Quest Hunter That Works! (Elementals)
- Last updated Apr 27, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)
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Wild
- 25 Minions
- 5 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Marsh Queen Hunter
- Crafting Cost: 5260
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/24/2017 (Un'Goro Launch)
- Match1955
- Registered User
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Total Deck Rating
16
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to share this deck with whoever is interested in trying it out. After a lot of trial and error with various hunter quest builds I believe I have come up with the best Hunter quest deck that can currently be put together. This deck is only about a week old, so some fine tuning may still be needed, and I invite anyone with ideas for ways to adjust and improve the deck to give their input. I have managed wins against some of the major deck archetypes out there (Murloc Paladin, Pirate & Quest Warrior, Rogue, etc).
The deck plays like a mid-range Hunter, and typically looks to finish around turns 7-10. The method for winning is pretty typical, get in whatever face damage you can while controlling the board.
Why the deck works (what makes this Quest Hunter different?):
The main difference between this deck and all of the other Hunter quest decks I've seen/tried, is that this deck does not rely solely on completing the quest to win the game, which is one of the reasons why there is no Tundra Rhino. That's right, there is no Tundra Rhino. The deck instead relies heavily on Elemental minion synergies to build first a wide board, and then a strong board, protecting your hero's HP with taunts. The quest is merely a helpful tool to that end, as cheap 8/8 minions are a key component to getting to the finish line.
Substitutions:
As mentioned above the deck is still a work in progress. Some possible substitutions that might be worthwhile are:
Hungry Crabs: Replacing the Raptor Hatchlings with Hungry Crabs is a great choice if you're facing a lot of Paladins. Be careful not to just kill the first 1 mana Murloc you see, as a well-timed Murloc Warleader assassination can turn a board your way. Edit: This substitution was made and is currently being playtested but so far appears to be working fine. If you're not running into a lot of Murloc decks, or you don't want to spend the dust crafting the Crabs, put the Raptor Hatchlings back in. Against any decks not running Murlocs, the Raptors are the better choice.
Golakka Crawlers: I've yet to playtest putting Crawlers in the deck, but if you find yourself facing a lot of pirate warriors and quest rogues, these might be a good inclusion. In that case, I would replace the Volatile Elementals.
Mulligan Strat:
I always keep the quest. It serves a few purposes:
First, a savvy player will see you play the quest and will think you are easy pickings. You may be able to take advantage of their over confidence and may be able to goad them into over extending; hopefully by the time they realize what you're actually doing it will be too late. Second, your opponent will be expecting you are trying to finish the quest at all costs, so they will always expect your hand to be full of 1 cost minions, and they will also be expecting a Tundra Rhino finish, so they are likely to be playing around that possibility and may hang on to a Polymorph or Hex when their better play is to use the spell.
Other than that your goal is to curve out strong initially, so any 1 or 3 drop is probably worth hanging on to, unless you have more than two. A hand full of 3 drops is only good if you have the coin, but is a pretty good start. Mulligan out any Sunfury Protectors unless you have fire flies and expect you're facing a pirate warrior. I always keep 1 Volatile Elemental to use as control or as an activator for later turns if I think it will be useful, it can also make your opponent hesitate on their next minion play.
If you've subbed in Crabs or Crawlers, keep or ditch as is warranted by the class you are facing and the curve you have in the rest of your hand.
Final Notes:
Elemental Synergy: Remember to plan ahead so your elemental triggers work the way they are supposed to. Sometimes keeping a Flame Elemental in hand is the right play, even if it means leaving a mana unspent, and sometimes making a weaker play on your current turn will set up a game swinging turn on the next one.
The Marsh Queen: If you do manage to finish the quest, remember that the Queen and her brood are a helpful tool to bring your opponent to zero HP, but they are not your only means of getting there. Her battlecry will water down your deck with a lot of cheap minions that draw cards, which is helpful, but may not fit your curve perfectly. If the better play is to hold on to her for a few turns, do so.
Giants: A crucial component to strong swing turns is getting the decks two Sea Giants out. Play or hold your 1 cost minions accordingly and don't be afraid to let an opponent's small minion or two survive a turn so you can surprise them when the battlefield seems overwhelming.
Tol'vir Wardens: Very rarely will the game go long enough that your Tol'vir wardens won't be drawing any 1-cost minions. It might be worthwhile in games that you expect to go the distance (control priest and quest warrior for example) to keep track of what 1-cost minions are left in the deck. If you have drawn all of your 1-cost minions before you have gotten your first Igneous, it may be best to hold a warden until after you've completed the quest, but let the board state make the decision rather than getting max value from your Warden's battlecry. Remember, you can win without completing the quest!
Servant of Kalimos: In general, bigger is better! Ozruk is an exception, you probably won't want to choose him, but in some cases he may be the right choice. Don't be afraid to grab another Igneous if the state of the game demands it.
Hero Power: I find that the deck curves out very well between the elementals and the 1 cost minions. In a typical game I often won't use the hero power until turn 8+.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy the deck and have success with it. Please share your ideas for fine tuning it to make it better. Feel welcome to send me a friend request to discuss ideas in game as well. Battletag: Match#1955
Deck Edits:
4-24-17:
Replaced 2 x Thunder Lizards with 2 x Animal Companions
Replaced 2 x Raptor Hatchlings with 2 x Hungry Crabs (due to frequency of Murloc Paladins)
4-27-17:
Replaced 1 x Sunfury Protector & 1 x Defender Of Argus with 2 x Mistress Of Mixtures
Two different tests:
First --Which I focus on efficiently spamming the board while clearing like zoo vs certain matchups.
Second --Which I focus on comboing huge minions and using comeback mechanics.
Which do you find works better? Or is it based on matchups?
The first one was pretty consistent, but I had a hard time beating taunt warrior, priest, and druid. That's why I was experimenting with the hyenas. I had Hydras in there at first, but you take way too much damage from the effect.
I think Tundra Rhino is way too strong not to have in the deck though. He does the same damage as a Hydra would do if combo'd, plus there is potential for an OTK.
Agreed, I think Tundra Rhino definitely needs a spot, at least 1 of them
They are pretty important. If not Sea Giants, I would consider probably 1 more 1 cost minion (Raptor Hatchling, Jeweled Macaw) and a Tundra Rhino.
At this point I am seriously considering adding 1 Tundra Rhino to the deck somewhere in order to allow for a big finish with the quest if it's completed and the board is still being contested.
Awesome and creative deck! Thanks for sharing!
Had to replace sea giants, hungry crabs, and sunfury protector since I don't own the cards with volcanosaur, thunder lizard, and defender of argus.
Went toe to toe with a quest warrior for a bit. He completed his quest then i completed mine a few turns later. He just rag'ed me down to win. I was starting to produce brood and at that point i was missing my rhino. They were dead in the water. Murloc paladin made me miss those hungry crabs. Mage was next and I controlled the match with the elemental synergies. By the time I completed the quest i had already won.
The elemental synergy is what makes the deck. The quest is very secondary like its been stated before. Kinda made me wonder if i should just replace the quest with another elemental and call it elemental hunter. Kinda kills the fun outta doing the quest. Already got an elemental shaman deck that runs on all 6 cylinders. Do I need a 4 cylinder elemental hunter deck?
I think your subs are okay choices, although I would probably put Raptor Hatchlings in if you don't have Hungry Crabs, since Hungry Crabs are actually a tech-sub for Murloc Paladins. Not having the Sea Giants is detrimental though, since the deck is designed to flood the board consistently making them cheap, sometimes free, board pressure.
While you could take the Quest out of the deck and have it still function very similarly to the way it does, there are some games where the Quest does complete and the resulting 8/8 and constant 3/2's also just win you the game. For one card, I feel it's worth having in the deck, even if it only results in a percentage of the total wins the deck gets.
Plus, the whole point here is to make a deck that can compete AND complete the quest. I am not married to the Elemental strategy if a better deck make up presents itself.
Thanks for trying it!
Removed due to duplicate post
The epics are killing me :P No Blazecallers or sea giants, and im sure there are no replacements :/
They are both pretty essential to the deck. If you don't have Blazecallers or Sea Giants would could go Savannah Highmane and tundra Rhinos and go for a bit more beast synergy. You always have a chance of getting a Blazecaller from a Servant of Kalimos though.
I shall see, i really find the hunter quest pretty weak , but not feeling like disenchanting for some reason
Really liked the idea of this deck with elementals, will try something with Cult master and Jeweled macaws for a bit of card draw
The original version of this deck had a Cult Master in it, but i scrubbed it. Having it in there will give you some options, but the deck seems to tempo pretty well without him. You could replace the crabs if you're not facing a lot of murlocs with Jeweled Macaws, but if I was going to swap the crabs out I would put the Raptor Hatchling back in, so the Tol'vir Wardens have a chance of pulling out a cheap 4/3, which can be a big tempo play on turn 6, especially if you're completing the quest.
Let me know how the subs work for you and if you feel like any of them deserve a full-time spot.
after some matches i just realized that quest reward isn't a very good one, not for the reward at main stage, but because it is too slow to Hunter archetype. Really love the concept of Queen Carnassa Plus raptors, but i think that will only work in competitive level when we got some cards to make an control Hunter Viable. Dinomancy is here (In love of this card idea tho, waiting for bigger purposes) , lets see what's coming in next expansions...
But good job dude, u make an unplayable deck into a playable deck. Got about 38%winrate on legend btw, that's not good, but that's not really bad. keep up the good work
The main issue Hunter has imo, that forces it to only work with aggressive decks, is that it has virtually no healing ability or ways to stay alive an extra few turns. You're right that the quest is too slow to work in an aggressive archetype, because mathematically speaking you can't complete the quest as fast as other aggressive archetypes can. The only other classes without healing in the same way are rogue & warlock, (paladin, priest & shaman can heal, warrior & druid have armor, mage has ice block).
Of those two classes (rogue and warlock), the warlock quest decks seem to suffer from the same issue as Hunters: the quest takes too long to complete, and once you do the pay off is in not way an auto-win. Rogues however have proven that they have the tools to complete their quest before turn 5 (thanks to prep and card craw/creation mechanics that feed into their completion) and the pay off is immediate, their board is converted into an overwhelming force; it's not an always an auto-win, but sometimes it is. Even if you complete the Hunter quest by turn 5, your only hope of running a bunch of the brood in on your opponent to get a OTK requires a Tundra Rhino to stick to the board on a subsequent turn, or already be there beforehand.
If Hunters are given tools to survive until mid game, their quest becomes more viable. If they the quest reward is altered to give them a way to survive, it becomes more viable. In the meantime, the best hope for a quest deck is for the class will have to involve very defensive minions. The only other method for healing I can see hunters using would be Darkscale Stalkers + Mistress Of Mixtures which maybe needs to get some playtesting but it sure hurts the concept for this deck. But maybe that is the real answer; in the end, I'm not concerned with whether the answer is elemental, healing, or some gimmick that hasn't been conceptualized yet. What matters to me is finding a way to get the quest into a competitive deck.
Thanks for trying it, and if you'd like to keep playtesting the deck and tweaking it to see what works better: Awesome, let me know how it goes.
yea, many games playing this i got this quest on turn 6, played Queen carnassa 5 mana 8/8 on board and found myself thinking: and now What ?
now what i pass my turn and damn, Shadow Word: Death blows up from his hand. My next turn i draw 1 raptor 3/2, put it, draw a card and here comes an 2/3 elemental 3 mana.
I placed Glacial Shard instead of Volatile Elemental, worked better to me, 1 mana to proc elemental effect next turn and helps a lot when u're facing aggro decks. Volatile is too random and pay 2 mana for 1/1 body isn't even fair.
I have tried that sub as well, it is hit and miss, at times it is superior to the volatile, at other times the volatile presents a very annoying problem for the opponent. If it's possible to complete the quest without playing one of the Tol'vir Wardens that is the best way to refill the hand and get that massive pressure of raptors onto the board (get 2 from Warden, draw 1 on the next turn and you're mostly guaranteed to draw at least 1 or two more as you start to put them into play, and hopefully get some of the end game elementals/giants into hand while you're at it. When the deck is working as intended, that is how it plays. Being a card game things don't always work out optimally. ;)
I'm also testing a variant that ditches the Defender Of Argus and one of the Sunfury Protectors for 2 Mistress Of Mixtures. With this substitution I found that the Volatile Elementals are working better than the Glacial Shards so far, but I still think it is a viable sub that can be made (and the Shards also help to get the quest completed quicker).
Really liking the deck. Found that I wanted more removal at times so I replaced 1x Defender of Argus and 1x Sea Giant with 2x Hunter's Mark.