Hearthstone: Hakkar the Soulflayer Brings Back WoW History

One of the recent card reveals in Rastakhan’s Rumble brings back some old memories from World of Warcraft. The legendary and fearsome Hakkar the Soulflayer has made his return. He is being used as a fatigue style win condition, and pays homage to a famous event that made itself known across the internet.

Relation to WoW

Hakkar was a raid boss in Zul’Gurub, and his blood was able to corrupt anything and everything it came into contact with. His “Corrupted Blood” debuff, had a bug in which players could spread it outside of the raid. It ended up killing everyone as people began to spread it. This is referenced by the card Hakkar will produce when played, also called Corrupted Blood.

Corrupted Blood in Hearthstone works similarly to the way it would work in WoW. Corrupted Blood will produce copies of itself every time it is drawn, and will reshuffle into your deck. Eventually the damage taken from Corrupted Blood will be too much and your hero will die.

Corrupted Blood also wreaked its havoc indiscriminately, much as it will in Hearthstone. Both players will have Corrupted Blood in their deck, being somewhat of a detriment to the person who plays Hakkar as well.

Meta Implications

Given what Hakkar does, he can really only be utilized in Fatigue decks. Some classes that aren’t traditionally in possession of fatigue archetypes may be getting some help with the new expansion. For now, there is no reason to not run Hakkar in a deck built around running your opponent out of cards.

Playing towards fatigue is not a super popular style simply because the games just last too long. Fatigue decks are not very good for climbing the ladder, but can be very viable in a tournament lineup, where winning is the only goal. Either way, Hakkar speeds up the time spent in fatigue games. Corrupted Blood stacked on top of fatigue accelerates the opponent’s death.

However, the card is rather easily countered. Skulking Geist, a card that has fallen out of meta, might see a resurgence. Corrupted Blood is labeled as costing one mana, and Geist will destroy it and all copies when it is in your deck.

Hakkar might not get popular enough to a point where people will run Geist in their decks. In this case, those who decide to run the card will be fine. Though, this also likely means that the deck archetype is not that strong. Any case where tech cards become mandatory inclusions, deck building can become kind of un-fun.

Abandoned Hakkar faction concept. Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

Hopefully the meta has a healthy spread, and we can have fun with this little homage to a historic moment. See the rest of the cards as they get revealed for Rastakhan’s Rumble here. 

Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website.

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