Hearthpwn

Leeroy + inner rage + rampage + this = pain

Spell hunter actually has several different ways to generate minions: Cat Trick, Wandering Monster, Animal Companion, Unleash the Hounds, Flanking Strike, Lesser Emerald Spellstone, and the minions generated off of Deathstalker Rexxar. All of those are popular in the current ladder list, so 13 cards ~ 1/2 of your deck either is, or directly generates a beast so it's not completely horrible, but then again my point is that even in a deck that is inherently slow... Dire Frenzy isn't great.

Why is it better than houndmaster for a traditional hunter deck? Typically you want to take the board early as hunter, and end up winning through either snowballing, or attenuation of hero powers. This is true for aggressive, and midrange hunter variants, even the slower hunters that use the DK. The only current hunter deck this is potentially better in is spell hunter, but barnes will be rotating, and spell hunter is not good enough in wild. 

This card is huge on value, but I'm not 100% sold that hunter wants to play essentially a 4 mana 3-3 with charge. There will be good targets, but you won't draw this consistently, and you won't typically have this hit a card you want imo.

Bottom line: houndmaster is still better for the on-curve play, and the lack of payoff consistency for this card means it will probably be too clunky to see play in anything other than a slow hunter deck.

rip, I'm dumb xD

Baku Hunter otk in wild:
Clockwork automaton -> carnivorous cube -> play dead x2 -> hero power = 48 damage with one emperor tick. This is a 5 card combo so it's a bit of a long shot but it's really cool! If I am being serious about this deck though, you could run fetch cards like tracking, and stitched tracker to find combo pieces. Yes, you will discard parts of it at times, but I don't think you care too much because your hero power still does a lot of damage per turn, and you could potentially pressure the opponent down anyway.

I guess they needed to print a priest counter.

How do you feel about razakus dragon priest?

So think of it this way: 

I don't keep auctioneer ever vs aggro because it's too slow. Why is auctioneer too slow -> 6 drop with must include cards in order to activate. 

I don't keep sprint ever vs aggro because it's too slow. Why -> 7 drop with must include cards in order to activate. 

Since we would never keep this vs aggro, the awkwardness that might be associated with a turn 4 sprint is usually avoided. However, if there is a case where you end up with prep + sprint on turn 4 vs aggro you're hoping for one of a few things to happen. 

Scenario A.) You have other good cards in hand from before ie backstab, early pirate or other removal/board contest. If you have been contesting so far, you shouldn't be in horribly bad shape by playing prep sprint on four because this should draw you into other high tempo or board contesting cards such as backstab, evis, sap and si:7.

Scenario B.) You haven't been able to contest the board because your hand is full of garbage, they had a good start etc. In this scenario, drawing isn't really all that bad either as you have a fairly high chance of drawing backstab, and contesting the board immediately. Remember that most turn 4 boards that are worth playing the game out against aren't so overwhelmingly large that a backstab + dagger isn't enough to clean up a bit.

In both cases, gaining more cards acts as a tempo exchange: lose more of the board now for a big swing turn later. Since rogue has the most efficient tempo tools in the game, prep sprint on four can just be game winning if you take the board since you will have a huge amount of tools in your hand to maintain that advantage. However, this advantage is typically never worth the risk vs aggro as something like dagger prep oil on three is much more oppressive with a much lower risk. The best way of summing this up is with the old fashioned who's the beatdown argument, and if you feel you can take the associated risk with x strategy vs x deck. 

tl;dr - vs aggro, you don't keep that combo ever because you are already in a struggle for board. vs control, totally fine to keep it, but it's a bit slow so I would want to have something else to do early on as well. If you have something early, and just happen to draw into sprint on four with prep in hand... EZ Clap in chat pls. 

Something I was wondering, and playing with for the last few days (since before your most recent update) was cutting auctioneer altogether. This allowed me to cut things like deadly, and replace it with a higher utility card in the late game like hallucination, as well as play shredder over tomb pillager for better board presence. My replacement for auctioneer was double sprint which made cards like prep even better since it now has 4 high priority targets. I was also running a tech slot of either teacher or spellbreaker (depending on the meta) instead of the slot that your shredder now occupies. My main question is do you think the one auctioneer and one sprint variant is better than double sprint or double auctioneer? I have found that I average only 2-2.5 cards off of auctioneer, and it's typically played the same turn as sprint. I know the 4-4 body is okay, and the demand for instant removal is huge, but the possibility of drawing 4 on turn 4 is also immensely powerful. Hope you have some solid insight for me :)

So token druid just got a lot better

You're really missing out by not running the quest; purge those insects by fire!

I remember people used to run one gadget and one sprint back in the day, some lists even ran one gallywix to combat aggro shaman, some even ran an assassins blade to increase damage output. Any thoughts on slots for those cards? 

Wild pyro to beat all the SMOrc in the meta

Decided to give the deck a try to get some quests done, and take a break from standard. The deck seems extremely solid, have definitely stolen a few games already. Definitely echo op's feelings about teching in a belcher, especially at low ranks (16-10) where the SMOrc decks are most common. So far I haven't dropped a game, while winstreaking up five ranks. Advice for anyone in NA ladder, get to know who you're playing against. Typically you will queue into the same people once you hit rank 5 and up so preparing for their decks will give you a much better winrate. GLHF everyone, and thanks for letting me enjoy rogue again op!