Hearthpwn

I was able to get this deck to rank 11 in February 2018 ranked season. It's a fluid deck that's very fun to play, but you are at a disadvantage both to cubelocks and murloc paladins that are popular in current meta. On the other hand, it does well against Secret Mage, Jade Druid, Evolve Shaman, and even Y'Shaarj/Big Priest. This is a swiss-army deck, and should be played differently depending on opponent class/style:

• Secret Mage (easy): You should be able to out-agro them, beware of their Counterspell secrets (test for it via Coin, Tracking, or redundant secret). The only card that's really a threat to you is Kabal Secret Runner. Also, protect your health, they'll often save a couple Fireballs to go face. (preferred cards: Cat Trick, Spellstone, Bow, Wandering Monster)
• Exodia Mage (easy): Kill her before she completes her setup. Don't ignore the lone Sorcerer's Apprentice on the board (kill her immediately), if this mage has 2 Ice Blocks in her hand, you won't be able to stop her in time otherwise. (preferred cards: same as above)
• Kingsbane Rogue (easy): Play as many cards as you can each turn to avoid milling. Make sure you always have something on the board, and always go face. Force them to use their Sap/Vanish before you use your Spellstones. Unless she picks up Leeching Poison by turn 3, she'll lose. Once she gets her Kingsbane to 5/3 + leech, you've lost. (preferred cards: Spellstone, Animal Companion, Wandering Monster, Cat Trick)
• Tempo Rogue (easy): Only saw a couple of these, but didn't really struggle with them. Same as with Kingsbane, just maintain board presence and go face and they'll concede. (preferred cards: same as above)
• Evolve Shaman (easy): His totems are vulnerable to Explosive Trap, but don't waste it too early. You also don't want to wait too long, as he'll eventually evolve his minions.  Keep pressure on using your wolves, forcing him to waste his Lightning Storm or Devolve early. He typically excels in late game, when he devolves your stronger minions and upgrades his weaker ones to do a ton of damage. Keep his side of the board clear and you should do fine, your Arcane Giants are immune to his Devolve being a 12-mana minion (preferred cards: Explosive Trap, Spellstone, Arcane Giant)
• Jade Druid (easy): Kill him early before he gets his 8/8 Jades. Maintain board presense, silence Aya, kill high damage minions and go face. (preferred cards: Wandering Monster, Spellstone, Cat Trick, Spellbreaker)
• Quest Warrior (very easy): He'll start of very slow, giving you plenty of time to set up. He'll mostly spawn Taunt minions, which are a bit annoying to deal with. Maintain board presence and go face. You should be able to kill him early. (preferred cards: Deadly Shot, Animal Companion, Spellstone, Spellbreaker)
• Secret Hunter (easy): It's all about who can play their mana more efficiently. A single misstep could lose you the game. It's a delicate balance of face damage and minion removal. (preferred cards: Spellstone, Animal Companion, Cat Trick)
• Face Hunter (very easy): Beware of his Scavenging Hyena, kill it quickly. His weaker minions are vulnerable to your Explosive Trap and Wandering Monster, you should be able to change the tide in your favor by turn 3-4. (preferred cards: Explosive Trap, Wandering Monster, Deadly Shot)
• Y'Shaarj/Big Priest (easy): He'll try to play Barns to summon 1/1 Y'Shaarj, who will in turn recruit his big minions. As soon as he does, silence his first big minion and kill Y'Shaarj. If you do this, you win the game. He may resurrect his dead minion later, so have Deadly Shot ready. (preferred cards: Spellbreaker, Deadly Shot)
• Combo Priest (easy): He'll have a slower start than you, but beware of his Twilight Drake. Kill it or silence it, otherwise he'll buff it to 20/20 or higher in a single turn and go face. The best strategy against him is not to allow him any presence on the board, if he has no minions to buff, he's dead. (preferred cards: Animal Companion, Spellbreaker, Deadly Shot)
• Cube Warlock/Control Warlock (difficult): You need to kill him before he start spawning Voidlords, you can usually kill the first Voidlord or 2 but by the time you deal with it and its Deathrattle he'll have more than enough time to set up his late game. A better strategy is to silence it and go face. Even if you seem to be ahead on the board, all hope is lost after he summons a 2nd Voidlord. Here is a game illustrating just how unfair these fights can be: https://hsreplay.net/replay/4vDqDHjrXZ2RhAZqENGHVU (preferred cards: Spellbreaker, Animal Companion, Savannah Highmane, Bow)
• Murloc Paladin (difficult): This fight actually seems less unfair than the Warlock. Mainly because you have a better chance of beating him with smart play. This deck will out-agro you, you will take a ton of face damage, but if you can survive until turn 6, you'll usually win. By that time, he'll have exhausted his cards and his minion synergy won't be able to keep up with your larger minions. The trick to surviving is taking out his main threats early: Murloc Warleader (+2 attack to other murlocs), Murloc Tidecaller (with growing attack), and Knife Juggler (who will do 1 dmg for every summon). Try to kill off the murlocs before he plays Gently Megasaur or Sunkeeper Tarim, he may also equip a maul to give his murlocs a further buff or play Righteous Protector to deny you access to the murlocs. Use Unleash the Hounds or Spellbreaker to get past Righteous Protector. (preferred cards: Bow, Unleash the Hounds, Spellbreaker, Spellstone)
• Silver Hand Paladin (difficult): Similar strategy but this one tends to be more difficult than murloc version because he has more minions with Taunt/Divine Shield, like the Righteous Protector. Kill/silence his Steward of Darkshire quickly, the last thing you want is for him to play that into Stand Against Darkness + Sunkeeper Tarim. You may as well concede if that happens. It's times like these I really wish I had a Blood Knight to put in the deck. (preferred cards: Bow, Unleash the Hounds, Spellbreaker, Spellstone)

The cards I've marked as preferred for each fight aren't necessarily the cards you should mulligan, do grab the bow and spellstones on the mulligan, for higher cost cards it's better to just keep them in mind. Remember that this deck is unique in that it has 2 search functions that can be used to find a solution to the problem at hand (most decks don't even have one):

• Tracking: Can be used to retrieve anything in the deck, but the other 2 items are discarded/lost.
• Stitched Tracker: Can be used to clone any minion in the deck, I've been using this to duplicate my Spellbreaker, King Krush, Savannah Highmane, and Arcane Giants. This in theory could allow you to carry 1 of each of the stronger minions instead of 2.

2/25/18

28 wins, 22 losses (56% win ratio)

Secret Hunter deck using the cards I currently have. Stuck around rank 18 right now, but not yet sure if the problem is the deck or my skill. Initially I started with what was a trash deck, and crafted a few replacements when I started noticing problems during play.

Synergies that seem to work well for me in this deck:

- Cloaked Huntress is great for casting secrets, I try to delay casting them until she is deployed, but sometimes I need to deal with a problem on the board (i.e. enemy swarming it with murlocs when I have Explosive Trap ready to clear them.

- Tracking can be used when in a bind to find answers to a problem when your hand doesn't have an answer. I learned the hard way not to use this card on turn 1.

- Stitched Tracker is an awesome card that serves multiple purposes. It can be used to discover Cloaked Huntress when you fail to mulligan her. It can also be used to get a duplicate Arcane Giant to make your win condition even stronger.

- Arcane Giant works great in this deck. It's a poor man's alternative to Kathrena Winterwisp + King Krush combo that more advanced Secret Hunter decks carry for their win condition. I threw these cards in because I didn't know what I was doing, but they're basically working like stronger versions of Corridor Creepers. By the time you play them, you'll typically play enough secrets that each will cost 4-6 mana. One weakness they have over King Krush is that you're giving the enemy one turn to clear the board before being able to attack with them.

- Cat Trick is my favorite non-situational secret, it basically allows me to have the opponent summon my minions for me. I often follow up by buffing it with Houndmaster before attacking. It basically creates a minion equivalent to Lord of the Arena out of thin air.

Typical Win Condition: once I get ahead by midgame and opponent struggles to catch up (usually by depleting resources killing my 4-pack of wolves), I play the Scalebanes. Once they start throwing knives around, opponent has to overextend himself to remove the new threat. Unless he has strong minions/spells of his own, I'm usually able to transition into Arcane Giants from there.

I want to try adding Secretkeeper to this deck to see if she can help me exert early pressure on the opponent, but I'm a bit frugal on my dust and not sure how much it would help yet. My fear is that this deck already has weapon and emerald stones synergize from the secrets, and even now I find it hard to have both ready to benefit from the secrets by the time I cast them. It will be almost impossible to satisfy a 3rd synergy, but maybe I'll only need 2 out of 3.

2/26/18

11 wins, 5 losses (68% win ratio)

After enough games, started realizing that the main limitation of original deck stemmed from not being able to grab the bow and spellstones frequently enough in early game. Crafted extra copies of each, and was able to push the deck to rank 17. Most matches became easier, this build even holds its own well in the end-game, when I'm able to spawn 4 arcane giants (2 from stitched trackers) for almost no mana. The only limitation I ran into was that my approach gives the enemy a turn to deal with the threat. This made games with priests especially annoying.

Here is an example where my early advantage was completely obliterated by the priest's stronger end-game: https://hsreplay.net/replay/m4TPg2roXhkQPFspjMAB6E. I was able to create threats on board, but priest was able to react to them quicker. I barely managed to win, and would have lost if the game lasted a turn more. My arcane giants were strong enough, if it wasn't for their inability to attack.

I decided to swap out one of the Kill Command for a King Krush I had lying around. While there, I traded the other Kill Command for Explosive Shot since I noticed I had one lying around. The opportunity to test this change came up immediately in the next game: https://hsreplay.net/replay/jqEefQmqTtGuFQLrGQX28o.

This druid created a similarly ugly situation for me as the priest before, but I was able to walk out of it via my new King Krush. It's effectively functioning like a stronger version of a Leeroy Jenkins with better survivability if the job isn't done in 1 turn.

In fact, as I continued playing more games, the benefit of having King Krush in the deck became more apparent, the build became a lot more forgiving in late game. In two recent games, I completely got screwed by RNG, unable to get spellstones at all the entire game, and won anyway thanks to playing King Krush at the right time (on 2nd play I also missed an earlier lethal opportunity right before he spawned the Voidlord, I should have played King Krush instead of the Huntress):

https://hsreplay.net/replay/p4paeUuKdn8oUum3z9RaCn

https://hsreplay.net/replay/EnpRN8V9Kf4pT3hktJCJxX

Often opponents started conceding before King Krush even finishes his introduction... I like :)

Changes to playstyle:

- Mulligan for Spellstones (and Huntress, but that's secondary now), don't worry about traps, there are enough of them so get into your hand by turn 3-4.

- DO keep Tracking if you get it in the mulligan. If you didn't manage to get the spellstones, use Tracking to get them. This DOES qualify as a board state that your hand can't deal with (as I mentioned earlier). Without spellstones, your play will fizzle by turn 6.

- DO keep Stitched Tracker if you get it in the mulligan, you can use it to summon Huntress later. Don't keep it if you already got Huntress, you'll use it later to get another copy of Arcane Giant.

Possible Improvements:

- Kindly Grandmothers don't seem to do much aside from buying time and allowing Houndmaster not to waste his synergy. I may swap them out for Secretkeepers later.

- Explosive Rune deals well with AoE, which this build otherwise lacks. This problem becomes especially apparent when playing against Paladins, other Secret Hunters, and Druids. Consider swapping one of the traps for a second Explosive Rune.

Currently at rank 15 with this build.

8/28/18

After struggling to go further with the above deck, I made some changes:

• Kindly Grandmother x2-> Deadly Shot x2 : this allowed me to destroy sole large minions (priest, warlock).
• Cobalt Scalebane x2 -> Savannah Highmane x2 : Highmane is an awesome card, but works better in combination with Arcane Giant in this deck rather than instead of it, I also started realizing that Scalebane tends to work more as a nominal threat, whereas Highmane is a real one.
• Bearshark x1 -> Spellbreaker x1 : this pushed my win rate against priests and warlocks over 50%, this works especially well in my deck because I can use Stitched Tracker to "search" for Spellbreaker.
• Snipe x1 -> Unleash the Hounds

This allowed me to push to rank 11 with relative ease but I hit a deadwall there for some reason, unable to get to rank 10. It's possible I just had a streak of bad luck or unfavored matchups. Since I was pushing for 10 on the last day of the season, I didn't have much time to try to get to rank 10 again.