The Water Hunter: Murloc Midrange Anti-Jade Hunter
- Last updated Mar 2, 2017 (Aggro Downfall)
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Wild
- 18 Minions
- 10 Spells
- 2 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Midrange Hunter
- Crafting Cost: 9900
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 3/1/2017 (Aggro Downfall)
- magikbus
- Registered User
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- 2
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- 26
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
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Total Deck Rating
92
Handbuffs suck, Scavenging Hyena is garbage. Murlocs are AWESOME.
Deck Overview
With the recent nerfs to Spirit Claws and Small-Time Buccaneer, we see a shift in the meta that may allow some hunter to sneak in!
It's clear that Hunter's handbuff mechanic simply doesn't work, so this deck aims to ignore Gadgetzan hunter class cards entirely and move towards a Karazhan-era midrange list with the addition of the Finja package.
Matchups
Favored against:
- Jade Druid
- RenoLock
- RenoPriest
- Control Warrior
- Aggro Shaman
Unfavored against:
- Midrange Jade Shaman
- Pirate Warrior
- RenoMage
- Miracle Rogue
- Dragon Priest
Notable Card Choices
Finja, the Flying Star
This card is the ultimate midrange build-around. You sacrifice tempo on turn 5 (or 4 with coin) for a massive swing the following turn. Remember that Finja can survive if he pulls a warleader that buffs his health. Obviously, including Finja means that we need Bluegills and Warleader. We also include The Curator for card draw and consistency.
Barnes
Excellent card that synergizes with every minion in the deck: There are no bad pulls with Barnes. Every minion has card text! This is why cards like Alleycat and King's Elekk did not make the cut.
Ragnaros the Firelord
Best 8-drop in Hearthstone. Strongly punishes Jade decks, usually bigger than your opponents jades on turn 8, so it will often kill a minion and then score a double trade. Bonus auto-win if pulled by Barnes.
Knife Juggler
I nearly cut this card but I decided it is here to stay. The card is super useful and synergizes strongly with Finja's summon effect. It also works great with Barnes. Either play it before Barnes on turn 6 to trigger two knife throws, or if Barnes pulls Knife Juggler it will throw one knife! Worst case scenario, your opponent will often throw resources to kill this minion at all costs, sometimes eating a spell that otherwise would kill a murloc.
Call of the Wild
Honestly, this card kind of sucks now. I'm seriously considering dropping this card for Sylvannas. I do like the effect of populating the board though, especially versus RenoDecks that use their limited AoE on the Finja board. Unfortunately, I've also lost a lot of games vs. Priest when their Thoughtsteal/Drakonid Operative steals this card.
This card, besides being an insane Barnes target, helps a lot vs. control matchups -- it replaces Call of the Wild which is just too slow. Sylvanas can also be used in conjunction with Kill Command for a ghetto mind control effect.
Mulligans
Versus Control/Jade
- Finja, The Flying Star
- Barnes
- Fiery Bat
- Animal Companion
- Quick Shot
Versus Aggro/Zoo
- Fiery Bat
- Unleash the Hounds
- Quick Shot
- Eaglehorn Bow
- Animal Companion
The Combo
Avoid playing murlocs if possible if you plan to Finja on turn 5. Once Finja is ready to attack, you can drop a Murloc Warleader from hand to buff his attack and get a surprise trade, or use support cards like Hunter's Mark, Quick Shot, Eaglehorn Bow, Unleash the Hounds, Kill Command, Bluegill Warrior to dish out some surprise damage to secure the trade. Then you'll need to decide whether to go face or trade.
Since we are playing hunter, it's best to push face most of the time, if you wanted to control the board more you should play the Finja rogue variant as it does tempo-based control better than hunter. Use your hero power and push for a quick finish!
An aggro deck with an overall positive win rate against Control but an overall bad win rate against Midrange? The counterplay triangle really has fallen to pieces by now...
Yes the deck gets -completely- annihilated by pirate warrior. Unfortunately, it seems pirates are here to stay...
Played this deck for about 12 games, went 4-8. Shitty deck.
Lol, so I basically say what Arcengal says below, but I save you the time of reading a bunch of words, and I get down voted? This deck is a joke. More time went into picking out the merlon image than in creating the deck. Feel free to waste your time, or maybe do something productive and find another deck.
You probably got downvoted because your comment wasn't constructive nor informative. Yes, of course the deck is shitty, it's hunter and they are in bad spot. The deck was made with the idea that Jade druid would become very popular with the decline of the highly aggressive pirate warriors and shamans. sadly, shaman still reigns supreme and this deck can't compete with their power level.
This deck is fun, when it works it feels good and when you lose to S Tier bullshit you don't have to be mad because you're playing a different, niche deck that more times that not will catch an opponent off guard. That was the sentiment behind the deck not a quick ladder climb.
To improve the curve. There are already so many three drops I think it actually helps to go with infested wolf. The extra attack can really come in handy and it works better with Barnes.
Need dust for Finja; I put in a Leeroy for now. Great deck!!
Take out all murlocs since Finja is only reason they work, Finja is super good would craft ASAP and hes good in other decks too
So, discounting new cards that come in with the new expansion, what changes will you make as cards rotate out?
Impossible to say until we see the new cards. The deck exploits OP cards like Ragnaros and Sylvanas, so it will probably need some high value murloc synergy cards or some sort of insane new hunter card to fill the void.
So, I was looking for a Hunter list that played the Finja package after seeing it used to great effect in Aggro Warrior and Rogue shells. I just played 21 games with this deck, played against a variety of archetypes and classes, primarily Jade Druid, Pirate Warrior, Jade Shaman, Reno Priest. My last matchup was against Discard Zoo, so there is definitely more variety now that people don't fall below rank 15 if they keep losing.
Thankfully, that includes me. My final score was 6 wins, 15 losses (29% winrate). Every game was frustrating for the core reason that the deck isn't good enough: the individual cards are all perfectly fine but as a complete deck it's far too fair to compete in the current metagame, which is comprised of the following:
- Reno decks (Your deck wants to be the aggro deck in all Reno matchups but can't be because you can't consistently play stuff in the first few turns of the game and you have one card draw option, technically two if you include the Azure Drake. Scar used to be enough to carry you in control matchups and if you untap with it you generally do well, but the issue is that you don't most of the time. On the occasional chance that you get something going board wise, you generally had to give up card advantage to do so and you just lose to Reno in that case, because it buys your opponent so much time. Games where you curve out better than your Reno opponent typically meet AOE and rebuilding doesn't happen quickly enough)
- Jade Golem decks (You. cannot. compete. with. decks. that. get. free. creatures. with. all. their. cards. I appreciate that that was obnoxious to read but there's straight up no way you can do that with this deck, because you're not generating anywhere near the same value. Yes, you have Ragnaros, but every game I played Ragnaros I lost because he either just got answered immediately or decided he had a different plan from me. Maybe you're luckier with him. The caution that the deck has a bad Jade Shaman matchup is 100% true and there's no reason to play something that consistently loses to the Best Deck in the metagame following the recent nerfs.)
Pirate Warrior (Did you draw Unleash the Hounds? No? You're dead. I had a game where I killed literally everything the Pirate Warrior played and still lost because his stuff all had charge and/or was weapon damage. Lack of taunts/healing/fast action options make you the underdog and if you're going second, you're in single digit percentages to win).
Although Standard is rotating soon and at least one of these issues goes away, those are the cornerstones of the current metagame and this deck doesn't beat them. In fairness, Finja was great fun and the games I won, I won because of Finja, but based on the evidence it just tells me that Finja is good, the deck isn't and he's probably better in the Warrior/Rogue shells I saw before.
I wouldn't recommend playing this deck on ladder. If you're looking to play Hunter, play in Wild. If you're looking for Finja action, look for a Rogue shell instead.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment and trying out the deck!
I agree there seems to be some issues with consistency and I'm experimenting with some changes to the deck right now. Hunter is in a bad spot and there's no doubt shaman just does what hunter does, better.
That said, one of the changes I've made is eliminating Call of the WIld in favor of Sylvannas. I'm also considering dropping 1 infested wolf for N'Zoth (But I'm holding off on that, for now.)
If you want to climb, Shaman is still the king, but I did have a much better winrate than you: 22-14 which is 61%. Many of these games were close and came down to a single draw of direct damage: I got lucky. Keep in mind since the season reset I'm only playing from rank 19 to 12. Results may vary.
The deck is a cool idea but this design just plays a little to slow from being to heavy at the top. It's even more surprising it's such a top heavy deck and no Elekk is being played. You are bound to get more value from that as opposed to the juggler. Also surprised there's no Curator since it's a perfect fit to this type of build and gives you late game draw. Either way you need more early drops to slow down the aggro decks and get you to the late game where you should be fine.
There is a Curator, and I left out Elekk because of Barnes, and also I've gotten some amazing results from the Knife Juggler. But thanks for your comment! I agree it struggles vs powerful aggressive starts, especially from shaman.
hmm..missed that Curator. I see it's in there. my bad. :)
Yo I like the deck a lot! Make a more in-depth guide please!!!
That's a hard one, Ragnaros is what makes the deck so strong against Jade Druid. You should consider crafting him, you'll get a full refund for him in April and you get to keep the card. If you really had to you could swap with sylvannas.
The Chance for hunters!
yo. Me gusta. Nice deck :)