Zul'jin


 * ''For the boss of the same name, see Zul'jin (boss).

Zul'jin is a legendary hunter hero card, from the Rastakhan's Rumble set.

Strategy
Zul'jin is a hero card where all the power is placed on its Battlecry. Its power rivals that of Yogg-Saron, but much less chaotic. Since it only plays spells that you have played - not to mention it's impossible to have the Battlecry prematurely end - you have much more control over the outcome. Zul'jin is a natural fit for Spell Hunter decks, effectively almost doubling the value of your deck. Even in other decks, it's a powerful comeback card for filling your board with minions from Unleash the Beast or Animal Companion and reloading your hand with more cards from Secret Plan or Hunter's Pack, as well as replaying every Secret that's been activated. Removal spells are a bit less reliable with Zul'jin, since most of them can target friendly characters. To optimize Zul'jin's effect, your deck should have a balance of Secrets, minion and card generation, and removal. For example, you wouldn't want a board full of 1/1 Hounds from Unleash the Hounds to block two Animal Companions or risk Explosive Shot and Kill Command damaging yourself.

As quests are counted as spells, Zul'jin is also one of a very small set of cards which can guarantee a copy of your quest; this ability is only shared with Hex Lord Malacrass as of Rastakhan's Rumble.

Another downside of Zul'jin's Battlecry is that when it's attempting to play a Secret that you already have a copy of, it'll reveal it to your opponent, helping your opponent to play around it if it is unknown to your opponent.

While his Hero Power, Berserker Throw, isn't too flashy, it's nevertheless a straight upgrade from Steady Shot since it can also target minions. That being said, if you plan on also running Deathstalker Rexxar, play Zul'jin first whenever possible.

Emotes
Each hero has their own selection of audio and written emotes that are produced in response to specific events. For more information, see Emote.

Lore

 * '' (also spelled Zuljin) was the Warlord of the s and chieftain of the  since before the . Zul'jin was a fierce enemy of the, with whom he shared many years of conflict. Zul'jin and the Amani tribe were allied with the orcish  for the duration of the Second War, but Zul'jin himself was captured near its end by , in whose custody he lost an eye and an arm, which he never regenerated. Upon gaining his freedom, he went into hiding to rebuild his army and plan an attack on the remnants of the high elves, now known as blood elves, only to find them allied with the . He was killed by ian adventurers who raided  during the.


 * ''Zul'jin - styled as "Warlord Zul'jin" - used to be found as the of  in, the capital of the Amani tribe.

In Hearthstone lore, Zul'jin serves as the champion of Halazzi's Lynxes, the ferocious hunter team in Rastakhan's Rumble.
 * Warlord Zul’jin is reckless, bitter, and has a chip on his shoulder that’s even bigger than his blade. He is more than willing to unleash the primal power of Halazzi the Lynx loa upon his competitors, but he’s got a special knack for the mystical side of the hunt.


 * Rikkar sympathized with Zul’jin. They had a surprising amount in common: they were both passionate, indomitable, and hungry for victory that always seemed just out of reach. Zul’jin never gave up fighting for the Amani empire, no matter how bad the odds. Or losing major pieces of his anatomy. If Zul’jin could keep fighting with one eye and one arm, how could Rikkar give up now, with two eyes and two whole arms?

Trivia

 * During development, one early version of Zul'jin was a 5-mana hero card with the Battlecry effect of equipping a weapon from the player's deck, intended to represent Zul'jin being a berserker. His Hero Power allowed him to deal 1 damage to any character, but the damage dealt would permanently increase by 1 whenever the player's hero took damage. According to Peter Whalen, this version of Zul'jin was partially intended to counter Odd Paladin decks but ended up being fairly extreme and never made it to the final design stage of the card design process. The team tried a couple of different versions of this Hero Power, such as making it so that damage taken only buffed the next Hero Power usage rather than all future ones or making it so that the Hero Power would simply get stronger each time the player used it. However, every iteration had the issue of creating a feeling that, as soon as a player played Zul'jin, the rest of the game would revolve around whether or not they could get it up to enough damage to kill their opponent, which made for fairly unfun gameplay. Thus, the team pivoted to a completely different version of the card that placed most of its power in the Battlecry instead. At the time, one of the other cards in the set was a 10-mana Legendary minion with the Battlecry "Cast all spells you've played this game". One of the problems with the card was that — being a minion — it couldn't be used in a Spell Hunter deck, but when the Battlecry effect was moved to Zul'jin it "just worked". To counteract the pretty extreme Battlecry, Zul'jin's Hero Power was designed to be fairly mundane and essentially just a tweaked version of Steady Shot.
 * The final version of Zul'jin was specifically designed to work well with Spell Hunter decks, since Rastakhan's Rumble is the expansion in which Kobolds & Catacombs and most of the Spell Hunter core cards have their "last hurrah" before rotating to Wild format and the team wanted the set's hunter hero card to make sense in that context.
 * Zul'jin's flavor text is a reference to a scene in the 2004 sports comedy film Dodgeball, where coach Patches O'Houlihan tells his team, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball," before proceeding to violently throw wrenches at them.

Patch changes

 * Added.