Frodan’s Hunter Deck Tech & Guide

Apr 5, 2014

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[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QCbMhDGnBw]

Introduction

Hey guys, this is Frodan with a breakdown of my current favorite deck to play on the Hearthstone ladder! I used this as my main deck to climb the ladder where I managed to hit legend last season

Recently, with all the rush Hunter craze, I wanted to explore the class myself. The rest of my classes were in the mid 40s to 50s in levels, but my Hunter sat at a pitiful Level 22 just a month ago. I tried playing with the current popular hyper aggro version, but I just didn’t find the style to suit me.

Why I don’t like playing Rush Hunter

I don’t enjoy the rock, paper, scissors of aggro hard-counters ladder. Sometimes you hit Warriors and Druids who have unstoppable hands. Overall, it wasn’t an enjoyable ladder experience for me. From my experience, the Mid-Range Hunter deck improves the Warrior and Druid match ups by 10-15% while still being extremely threatening to naturally easy opponents like Shaman and Rogues.

While I did find pleasure in the ability to do burst damage with Hunter, the wins weren’t that satisfying for me. Similar to the Zoolock deck, I don’t really like running out of steam so early and living off the top decks if you don’t have the answers.

What’s so different about Mid-Range Hunter?

This deck scales back the all-in feeling of Hunter when they can’t find lethal damage early and the game transitions to the later stages. It retains those threats while putting a strong emphasis on board control and good decision making.

As a mid-range Hunter, you tend fight more for the board position, but you have the flexibility to push out high damage as well. For example, players have the choice of using Eaglehorn Bow to clear minions or as a strong threat to do big damage.

What I liked most is that there still strong mid/late game options if the early game doesn’t as planned. You often can steal games from tough spots!

Part of what makes this deck powerful is the fact that it is off-meta. A small sect of the players know this deck let alone expect it. You can prey off the opponent’s insecurity of cards that you don’t carry like Kill Command and Arcane Shot. Accordingly, you might have them do the theoretical best play, but not the correct one

Playing The Deck

I got the idea from hitting a player (I forgot who…I’m sorry!) who was playing a mid-range control Hunter with cards like Deadly/Multi-Shot/Explosive Shot to protect his beasts like Stranglethorn Tiger and Savannah Highmane. He put out scary minions who can still do high damage if you pair it with the follow-up Leeroy/UTH plays. I was intriguied and experimented a bit with tweaking the deck and combining it with the strong cards running in current Hunter decks to get what I have now.

The most important aspect of this deck is playing the early game correctly. Capitalize on the fact that they expect you to be a standard Hunter! Mid-range doesn’t start as fast as normal Hunters who run cards like Leper Gnomes/Flares/Boars to get things started. Make intelligent reads about your opponents and react to what they are playing. The deck is trickier than what you might expect from the standard Hunter deck! Don’t be worried about failing a few times like I did

Your burst in the mid and late game is outrageous. I’m not even afraid of legendaries and huge taunters because you have a mix of removal with great tempo cards. Having an open/safe board on Turns 5 and 6 are crucial for dropping your meaty minions and seizing tempo away with followup cards like Freezing Trap or Deadly Shot. It’s not as hard as you might expect because you always threaten full removal on Turn 4 with Buzzard/UTH/Hunter’s Marks. Turns 9 and 10, you always have big board play opportunities with Houndmaster + 5 or 6 drop beasts. Don’t forget the sweep opportunity with Scavenging Hyenas (there’s an example scenario in the gameplay video!)

My dream scenario is:

Turn 4 - Houndmaster + King Mukla attack (7)

Turn 5 - Finishing with Hound+Mukla (11) + Leeroy (6) + Coin+Heropower (2). That’s 26 coming in two turns if he has no answers. It’s happened a few times before Dream big!

Mulligans: Vs Aggro

Eaglehorn Bow, Unleash the Hounds/Starving/Hyena Combos are huge here, Animal Companion, Exploding Trap, Knife Juggler, and Houndmaster can be a good keep especially in HvH.

Mulligans: Vs Control

Deadly Shot, Freezing Trap, Animal Companion, King Mukla, and the Eaglehorn Bow. Hunter’s Mark can be good early, but a strong late game card as well.

Core Elements

Unleash the Hounds - If you don’t know why this is an auto-include, play several games on ladder and you’ll easily see. This card has so much synergy with every other card in the deck it’s outrageous. Knife Juggler, Starving Buzzard, Hunter’s Mark, Hyena. List goes on.

Deadly Shot/Freezing Trap - These tempo/control cards are big-time mulligans vs control classes. They will play around UTH and naturally keep their minion count low. Timing and risk/reward evaluation is extremely key here. Dead Shot feels like an auto-win vs Handlock and Miracle Rogue at times with a naked Mountain Giant or stealthed Gadgetzan.

Eaglehorn Bow - Your primary way to deal with any threat early game as well as your piece to finish games. Just keeping the bow up with one charge left always threatens a potential game-ending combo. Has many flexible uses for controlling the board or damaging the opponent. Try to keep it alive as long as you can, but don’t be married to the idea when you are racing for damage. You never know if you draw into your second one!

Big Beasts (Kodo/Tiger/Savannah/Mukla) + Houndmaster - Not only are they great for damage, but their bodies are HUGE to soak up removal. By now, Hearthstone has hit a critical peak of 5 health minions because of their impossibility to remove. This is why I like having King Mukla because he’s like a turn 3 Tiger with a “drawback” that can even be used to your benefit against Handlocks/Miracle Rogues. A strong combo is Kodo + Deadly Shot to remove the Sunfury/Argus while lining up a kill on a big taunted creature like the Ancient Watcher.

Houndmaster - High value at all stages of the game. Basically, Mark of the Wild attached to a 4/3 minion. You really won’t understand his strength until you see it in action to swing games particularly in HvH. Your main answer to aggro as well as surprise trade-up damage a la Dark Iron Dwarf. I often use hound master on a small target if I sense the opponent is holding a Big Game Hunter.

Scavenging Hyena - Very similar to Blood Knight where you often use your own board to leverage the minion. Even though its vanilla 2/2 body might be unimpressive, it has Frothing Berserker/Unbound Elemental of fear. Often acts as a removal sponge too. Great tech card that I enjoy using at the moment. And like Blood Knight, oftentimes more than 1 in your deck is greedy.

Alternate cards/Budget list

Acidic Swamp Ooze - Extremely valuable in Hunter vs Hunter which is your worst match up. I wasn’t running into too many of them last season, but this really helps shore up the match up in my opinion. More often than not, with double tracking you’re bound to hit it so including it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you’re encountering lots of Hunters and Warriors. I replace the Hyena with this card.

Razorfen Hunter - Pretty underrated as a turn 3 drop vs Aggro. Don’t be so eager vs cards like Acolyte of Pain or Armorsmith. The boar also gives you beast card synergy with Buzzard/Hyena/Houndmaster.

Arcane Golem - If you don’t have Leeroy, putting in an Arcane Golem is great because of the finish potential. You need to always have an ability to threaten. Arcane + Eaglehorn + Hero Power is 9 damage on top of whatever you have on the board. There is plenty of room for nasty burst. In my budget deck, I even play 2 because you can double Arcane combo at full mana late game.

Misdirection - Another card that can be a life-saving trap. Freezing Trap is much easier to play-around than Misdirection. It can often win you tempo or even games purely due to the wrong guessing/assumptions especially if you revealed the other two traps.

Flare - If you REALLY feel like you need to deal with Hunters this is a great way to guarantee board safety, card advantage, and tempo all in one package. Also, nice to take out Freeze mages who are relying on Ice Block. Another tool depending on what you’re seeing on ladder. I personally don’t like it at the moment because I value the stealth on the Tiger.

General Matchup Rankings and Tips

Great/Solid match ups (55%+)

Mid-Range Shaman - Kodo is a god in this matchup. Always take out spellpower totems!!!!

Miracle Rogues - Deadly Shot the concealed Gadgetzan = sploosh. Use Houndmaster if you feel a Leeroy coming.

Control Mages - Polymorph doesn’t work with Starving Buzzard procs for some reason, but you can Houndmaster it!

Control Priest - Cabal Shadow Priest has very few targets in your deck.

Handlock - Deadly Shot the Turn 4 mountain giant. Use Hunter’s Mark and Ironbeak Owl to close out the game before he can recover.

Watcher Druids - Deadly Shot and Freezing Trap on Innervated Yetis feel orgasmic. They have a hard time dealing with Savannah.

Control Warrior - Baiting out early executes is good because Warriors feel like they won’t get good value generally in the match up. Another class that can’t deal easily with Savannah.

Aggro/Control Paladin - Hero Power feels useless to them in many scenarios. Knife Juggler are great against Divine Shields/Recruits. Save Ironbeak Owl for Tirion!

Could go either way (45-55%)

Tempo Rogues - Somewhat borderline on the rankings, but their quick start can give you trouble often. UTH/Buzzard are great because these Rogues tend to dig themselves into card count holes by playing many cards to grab the board.

Zoolock - Sometimes you take too much damage stabilizing the board. UTH saves you often here.

Aggro Mage - Same reason as Zoolock.

Murlock - Perfect murloc starts are just hard to stop, but it does play into UTH.

No one said it would be easy (<45%)

Aggro Hunter - Houndmaster and optimal damage-per-turn is crucial. My win% hovers barely at 50% which honestly isn’t that bad since I run into Hunter’s a fair portion amount of games. Retool your deck with the Oozes/Flares if you feel you’re running into it too many times.

Haven’t decided yet (will update)

Ramp Druid - I have a small sample of really easy games and utterly hopeless games. Can’t target what defines the matchup just yet.

Aggro Warrior - Haven’t faced them with this deck really. Probably irrelevant at this point.

Closing Thoughts

Overall this deck is pretty cheap on the dust side and not much more expensive than the regular Hunters. This rendition of Hunter has performed brilliantly for me while catering to my tendency to play mid-range playstyle.

I’ve played 54 games this season (Play Season 1 in April) and have a 66% win rate with it so far. My top 3 win rates are Warriors, Druids, and Rogues (been facing Miracle Rogue). Here is a picture of my first 29 games.