either. Gatling gun can help you from a longer way out thats all if you can draw it after that.

I beat him on my second try.
I did not have Gatling wand, Karl, Lei,
Tony, any senior explorers or any OTK.
I only ran one wing per explorer. I one shot wings 1 and 4, so the heroes I used for those wings (Finely, and Brann) didn’t have many upgrades.

I spent a good deal of time on each phase. I played it slow with control. The additional treasures should give you the equipment to do so.

The order of explorers I used was Finely->Brann->Elise->Reno.
I got the maximum possible value out of Finely and Brann only being forced to swap them after I (and the boss) took several rounds of fatigue.
Phase one actually didn’t give me much trouble. The bosses hero power automatically sleeps his 6/6s and the 6/6s chain board clears off of each other, making it easy to wipe out all of his minions. The only trick is figuring out how to keep a healthy life total.
I needed a timely Adarrah topdeck to clear the bosses’ massive boards in phase 2. This is definitely the hardest phase for me. Tekahn can feel really unfair in this stage.
The final phase he mostly kills himself. You do need to have a good setup, but if you can get 40 damage in right on the phase switch you will be in a good position to finish him off, even if you are on your last explorer.

All in all, I had a fun time. You certainly don’t need Gatling wand to defeat the boss. With 4 heroes, OP control treasures and 200 hp you can overcome the boss.

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i just did it with Finley and Elise only.
With the first phase i got jr scout early and ,sacrificed truesilver lance to get control. i found that if you have your big minion under divine shield he goes for the smaller minions even though, he doesn;t factotr that his death rattle will kill you off after, They dont get killed as quick hitting small minions so then they build up and so board clear themselves.
I used everything else except the murlocs so then when he played obsidian statue I used that and goit a murk eye.
used the murloc deathrattle to keep rhe murloc numbers up.
So used that with windfury to get it just down under 200…
the key i found in this go with phase 2 is he had almost a full hand going into it. So he had only one board clear and played cthtun straight after and then was playing old cards.
Then I used the steed and divine shield and he kept firing it to but it survives iwth divine shield.
So I managed to get him under 100 and then used Elise because she is the only other one with a guaranteed board clear.
so the big thing is make sure he has a almost full hand when going from 1 to 2.

found another method, you can make an army of lei flamepaws , first time you shuffle him into the deck its double 6 copies. The second time, you wait till you have multiple lei flamepaws and you do even more. Watch out that you dont fill your hand over with generating more spells. Then with all the multiple flamepaws appearing, use them with torch to mulitply the damage.

Just did a super fair one. Clear Stage 1 pretty easily. Stage 2 is impossible due to his hero power so i just play a long draggy game as brann and then i died at brann and continue to slow draggy at reno. The good thing is i use perfect wish to steal his cthun to make sure he can’t revive it from his graveyard. As the game drag and drag with me slowly removing his minion he went into fatigue. At fatigue he played the spells from rin to get azari. As time passes his fatigue hit turn 10 or so and he completed his spell getting azari. At this point, thru RNG, my hand have toggwaggle scheme and the 4 mana shuffle 3 copy of a minion into ur deck, cast when drawn. So the next turn i got 3 azari on board and a azari in hand. I got him below 100. Play azari burn his deck and he just dont stand a chance anymore with me newly into finley and having elise as backup.

found another method, you can make an army of lei flamepaws , first time you shuffle him into the deck its double 6 copies. The second time, you wait till you have multiple lei flamepaws and you do even more. Watch out that you dont fill your hand over with generating more spells. Then with all the multiple flamepaws appearing, use them with torch to mulitply the damage.

Yeah, I used the same method. Needed Reno only on Heroic

I have tried it all and failed in Heroic. Normal was tough but I got it done.

Lei army, Reno just died and the plan went sour from that point. How do you survive to draw the extra Lei copies? Did you concede until you can Whip Rakanishu?

Azari didn’t work, even when I played it on an empty board. He has a hand full of high value cards and the tempo was too high.

I am going to try to get the Scales of Justice so I can have a second non killing board clear and try to remove both Hadronox and C’Thun from the res pool.

Update:

I finally beat him, with some insane RNG.

I got Seance and Zola discounted. He played Shudderwock, I played Seance, Shudderwock, and Zola.

I got ahead pretty good, and he used up all of his board clears. He finally got ahead again, I played Shudderwock, and he couldn’t clear me! GG.

Hearthstone is fundamentally incapable of being played in a “fair” way as you describe. Ridiculous cheese vs ridiculous cheese is what matches boil down to, especially on heroic.

Necro-ing this thread.
Hopefully they will look at the stats, and the stupid fight they’ve designed here and fix it.
Retrying for OTK combos over and over, or sticking it for a 15 - 20 minute fight still requiring gross luck is not game design, it’s a monument to terrible developers somehow having jobs.
This needs to be addressed. Either the Game Mode, or these people having jobs. Either or.

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I didnt beat him with cheese, i only played brann for everything and when it came to the final fight, i just played properly, left brann for last and managed to win by rng and smart plays, took me a couple of attemtps but i was determined to not refight those bloody plague lords only to die multiple times before finally getting to them and dealing 10 damage, its fun on normal, its a challenge on heroic and its a challange that fun once you beat it but you dont want to touch it again

Finished all heroics in first try, so easy wish they could do heroic way harder.

Define cheese? I don’t think there’s any like AI breaking tactics like they had in Naxx. I found him really quite easy. This is definitely a lot funner IMO than last adventure.