She just seems really weak and unreliable.
Don’t pick too many spells as they will dilute your pool later. Don’t be afraid to use your hero power when no spells have been cast early on since they give you a 0 mana 1 damage spell you can use to combo or when you have spell damage. And try to get the treasure that allows you to use your hero power twice at reduced cost. Also, don’t bother with card draw and generation as you’ll have plenty of cards with your hero power.
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It’s not even just Tess, it’s the bosses. Challenge 8/8 is always a crapshoot, you can only win if you were lucky enough to build a deck that happens to counter them, but of course that never happens. I’ve won it with houndmaster thanks to some ridiculous luck but feel the other heroes are so inferior you’ve got almost no chance.
I just got my azz handed to me on 4/8 with canoneer because the hero power is so worthless it might as well say “passive: you have 1 less spot on the board” Monster hunt is so unbalanced it’s unbelievable.
Jade Shuriken, together with either Cult of the Wolf and/or Sticky Fingers and Tess’s Hero Power. Keep other Spells to a minimum, and other Jade cards aren’t important.
Jade in the Rough, focusing on Jade Shurikens, with Cult of the Wolf (preferably with Sticky Fingers too). Grab Secret cards (like Frenzied Trapper and Hunter Secrets) for board control. Her Hero Power is powerful in that it recycles spells.
Tess is by far the hardest character to beat it with (at least in my opinion) so I recommend finishing it with the others first if you haven’t done so already. I beat her run by taking the extra mana crystal buff twice so the final boss didn’t start with such a huge lead, and built a secret based deck that abused professor putricide so he got punished for doing basically anything. I also took the scroll that restores your minions to full and lets them attack again (which actually won me the boss fight where I otherwise might have lost it) and the minion that got extra spell damage for each spell you played (which made the rest of the run easy). Also pray you don’t run into the wisp boss on her run, you can build your deck around it but doing so wrecks your chances against the last boss.
Tess is the easiest one to win with. I typed up extensive tips here:
Tess is the only one I haven’t beaten it with. Mostly because the last fight is always Captain Shivers and hes OP AF.
Yep, Tess is by far the hardest, but the only reason she is the hardest is because of Shivers. If she had any of the other bosses, she would’ve been second easiest.
OMG, I finally beat it with Tess after 15-20 attempts. This depends on your treasures as well, so a bit of luck will need to be involved if you only are offered bad cards and treasures.
You might laugh but the card that won me this game was Counterfeit Coin! Yes, really, combined with Questing Adventurer the final boss was EASY.
Now, everywhere I looked they told me to get Jade in the Rough and aim for Jade Shuriken and I always tried this but either didn’t get Jade 75% of the time, or I’d get Jade but no Shuriken, or the stars would align and I’d fail at the last boss with the weapons because I couldn’t get my deck rolling and got overwhelmed very early each time. I got soooo close once with Jade but eventually gave up and tried using my brain to beat this because I got quite used to Tess’s strengths.
Now, I am telling you, IGNORE ALL Jade, you need too much luck to get it to drop for you. For this to work for the average Joe, you will NEED about 3x Jade Shuriken AND Cult of the Wolf as a passive treasure to make use of this without getting overwhelmed. I’m sure I possibly chose bad complimentary cards but whatever.
Instead, here’s what I did to beat this challenge very easily:
Passive Treasures – Cult of the Wolf & First Aid Kit
For your passive treasure, Cult of the Wolf is VITAL, it’s by far the best treasure for Tess because you need to rely on damage spells for this trick to work. Don’t bother without it, seriously you want it as your first one you get, but you can win if it doesn’t drop first if you get First Aid Kit. I’ll explain how this worked below.
Secondary passive treasures that could work:
- Potion of Vitality would also be a great option to First Aid Kit, remember, you want to stay alive and keep your minions alive while keeping the board clear so extra health will let you use Tools of the Trade recklessly
- Crystal Gem - Was hoping for this but didn’t happen, this will help you snowball
- Entrenchment could have worked too to keep minions alive
- Small Backpack can work for extra early cards to help give better options
- Sticky Fingers with Cult of the Wolf and low cost damage cards can be OP
- Glyph of Warding if you got nothing better
Treasure Cards – Tools of the Trade & Hunter of Old
I chose Tools of the Trade which had great synergy with First Aid Kit. Why? Because I can keep my minions on the board early by using Tools of the trade however I needed it. Need to take out 2-3 minions or set yourself up for a combo? Easy! Deal 4 damage? Easy! And with First Aid Kit you gain 2 health back to your hero and any damaged minion every single round, so taking out a 4x4 costs you 2 health and if the board is clear you have the 4 back in 2 turns. That combo kept me and my minions alive which was crucial in early games.
For the second Treasure card I ended with Hunter of Old because I was using lots of cheap spells to do damage, and this could have been very powerful for a quick kill because it gains +2 spell damage every time you cast a spell. Buuut, I never even ended up seeing the card in my hand. lol. So I didn’t really even need it at all. I reckon getting Hunter of Old first with good damage spells could have worked great too.
Other good secondary treasure cards:
- Frenzied Zapper is GREAT
- Pristine Compass can be great if it draws you the right cards
- Cartographer is always good
- Enchanting Tune can be a life saver
- Exterminate if you know how to use it well can deal 27 damage to the hero on turn 9 if you play it well.
- Gilnean Vigilante played right can be game changing for this setup by creating a very strong Questing Adventurer
- Heaps more great 2nd options really
Card Buckets – Specialist & The Professional
You want lots of cheap damage spells which you can re-summon with your Cult of the Wolf Power so Backstab (OP Card), Eviscerate and Fan of Knives will let you keep your minions alive, so always go for Specialist Card Buckets unless it’s a bunch of 5 cost minions early on, aim for the damage spells. The minions you want are mainly ones that give spell damage, having 2-3 with “Add 1 Spell Damage” on the board is incredibly powerful when you can just regenerate the damage spells you need. I took out a whole board of 5 health minions with Fan of Knives alone. Spell Damage minions with Cheap damage spells will make this a breeze. Also aim for a Questing Adventurer or 2, this is what won me the final boss plus combo damage minions because your cheap spells will make them useful.
Aim to have a couple ZERO cost spells like: having Counterfeit Coin and Backstab is essential, this will help trigger combos on eviscerate and combo damage minions and help questing adventurer become a monster.
Avoid any expensive minions, you are doing spell damage and combo damage mainly while having 2-4 minions of your own on the board at all time, pirates and deathrattle/battlecry cards (unless they add spell damage) weren’t used at all here.
If you CAN get a Jade Shuriken or two and there’s not spell damage or combo cards, then go for it, especially if you can get 2 of them in one go, although I only had that happen twice ever.
How to play basics:
Use your Tools of the trade and Damage spells to keep your minions alive and to clear the board so your minions can go face and stay alive. That’s the gist!
Don’t dump your cards or add too many minions to the board unnecessarily or they might be cleared and you will have nothing to help do face damage because your spells are for keeping the board clear. You need to keep your spell damage minions alive so play to protect them and play them wisely so they don’t die. I used mine to play face 90% of the time, only spent their lives if I had to.
Don’t get any expensive minions or bother with too many secrets, you will be winning with mainly spell damage and 1-6 damage minions that offer combos or spell damage, any minions that cost more than 6 will be unnecessary. I had the 9 cost dragon that added 5 spell damage very early and never used it once because I usually won by the time I had a chance to play it.
Final Boss tips:
You need to burn his deck so he is left with no cards, otherwise you will get overrun.
You need to make sure you can keep the board clear and PRAY he plays the minion that burns 3 of his cards in the deck fairly early. Aim to get those zero cost spells early too and keep regenerating them while having a minion or two on the board and making sure you can clear any taunts or high damage cards, ignore his low damage ones that don’t have harmful effects. Don’t worry about his 1-4 damage minions if they don’t have taunt, your First Aid Kit will keep regenerating health for you when they attack your face.
The card that won me the game was getting Counterfeit Coin early and using Cult of the Wolf and Backstab once he played that card burning minion and spammed it so he burned through his entire deck very fast and eventually he lost his weapon! Once that minion that burns card is down, play AS MANY CARDS AS POSSIBLE to burn his deck!
Eventually you will burn his weapon and any minion he has. Use the cheap spells to take out high damage ones but keep the minion that destroys his cards alive!
I nearly got screwed over when he had a shuffle duplicate of your hand in to your deck when he had only 2 cards in his deck and 8 in his hand. He did this twice and gained another 16 cards but it was too little too late.
SPAM the counterfeit coin, place and protect a Questing Adventurer down early too and protect him, spamming all these cheap cards turned mine in to a 27 damage minion by the end of it and I was left with about 35 Hero health!
The last 3 turns he had 7 cards but none of them were played because they were all weapon buffs so they were useless! So even without my extremely powerful Questing Adventurer he would have just got wrecked by drawing damage cards and doing minimal Minion damage.
That’s it, burn his deck, otherwise I don’t see any possible way of beating this final boss. You will get overwhelmed eventually.
Deck List
1x (0) Backstab
1x (0) Counterfeit Coin
1x (1) Elven Archer
1x (1) Sinister Strike
1x (1) Worgen Infiltrator
2x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos
1x (2) Bloodsail Raider
2x (2) Eviscerate
1x (2) Glaivezooka
1x (2) Lock and Load
1x (2) Patient Assassin
2x (2) Shiv
1x (2) Snake Trap
1x (3) Blink Fox
1x (3) Deadly Shot
1x (3) Fan of Knives
1x (3) Headcrack
1x (3) Hired Gun
1x (3) Plague Scientist
1x (3) Questing Adventurer
1x (3) Shadow Strike
1x (3) SI:7 Agent
1x (5) Assassinate
1x (5) Azure Drake
2x (5) Vilespine Slayer
1x (6) Gadgetzan Auctioneer
1x (9) Malygos
Deck Code
AAEBAaIHG7QB2QKFA7QDxwObBcQFxgWXBrkGpAfiB+cHxQjdCO0I2w+0E7KtAvW7As+/ApTQAsf4Au/6Av/6AoOAA6GBAwS9BO0FiAeBwgIA