How to Complete All Year of the Hydra Achievements for Achievement Points - Great Deck Lists!

Welcome, fellow achievement hunter.

Ever since the introduction of the profile journal and the achievements system, each Hearthstone Year has always brought us a handful of achievements to complete in order to gain more achievement points: while a few of them are relatively easy to complete, others may take time or a proper set up. In case you're wondering what's the best way to gain all those sweet sweet bragging points locked behind the Year of the Hydra achievements, do not fret, as we have the answer you're looking for!

In this guide we'll focus our attention on the Year of the Hydra achievements and provide at least one way to complete each of them. Remember that these achievements are meant to be completed throughout the entire Year of the Hydra, so it is fair for them to be quite long or difficult. Moreover, it is possible that support from upcoming expansions (and mini-sets) will make things easier for some of them.

Disclaimer: just like for all expansion achievements, the Year of the Hydra achievements can be completed in Ranked Standard, Ranked Wild, Arena, Casual & Heroic Duels and Classic - Casual Standard, Casual Wild and Tavern Brawl will not count towards your hunt! Moreover, we'll always take Ranked Standard as the default game format for our strategies: if we happen to have some strategies or particular interactions belonging to other modes to highlight, we'll be sure to specify it.

Here are all the achievements we're going to complete together:

1. All You Can Eat - Draw 100/200 cards with Feast of Souls.
2. What's All the Buzz About? - Gain 50/2563 armor with Earthen Scales.
3. Miserable Pile of Secrets - Play 75/150 0-Cost Hunter Secrets.
4. Caution: Lethal May Be Hot! - Destroy Your Opponent 10/30 Times with Pyroblast.
5. Friendly Fire - Restore 150/300 Health with Ragnaros, Lightlord.
6. Praise the Sun - Play 200/400 cards generated by Lyra the Sunshard.
7. A True Class Act - Replay a card from 4/9 different classes with a single Tess Greymane.
8. Hot Ones - Attack with a minion affected by Flametongue Totem 100/200 times.
9. Discard? No Thanks - End your turn with 6/10 High Priestess Jekliks in your hand.
10. Oh Mr. Crowley - Trigger a single Darius Crowley's effect 2/4 times.
11. Great Great Grand-Dragon - Destroy 100/200 minions with Primordial Drake.
12. Out of Your League - Play 75/150 members of the League of Explorers from the Year of the Hydra.
13. Toasty! - Deal 250/500 damage with Wild Pyromancer.
14. $29,000,000,000 - Restore 29 Health with a single Reno Jackson.

Year of the Hydra Achievements Overview

Among all the Year of the Hydra achievements, only 5 of them are completable in a single game, and even some of them require quite the difficult set up in order for you to be able to get the job done.

Before going in detail, we want to make clear two things:

1. These achievements do not give XP points: all they reward are achievements points, which consists of the orange orbs at the top right corner of your profile journal
   • Therefore, these achievement are meant only for perfectionists or real grinders.
2. Unlike those which comes with expansions, these achievements are not meant to be completed in no time: most of them will take you dozens of games.
   • While we can't stop you to force them, it would be better for you to complete them by little steps, while normally playing the game: if you're not used to this level of grind, you might get burnt out pretty fast!

How to Complete the "All You Can Eat" Demon Hunter Achievement

• Requirement: Draw 100/200 cards with Feast of Souls.
• Speed Rating: 1/5 in Standard, 3/5 in Wild.
• Related Achievements: none.

Disclaimer: cards drawn by Feast of Souls will count towards this achievement even if you burn them (yep, we tested it).

In Wild, Expendable Performers is an incredibly efficient way to complete All You Can Eat without losing your mind. Here's a simple 10 mana combo you can use to progress this achievement each time by 14 points:

• Play Blur, so that you won't suffer fatigue damage.
• Play Expendable Performers while having no other minions in play.
• Cast Immolation Aura.
  • Immolation Aura will get rid of both the Illidari Initiate waves.
• Play both copies of Feast of Souls and draw 14+14= 28 cards.
• Cards overdrawn or fatigue damage will still count towards this achievement.

If you don't own Expendable Performers, your job will be significantly harder, as Standard doesn't currently have any top-notch tools for this achievement: while this doesn't mean that you won't be able to complete All You Can Eat over there, an even longer grind awaits you. One of the coolest ways we've found consists of combining Gruntled Patron and Spammy Arcanist.

• This is usually an 11 mana combo, so coins from Mailbox Dancer may be necessary depending on the situation.
• Play Gruntled Patron.
• If there are no 1 and 2 Health minions on the board, use Elven Archer on the Patron.
  • This move will give you both the 1 and the 2 Health minions you need to keep the Defile going.
• Once you've set up the board, play Spammy Arcanist and then Feast of Souls.
• With this method, each Feast of Souls will draw 13 cards.

How to Complete the "What's All the Buzz About?" Druid Achievement

• Requirement: Gain 50/2563 armor with Earthen Scales.
• Speed Rating: 1/5 in Standard, 5/5 in Wild.
• Related Achievements: none.

Disclaimer: since the start of the Year of the Hydra, Earthen Scales got its cost increased from 1 to 2 mana, but that doesn't represent too much of a hinder for this achievement.

While the amount of Armor you have to gain in order to complete What's All the Buzz About? may seem strangely out of reach, there's a good reason for it, as well as a simple method for you to achieve it. Such reason lies in the Wild format, in particular in the Linecracker-BEEEES!!! combo.

• You need a starting 11 mana to start the combo, so you'll need either Wildheart Guff online or a Biology Project/Innervate in hand.
• Play Linecracker.
  • If you don't have Wildheart Guff online, play Biology Project to gain an additional Mana Crystal.
• Play Floop's Glorious Gloop.
• Play BEEEES!!! on your Linecracker, triggering its Overkill effect 4 times.
  • This will set Linecracker's Attack to 10, 20, 40 and 80, making it an 80/6 unit.
• Play the second BEEEES!!! on your Linecracker for another 4 Overkill triggers.
• This will set Linecracker's Attack to 160, 320, 640 and 1280, making it a 1280/2 unit.
• See where this is going? Good.
• Play the first Earthen Scales on Linecracker, which will give you 1281 Armor.
• Play the second Earthen Scales on Linecracker, which will give you 1282 Armor.
• 1281+1282=2563, which is the exact amount of Armor you need in order to complete What's All the Buzz About?!

• As you can imagine, Mecha'thun is not strictly necessary for this achievement: it's there just because it's used as a win condition in case the Armor alone won't secure the win.
  • If you do not own it, feel free to remove it for something else like an Innervate.

If you want to complete What's All the Buzz About? in Standard, well, good luck to you! In fact, this format doesn't have particular ways for you to give a minion a ton of Attack, so a nearly endless grind will await you. With this being said, we still feel like proving a decklist for those of you that still want to go for it.

• The plan is casting Celestial Alignment and then playing both Lady Anacondra and a copy of Arcane Devourer.
• Play as many spells as you can, increasing Devourer's stats by +2/+2 each time.
• Once you are the end of your miracle turn, play all the copies of Earthen Scales you have on Arcane Devourer and move on to the next game.
• If you gain enough Armor and your opponent happens to be an aggressive deck, you might even win the game by killing their will to play the game!
• Another inclusion that's worth mentioning is Queen Azshara: you're already playing a ton of spells and many of Azshara's Relics are quite useful.

How to Complete the "Miserable Pile of Secrets" Hunter Achievement

• Requirement: Play 75/150 0-Cost Hunter Secrets.
• Speed Rating: 2/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

It is very clear that Miserable Pile of Secrets is meant to be completed with Cloaked Huntress, One Night in Karazhan card added to this year's Core Set: in the end, Hunter doesn't have access to many mana reduction tools for you to discount your Secrets with, so you do not have many alternatives available.

Another rather annoying inconvenience of Miserable Pile of Secrets is that you can play only 5 Secrets at time, so it's not like you can have a giant miracle turn with Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Cloaked Huntress and play a ton of Secrets one after the other.

All in all, the plan is pretty straightforward:

• Draw your deck until you have at least 5 different Hunter Secrets in hand.
• Play Cloaked Huntress.
• Play the 5 Hunter Secrets.
• Rinse and repeat.

Starting from the Standard format, here's the strategy we came up with.

• Draw a bunch of Secrets (special thanks to Dun Baldar Bunker) and wait for your combo to be ready.
• Play Cloaked Huntress and all the Secrets you can.
• As you can see, we did not include Snake Trap, as we want to make sure that Emergency Maneuvers will resummon a copy of Cloaked Huntress for an additional "dump" turn.
• Secrets have different Spell Schools, so we included Arcane Shot and Shellshot to give you an even better drawing tool in Multicaster.

If you want to complete this achievement in Wild, user NebuchadnezzarHS created the decklist you see below.

• Pretty much the same reasoning, with the difference that Wild has access to a wider Secret pool and Subject 9.

How to Complete the "Caution: Lethal May Be Hot!" Mage Achievement

• Requirement: Destroy Your Opponent 10/30 Times with Pyroblast.
• Speed Rating: 1/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

Pretty straightforward, although rather complicated achievement, as the setup it requires isn't easy and most of the times your opponents will concede before you'll be able to deliver the final blow. For Standard, you might want to play some normal Big Spell Mage.

• With the aid of the strong Hero Power package, you should be able to put your opponent in lethal range quite often.

It may sound really strange for you to hear this, but one of the most efficient ways to complete Caution: Lethal May be Hot! is playing... Classic. Yep, you read that right. In this format, Pyroblast slots perfectly in Freeze Mage, a deck which has high chances to put your opponents in range for a Pyro lethal. We thank our user NebuchadnezzarHS for the decklist!

• While it's not been tested, Caution: Lethal May Be Hot! does not ask Pyroblast to be played from hand in order for it to count: therefore, Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate's Wheel of Fate should count too!
• Duels format note: Reno Jackson is a Mage-Rogue Hero, and therefore has access to both Pyroblast and Swiftscale Trickster, allowing you to obtain some fast progress in the first few matches of your runs.

How to Complete the "Friendy Fire" Paladin Achievement

• Requirement: Restore 150/300 Health with Ragnaros, Lightlord.
• Speed Rating: 1/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

Based on the achievement's text, the Health restored should come from either Ragnaros, Lightlord's end of the turn effect or from some Lifesteal shenanigans.

For Standard... eh... there's no real way for you to progress Friendly Fire other than running Ragnaros, Lightlord in every Paladin deck you play - it's not a particularly efficient method, as you'll restore only 8 Health per turn, but unfortunately it's the best the format has to offer.

For Wild, things look slightly better: with a wider card pool to choose from, you have many ways to speed up the process.

• This deck runs very few, but crucial minions.
  • Vitality Surge is an excellent cheap tutor.
• First of all, play High Priest Thekal to set your Health total to 1.
• Then, use Cariel Roame to reduce the cost of spells like Desperate Stand, Gift of Luminance and Redemption.
• Set up Cavalry Horn and, once Ragnaros, Lightlord is the lowest cost minion in your hand, trigger the weapon's Deathrattle to summon it on the board for free.
• Cast as many copies of Desperate Stand and Gift of Luminance as you can on Rag, making it very resilient to removal.
  • Just to be sure we're on the same page, first you play Desperate Stand and then you play Gift of Luminance.
• Heal back up by a ton.
• In case any of your Rags stick, cast Lightforged Blessing on them, so that trading will restore Health as well!
  • If you do not own such an old and niche card, Hold the Bridge works too.
• Use Sathrovarr to get access to additional copies of Ragnaros, Lightlord.
• In case your opponent is trying to win a little too hard, Time Out! is an excellent stalling tool.

How to Complete the "Praise the Sun" Priest Achievement

• Requirement: Play 200/400 cards generated by Lyra the Sunshard.
• Speed Rating: 1/5.
• Related Achievements:
  • Neutral's Toasty! - Although Wild Pyromancer may backfire and kill your entire board, your deck is filled with cheap spells, which are perfect for multiple Pyro procs.

In order to complete this achievement, we're going full "Miracle" mode just like players did back when Journey to Un'Goro was releases in April 2017 (ahh... time flies so fast). What's needed? Simple: Lyra the Sunshard and two copies of Radiant Elemental, all of which are currently in this Year's Core Set, so you won't have to spend your dust for some mere bragging points!

The plan is very simple: you jam both Lyra and both Radiants and start slinging spells as fast as possible. In order for us to keep going as long as possible, we want to build a deck with a decent amount of card draw (so that we can draw our combo pieces in time), card generation and a lot, a lot of cheap spells.

• All the spells you see in this deck are esemplificative.
  • You may include what you prefer, as long as it's cheap and won't backfire when you cast it.
• Although it's not strictly needed, Priestess Valishj can help a ton, since it has the potential to give you back most (of not all) the mana you spent to set up the Lyra-Radiant combo.

How to Complete the "A True Class Act" Rogue Achievement

• Requirement: Replay a card from 4/9 different classes with a single Tess Greymane.
• Speed Rating: 2/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

Disclaimer: if the rumors are true and we'll see the addition of Death Knight as Hearhtstone's 11th class later this year, this achievement will become a little easier to complete.

Very dependent on luck, but it's definitely doable. In order for us to complete A True Class Act, we'll play as many "burgle" cards as possible, allowing us to increase our chances to get our hands on cards belonging to all the other 9 classes. Such task can be completed in both Standard and Wild, although the latter has better burgle cards and burgle support: if you have a large collection, go there!

Here's our Standard deck.

And here's our Wild deck.

• If you manage to obtain a Hero card from another class, Tess Greymane will consider you as a character from that class (i.e.: if you burgle and play Lightforged Cariel, Tess will consider you as a Paladin) and will replay all the Rogue cards you've played up to that point.

How to Complete the "Hot Ones" Shaman Achievement

• Requirement: Attack with a minion affected by Flametongue Totem 100/200 times.
• Speed Rating: 1/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

I personally completed Hot Ones while grinding the Voyage to the Sunken City's Feeding Frenzy achievement in Wild, with the strategy you'll see below.

• Play Flametongue Totem.
• Play Totemic Reflection on it.
• Play one Piranha Swarmer at time between the two Flametongue Totems and trade it into an enemy unit.

Sure, Hot Ones doesn't progress faster if the attacking minion is enhanced by two Flametongue Totems instead of just one, as it only counts the number of attacks executed, so it really depends on how many birds you're trying to catch with a single stone.

Our user NebuchadnezzarHS followed a fairly similar strategy, consisting of running many cheap Rush minions, only for them to be dumped together with Flametongue Totem for a swing turn.

In the recent weeks, Even Shaman has experienced a surge in both its play and win rates, probably due to the Wild meta environment shifting towards a favorable field for the archetype. Fortunately for us, most list do run Flametongue Totem, so we see this as the best way for you to complete Hot Ones while winning games.

How to Complete the "Discard? No Thanks" Warlock Achievement

• Requirement: End your turn with 6/10 High Priestess Jekliks in your hand.
• Speed Rating: 4/5 in Wild.
• Related Achievements: none.

Let's make things simple: in order to complete Discard? No Thanks, you'll need to discard your whole hand while holding 5 copies of High Priestess Jeklik There are a few ways to achieve this result, although none of them are particularly easily to pull off.

With the current Standard card pool, we are afraid to tell you that it's impossible to pull off Discard? No Thanks with a consistent strategy: the Discard synergy is too narrow and there are no "tutor" discard effects (for example: discard a minion, discard the highest cost card,...) we can proficiently exploit.

With this being said, Wild is a completely different story.

• Make sure High Priestess Jeklik is the highest cost card in your deck.
• This way, Expired Merchant will always discard Jeklik.
• After you trigger Merchant's Deathrattle, you'll have a total of 4 Jekliks in hand - almost there!
• After that, you'll need to discard one of your Jekliks another time.
• Finally play Murder at Castle Nathria's Tome Tampering to discard your entire hand, fill it with copies of High Priestess Jeklik and trigger the achievement.

How to Complete the "Oh Mr. Crowley" Warrior Achievement

• Requirement: Trigger a single Darius Crowley's effect 2/4 times.
• Speed Rating: 2/5 in Standard, 3/5 in Wild.
• Related Achievements: none.

Oh boy, what the frustrating achievement we've got here. If it were just two triggers, we would've suggested Bruising in Duels, but 4 becomes very difficult to pull off with consistency. In fact, relying on Crowley surviving 4 turns in a row seems pretty unreliable.

Standard is once again the most difficult format in which completing this achievement: you'll need your opponent to control a total of 5 units, which is pretty unrealistic if you don't want to die in the meantime.

• Play at least one Mailbox Dancer and obtain a coin.
• Get to 10 mana.
• Play both copies of To the Front!, making your minions cost 4 less mana.
• First you play Darius Crowley, which will cost 1 mana.
• Then you play Battleground Battlemaster, which will cost 2 mana.
  
  • Order is very important: you want Riot! to make Crowley attack first.
• Kill two enemy minions with Crowley without having it die.
• Finally, cast both copies of Riot! (with the aid of the saved up coin).
• We thought Riot! would synergize with Battleground Battlemaster for a double attack, but unfortunately things aren't like this.

In Wild, things a slightly easier, as you'll need your opponent to control just 4 minions.

• Play at least one Mailbox Dancer and obtain a coin.
  • Alternatively, you may include Kindling Elemental to reduce Whirlwind Tempest's Cost by 1 mana.
• Get to 10 mana.
• Play both copies of To the Front!, making your minions cost 4 less mana.
• Play Darius Crowley, which will cost 1 mana.
• Play Battleground Battlemaster, which will cost 2 mana.
• Play Whirlwind Tempest, which will cost 4 mana.
• Proceed to kill 4 enemy units with Crowley, completing Oh Mr. Crowley.

How to Complete the "Great Great Grand-Dragon" Neutral Achievement

• Requirement: Destroy 100/200 minions with Primordial Drake.
• Speed Rating: 2/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

Considering that you have to kill minions (through both Battlecry triggers and trades) and not just deal damage to them, Great Great Grand-Dragon is quite the demanding achievement. However, there are ways for you to complete it with a decent pace that aren't just "play Primordial Drake in every deck and hope for the best".

For this reason, we think that Paladin has the best card combo to progress this achievement: in fact, Uther has access to Equality, a 2 mana spell that will put every minion on the board in Primordial Drake's Battlecry's range.

• Have your opponents flood their side of the board.
• On turn 10, play Equality into Primordial Drake for a 10 mana perfect board clear.

However, nothing and nobody stops you from running Primordial Drake in every deck you can, especially if you like Kazakusan shenanigans.

How to Complete the "Out of Your League" Demon Hunter Achievement

• Requirement: Play 75/150 members of the League of Explorers from the Year of the Hydra.
• Speed Rating: 3/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

Out of Your League basically asks you to play any of the following four cards for a total of 75/150 times:

• Brann Bronzebeard
• Elise Starseeker
• Reno Jackson
• Sir Finley Mrrgglton

Despite being printed back in the day with The League of Explorers adventure, they are now part of the Year of the Hydra's Core Set, meaning that they are available for free to everyone.

Although the fastest way to complete Out of Your League would be to run each of these 4 minions in every deck you play, we think that most players out there have already earned a fair share of progression points due to the sole fact that Brann Bronzebeard is such a strong card that has made the cut in many, many meta and off-meta decks: if you're not in a hurry, you might as well complete this achievement while normally playing the game or while hunting other achievements!

How to Complete the "Toasty!" Demon Hunter Achievement

• Requirement: Deal 250/500 damage with Wild Pyromancer.
• Speed Rating: 2/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

As a preliminary thought, it is more than worth noting is that Toasty! doesn't require you to deal damage just through Wild Pyromancer's effect: trade damage works too! This piece of information gives us a lot of freedom, as it open up several ways for us to progress the achievement:

• Effect damage, obviously - slow, but granted.
• Handbuff effects into a trade - Paladin is great at this.
• Board buff effects into a trade - Wild Priest is great at this.

The two decks you see below belong to the Wild format.

How to Complete the "$29,000,000,000" Neutral Achievement

• Requirement: Restore 29 Health with a single Reno Jackson.
• Speed Rating: 5/5.
• Related Achievements: none.

To be honest, I completed this achievement in the first few days of the Voyage to the Sunken City expansion without even knowing of its existence, merely because I was messing around with Reno decks. This goes to show how you can casually complete $29,000,000,000 without having to brute-force it. Therefore, our suggestion is to just play the game.

However, if you still want to complete this achievement in the least possible amount of time, then Wild is your place: High Priest Thekal is an actual card and Reno Paladin is somewhat viable in the format. Save up both Thekal and Reno, play them on the same turn and you'll be done. Easy Peasy.

With the introduction of Prince Renathal, completing $29,000,000,000 is going to be even easier: just play an Highlander deck with Renathal in it and, once you're at 11 Health of below, play Reno Jackson.

Other Resources

Do you like achievement hunting? Are you interested in guides for expansions achievements? Look no further, as we've got exactly what you're looking for. Click the banners below to visit respectively the Sunken City Achievements portal and the Castle Nathria Achievements portal, so that you'll be able to take a look at all our class guides!

We have added an #achievements channel on our Discord server if you want to talk with others in real-time. If you need an assist, you can also respond to this guide and we'll do our best to help you out; the comments are also a great way to share your own decks that you've used to complete the achievements above.

Good luck tackling any of these achievements for your experience boost or just for the sake of satisfying completion!