Taunt is one of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hearthstone’s most basic mech🌳anics. Minions that have the keyword force your opponent to direct their attacks at them, preventing attacks on your hero or a more vulnerable minion. As a result, Taunt minions𓆏 and the cards that create them are the bane of every aggro player’s existence.
And while Hearthstone is less focused on mini🐠on combat than it used to be, Taunt minions can still be an invaluable tool, particularly if they come with a bonu🌺s effect of some kind. If you want to add some defense to your next Hearthstone deck, here are the best Taunt cards the game has ever seen.
12 Sunkeeper Tarim 🎃
Sunkeeper Tarim is a minion fully capable of warping the board around himself. His ability can shrink massi🐬ve opposing boards to a state where he or a medium-sized boa🌄rd clear can get rid of them. Alternatively, he can buff your own board from a bunch of inconsequential tokens into real threats.
When he was released, Tarim was in almost every Paladin deck, but he doesn’t see much play in Wild nowadays, in part because the format is too fast and combo-oriented for such a board-centric minion. But if he ever returns to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the slower Standard format, he might see a resurgence.
11 ꦏ Voidwalker
One of💖 the original Warlock cards, Voidwalker can still compete in modern Hearthstone, seeing regular play in Zoo Warlock decks throughout the game’s history.🐼 A 1/3 statline gets less impressive for a one-drop with each new expansion, but it’s still strong enough to hold its own in a pinch.
More importantly, having Taunt on a one-mana minion is surprisingly valuable. Not 🔯only is Voidwalker a cheap body you can use to protect your own life total, but it al꧑so makes it far more difficult for your opponent to trade efficiently with your board.
10 ✃ Spreading Plague
Spreading Plague is a spell that punishes your opponent for playing the game as inten🐠ded. The more minions they summon, the more Scarabs you’ll get. This effect is obviously better against small minions that struggle to deal with 1/5s, but it can at least slow down larger-sized boards as well.
And Spreading Plague isn’t just a defensive bastion; with the buffs available to Druid, if your opponent doesn't manage to clear all of your Scarabs on their turn, you can kill them on the counter-swing.
9 B✨ridge Riff
When the three highly synergistic Riff spells first released in Festival of Legends, they weren't included in most Warrior decks. Then the Hearthstone team buffed all of them over the course of a few patches, and now the Riff package sees consistent meta play.
Talking about Bridge Riff specifically, the combination of a 3/4 with Taunt and ♓a 4/3 with Rush can shut down early aggressive boards and have enough stats to pressure Control and Combo decks. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that from the second Riff you play onward, you are getting an extra card’s worth of value each time. That means Bridge Riff will almost always be even better than it looks on the surface, and that you can get extra copies of it.
8 Igneous Laꦅvagorger
Igneous Lavagorger is a Control powerhouse. To start with, Dredge allows you to find the right tools for whatever your opponent is doing. More importantly, in addition to blocking damage with its body, you can gain a massive amount of armor from Lavagorger’s abili🅰ty.
That both keeps you safe from oncoming threats and can be used with the various synergies Warrior possesses. And on top of it all, the Lavagorger is both an Elemental 🎶and a Beast, allowing it to fit easily into Menagerie Warrior decks along with its natural slot in Control strategies.
7 Dread Corsaiꦇr ▨
A 3/3 with Taunt isn’t all that impressive. But getting one 🍰for free is pretty good, and it’s extremely easy to lower Dread Corsair’s cost in the right deck. The card also has exceptional synergy with Pirates, a group of minions that often benefit from playing a lot of them extremely quickly.
Thanks to this combination of abilities, Dread Corsair has seen play 𒁃primarily in aggressive Rogue and Warrior decks, which have access to relatively cheap, high-attack weapons and a some of the🔜 Hearthstone’s most powerful Pirates.
6 Lightray
Getting a free 5/5 with Taunt is pretty good, and Lightray can often be t෴hat for you. The card is a natural fit in Pure Paladin lists, which only run Paladin cards. In those decks, every card you play is a step towards reducing your Lightrays’ co🅺sts to zero.
It has particular synergy with the spell Order 🌠in the Court, which sorts your deck from highest to lowest cost, then draws you a card. And in decks running Li🌠ghtray, it will almost always be the card you draw.
5 𓃲 Gnome Muncher
If you showed Gnome Muncher to a Hearthstone player back in 2014, they might pass out from shock. Death Knight’s arrival to the game came with a bunch of powerful cards, and Gnome Muncher was definitely one of them. A six-mana 5/6 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:with Lifesteal isn’t anything particularly special, but its ability allows you to take advantage of the healing effect right away whilℱe fighting for the board or damaging your opponent’s face at the same time.
Fortunately, Gnome Muncher does require at least one Blood Rune, so you won’t see it in every Death Knight deck. But you'll definitely feel its impact whenever it hits the board.
4 Thing From Below ꦦ
Oh look, it’s another free 5/5. Like Lightray, Thing from Below starts at a relatively high cost, but quickly gets much cheaper. At six mana rather than ten, Thing fr♒om Below is already less painful to play than its Paladin counterpart under normal circ𝓰umstances, and it can be reduced faster as well.
Not every Shaman card is a Totem or summons one, but many do. In fact, some summon multiple Totems at once, which can make your Thing from Below cost zero almost by themselves. On top of that, you get a Totem every time you use your Hero Power as well, a factor most relevant in Even Sha꧒man decks, which use Genn Greymane to make your Hero Power cost one mana.
3 Dirty Rat
As a 2/6, Dirty Rat is not a bad play on two mana against certain 🦋aggro decks. Its effect will be a downside in that case, but the Rat will still usually out-stat the minion it summons if you know your opponent is running a lot of low-cost cards.
However, in many cases, Dirty Rat’s Battlecry can actu🌄ally be a benefit, and is in fact the main reason to include the minion in your deck. When played with the right timing, the Rat can pull a key combo piece from your opponent’s hand. That will often slow their gameplan down significantly, and in the best case scenarios ruin it entirely.