Tickatus

Tickatus is a legendary warlock minion card, from the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire set.

Strategy
Tickatus is a bit of a double-edged sword. 8/8 for 6 mana is a fantastic bargain, but suffers from a terrible downside. You risk burning away crucial key cards from your deck by playing Tickatus uncorrupted. As such, it's best to only consider playing him immediately only if the enemy is considerably weakened. Tickatus's non-corrupted form can also be used to achieve the conditions of Neeru Fireblade or Mecha'thun more quickly.

Once Corrupted, Tickatus can be used as a counter card to combo decks, attempting to burn away key combo pieces in large numbers. He's also an almost automatic win in control matchups, where he brings the opponent closer to Fatigue and very likely burns his key value/removal cards that they need in order to deal with a control warlock value/boards. In Wild, Tickatus can also be used with Brann Bronzebeard to burn up to 10 opponent cards, which is incredibly destructive against control/combo decks. Tickatus is generally too slow and unimpactful against an aggro deck, but can still be played as a large threat once the board has stabilized. Keep in mind that, with Warlock's consistent card draw, Tickatus will generally put both players on similar deck size (although with the opponent losing value on their burnt cards).

Tickatus is fairly expensive, and will require a heavy deck to consistently Corrupt. The easiest ways to Corrupt Tickatus are cards like Soulciologist Malicia, Twisting Nether, or even an uncorrupted Strongman in a pinch.

Tickatus can also be duplicated by Felosophy or Expired Merchant, or gaining another copy from Y'Shaarj, the Defiler. This gives Tickatus the potential to burn a huge number of cards from the opponent's deck.

Lore
Tickatus is unique to Hearthstone. He appears to be an Abyssal, obsessed with Darkmoon Faire tickets; hence the name Tickatus.


 * ''s are demonic constructs similar to infernals, but made from rougher, more jagged material. Their flames can be either red, green or even blue. The ritual to summon an abyssal is complicated and often fails. When a failure occurs, a small piece of the demon typically remains behind, seething with a combination of latent demonic rage and despair at its own dysfunction. Ancient battlegrounds are littered with such stones.


 * ''Their white-hot cores can be useful as a compressed fuel source.

Trivia

 * Tickatus has proven to be a very contentious topic among the Hearthstone fanbase, seeming too slow to be used at the top competitive levels of play, but being seen as very unfun to play against in the more casual levels. While developers such as Iksar/Dean Ayala do not view Tickatus as a problem and has repeatedly defended the card on Twitter as not mattering unless the game goes to fatigue, the ability to essentially get rid of the opponent's ability to play the game after using Tickatus in combination with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler is seen as a serious problem in the game's lower tiers. Iksar's claims that Tickatus would not be nerfed unless it becomes a problem at the higher tiers have also caused controversy.

Patch changes

 * Added.