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.

Check Out Our Other Guides!

• Tombs of Terror General Guide
• Chapter 1 Guide – Vesh, Plague Lord of Murlocs
• Chapter 2 Guide – K’zrath, Plague Lord of Madness
• Chapter 3 Guide – Xatma, Plague Lord of Death
• Chapter 4 Guide – Icarax, Plague Lord of Wrath
• Reno Jackson Hero Guide – Mage / Rogue
• Sir Finley Hero Guide – Paladin / Shaman
• Elise Starseeker Hero Guide – Druid / Priest
• Brann Bronzebeard Hero Guide – Hunter / Warrior

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.