What is Starship in Hearthstone?

Hearthstone has many card effects that are common enough that they get their own keyword - a word or two that immediately tells you how the card works. Let's take a look at the Starship keyword.

Starship is a mechanic from The Great Dark Beyond which essentially acts as multiple parts (or "Pieces" if you will) of the same minion combined into one, inheriting the combined stats and effects of all of the dead Starship Pieces. While building a Starship, an icon will show up on the battlefield letting you know you have this option. You can pay 5 mana at any time to launch your Starship.

Any class can build a Starship, but only Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, Rogue, and Warlock have their own cards dedicated to building Starships.

Keyword that Work Great with Starship

The bread and butter mechanic for Starship are the Starship Pieces. When Starship Pieces die, their stats and effects go into your Starship. You unavoidably need to have Starship Pieces in your deck when you want to build a Starship.

Starship Piece is naturally a slow keyword that wants you to bide your time until you launch your Starship. As such, anything to help you survive in the game enough to get your Starship active will be great. Have some Taunts and healing in your deck if possible.

Playing Against Starship in Hearthstone

While Starship Piece can be used to make really fun and giant minions, it does have a few curious downsides. Namely the fact that while building a Starship, your opponent will see it coming because it will naturally take many turns to build it and they will see the icon on the board which launches the ship. Your opponent will feel inclined to hold onto some removal options to get rid of your Starship as soon as it hits the board, so don't be surprised if it only lives for one turn. Even without direct removal, your opponent might keep track of what pieces you've played to remember its stats and what it does.

Additionally, Starships are very slow to build since they cost 5 mana to launch and require players to have put several pieces in them before they become worth it. As such, against fast decks, it's not unreasonable in the slightest for them to try to kill you before you have a chance to play your Starship.

If Starships are ever popular in the meta, your opponent can also tech in a Star Vulpera to destroy it more efficiently than a typical removal spell.

Example Starship Hearthstone Cards

Crystal Welder is a very basic Starship card. While you're building a Starship, it becomes a 2 mana 4/5 with Taunt. There are no 1-Cost Starship Pieces, but it is still possible to trigger this on curve by Coining out a 2-Cost piece on turn 1 and then playing Crystal Welder on turn 2.

Exarch Othaar is a Druid Legendary that helps you out on building a Starship by giving you some cheap and powerful Arcane spells. As both of Druid's Starship Pieces have synergy with casting spells, this naturally helps those cards out and makes your Starship better when launched.

Star Vulpera is a tech card made specifically to counter the Starship mechanic as it can destroy a Starship or a piece of one for only about 1 mana worth of value and comes with a 4/5 body.

The Exodar is a bigger Starship payoff. When you play it, it launches your Starship (effectively saving you 5 mana) and comes with a Protocol to choose from which range from gaining twice as much Armor as its Health, dealing randomly-split damage equal to its Attack, or getting 1-Cost copies of your Starship Pieces.