N'Zoth Midrange Hunter
- Last updated Dec 20, 2016 (Gadgetzan)
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Wild
- 21 Minions
- 9 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: N'Zoth Hunter
- Crafting Cost: 7240
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/29/2016 (Old Gods)
- Burr0
- Registered User
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- 5
- 14
- 39
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
N/A
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Total Deck Rating
74
[UPDATE]
This is the new updated version of a deck i got legend with few months ago. That's why it has that many upvotes and the guide is outdated. I was trying to update the deck with the new cards but in the current meta there is no space for Midrange Hunter that's why i gave up on the deck. However I'm ready to update the deck/guide as soon as the deck fits the meta better.
Hey Guys,
i built this deck last season and started from rank 6. I didn‘t lose until rank 3 and with a bit of a struggle got legend within a total of 2 days (I got legend only once besides this time where I used a netdeck). I won 51 and lost 25 games which means i had a winrate of 67%.
Introduction:
I am known as Burr0 and i have been playing Hearthstone for over two years now. This is my first Deck Built which I upload on Hearthpwn and try to explain. I decided to upload it first since i built it all myself and really suddenly got lot of success with it. After I realized positive feedback I eventually decided to explain a bit of my strategy, trying to help those who actually try the deck. I am also considering to start streaming or upload videos at YouTube for some gameplay examples.
Why did I build the deck and why is it so strong?
When I first saw N’Zoth, I knew he would be good in Hunter but I thought he could only be viable in Wild. I was mistaken. So when Whispers oft he Old Gods released I for sure wanted to play Midrange-Hunter because I really liked Infested Wolf and Call of the Wild. So I added N’Zoth and some value Deathrattle cards. Midrange Decks have always been my favorite ones since they somehow function as Hybrid decks with both strong early- and late-game. And that’s exactly this deck’s strength: If you face for Example Aggro-Shaman, you can challenge them with early value Minions like Fiery Bat, Huge Toad or King’s Elekk or even with early removal like Quickshot. On the other Hand if you face any Type of Control/Lategame deck you can just race them in the early-game and finish them with value-late-game. That’s at least my opinion but you should easily expierence this because it’s the main-characteristic of Midrange-Decks in general and especially in this deck.
Mulligan:
I can’t really differentiate between each class thus the Mulligan is pretty general for this deck:
Always keep : Fiery Bat, Huge Toad, King's Elekk, Quick Shot;
those are your turn one and two Minions and thus they can be game-deciding. Fiery Bat can always trade with one and two health Minions like Knife Juggler and with a 50% chance it can kill three health Minions like Tunnel Trogg. Oftentimes it’s difficult if you should take the risk. It’s almost the same witch Huge Toad. It can perfectly trade with Tunnel Trogg If you coin it out and with a 50% chance do a value trade with Totem Golem or Twilight Elder. King’s Elekk is similar to Huge Toad with obvious difefrences. It’s often not easy to decide between Huge Toad and King’s Elekk on turn one (with coin) or turn two. The thing is: If your Oponent plays Warlock, Shaman, Paladin or Hunter they will probably play several Minions and you should play Huge Toad. Also If you know they play C’thun- decks you should play Huge Toad because of Twilight Elder and C’thun’s Chosen. Else If you face Control Decks like Priest or Warrior you wanna play the Elekk for more card-options. King’s Elekk should for sure be played if you don’t have a 4-drop since the chances of getting a 4-drop are most likely and turn 4 is very important for you. Another strategy I often used is to play King’s Elekk to see what deck your oponent is playing, when you’re facing for example Warrior or Warlock you want to know if cards like Dreadscale are important in your matchup. Quick Shot is a key card in this deck. You should keep at least one in hand in every matchup. In the current Meta with Shamans and Warlocks there will be early value drops like Tunnel Trogg or Knife Juggler and you should always remove them immediately. Versus Shaman, Warlock and Hunter you should keep two Quick Shots, in the other matchups one is enough. When facing Tunnel Trogg it’s always worth coining out a Quick Shot if you have a 2-drop, or if you go first and have both 2-drop and Quick Shot you should remove the Trogg first.
Almost always keep : Animal Companion, Infested Wolf, Dreadscale, Powershot, Unleash the Hounds;
Animal Companion is very important in this deck because it’s your only turn 3 Tempo play and it is very diverse with 3 possible Companions. As a Tempo play you probably want Misha, as removal you need Huffer especially against 3/4s and 4/4s or versus 1/3s. Leokk on turn 3 is only useful when you have a 1 or 2 drop on board already. Infested Wolf is a very good turn 4 play especially versus Feral Spirit. Wether you keep it or not is dependent on the other cards you get offered. If you have any 2-drop you should keep it but if you only have expensive cards you mulligan it for early cards. Dreadscale, Unleash the Hounds and Powershot are efficient, early board clears so you should for sure keep them against Warlock since it could be Zoo. You should also keep them versus Hunter, Paladin and Shaman but again if you don’t have any 1- or 2-drops you should rather mulligan them.
Sometimes keep : Hunter's Mark, Kill Command, Infested Tauren, Houndmaster;
Keep Infested Tauren and Houndmaster only if you have at least 2x 1- or 2-drops as valuable/Tempo Midgame plays. Else they can be very useless in your starting hand. In the early game Hunter’s Mark and Kill Command are (compared to Quick Shot) rather insuffecient removals but if you face strong Aggro decks like Shaman or Warlock you can keep them but only in combination with any cheap Beasts (Kill Command) or Dreadscale, Unleash the Hounds, Powershot (Hunter’s Mark).
You should never keep any card that costs 5 or more. Even if you face Control decks in which you for sure need Savannah Highmane, Call oft he Wild and N’zoth. But you cannot afford to miss on your early game and therefore you should always Mulligan for at least one 2- and one 4-drop. Those are your important plays early game.
Strategy / Playstyle:
As mentioned the main-characteristic of this deck is the mix of Tempo and Control. You will always prefer to play a Control style but if you’re opponent plays a slow deck you can pressure them in Early- and Midgame and when advanced to late-game you make your value plays. It always depends on your matchup.
Early game:
The early game is obviously dependent on your mulligan. In any matchup you should start with Fiery Bat, King’s Elekk or/and Huge Toad. When necessary use Quick Shot as early removal. On turn 3 there is only one Tempo play with Animal Companion but a 2-drop such as Huge Toad is always still a value play considering it’s a very competitive body. A very good turn 3 play is also when you played a Beast on turn 1 or 2 and your opponent played a 4 or 5 health Minion such as Darkshire Councilman or Twilight Elder to Kill Command those so you can slow your opponent down before you play your value 4-drop.
Mid game:
As mentioned turn 4 (or turn 3 with coin) is very important since you have 6x potential 4-drops and even a 2-drop with hero power is pretty strong. Measuring the right play on turn 4 is not always easy and therefore situational. Hound Master is obviously the most value play when you have a beast on board but you will barely ever have one so you should hold on with Hound Master for turn 5 or 6. On an empty board you wanna play Infested Wolf because it’s a really sticky body and most of the time trades at least 2 Minions. Especially when you’re playing against Shaman it can trade with basically every of their early Minions. Infested Tauren Is only good when you’re under pressure as an Anti-Aggro play. When you’re facing Zoo it can have good value versus cards like Knife Juggler and Dark Peddler. Your turn 5 however can be your weakest one. One oft he best plays is Animal Companion with Hero Power or a 2-drop. Stampeding Kodo is an obvious play when there’s a 2 or less attack Minion but even without it’s still very valuable as a 5 health Beast into potential turn 6 Houndmaster. Most of the time however you will end up playing a 4-drop on turn 5 which is a good play when you’re ahead or even but when you’re facing Aggro this is probably the point when you lose and once again your early game is game-deciding. Your turn 6, again, is very strong and obvious with Savannah Highmane or Sylvanas or even a 4-drop plus Hero Power. Whether you play Sylvanas or Highmane depends on your oponent’s board so if he has a rather strong board you’re playing Sylvanas as an indirect boardclear. Worth mentioning that against Rogues you sometimes should consider a 4-drop over a 6-drop on turn 6 because when they play Sap you’re pretty much wasting a turn.
Late game:
The late game is extraordinary in this deck and with N’Zoth and Call of the Wild the most fun part in my opinion. With turn 7 being a weak turn, your turn 8 should be most of the time the turning point. Call oft he Wild is just so good and i could talk very much about it but i guess i don’t have to explain why it is so good. But the strategy is that when your planning to play it on turn 8 you should have some Minions on the board already so with the Leokk buff you can either Push for lethal or you do a value trade. A very important strategy is also that when you have the coin you can hold it for a turn 7 play. This is especially good when you have two copies of Call of the Wild in hand so you can even kill your opponent on turn 8. Turn 8 can also be very good when you combine 2x 4-drops for example Infested Wolf with Hound Master or of course also Ragnaros which can sometimes even be better than Call oft he Wild. The only value turn that’s left with this deck is the popular turn ten (or turn 9 when you held the coin ‘til then) with our favorite Old God N’Zoth. The only advice I can give is to play it as soon as you can and not to try to get the full value. When you play N’Zoth on average 3-4 Minions died which is already enough to threaten lethal next turn even if those Minions are only 2/3 Attack Minons. The strength of N’Zoth Hunter is that most of the Deathrattle Minions summon other Minions and therefore your board can’t get fully cleared with Equality, Brawl or Twisting Nether so you can still have lethal with Call oft he Wild next turn. I am aware that this deck does not run card draw except for King’s Elekk but especially those high mana / high value late game cards should win the late game single handed over 1-4 turns. And even if you can only push your opponent to low health you can finish your opponent with your Hero Power or fish for Quick Shot and Kill Command.
Replacements:
I personally don’t like the concept of replacing cards your missing with cards that are most similar. Also this version is probably not the best one already so i keep testing other cards and i would love your suggestions and experiences so please give them to me :p. I can say that the weakest cards in this deck are Houndmaster, Hunter's Mark, Powershot and Stampeding Kodo so you can replace those if you wanna try other cards such as Princess Huhuran. So if you’re missing a lot of the cards you can decide what gameplan you have.
On the one hand you can go for more deathrattle value and cards such as Harvest Golem, Loot Hoarder, Forlorn Stalker, Polluted Hoarder, Abomination, Princess Huhuran, Cairne Bloodhoof or Chillmaw.
On the other hand you can go for the beast value and try cards like Scavenging Hyena, Carrion Grub, Stablemaster, Tundra Rhino, Giant Sand Worm, Tomb Spider or Stranglethorn Tiger.
Andi f you’re annoyed of Aggro/Tempo decks you can try control cards like Eaglehorn Bow, Deadly Shot, Multi-Shot, Mind Control Tech or Psych-o-Tron.
The easiest replacements are to add a second copy of the single cards like Savannah Highmane or Stampeding Kodo. If you’re missing only few cards i think Carrion Grub, Stranglethorn Tiger, Ram Wrangler, Princess Huhuran and Savannah Highmane are the best replacements overall.
Proof: http://imgur.com/a/xgE4Q
Burr0
Loving it,, up to 14 no problem. Expecting top 10 ladder easily. I have never lost to a control warrior yet. 1 minion at a time.
I agree that Harrison is really good right now, so I added it. However Barnes is a key card in this deck so I don't feel like replacing him. Thx for the feedback tho :)
You can see the latest changes beneath the deck: i removed 1x Deadly Shot , 1x Infested Tauren , 1x Stampeding Kodo , 1x Call of the Wild to add 1x Freezing Trap , 2x Eaglehorn Bow and 1x Harrison Jones .
Hi Burr0,
this deck looks very appealing to me.
What do you think of Forlorn Stalker? In general and for this kind of deck?
Keep it up!
I've tried the card and I don't think it's good enough right now. On the one hand a 4/2 can't really compete on board on turn 3 while the upside of buffing like 2 cards in your hand doesn't really help. Dreadscale for example will often also end up as a Tempo 4/2 but it is atleast a Beast and can in some situations be very good. The card looks like it would fit in a Deathrattle-deck but it's effect and body is just too weak. You can use it however as a replacement for some cards like Dreadscale.
Thanks for the fast reply. I've been testing it a little and what you're saying is basically correct. On the other hand a buffed fiery bat or a buffed infested tauren have insane value.
The other thing i have come across is the lack of card draw. I've had a couple of games against control warrior where this deck is supposed to shine but i couldnt keep up the pressure or at least the initiative because the elekks dont draw anything.
I know Midrange hunters dont really have alot of draw abilities since starving buzzard got nerfed all those months back. For now i included Harrison since there are so many weapon classes around and Thalnos.
The problem with card draw is common for any Hunter deck, Hunter just doesn't have simple draw mechanics like Nourish or Life Tap. However when playing the Control Matchups you mostly play high value cards each turn and so you play often only one card a turn. When arrived in the late game (like turn 10) you should have your deck down to about 15 cards. That means that out of the 15 cards you already had, half of your late game cards are included. In this version you run 6 late game cards which is alot for Midrange Hunter and so mathmatically you should already have 3 late game cards when in late game. Especially when you play those cards followed by another (like Call of the Wild into Call of the Wild, or Sylvanas/Savannah into N'Zoth) you should be able to take out Control Warrior since he will run out of Brawls, Executes, etc. You only lose vs Control when your unlucky on your late game draws or already lost the early game.
Also I like the Thalnos choice, out of the card draw Deathrattles it fits this deck best as a 2 drop that can improve your Quick Shot and Kill Command trades in the early game.
Is this deck still valid at all?
This deck is basically like Midrange Hunter and therefore recently rather uncommon. But I'd say especially because this deck shines versus Zoo it's still decent. I personally still play it in many tournaments successfully. However on ladder it's better on higher ranks (Rank 5 and above) since you target Control Decks. You should give it a try ;)
I'm a bit confused since it seems if you bottom deck Dreadscale against zoo or aggro shield pally it's almost an automatic loss. 0% chance to beat rogue because highmane just gets chain sapped on turn 6 and 7 and you are dead on turn 8. Very low chance to ever beat dragon priest. 50/50 vs Warriors at best. What is this supposed to actually beat? Face Shamans? Ok that's 40% of all players but another 40% are all Warriors and you go 50/50 with them and you lose to everyone else. Zero card draw and zero ooze/harrison seems like a bit of a fail to me?
I disagree about the Warrior 50/50. Versus any Tempo/Dragon Warrior it may be 50/50 but against any type of Control Warrior you are insanely favoured, it's like 70-80%. Same goes with Control Paladin. It's true that Priest and Rogue are the weaknesses of this deck but based on the amount of Rogues and Priests overall you will still most of the time be favoured. Also Rogue isn't the most unfavoured Matchup since you can stillout-tempo them if you get atleast 2 1/2-drops so you don't have to rely on your high mana cards (I run only 1 Highmane for a reason). You should also understand the main playstyle of Hunters which is to use extreme high value cards you curve into so you dont need card draw when you play about one card a turn. Hunter is especially good in the current Meta because you run alot of burst which is super powerful when there are hardly any good healing cards (taunt does not count). You can always change your gameplan when your in an unfavoured matchup and from the point you're in lethal-range use your Hero Power, Burn- Spells and high Attack Minions to push for lethal.
I actually had a mad losing streak to face shamans since this deck has no weapons or ooze there's nothing you can do to trade efficiently with AIDS combos like squire+flametongue getting 2 for 1 values and then you play your highmane he gets hexed games over. I modified this to include 2 deadly shots instead of the power shot (TOTALLY useless card) and 1 of the UTH cards, and a freezing trap instead of the kodo. Without those you automatically lose the game if they coin out a flamewreathed faceless and you take face from it 4 turns in a row. I want to see a video of this deck ever actually beating someone without severe downs above rank 15 lol.
Thx man :), I also feel like this deck is better than the common Midrange list due to its strong late-game. I wish more people would appreciate that..
Hi , I love this deck so much. Thanks for posting it
do you wanna battle sometime? My battletag is CrushOrange#1200
Great News, I'm pleased to hear that :) Gonna add you
could you try again i think my frienlist was max now it has room
I was wondering if this wurf making.. I am a control priest and warrior main, and i am getting destroyed by aggro, but have a near perfect winrate against control. i was wondering how this deck does against aggro and vs control
Against control decks this deck is mostly favored since it's a value Midrange-deck. I'm not sure about Aggro, there is like Zoo in which you are favored and Shaman which is your hardest Matchup. Aggro (Tempo/Pirate) Warrior, Aggro Paladin and Aggro (Beast) Druid are rather rare Matchups but i guess it's like 50/50 because it really depends on your starting hand. But overall you should get favored matchups in the current meta, I climbed alot with this deck. And based on the fun you have it's definitely worth crafting ;)
awesome man, thank you so much. i will definitely make the deck now
You're welcome, thx for the feedback :)