When it comes to Hearthstone combos, luck usually plays a very small role. A combo in Hearthstone refers to playing a specific set of cards that lead to your opponent’s death. This means that a combo usually deals ~30 damage from you hand in a single turn. Not an easy feat, to say the least. Typically, you’re relying on simple draw luck, and once you have the cards you need, you kill them. Not too difficult. But there are a few combos out there that do heavily rely on luck.
Lucky Hearthstone Combo #1: Murloc Paladin
This is probably the least RNG reliant deck in this article. Murloc Paladin is a well known and popular deck, appearing in professional games many times until it was rotated out of standard. Murloc Paladin makes use of Anyfin Can Happen as its combo piece. For those unaware, Anyfin Can Happen grabs any Murloc that has died throughout the game and brings it into play on your side of the field. You make use of this with Bluegill Warrior and Old Murk Eye – replacing Murk Eye with Finja after Murk Eye rotated to wild (although now you can put Murk Eye back in, since Anyfin itself rotated). They come charging in and do massive amounts of damage to your opponent.
The randomness comes into play in two aspects. First, if more than seven Murlocs have died, it’s completely random which ones return. This can massively screw you over, especially when you play your second Anyfin. Imagine you use the first to clear, and you had a full board of Murlocs. Two Bluegill, two Warleaders, and a Murk Eye. Suddenly, your next pot has a wildly varying damage potential. With four Bluegills, four Warleaders, and two Old Murk Eyes. This presents us with nine different damage outcomes, varying from 30 to 44 damage! That may sound like overkill, but if your opponent has taunts or happens to have a lot of armor, the damage is extremely relevant.
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The other issue with this combo is that Anyfin doesn’t specify your Murlocs. If your opponent plays any Murlocs and they die, you might end up bringing those Murlocs on to the board instead of your own. Now, at the time Anyfin was popular, there weren’t any decks that actually ran Murlocs, with the exception of Sir Finley. But there were quite a few Discover mechanics. People would often look for Murlocs specifically to mess up their opponent’s Anyfins. The randomness comes into play not only when you play the Anyfin, but based off what deck you are matched against AND if they can Discover any Murlocs to mess you up with.
The most luck-reliant part of a Murloc Paladin deck combo involves a very specific case. In Anyfin vs. Anyfin matchups, the pool of Murlocs can get so messed up that you can pull a full board of Warleaders. Or a full board of Bluegills. Or, in very strange situations, a full board of Old Murk Eyes. If you managed to get into a game where 7+ Bluegills died, 7+ Warleaders died, and four Old Murk Eyes died, your possible damage output ranges from–wait for it–ZERO to 56. A full board of Warleaders offers zero charge damage. A board of three Warleaders and four Murk Eyes is 56. How’s that for random?
Realistically this deck has very low damage variance under normal circumstances. But you can certainly make it ridiculous, since it is naturally based in randomness.
Lucky Hearthstone Combo #2: Holy Wrath Molten Giant
Who hasn’t heard of the best combo in the entire game? This is, by far, the most random combo on the list. We’re talking, of course, about Holy Wrath Molten Giant! The way REAL MEN AND WOMEN win games of Hearthstone!
In all seriousness, this combo is ridiculous. Holy Wrath draws a card and deals damage to the target equal to the cost of the card you drew. Molten Giant costs 25 (formerly 20). In other words, you can dish out 25 damage to your opponent’s face for five mana. But that’s only if don’t draw any of the other 28 cards in your deck.
Obviously, the variance on how “random” or lucky this combo is depends entirely on the current state of your deck. If you have two cards left and haven’t drawn a Molten Giant, I figure you’ve got a good shot. But if you’ve drawn one already and have only 15 cards left, it’s a bit less reliable. Since every game is different and there are very few ways to control it, I like to calculate the odds of success based on total deck size. So you have 30 cards in your deck, two that you want to draw (Molten Giant), and one you’re definitely playing (Holy Wrath). There’s a 2/27 chance of you drawing Molten Giant if you have Holy Wrath in your starting hand and you just got off a hot streak in Vegas. (Of course, if both Molten Giants are in your opening hand, you’re screwed.)
Holy Wrath Molten Giant has been around forever, and there are a ton of clips of pros having fun with it. It makes for some hilarious gameplay. Roll the tape.
You can use Hemet to thin your deck down to only a few cards if you want, but overall, Holy Wrath Molten Giant is terrible, but it’s brilliant when it works.
Lucky Hearthstone Combo #3: Purple’s Axe Flinger
This is my favorite combo on the list, because I watched it happen live and it was amazing. I’ve only ever seen this deck once. Even after its success and fame, I’ve never seen it afterwards because it’s just so incredibly impractical. The deck we’re talking about is a fatigue Axe Flinger deck. Like many combo decks, it relies on at least one Emperor Thaurisan tick, and when it was showcased, Emperor was in standard. It was seen on Dog’s stream by a fellow Hearthstone professional, Purple. I’ve linked the clip, but there’s some NSFW language in it. (Thanks, Twitch donations. Keep it classy.)
The deck revolves around getting to fatigue so you have all your cards, and then making use of Axe Flinger’s ability. Axe Flinger deals two damage to your opponent each time it takes damage. Purple’s combo was Axe Flinger, Axe Flinger, Whirlwind (4 damage), Rampage, Rampage, and then Bouncing Blades. Here’s where the RNG comes into play. If the Bouncing Blades works perfectly and kills one Axe Flinger while the other is at one health, it does exactly 26 more damage, for a total of 30.
This combo is, as you might have figured out, heavily RNG reliant. This is why the fatigue is a bit more important, so you can have a bit more room for error. If your Bouncing Blades messes up even once, you’re only doing 28 damage. Without fatigue, that leaves you with no cards left to win. That being said, Bouncing Blades could mess up terribly and only hit one Axe Flinger at all! Then the combo would do a mere 18 damage total. This is a fun OTK, but not only does it require an Emperor tick, it’s also extremely reliant on Bouncing Blades RNG.
Lucky Hearthstone Combo #4: Yogg-Saron
It’s only right to follow my favorite with my absolute least favorite card, combo, archetype, whatever, of all time. Meet Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End. Yogg is a comeback card, a board clear, heal you to full health, a one shot kill on your opponent, and a suicide button. It can be any of these, all of them, or none of the above. Yogg is the kind of card that you throw out, yell ‘YOLO!’ non-ironically, and walk away from your computer. For those who don’t know, Yogg plays a random spell, with a random target. It doesn’t just play one random spell. It plays a number of random spells that’s equal to however many spells you’ve played this game. And in decks that run Yogg, this number is usually between ten and twenty.
Yogg is stupid. Even if you’re a fan of Yogg, you have to admit the entire concept behind him is utterly ridiculous. “Toss a coin. Heads you win. Tails you lose. If it rolls off the table, we make up new rules.” Anything can happen, and it’s not super fun to be on the losing side of it. Yogg is weighted towards the caster, since there are a lot of spells (like Consecrate for example) that can only be positive for the caster.
There have been more than enough videos of Yogg killing people from full health, both caster and opponent. It may only be one card, but it’s clearly in the realm of “one turn kill.” And what’s more random than Yogg? He definitely has a place on this list, but honestly, screw Yogg.
