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7 Min read In Warcraft Rumble, Rend Blackhand is a strong leader for both PvE and PvP and can be used to clear normal and Heroic campaigns easily.
He is also one of the best long-term investments for your account as he can be used in a low-level clear of Onyxia.
To see how Rend compares to other leaders, check out our Warcraft Rumble Leader tier list.
Blacken the Skies: Your other Flying troops cost 1 less Gold while Rend is in play (but no less than 2). Rend’s leader ability incentivises a deck that contains a few flying unit that cost 3 or more. Rend is one of the strongest leaders due to the strength of flying minis in general. Minis like Harpies, Whelp Eggs, Gargyole, Drake are already highly rated S to B tier minis that you would already run in any other leaders’ deck, so Rend reducing their cost by 1 is just icing on the cake.
Although Rend is quite a costly leader at 6 gold, by playing 3 discounted flying minis, you can bring Rend’s effect cost to only 3 gold, which is very valuable considering how strong Rend is as a standalone unit. Rend has 2 forms – he is summoned on a Drake and does elemental damage, and when his flying form drops to 0 health, he dismounts and turns into a melee unit that charges once to the nearest enemy and does cleave attacks. Rend has a separate health bar for each form which means that he will survive hits that would normally 1 shot other minis, such as living bombs or the bosses attacks.
Rend’s flying form is similar to a 4 gold Drake, and his grounded form is similar to a 4 cost stonehoof tauren, which trades in multiple charges for a cleave attack. He is essentially two 4 cost minis combined into a single mini, which effectively costs 3 gold when played alongside other flying minis. This alone attests to his strength as he brings so much value for his cost.
Rend also gains more value the longer he survives. In big maps (especially Onyxia) If you manage to keep Rend alive long enough, you can also cycle through your deck quickly and summon more copies of your flyers, further generating value from a single. For this reason, he is the leader that can defeat Onyxia with a highly underleveled deck.
Do not be fooled by his high cost and think him indestructible. Like all other ranged damage minis, he should be usually be played on the backline with a tank in front of him because his flying form has low health. However, Rend is quite versatile, and in some instances you can play him at the front and wait for him to get hit and dismounted, which turns him into a beefy melee tank for the rest of your flying minis.
Scale and Steel is Rend’s best talent by far as it lets each of his already strong forms perform their duties better and trade into minis that they normally cannot without this talent. You will pick Scale and Steel most of the time for both PvE and PvP.
While flying, his drake gains resistance which allows it to trade well into threats that deal magical damage such as Drakes (especially relevant in the Onyxia fight), SAFE Pilots and Pyromancer. Even his drake form dies and Rend dismounts, his armored form and charge allows him to kill the mini which dismounted him and tank for the rest of your minis. As a Rend deck naturally comes with a lot of low HP flying minis, having a charging armored tank on the ground helps keep your other minis alive.
Flaming Soul is useful in certain maps where you encounter a huge wave of enemies, in which you can send sacrifice Rend by sending him in headfirst and detonating everyone. Some maps include the Deadmines dungeon stage 2 where a huge wave of 6+ mini comes from the left. In PvP, Flaming soul also can be used to surprise opponents, and are good in maps where there is a tight chokepoint which will funnel minis for an explosive wipe.
Legionnaire is a talent that sounds good on paper but doesn’t work too well in actual fights. While it may be tempting to have both Drake and Rend on field at the same time, trigger this ability requires Drake to be hit, and this usually means that the Drake would be dead by the time Rend dismounts starts tanking.
Below is the best Rend deck that we used to clear all Heroic stages 0 to 2 levels below the recommended deck level. Note that the decklist below is the general deck that we used for most stages.
On stages with different mechanics, certain minis should be swapped out to counter that stage.
For example, in Heroic Devilsuar, ranged minis can attack the boss without retaliation but melee minis will get killed instantly. Swapping out Harpies for Batrider will help you clear that stage even if Batrider is under-leveled.
Possible replacements:
The objective of this deck is to play Rend as soon as possible defensive, summoning as far behind as you can or on enemy already distracted by your tower. Then, with his slow movement speed and ability to summon flying minis cheaply, continuously use your cheap mini to go on the offensive or to defend Rend to continuously generate more value. A 6 gold Rend which is summon and immediately dies, is too expensive. A Rend summoned at the back followed by playing 6 flying minis before he dies, effectively saves you 6 gold thus meaning he was played for free. Think of Rend as a commander in the backlines, summoning hordes cheaper cost minis to be his offence.
Rend himself is a powerhouse on his own, but you seldom want to play him on the frontlines tanking all enemy fire because you want him to survive as long as possible. For this reason, although Rend’s land form is highly tanky, we still run both Quilboar and Earth Elemental to tank for Rend and your other flying minis, keeping Rend in flying form as long as possible.
We include 3 flying minis, making it easy to cycle through 3 flying minis and getting the most value of Rend’s leader ability. Harpies is a no brainer, which boasts the highest DPS in the game and will shred through any mini or boss given a few seconds for them to work on the enemy. Drake is a elemental mini which helps even your mini and prove highly distracting to enemy melee minis when it hatches many eggs just by existing.
Both Whelp Eggs and SAFE Pilot are included as unbound mini that can help you snipe off key enemy minis. As Rend deck is mostly comprised of air minis, he can easily overrun the AI minis as they are not smart enough to properly counter air minis, and would constantly send horde of melee minis who are unable to hit your air minis, leading to easy pickings. When they do summon ranged minis, use your Whelp Eggs and SAFE to snipe them down so that you maintain air superiority.
Quilboar and Earth Elemental are included to further the same plan of maintaining air superiority. Where encountering minis that Whelps and SAFE cannot snipe down, such as huntress and towers, your goal would then to distract the huntress or towers by summoning your unbound minis behind them, allowing your Harpies and Drake to engage the huntress and kill her before your tank dies.
Possible replacements include Chimaera, Season 2’s newest mini. However, while it is tempting to use Chimaera in a Rend deck due to the obvious synergy with Rend’s reduced cost, do note that Chimaera has a faster movement speed than most of the rest of the deck, other than Harpies. This means that after every battle, Chimaera will start outpacing all your tanks, including Rend, Quilboar and Earth Elemental. It is quite challenging to keep it protected as it races ahead into danger, and failing to protect it is a costly 4 gold lost.
Gargoyle is a good mini to include for stages where bosses are the main difficulty of the stage and you need help to take it down. Being a heavy hitting siege unit it will shred towers and bosses really fast, but it offers almost no help against minis as it will ignore them, and will only serve as a punching bag which you need to quickly back up with other minis.
Rend’s PvP deck plays out similarly to his PvE decks – include flying minis and play Rend defensively. However, Harpies are dropped from his decks as they are too squishy and are often immediately killed by a spell or SAFE by human players who knows how to deal with harpies.
Rend’s deck depend highly on the PvP map of the season and the modifiers present in the season. In weeks where there are Rocker Towers dealing high AoE damage, slow minis like Rend and drake will have a hard time reaching the towers to kill it, necessitating some fast or siege mini to close the gap.
On maps where mines are spread out and hard to defend, Dark Iron Drawf is a good mini to use to fight for those resources.
The slot with Prowler can be replaced by many minis depending on what you need to tackle the current map. It could be a spell like deep breath which can help to chip away the enemy’s base, a siege mini like gargyole or meat wagon to help siege the base, or a tankier mini like Fire Elemental to add some tanky frontline to your team.
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