Hearthstone: Blackrock Mountain - 5 Most Powerful Cards You Must Own

1. Emperor Thaurissan (Neutral)

Card Text: 5/5, 5 mana. At the end of your turn, reduce the Cost of cards in your hand by (1). Remember how we talked about Dragon Consort being powerful because of its cost reduction abilities? Now imagine that, but more, and you have Emperor Thaurissan. Emperor Thaurissan is hands down the most powerful and scariest card to come out of Black Rock Mountain, purely because of his cost-reducing capabilities. His stats are technically below average at 5/5 for 6 mana, and he isn't the best topdeck if you have no cards in hand, but this is nitpicking. Play the Emperor on turn 6 with 5 cards in hand, and you have a net mana cost reduction of 5 for future turns. And if your opponent doesn€™t kill him immediately, or you manage to protect him behind a Taunt, he will carry on making your cards cheaper. This is particularly powerful in combo and spell-based decks. Take a staple Druid deck, for example: the usual win condition for a Druid is to find your Force of Nature + Savage Roar combo and hit your opponent for 14 damage or more. Normally, this can be done on turn 9 at the earliest, since Force costs 6 and Roar costs 3. But add in the Emperor to the equation, and suddenly everything changes. With Emperor in play, you can activate your combo on turn 7 and outright kill your opponent should they be low enough on life. Possibly even more frightening is that the Emperor allows for the €œdouble combo€ €“ Force plus 2 Savage Roars, which means you can hit your opponent for a minimum of 22 damage. The reason this is so powerful is because currently there are so few cards that let you interact with your opponent€™s hand. If your opponent has the spells they need to combo and win, outside of Counterspell and Loatheb, both of which are a one-time use only, there just isn€™t a great deal you can do about it. Maybe in future sets there will be, but at the moment, the good Emperor is one of the most played cards in the metagame €“ and with good reason. What have been your most powerful cards so far? Let us know in the comments!