Hearthpwn

I. Introduction

Good day to all of you! I am JHUS, read as /ˈdʒʌs/, which is actually short for Jhustine and rhymes with justice. I am here to present to you probably the best configuration for hunter at the moment. It is notable that this list has no Eaglehorn Bow and Unleash the Hounds and it has pirates! Slightly different from what you are used to playing but I assure you those little changes will affect your winrate.

Reasons for not playing Eaglehorn Bow and Unleash the Hounds:
Eaglehorn Bow - for the value it gives, it is not worth 3 mana, you cannot utilize the addition of charges because you do not use secrets. This is basically a Fiery War Axe in most lists. In addition to this, Bloodsail Corsair is also everywhere and most likely destroys your bow.

Unleash the Hounds - this card is mostly a dead card on some matches and in the cases where your opponent actually plays many minions, such as Tempo Rogue, they are quite big and cannot be removed by the little 1/1 hounds.

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II. Gameplay Videos

Before you begin reading below or before diving into a game, here's Sean Cool who not only explains the deck for you who do not actually want to read the guide below but he also shows you how to play the deck.

We also have The Abusive Sgt who I know absolutely hates hunter and decides to give it a try. Will he be convince to stop hating hunter? Come and see how it goes! 

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III. Deck Overview

The deck is basically divided into 4 sections namely: Beasts, Pirates, Buffers, and Finishers.
It is a good idea to be familiar with the deck and know your odds each turn.

Beasts (18)(60%) - these consists the backbone of the deck and will be your main source of damage and shows that you are indeed a hunter.

• Alleycat
• Jeweled Macaw
• Crackling Razormaw
• Golakka Crawler
• Kindly Grandmother
• Animal Companion*
• Bearshark
• Bittertide Hydra
• Savannah Highmane
  *technically summons a beast

Pirates (5)(17%) - I added the pirate package because they can actually snowball games really quick.

• Bloodsail Corsair
• Patches the Pirate
• Southsea Captain

Buffers (8)(27%) - These cards will support your minions on board to make them even more valuable and make efficient trades and of course help out with dealing damage

• Crackling Razormaw
• Southsea Captain
• Houndmaster
• Bonemare

Finishers (3)(10%) - These will be mainly used for closing out games and can also be used to help you get out of sticky situations.

• Kill Command
• Leeroy Jenkins

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IV. Card Explanations

Alleycat
This card is basically a 1 mana for 2 beasts that can easily synergize with the deck e.g. being buffed by the Crackling Razormaw. Don't forget it can also act as a way to get the full 5 damage of your Kill Command.

Bloodsail Corsair
You will mainly use this card to summon Patches the Pirate from your deck. This is a very strong turn-1 play btw. It will also be useful against classes with weapons. This can destroy most weapons because common weapons used only have 2 charges and they use the first charge once they play it.

Jeweled Macaw
This card is a decent turn 1-play and provides you with another beast that you can play later on. Take note not to end your turn too fast when you play this card, you never know when you get a Snowflipper Penguin! This card can also potentially get you something good out of the 83(?) cards it can give you (remember that this has a 1% chance to give you something to finish a game with a charge beast! LOL!. Again, another card that can be used to get the whole 5 damage out of your Kill Command.

Patches the Pirate
This card is a very strong card because it will mostly be a free card unless you draw it. This could give you the tempo you need to gain board control. Always keep in mind if Patches the Pirate is still in the deck, make sure not to end your turn before this attacks.

Crackling Razormaw
This is usually your go-to followup card to your beasts. The effects of adapt can be really beneficial to you! Take note that you will be able to choose 3 out of the 10 choices for the adapt.
Don't know what to choose? Click this spoiler below.

Golakka Crawler
The meta today includes many decks that include Pirates and what good way to beat them up is through this card. This card provides quite a big tempo shift if you could eat your opponent's pirate. Take note that the battlecry will also target your own pirate so you need to keep this in mind and make the correct order of play. Remember that there will be times where you will have to eat your own pirates in order to gain tempo.

Kindly Grandmother
This is technically two beasts in one body. Both of which can effectively synergize with your cards. This card can also provide you more value if the Big Bad Wolf actually comes after your initial board being hit by some aoe spell. Against priest, you would actually need to think twice before playing this card. It is a very good target for Potion of Madness where the opponent would actually get the Big Bad Wolf once the Kindly Grandmother dies so keep this in mind against priest.

Animal Companion
Even though this card relies on RNG I believe that all the animal companions are good (even Leokk at times). Huffer is mainly useful for the instant damage it can deal. Misha on the other hand provides protection for your other creatures. On the other hand if you already have a board then Leokk will really be good!

Bearshark
This card is very difficult for druid, mage, and priest to deal with and it becomes even deadlier if you could follow it up with a Houndmaster. However due to just having 3 hp it could easily be traded up with by aggro decks.

Kill Command
This is mainly used in the deck as a finisher, however if the need arises to use this to remove a threat then do so. Do take note that you need a beast on the board to utilize the full 5 damage out of this spell.

Southsea Captain
This card is included in the deck to buff the other pirates. A powerful play would be to coin this on turn-2 to summon Patches the Pirate, this will give you a 3/3 minion plus a 2/2 charge minion which is really very hard to deal with. The card is a 3 mana 3/3 so it is also good to play it just for its body. 

Houndmaster
With the number of beasts in your deck there will be only a few cases where you will cast this and not get the +2/+2 and taunt that this card provides. This is effectively a 4 -mana 6/5 with taunt, value!

Bittertide Hydra
The 8/8 body of this minion makes is quite hard to remove from the board specially if you could play it as early as turn 4. You should however be wary that it could potentially be used against you too. One example is if you are against another hunter and you have minions on the board, an Unleash the Hounds could potentially be painful on your end so you should also take into account if your opponent can use the damage effect to their advantage.

Leeroy Jenkins
This is another notable finisher in the deck. However if the need arises to trade this with another big threat then do so, just keep in mind that it summons two 1/1 whelps on your opponent's side of the board.

Savannah Highmane
This card is such a powerful card that is very hard to remove from the board (unless they have something like silence). It is very difficult to kill both the 6/5 body and the two 2/2 bodies that it will produce. This most of the times ensures that there will be a target for your Bonemare.

Bonemare
This card will win you many games due to the fact that it provides so much value with the +4/+4 buff (plus taunt) and it also has a decent 5/5 body which potentially gives you two threats on the board if you could buff something with it.

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V. Card Alternatives

Unfortunately for this deck, I won't be suggesting alternatives as the deck might be the best for the current meta and every bit of firepower helps.

If you lack most of the cards on the list then I suggest you check out my other deck which showcases an F2P version of the deck:

JHUS's Midrange Hunter (+F2P) <- Click here to see!

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Bonus section: To use Pirate package or not?

This again is always the question, to pirate or not to pirate. Here I present to you how I decided to add the pirates in the deck. Percentage of game you encounter each type of archetype is from https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-68/ and whether or not Golakka Crawler is included in each archetype is based from https://hsreplay.net/meta/.

Click below for the calculation:

With this I can say that you will face roughly a deck archetype with a Golakka Crawler 41.84% of the time.

In addition to this, here's the odds of them having Golakka Crawler in their starting hand:

1. If they don't hard mulligan for Golakka Crawler:
   a. without coin: 19.31%
   b. with coin: 25.29%
2. If they hard mulligan for Golakka Crawler:
   a. without coin: 36.55%
   b. with coin: 46.80%

*special thanks to people on the forum for crunching the numbers for the Golakka Crawler (shout out to Brbs, Th3D4rkL0rd, MystikArcher, and onjens9k!)*

People don't actually expect pirates from a hunter so I think it is safe to assume that they don't really hard mulligan for it and if they do the odds are again less than 50%.

TL:DR I then decided to use the pirate package because more than 50% of the time it will not go answered and you snowball the game to victory.

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Thank you so much for your time. I hope you liked the deck. If you did, give the deck an up vote (+). Leave a comment below on your experience with the deck or how you think this deck can improve. Peace!