Tombs of Terror Strategy Guide – Chapter 5: The Inner Sanctum (Finale) – Tekahn, Plague Lord of Flames

Tombs of Terror is the solo PvE adventure content for the Saviors of Uldum expansion. It picks up on the story from last expansion’s The Dalaran Heist. After League of E.V.I.L. has stolen the Dalaran city, they headed towards Uldum and unleashed plagues (which took the form of powerful Plague Lords). But completing their plan might not be as easy as they thought, because this time the League of Explorers is there to stop them. You will play as one of them, trying to stop plagues from spreading across the world.

In the finale, players will visit The Inner Sanctum and fight against Plague Lord of Flames – Tekahn.

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Chapter 5 Strategy

Finale is significantly different than the first four chapters. Instead of fighting through seven bosses before getting to face the Plague Lord, you start your fight against Plague Lord – Tekahn. There’s no deck building, no treasure picking etc.

Instead, you start with “200 health”, as all of the Explorers combined. Of course, you won’t keep playing like that – at the beginning of the match you will pick the one you want to start with. After that, you will also pick your Hero Power (but you might only pick from the ones you’ve already unlocked). Each Explorer starts with 50 health. Switching between them is also quite simple – once the one you’re playing as dies, you pick another one to take its place. You lose only if you won’t manage to finish off Tekahn with all four.

Explorers’ decks themselves are pretty average – you don’t get any broken synergies that you can normally build throughout the run. However, in order to make things easier, you get a bunch of Signature Treasures shuffled into your deck. To be more precise, every single treasure you unlocked on a given explorer will get shuffled. Which means that if only the first one is unlocked, only the first one will be shuffled. But if you have all 6, you will get all of them in your deck. Additionally, when you switch Heroes, you immediately draw some of the treasures – most likely to make a comeback easier (given that usually when you die, you’re really behind on the board).

From there, the goal is to simply beat the Plague Lord. After you do, you officially finished Tombs of Terror! Unlike during the previous chapters, however, his health will reset after each unsuccessful try. You have to start over from 300 health and Phase 1 instead of slowly chipping him away. However, if you want to make him easier, you should go back and play more with all of your explorers to unlock their Signature Treasures. If you unlock all of them, the fight should be a piece of cake, since your deck will have multiple powerful draws.

Tekahn, Plague Lord of Flames

Phase 1 – Awaken the Flame

Note: This Hero Power costs 0 mana on Heroic, but I couldn’t find the right asset in game files.

You might remember that Dark Pharaoh Tekahn in Constructed is all about Lackeys… and actually, he’s quite similar in Tombs of Terror too. On Turn 2, he will drop Rakanishu, which makes his Lackeys 4/4 – just like Constructed Tekahn. He will have many ways to get Lackeys, including Sinister Deal, Sludge Slurper, EVIL Genius or EVIL Conscripter. And all of them will be 4/4, making them quite menacing. That’s your first goal in the early game – to play for the tempo as much as you can and stabilize. Not only he will have a 4/4 minion on Turn 2, but also drop a bunch of other 4/4’s very quickly, so you need a way to clear them before he overwhelms you. Try to play quickly, don’t go for value plays etc. – just develop as much as you can.

However, the main concern in this phase is his Hero Power. His deck is filled with multiple Sanctum Golems – they cost 4 mana and are 6/6’s that can’t attack… until he uses Hero Power. Which is free on Heroic, by the way. Then Sanctum Golem changes into Enflamed Golem, which deals 3 damage to the entire board on Deathrattle. And it can absolutely attack. What’s even scarier is that it summons another Sanctum Golem on Deathrattle – so in order to fully kill it you need to deal not 6, but 12 damage. That’s really important, because simply killing the first part and leaving Sanctum Golem alone is counter-productive, since Tekahn will just Hero Power it again.

What you want to do is kill every Sanctum Golem he puts on the board. At first they’re quite harmless – until he starts to Hero Power them. From Turn 6 onwards (Turn 4 onwards on Heroic), he will be able to drop Golem and Hero Power it. What do you do then? If you can kill both bodies, you do it. Use your small minions (3 or less health) to trade into the first body, since they will die anyway. Remember to go face with whatever’s left that will die. Then kill the second body with minions you have left or a removal. If he drops a Sanctum Golem and doesn’t Hero Power it, but you can’t fully kill it, at least do some damage with Hero Power or something, because they keep all the stats after getting Hero Powered (so e.g. if it was first buffed to 8/8 and then damaged to 8/4, the Enflamed Golem will also be an 8/4). Keep in mind that Enflamed Golem damages the ENTIRE board, so it can be a double-edged sword. If your opponent has a few minions on the board, clearing Enflamed Golem can also do a lot of harm on his side. Sadly Lackeys will dodge it since they’re 4/4, but now you only need 1 damage to finish them off. If you, however, can’t clear both bodies, it might be a good idea to just ignore Enflamed Golem for a bit. Just develop the board, but nothing that he could run his Golem into to sacrifice it. Then next turn you hopefully have enough to clear both bodies at the same time. If you don’t, then he will just keep respawning it.

Luckily, the amount of Sanctum Golems he runs is limited and he doesn’t have that much card draw. Even though his Lackeys are 4/4, without ways to refill hand, he will run out of cards eventually (because drawing a 1-drop or 2-drop in the late game is not great). Once he goes into topdeck mode, you should be able to go through the rest of this phase easily. If you end up in a situation like that, where he’s simply topdecking (or maybe even completely out of cards), develop a big board first before switching phases. Your board will most likely get wiped after the phases change, but you will at least get let’s say 50 damage in, making going through Phase 2 easier.

When it comes to AoE clears, he plays (obviously) Plague of Flames, which is not perfect given that he rarely has enough small minions on the board to leverage it. Still, it can swing the board sometimes if you aren’t careful, so having only big minions is not the best idea. On Heroic, he also has Plague of Death, which is basically a board wipe in the late game – be careful about that. I would only really overextend between Phase 1 and 2 where you can get A LOT of damage for cheap.

Phase 2 – Curse of Flame

Note: This Hero Power costs 0 mana on Heroic, but I couldn’t find the right asset in game files.

Phase 2 is really, really explosive – literally. Basically every turn, he will use his Hero Power on one of your minions. Then at the end of your turn, if the minion is still alive, it will deal 5 AoE damage to all characters. It includes entire board and both Heroes. However, given that at this point Tekahn still has 200 health and you don’t, damage he deals to you is a bigger deal than damage he deals to himself. It reminds me of Ragnaros’ Living Bomb from the PvE Brawl vs Nefarian. It’s on Hero Power, and it’s cheaper, but the downside (for opponent) is that it damages everything. Still, the basic way to deal with it is the same.

There are two ways to approach those time bombs – defuse them or use them against your opponent. The first scenario is simple – if the minion dies before you end your turn, nothing will explode. This means that if you have a bunch of small minions and one takes the bomb, all you need to do is sacrifice it in some way. The simplest option is to trade it into something (and it usually works, since he will also develop the board), but if your board is big enough you might consider using a removal spell to get the bomb out of your board. Just play the game like you would normally, trading in the minions he targets with bombs each turn.

The other way to approach this, however, is to let the bombs go off and play around that. Tekahn will also develop the board, so bombs are free board clears. And even if you don’t play anything with over 5 health, your minions still have a round of attacks before exploding, so you should get him down way more quickly than the bombs would kill you. However, ideal way to use this strategy is to drop a big minion every turn – stuff that is 6 or more health. This way they will survive a single bomb, won’t clear your board that easily (but might clear his) and you will get a lot of extra damage every turn. If you’re going for this strategy, Finley’s Divine Shield + Windfury Hero Power is really useful. Not only you protect your minion from the explosion, but if it’s pretty big you can also push a lot of damage while not developing much more.

Still, be careful about the second strategy, since you want to have as much health as possible going into the third phase.

Phase 3 – Soul Pyre

Here’s where the real ride starts. As much as you could stall in the first phase quite easily, in this phase you absolutely can’t. Every time you play a card, you take as much damage as that card’s cost. Even if you saved the perfect 50 health to this point, you would have only 50 mana worth of plays before you die – and especially on Heroic that’s really unlikely. Of course, you could still heal or gain Armor with some cards, and that is highly advisable!

You should save as many explorers as possible until this point – ideally get here with the first one. Even in grand total, you have a 200 health = 200 mana limit, and that’s not as much as it might seem. Try to play for the tempo, prefer a few small minions over a bigger one, since they have more stats combined for the same mana cost (and thus you take less damage). What’s great is that Tekahn will also take damage for every card he plays, which might get him closer to dying.

Try to preserve your health – kill opponent’s minions so they won’t go face and won’t get rid of your precious life total. If you lose the board control completely, he will easily clear your Heroes one by one without playing more cards, which means that you will just die and he won’t take more damage even if he’s low. That’s why face rush strategy is not a great plan (unless you’re already ahead on the board) – play for the tempo, but do your trading etc.

What’s even worse is that at one point he will cast The Final Plague?! spell. While it’s not clear what it does from the description, the effect is simple – it summons all four Old Gods onto the board. 3 out of 4 won’t trigger their effects, of course, but they’re still huge bodies (C'Thun, N'Zoth, The Corruptor and Yogg-Saron, Hope's End). The fourth one – Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound – is even scarier, because he’s a 10/10 and he will pull even more minions out of Tekahn’s deck every turn. This is a massive swing turn and you either need to be REALLY ahead on the board to deal with them, have a big board wipe or… save Elise and get Addarah. That’s probably the best way to deal with Final Plague – you shuffle them all back into your own deck!

Luckily, the big swing will also cost him 10 life, which is a big deal given that he should be getting closer to death now. As long as you can deal with The Final Plague, you should be able to stabilize. If he wants to develop more, he will have to pay life. Yes, he has some healing, but not enough to really offset the cost of playing multiple cards. So if you deal with Old Gods and get some board in, the game should be within your reach. Ideally, you might want to save some burn for the final stretch, so in case you lose the board control for some reason, you can still kill him off with spells. A few Fireballs (from Archmage Antonidas) or Reno's Magical Torch can do wonders after he’s low.

Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

12 Comments

  1. Enemy
    October 3, 2019 at 8:39 pm

    I just managed to kill him with the gatling wand in the second phase. I did around 160 damage with the spell. The third phase triggered some dialog but it didn’t stop the damage.

  2. SamuraiGunmanJr
    October 3, 2019 at 6:51 am

    Here is my strat in defeating Tekahn on Heroic, should be not too much RNG but I guess it’ll help

    Start off with Reno, get Lei Flamepaw, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Reno’s Lucky Hat, Fireball.
    Just survive until you get those cards.

    Next swap to Elise, get Jr. Navigator and you’re set 🙂

    Play Lei Flamepaw, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Jr. Navigator. Use Reno’s Lucky Hat to Jr. Navigator to get infinite spell damage, one shot Tekahn with fireball…

    It might take few attempts but that combo is really lethal. Basically infinite damage.

    *Lei Flamepaw is optional, but it saves a lot of time

    • Templar Punk
      October 4, 2019 at 1:44 am

      Can also work with Gattling Wand. Finally beat him. Everyone has been mentioning the gattling method, but thank you for taking the time to writing a simple explanation.

    • ShadowDancer
      October 4, 2019 at 3:03 am

      wow thanks a lot <3 with you help i managed to one shot him on first try!
      best combo

  3. MarmotMurloc
    October 2, 2019 at 8:44 pm

    Alright, took 4 tries, but heroic Tekahn took the L.
    My strategy: First hero, brann: Try to survive, and just survive. Use the tracking hero power to help find taunts and treasures earlier, expect to leave the boss at higher than 300 health at the end of this phase. You will need to survive till they are down to the last few cards In Hand or deck in order for this to work well
    Next Hero/ Final Hero: Reno: Finish clearing out Tekahn’s board and 1st deck, we are going to be waiting until fatigue triggers his second phase. Try to dig for treasures and just build a massive board. Ideally hitting lei flamepaw will help.
    The turn before fatigue will trigger his 200 health phase, smack the ever living daylights, we need to deal close to 100 in just a couple turns to be safe. Dig haaaard for the tomb diver, they are needed for the next phase. At this point, given brann and Reno both play secrets, tomb robber should be active. Play them, and hero power.
    Survive and hero power every turn, digging for aegis of death, gnomebliterator, and similar high level treasures.
    At some point, trigger his next phase, ideally with a burn spell.
    If you have aegis of death, it’s probably gg right now, if not, focus on getting those treasures, they are necessary to keep up with his high mana plays.
    Death him with gnobliterator, and every other treasure ( he seems to do well over 50 to himself given just a few turns to cast spells)

    This is a rough outline, doesn’t always work, but i wish you all luck regardless

  4. James37
    October 2, 2019 at 7:15 pm

    Whilst I appreciate Stonekeep’s guide I think it can be much further expanded on. Having played and beaten the Heroic mode I think I should share some of my tips with others who want to know how to win. And you only need 4 treasures from each hero to win – no need to grind if you play smart. WARNING: Spoiler alert!!

    Phase 1 – You want to select Finley as your hero with the discover hero power. A very pressing objective of this phase is to discover 3 key spells that will greatly assist you in the coming phases. You need 2 transformation spells from the shaman class. Can be Hex, Devolve or Plague of Murlocs. You also need a single target removal spell. Until you get these 3 spells you should never go face with your minions – simply just trade. There should be ample opportunity to get these spells from your discover hero power but if you can’t get them by the time your opponent fatigues through the first phase then concede and restart. Finley should never fatigue because of that +2 health spell and he will always have minions to play due to the hero power.

    Finley also has the lance which you should equip on turn 4 after the opponent has had a chance to play the weapon removal on turn 3. If you don’t have the lance early on then wait until he has played 2 weapon removals and then equip it – it will last all the way to the 2nd phase. Finley’s lance is a great weapon to have early on – it makes life a lot easier.

    Phase 2 – Ideally you want Finley to survive this phase up to the point where the opponent plays his big C’Thun. Then the next hero you need is Brann who has a treasure that destroys two opponent minions. If you kill the C’Thun with it you’ll get a lot of armour. There are 3 other opponent minions of importance in this phase which you need the cards from the first phase for. Hadronox and Rin you need a transformation spell for otherwise you’ll simply lose the game if they get their deathrattle effects off. There’s also a shudderwock which can get quite big so you might need the single target removal spell for that.

    Phase 3 – After clearing your board, the opponent will play the final plague along with 0 mana giants and another big C’thun. This will kill Brann and you’ll need Elise to be your next hero because she a treasure which silences and clears the enemy board. Once Elise has cleared the board, then this should be your win. Play out your minions like you normally do and your priority should be trading. Opponent has lots of board clears so just play enough to trigger them and he will run out of health before you do.

  5. Tbrandst
    October 2, 2019 at 9:46 am

    My heroes don’t switch when one dies. I got him all the way down to 35 health and Reno lost and it said I lost the event.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      October 2, 2019 at 9:59 am

      That’s weird… Did you try again? Maybe it’s bugged in some way. I just tested it and it worked for me again.

      • Tbrandst
        October 2, 2019 at 10:39 am

        I did just irritating that I would have won that round. It is WAI now.

  6. PPAP
    October 2, 2019 at 8:31 am

    My favorite way to play this is getting Finley’s Lance and battlecry hero power. I used it to finish my opponent without switching heroes. One thing worth noticing is that Tekhan won’t pay attention to his hero power in the third phase and he might play cards that will kill him (That’s how I won my first game against him)

    • MarmotMurloc
      October 2, 2019 at 6:39 pm

      Same, it’s a very effective strategy
      That being said, it doesn’t work in heroic because he runs like 3-4 gluttonous ooze

      • PPAP
        October 3, 2019 at 2:41 pm

        You’re right, buut I managed to get rummaging kobold and shudderwock from my hero power, so it ended up well for me