Hearthpwn

Hey pals,

For the longest time I've had my eye on a deathrattle hunter deck that can create big tempo swings via Play Dead and establish a somewhat of a sticky presence through its deathrattle minions. Now, before you jump the gun and talk about how competitive it is, once I'm rank 5 each season, I tend to experiment with archetypes that are ''odd'' or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

I don't really consider myself an avid deckbuilder by any means, as I know how different it is to actually build decks, rather than play them. I would really appreciate you guys working with me on this archetype, as I see a LOT of potential here. I was able to take on tempo mages, razakus priest and even tempo rogue in a couple of games with this very ROUGH draft below.

How does one actually approach this. There's so many things I want to have in there, I literally cannot figure out what to cut or how to balance early and mid/late game in this deck. It drives me nuts! I know it can be really good if refined properly, so please, any ideas and more refined versions of better builders than me out there, put them in here and elaborate a bit on how you actually go about this one.

Play with warlock.

This card is good but slow, you need control tools, healing and draw to make this work.

Quote from hillandder >>

Play with warlock.

This card is good but slow, you need control tools, healing and draw to make this work.

I’d cut the rat packs and the stalker for 2 animal companions and a bonemare.

Quote from danklesminky >>

I’d cut the rat packs and the stalker for 2 animal companions and a bonemare.

I've also been considering deadly shot, but it's so freaking inconsistent it's unbelievable.

Crackling Razomaw and emerald Spellstone are the only stuff thats even remotely competitive. everything else hunter has compared to the other classes is less garbage. don't bother experimenting hunter is right the devs want it to be.

I think Plated Beetle is hurting your Kathrena Winterwisp too much considering Mistress of Mixtures is nearly as good. I'd recommend swapping them to increase the value there. Honestly, I'd go for King Krush cube combos to get faster damage out of cube hunter. Savannah Highmane is too slow as a cube target (but still good for the deck!) and you can end up losing highmanes due to too many little minions on board.

Remove Acolyte, and Dred. Swap with Crush and a second bonemare. I also don't see how the Pirate package works with this deck, I would swap for more early game type cards; Or perhaps Tracking.

Here's what I'm thinking towards:

With this there is no way to get a bad Kathreena and we can focus on getting a swamp king or king krush cube combo, either would be pretty strong.

Disclaimer: I don't play hunter, I can be entirely wrong about my approach to designing cube hunter.

Since you're not an experienced deck builder as you say, it might be a good idea to structure your efforts more. If you start out with adding a bunch of one-of cards, you can't really see properly which cards are pulling their weight and which aren't. In your case, since you already have a rough draft, you might start by cutting all the one-ofs and focus on cards that might be worth including twice and fill your deck with duplicates. Legendaries should for this reason be restricted to a minimum, at least until you have worked out the core cards. Too many legendaries in an unproven deck add to its inconsistency which is likely already an issue from the get-go, skewing results one way or another. Looking at old lists with the same concept might give you some ideas as well in this stage.

Then start playing the deck and start figuring out your core cards, once you figure out which cards are critical you can start the refinement process properly, since you now understand which cards are core and then think about how they are best supported. If the deck works reasonably well after that, you can slowly introduce more legendaries and utility cards, perhaps to shore up a weakness you have discovered in the initial playtesting.

That being said, the class you're working with isn't the easiest one. Because of the overall low power level of hunter cards and the host of situational cards hunters have access to, you're probably going to run into problems that you can't fix. I do suggest you try the archetype in wild though, since there's some interesting options available to you there.

ControlTheBoard was playing with a cube hunter egg deck the other night with some pretty good success.  It was in Wild, but looked like wht you may be looking for.

Quote from djenin >>

Since you're not an experienced deck builder as you say, it might be a good idea to structure your efforts more. If you start out with adding a bunch of one-of cards, you can't really see properly which cards are pulling their weight and which aren't. In your case, since you already have a rough draft, you might start by cutting all the one-ofs and focus on cards that might be worth including twice and fill your deck with duplicates. Legendaries should for this reason be restricted to a minimum, at least until you have worked out the core cards. Too many legendaries in an unproven deck add to its inconsistency which is likely already an issue from the get-go, skewing results one way or another. Looking at old lists with the same concept might give you some ideas as well in this stage.

Then start playing the deck and start figuring out your core cards, once you figure out which cards are critical you can start the refinement process properly, since you now understand which cards are core and then think about how they are best supported. If the deck works reasonably well after that, you can slowly introduce more legendaries and utility cards, perhaps to shore up a weakness you have discovered in the initial playtesting.

That being said, the class you're working with isn't the easiest one. Because of the overall low power level of hunter cards and the host of situational cards hunters have access to, you're probably going to run into problems that you can't fix. I do suggest you try the archetype in wild though, since there's some interesting options available to you there.

 

Ah my apologies, I presumed and didn't read properly I suppose.

The reason I gave you more general advice on deck building than actual specific suggestions is that your current build looks very unfocused. So i thought I'd help you more by suggesting a plan of attack as it were, teaching a man how to fish and all that. :)

Quote from djenin >>

Ah my apologies, I presumed and didn't read properly I suppose.

The reason I gave you more general advice on deck building than actual specific suggestions is that your current build looks very unfocused. So i thought I'd help you more by suggesting a plan of attack as it were, teaching a man how to fish and all that. :)

I actually think you don't want to use the cubes, as they are gonna be too slow if you are trying to cube King Krush or Swamp King Dred.

I'm having better luck using the Seeping Oozeling with Devilsaur Eggs, Abominations, and Katherina so that you are stealing some good deathrattles. Then I have Charged Devilsaurs that are pulled out for the kill. 

Still testing at rank 15, but if I start to get a win streak going, I"ll post my list.

 I think making it a spell hunter and then adding in the kathrena and legendaries package would be easiest, but lets try somthing.

Really weird, and needs some tweaks, but is a different method of doing things, pull the big charge beasts out and copy everything far too much. if you can get to the lategame it is pretty good, but the early game survival cards need work. that just takes trying them out and replacing the ones that feel bad. 

By the way you can't run any cards that summon beasts safely with the bowman, so perhaps you cut it for a spellstone, which would objectively make this better, but prob less fun once you reach the lategame.

Spiritsinger Umbra should be in it.  If you have the perfect curve w/ a turn 8 Kathrena, then you can turn 9 Umbra + Cube the beast that you pull for a super huge tempo play