Baku the Mooneater

Baku the Mooneater is a legendary neutral minion card, from The Witchwood set. It was once in the Hall of Fame set from April 4, 2019 to March 30, 2021.

Strategy
Baku provides a very powerful bonus from the start of the game, at the cost of seriously hurting your deck building. Many staple cards cannot be used with Baku. However, it's possible to substitute cards with otherwise worse versions. For example, Gluttonous Ooze can be used instead of Acidic Swamp Ooze and Ironbeak Owl can be used instead of Spellbreaker.

One of the notable downsides of Baku the Mooneater is having to put Baku herself into your deck. As a vanilla 7/8 for 9 mana, Baku is essentially a dead draw, especially so for the more aggressive decks that many of the upgraded Hero Powers support.

Baku's strategy is wildly different for each class.
 * Demon's Bite allows you to put on high pressure each turn, dealing 2 damage for only one mana. It also pairs incredibly well with Aldrachi Warblades and Flamereaper, enhancing their effects doubly over Demon Claws. Demon Hunter has access to a few attack-based odd minions, like Battlefiend and Satyr Overseer, as well as the neutral Hench-Clan Thug. The main weakness of Demon Hunters is their lower card pool than the other classes, requiring them to use more neutral cards. They also have to give up some of their most powerful card draw like Skull of Gul'dan and Spectral Sight.
 * Dire Shapeshift is a flexible ability, letting you either effectively gain armor or chip away at enemies. It has the dedicated support, Gloom Stag, which allows for a strong Taunt backbone. It synergizes well with Gonk, the Raptor, giving you more damage to work with at any time.
 * Ballista Shot puts on a huge amount of pressure each turn, allowing Face Hunter decks to focus hard on the opponent. This is supported by odd-cost cards like Wolfrider and Animal Companion.
 * Fireblast Rank 2 allows for high value trading and applying pressure to your opponent. Black Cat is a great support card for this deck. This favours Tempo and Value decks. Additionally, many strong Elementals are odd (including Frost Lich Jaina), allowing for an Elemental backbone. Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk works perfectly with this power, since it only takes 4 hero powers to trigger his effect.
 * The Silver Hand generates multiple minions each turn, which is invaluable for Aggro Paladin. While they lose out on board-wide buffs like Level Up! and Sunkeeper Tarim and all 2-drops, they make up for this with the sheer number of Silver Hand Recruits and Divine Favor and Unidentified Maul - all of which help aggro Paladin's strategy. Several Silver Hand synergy cards are also odd-costed, such as Warhorse Trainer, Quartermaster, Muster for Battle and Steward of Darkshire.
 * Heal is a powerful value Hero Power, capable of keeping minions and yourself topped off. It works very well with Quartz Elemental, easily keeping it swinging. While Priest has access to Glitter Moth, that card is generally unimportant for what a Baku deck requires. Raza the Chained further increases the utility by allowing the substantial heal to be used free of charge, though coming with additional deck restrictions, and missing out on Reno Jackson, Kazakus and Zephrys the Great.
 * Poisoned Daggers is incredibly efficient in the early game, making their first few turns incredibly powerful. It is a strong fit Tempo Rogue, where it keeps many of its staple tempo cards like Hench-Clan Thug and Vilespine Slayer.
 * Totemic Slam give the Shaman's Hero Power more flexibility, giving a guaranteed Strength Totem or Stoneclaw Totem whenever they are needed, and with Totemic Reflection, Primal Fusion and Thunder Bluff Valiant, one can build up a veritable army of Healing Totems. However, Totemic Slam's increased power comes much more situationally than other upgraded hero powers and odd decks will lose many powerful cards such as Hex, Devolve and Totem Golem, mounting the Shaman with a harsh deck building restriction. The removal of Wrath of Air Totem also greatly hurts the utility of this effect.
 * Soul Tap is only a marginal improvement over Life Tap, especially since Warlock has access to plenty of healing. The sacrifices needed for it aren't worth the benefit.
 * Tank Up! is a strong bulking tool, especially when you can begin the extra armor immediately. Many of Warrior's best cards are odd, such as Brawl, Shield Block, and Shield Slam. You can also use Fire Plume's Heart with Baku, which works well with the large number of strong odd-cost Taunts. Warrior also has decent substitutions, such as Fiery War Axe instead of Blood Razor. Also effective in Mech decks, where it keeps its core cards like Eternium Rover, Omega Assembly, Dyn-o-matic, and Dr. Boom, Mad Genius.

Lore

 * The Witchwood's growing influence drives even the redoubtable citizens of to fearful flights of fancy. Uneasy townsfolk share bizarre stories of black cats with knowing eyes, and giant moths that peer into windows during the dead of night. Stranger still, they all seem to share the same horrid dream, night after night: a feeling of unspeakable dread as they watch huge, spectral fangs devour the moon.

Baku is unique to Hearthstone. According to Mike Donais: "Hagatha, the witch of the Witchwood awakened the trees and beasts of the woods making them stronger and angrier. Baku the Mooneater is the great worm that is basically her General." Baku has apparently devoured the, the larger of 's two moons, leaving only the.


 * No being akin to Baku exists in any our exhaustive records that describe serpents, dragonhawks, dragons, or other scaled, magical creatures. Given that this being has not been seen physically'' by anyone at all—instead observed solely via shared dream visions—our duty to investigate her nature is clear.


 * Our arcanists’ initial hypothesis is that Baku may in fact be the tormented psyche of a dragon whose physical form is trapped within the bounds of the Witchwood, but outside'' of physical reality—some kind of dream-dwelling projection of this dragon’s mind, warped and twisted by Hagatha’s own nightmares.


 * Whatever the Mooneater’s true nature, those who dream of her tend to slowly descend into a fugue state—neither waking nor dreaming—and develop the ability to manifest their will in surprising ways. In brief moments of lucidity, these subjects express a feeling of crushing, unyielding dread, and report seeing a kaleidoscopic serpent coiling and stretching across the horizon, blotting out the sky overhead.

Baku is similar in appearance to a. The closest habitat to that would contain them would be the.


 * Sea serpents are large serpents living in the seas of . The sea serpents made their first appearance in  in the Kelp'thar Forest of . They shouldn't be confused with the gigantic s that also roam the areas.

Trivia

 * Baku is a reference to, a dragon or sea serpent from Philippine mythology who is believed to cause eclipses by attempting to swallow the moon.
 * Baku's character originated from when Blizzard needed artwork of a giant snake for a different card. The artist sent back art of a large python coiled around a tree, but the outsource manager stated that they'd need a bigger snake than that. The artist, "feeling saucy", responded by sending back artwork of a snake bigger than an entire village, and since Blizzard "needed some badass art for Genn's Odd-nemesis", the artwork ended up being promoted from a generic card to a legendary in the form of Baku the Mooneater.
 * At the onset of the Year of the Dragon, Baku joined Genn Greymane, Black Cat, Glitter Moth, Gloom Stag, and Murkspark Eel as the first non-Classic cards to rotate into the Hall of Fame.

Patch changes

 * Move from the Hall of Fame to The Witchwood set.
 * Moved from The Witchwood to the Hall of Fame set.
 * ''Commentary: Baku and Genn are powerful cards that have promoted new strategies since their introduction in the metagame. Those strategies have been more prevalent than we’d intended in Standard, and we felt that they might end up overshadowing what we're going to introduce in the Year of the Dragon. In order for set rotation to breathe new life into Standard and maintain overall health of the ladder, we are rotating Baku and Genn into the Hall of Fame a year earlier than normal.


 * Added.