Bomb Hunter has emerged from the Mechrattle Hunter shell, and appears to be the stronger deck for the current metagame. [Insert obvious caveats about the metagame's youth here.]
Bomb Hunter has an edge on Mechrattle Hunter because it has a much faster early game. Not only are you actually playing more early game minions, but Magnetic is very similar to Charge. Each Goblin Bomb on the field essentially reads "Give a Magnetic minion +2 health and Charge."
It sacrifices the late game of Whelps and Nine Lives for repeated damage from Goblin Bombs. And this makes sense too, right? Besides juggling Whelps, one of the best parts of Nine Lives is the repeated use of Spider Bomb. In this deck, Spider Bomb is most often magnetized to another minion, removing it from the Nine Lives pool.
While the deck seems like it should be simple to build (type mech into your filter and add minions), I actually think quite a lot of them have been poorly built.
This list from Alutemu, which hist #9 Legend, is as good as I've seen, and he and I have stumbled upon similar ideas on a few cards.
This leaves about 9 cards of "flex" options. Personally, I think Tracking should be one of those options. It's among the very best Hunter cards, and these lists don't play Zul'jin, which is the only reasonable logic to ever exclude Tracking from a Hunter list. So that brings us down to 7 cards.
Alutemu plays Springpaw, which I have been doing in every Hunter deck I play. Proactive cards are the name of the game in aggressive match-ups, and few do it better than Springpaw. Conversely, I don't know how useful Houndmaster Shaw is here. While it's obviously a good standalone card, by turn 4 or so, you should have mechs on board to magnetize, which means your minions are already fast without having to spend 4 mana on Shaw.
Unleash the Hounds has the worst drawn and played statistics of any card in this deck, so I think it should be cut for sure. And this makes sense. Hounds is a card you play when you are behind on board, which this deck does not aim to be. Further, it's a far worse comeback mechanisim than things like Venomizer or Spider Bomb.
The two mana slot seems to be a place where we see a lot of divergence. So besides cutting Unleash the Hounds, I think this is where the most work can be done within the deck.
Good day, everyone!
Bomb Hunter has emerged from the Mechrattle Hunter shell, and appears to be the stronger deck for the current metagame. [Insert obvious caveats about the metagame's youth here.]
Bomb Hunter has an edge on Mechrattle Hunter because it has a much faster early game. Not only are you actually playing more early game minions, but Magnetic is very similar to Charge. Each Goblin Bomb on the field essentially reads "Give a Magnetic minion +2 health and Charge."
It sacrifices the late game of Whelps and Nine Lives for repeated damage from Goblin Bombs. And this makes sense too, right? Besides juggling Whelps, one of the best parts of Nine Lives is the repeated use of Spider Bomb. In this deck, Spider Bomb is most often magnetized to another minion, removing it from the Nine Lives pool.
While the deck seems like it should be simple to build (type mech into your filter and add minions), I actually think quite a lot of them have been poorly built.
This list from Alutemu, which hist #9 Legend, is as good as I've seen, and he and I have stumbled upon similar ideas on a few cards.
The cards that appear to be core to all Bomb Hunter lists are:
- Mecharoo
- Fireworks Tech
- Venomizer
- Spider Bomb
- Ursatron
- Explodinator
- Replicating Menace
- Wargear
- Zilliax
- Missile Launcher
- Boommaster Flark
This leaves about 9 cards of "flex" options. Personally, I think Tracking should be one of those options. It's among the very best Hunter cards, and these lists don't play Zul'jin, which is the only reasonable logic to ever exclude Tracking from a Hunter list. So that brings us down to 7 cards.
Popular options are:
- Dire Wolf Alpha
- Galvanizer
- Upgradeable Framebot
- Whirliglider
- Leeroy Jenkins
- Houndmaster Shaw
- Unleash the Hounds
- Mossy Horror
- Mechanical Whelp
- Bomb Toss
- Acidic Swamp Ooze
Alutemu plays Springpaw, which I have been doing in every Hunter deck I play. Proactive cards are the name of the game in aggressive match-ups, and few do it better than Springpaw. Conversely, I don't know how useful Houndmaster Shaw is here. While it's obviously a good standalone card, by turn 4 or so, you should have mechs on board to magnetize, which means your minions are already fast without having to spend 4 mana on Shaw.
Unleash the Hounds has the worst drawn and played statistics of any card in this deck, so I think it should be cut for sure. And this makes sense. Hounds is a card you play when you are behind on board, which this deck does not aim to be. Further, it's a far worse comeback mechanisim than things like Venomizer or Spider Bomb.
The two mana slot seems to be a place where we see a lot of divergence. So besides cutting Unleash the Hounds, I think this is where the most work can be done within the deck.