Hearthpwn

Hey Guys,

NEW SEASON! Exciting. A lot of people have been crushing it up with this deck (and have reported seeing this exact deck being played against them!) I've found that in different parts of the ladder there are more of different classes (i.e. right now at around 6-10 I see almost no hunters- a lot of priest and rogue), but at around 16-12 I saw pretty much ONLY hunters. If you're playing against a ton of hunters, drop a hunters mark for a flare. Keep it in your starting hand if you get it, and hold onto it for those tempo swings! He's expecting to return one of your minions to your hand or get a snake trap procced- clear the trap, get an extra card, and do the damage anyways. Hope this helps your laddering! If you NEED 2, take out a dire wolf for the second one.

2nd update: If you're finding you play only zoo/hunter, drop a savannah and a hunters mark for 2 flares, and replace a houndmaster and a freezing for 2 explosives

Quick Update: Have been crushing it in Legend with this deck too! Made it from 1500's Legend to 400's in 1 day. Just beat a rank 15 Legend! :)

If you hit legend with this deck add me please! I'd love to hear from you guys! MadJukes #1655

Also just 1 request- if you like this deck please upvote it so it gains more visibility to other people! :) Good luck! I'll start putting more decks out soon!

Just hit Legendary from rank 6 in 2 days with this deck after trying different variations on Hearthpwn. Meta keeps shifting obviously but I've had around a 65% winrate crushing it up. This deck runs no flares, so it's a little weaker against other hunters than ones that do, but it doesn't have the standard weaknesses to priests and warriors that other hunters do. It crushes handlock and zoo, beats shaman pretty easily, and wins 80%+ against the rest. It's important to note that this hunter deck is NOT COUNTERED by current priest and warrior decks and THATS why it's so easy to make it to legend. 

It's super aggro and forces opponents to make trades. The 2 dire wolves are there to make value trades (with unleash, snake trap, or haunted creepers). The undertakers + deathrattle minions are pretty standard in all hunter decks. It's running a little heavier (with 2 houndmasters and 2 highmanes) when most decks run 1 houndmaster and 1 highmane, but this allows you to have a solid mid-game against priests and warrior, making it difficult for them to stabilize the game. 2 Hunter's marks for easy removals with snake trap, haunted creeper, webspinner trades. The owl is for those pesky taunts or deathrattles. Everyone runs belcher, and most classes use taunts as a way to slow down hunters and zoo, so having 2 hunter's marks, an owl, and a black knight is crucial to removing taunts to apply pressure to face fast. Everything else is standard as well in hunter decks.

If there's enough interest I'll add specific matchup guides as well. Good luck!

Updates/Edits!

There's been some questions in the comments section about how to play this deck- most people have found a lot of success but some people feel there's not enough card draw. No deck (except possibly zoo) is just brainless play whatever you can, so there's obviously some thought into how to play every turn. I'm going to offer a couple thoughts on when NOT to play minions and what the overall goal of the deck is so you don't play it incorrectly. You shouldn't feel like you need card-draw for the most part because it curves out pretty well and if it gets to turn 10+ and you haven't gotten in a position to win, you've probably either played incorrectly, or gotten terrible draws at some point. Occasionally they'll have the perfect answer every turn as well (happens, although infrequently).

Turn 1-2, you're trying to play undertaker out and buff it fast against most classes. Drop all your traps in mulligan unless you know they're a slow class that will try to attack your minions to clear it early- in which case it is sometimes ok to keep snake trap. A turn 2 attack that drops 3 1/1's on your turn swings the game REALLY hard in your favor. Turn 3 you should either have a buffed undertaker and just snowball with animal companion, houndmasters, etc etc. Try not to play houndmasters without a target, especially early, so keep that in mind as you're playing your minions out. Don't play something that will get auto-killed, unless you think the opponent gets greedy (i.e. has a flame imp out and wants to attack your face instead of the haunted creeper or webspinner). It sets up really well for a houndmaster and swings it in your favor again.

Through midgame, your traps and mad scientists will carry you. Use your weapon and weaker minions to clear their weak minions for the most part, trying to keep as many alive as possible. If you have a taunt up, just go for face instead if it's early and there's no chance of it getting black knight'ed. If they have multiple minions, kill the less annoying one and let the other one trigger your freezing traps, which allows free face damage for 2 turns as well as making their minion cost double +2 mana (which is HUGE).

Going into late game, you have your savannah highmanes, which are 2 ridiculous beasts. Keep the pressure on, and use kill commands to finish. If you're stuck at some point and the opponent is at low health, (say, 7), don't drop everything on every turn. It's worth it sometimes to try to draw into a beast if you have kill command to finish, or keeping a cheap beast to play beast + or beast + houndmaster on the same turn. Hunter decks all have synergy so you have to try to combo into plays instead of dropping 1 card at a time.

Hope this helps! If you have specific questions I'm more than happy to answer, just ask away in comments below!

 

Against Priest, there are 2 ways of playing it.

1) Try to draw undertaker and buff it. Best if you buff it as much as you can before they hit 4 mana, when they can start stealing your minions. You can apply a TON of pressure before turn 4 and establish board control though.

2) If they drop cleric first, it's not such a good idea to start throwing down cheap minions then. It's almost better to save them in your hand to give an undertaker a fast buff later and just hero power turn 2. Animal companion is your friend, and houndmaster turn 4 creates a really strong taunt they have to deal with. If you can set up a trap turn 2 for that combo, then a lot of the time it leaves your minion safe (i.e. they can't attack it or they get returned to hand) or you generate 1/1's as well and you steamroll from there. I try my best to not use Kill Command to kill minions but more as a finisher unless I need it to keep important minions safe.

Against Warrior: It's important to trade fast and well early against armor smiths, acolytes, taskmasters. If you can put up a taunt that they can't burn through, it usually allows you 2-3 turns of hitting face to set up for lethal. If you're not able to do that, use weapon to clear his acolytes (even if you have a savannah and he has an acolote and you have only 1 charge on your weapon, since he could be running execute). It's really important to try to bait his heavier minions into freezing trap, since then he's SOO and loses control of the game fast.

Against Hunter:

Since they have flares and you don't, you shouldnt count on your traps as win-conditions, since you have to assume they probably have flares. Instead, you want to try to flood and control by using your super cheap minions and 2 houndmasters that set up taunts. Snake traps, hunter's mark, and unleash are amazing cards against other hunters, because you trigger freezing traps super cheaply. If you can get around their freezing traps with cheap minions, have your heavier minions taunted, it's VERY difficult for them to actually play around you since your deck is innately stronger in minions. That being said, the matchup is still difficult but (imo) favored very slightly in your favor. I'm slightly above 50% winrate against other hunters. If you're facing mostly hunters in constructed, I'd drop a hunters mark for a flare and keep it in your hand when you mulligan.

Against zoo: 

 You don't really want to keep webspinner unless you already have an undertaker + webspinner in your hand. You really like those 2 attack minions like leper gnome and mad scientists, bc they trade really well against flame imps and knife jugglers. As the game progresses, they have trouble against animal companion + houndmasters, or even webspinner + houndmasters, because they're forced to attack your minions while you attack their face. Snake traps are awesome, and you want to try to bait them into triggering it by putting something semi-valuable up early. (Or easy to "kill" that would be a value trade). I know a lot of people are saying you run out of steam, but in reality, you're probably not playing optimally. While most hunter decks run out of steam because they just don't have the cards to play anymore, this deck is designed to have a powerhouse mid-late game and shouldnt just lose your early game momentum that all huntertakers have. Zoo is especially easy because you can force them to lose momentum with traps and when they flood the board, you have your unleash

Obligatory picture when I made it to legend:

Update pic: