Hearthpwn

Quick Note: There's some good questions in the comments section, so read through those for additional nuggets!

Update 8/19: With all the Gigglings around, adding in Blood Knight can be strong. Consider taking out Reckless or Spellbreakers.

Update 8/13: Now with some general matchup advice! Adding more soon.

 

Most of the guide will now be under construction as I continue to refine the list, but this list has been working pretty well for me. 

 

General Mulligan:

We still want our Flame Imp + Homunculus starts. We can keep Soul Infusions if we have a taunt or Doubling Imp to buff, buffing a Ghoul that we can play for free is also pretty good. We play aggressively early on and try to burst our opponent out in the late game. 

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Card Choices:

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Spellbreaker: Currently still feels like this deck really needs the 2x Breakers to help push through damage.

Doomguard: Nice to have as a 1 of which gives additional burst which this deck needs since we cut Life Drinkers. I prefer 1 of since the discard can be awkward if you’re running 2x

Vulgar Homunculus: actually just the nuts. This on 2 in most situations makes up for the lack of Keleseth. It gives you so much more game vs other aggro decks and is the reason why you can compete with Keleseth on 2 in mirrors. This also can single handedly win you the game vs Odd Rogue if they can’t efficiently deal with it via Deadly Poison or SI/ Deckhand because you often get to heal it and gain so much tempo and time to just go face that even when they eventually win board, you’re already threatening lethal.

Doubling Imp: Even without buffs this is effectively a 4/4 for 3. With cards like Infusion, you can get some nutty draws. 

Soul Infusion: A very solid card with big high roll potential. In this budget version it can allow you to play a T2 4/6 Homunculus or smooth out your T2 with one drop + Infusion on the one drop. Typically you want to hit your taunts or Doubling Imps with it. 

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Matchups: 

Some general advice (more specific advice to come when the meta settles more)

Druid: 

We want to have aggressive early starts with Flame Imps and Homunculus, getting a Soul Infusion off on a Homunculus or Flame Imp can be big since they won't always have a way to deal with it. Going into turns 4,5,6 we avoid developing small minions to play around Plague- these are the best turns to play a Fungalmancer or spend mana tapping and playing Soul Infusion. We want to try to finish the game by T10 before they can UI and stabilize. You should try to set up board states that beat UI on 10 which sometimes means going wide and risking they have a (second) Plague. 

Warlock:

Usually the Zoo or Even variety. Against Zoo we always keep Vulgar Homunculus as that card can single-handedly win us the game vs Keleseth starts. We can keep Soulfires going second since we will need tempo swings to take over the game and preserve our board. The mirror is all about getting good value trades and preserving our board while killing theirs. Landing a Fungal Enchanter heal on multiple minions can be game winning.

For Even, we go for the biggest creatures we can find. We want to have resilient boards to Hellfire and Defile (usually means not playing a 1 health minion or sometimes holding a Happy Ghoul). A big Infusion'd minion early can carry us to victory. We usually need to hold Spellbreakers for Lich King or Sunfury'd targets, at that point in the game, we almost always need to go face, even if we risk losing to Hellfire lethals. We need to win ASAP since we have no longevity.

Rogue:

Vs most Rogue's other than Odd, we really value going face since they don't have ways to heal (outside of Kingsbane and Leeching). We often will use Soulfire to kill their minions to preserve what we have on board since those minions can push more than 4 damage over the course of 2 + turns. 

Against Odd we want to mull for taunts and Soul Infusion to buff our taunts. Doubling Imp or Happy Ghoul turns can also provide the necessary tempo swing to win back board and thus the game. Watch out for Vilespine and Fungalmancer turns. At some point, we probably need to risk losing board to push the final points of damage.

Shaman:

Ike Shaman is a rough matchup since it's nearly impossible to play around all their cards. This is a matchup where we need to go hard early and hope they don't highroll Lightning Storms. When they draw their high end, we will usually lose to their value. But hey at least they don't have Healing Rains.

Even is a bit easier and more dependent on who went first. Tempo is king and thus going first and having the first one drop into two drop is huge. If you keep their board clear, they have a hard time coming back. They do have minions that swing tempo like Eel and Fire Ele so those are cards we need to play around. 

...More to come soon! What matchups are you guys seeing a lot of? I'll cover the most popular ones.

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Thanks for reading once again! If you’re interested in watching VoDs of my gameplay, you can find them here: https://www.twitch.tv/cozykittenHS/videos/all

Drop a follow if you’d like! I stream pretty much every day.

Questions, comments, concerns addressed in the comments! Will be actively checking.