Yeah, midrange hunters have kind of been pushed out of the meta right now. It's not going to help now that most of their 1-drops are rotating out. Maybe the new 2/1 lifesteal beast Swamp Leech would work?
I suppose you could add in stonetusk board and dire frenzy to hopefully get 3 to 6 1 mana 8/8 chargers with Emeriss, but that would need more stalling and draw to work consistantly.
Thanks! Replying to your other comment too, hunters have really poor draw atm. Perhaps countess ashmore would work, there is a rush/lifesteal minion, and also deathrattle dragons. Maybe also add the vilebrood skitterer for removal and a draw of 3 cards. Although you risk becoming a bit top heavy.
The highest I ranked purely running this was 15. It's a pretty fun deck to grind early ranks with, but it slows down later on. I found it doesn't have enough tools to cope with spiteful priest's huge minions, and warlock's copious amounts of taunts counters having a few large minions extremely well. Win/loss pretty much devolves into draw highroll. I just rode an 80% win rate spiteful priest to rank 10, so maybe I'll try it out at that floor. Anyway, I have found this deck fun, but I wouldn't craft much to build it. Especially with the new expansion coming up.
It is in there, under the few neutral cards. Oaken summons also has pretty severe anti-synergy with Twilight Drake too unfortunately :( . 4 mana 4/1 gain 6 armor's pretty poor.
So I made thisdeck a while ago, (actually pre-wild) and whilst it wasn't the best, it was extremely fun and very satisfying to actually win with. Possibly because it wasn't face hunter. Anyway, now some decent tools have come out with K&C, I've updated it to look more like this:
It's done surprisingly well in wild, I've won all four of the small sample size I've played. However, I would very much like to make it a standard deck.
Now, as Quick Shot can become Flanking Strike, there are only really 2 cards that need replacing, and they are King's Elekk, and Azure Drake. The problem is that they fit so well with The Curator, he draws 3 minion cards from your deck, all of which (potentially) draw you more cards. I think this means that the whole curator draw engine needs replacing, but I'm not sure what with. Maybe stitched tracker, thalnos and some spells like call of the wild (or to my side haha).
So any help or ideas for replacements would be greatly appreciated, and even just checking out the deck would be cool, especially if you could give me some feedback or improvements for wild.
Ok, let me explain. Grand Archivist is obviously utter trash in most decks. "Whoops, just used my last Hex [/card]on my [card]Snowfury Giant... At least I have a taunt now!" But in the right ones, it can be insane. I'm going to use mage as my main example is it probably has the best synergies. Imagine just having spells like Blizzard and Flamestrike in your deck. Not drawn a board clear against evolve shaman? Just drop Grand Archivist, now you've got a big body with good trading stats, and a guaranteed board clear at then end of your turn, which was practically free (~3 mana?). Or Raven Familiar on turn 2, and have a flamestrike in hand for whenever you need it. Your opponent won't even fill the board if they play around it, meaning you can probably last long enough to use it. Or something less aggressive than a flamestrike, what about Cabalist's Tome, Ultimate Infestation, Nourish, Call of the Wild?
Another aspect of Grand Archivist that I too thought was a huge downside, was that is removes the card from your deck. But in reality, this is not different that if you were to draw it, and in fact is better! It's effectively like topdecking a free flamestrike. You just play Grand Archivist when you would play flamestrike, and then you 'play' flamestrike at then end of your turn. And now it's not in your deck you can't draw it as a dead draw against two 1/1s, but is also won't be the last card in your deck when you really needed to draw it to win the game. And now your chances of drawing a key card have increased, similarly as to why Patches was so good (apart from the extra 1/1 body on turn 1).
These all work incredibly well with Spiteful Summoner as well, it's now a neutral and far superior Faceless Summoner, providing your deck is built correctly. A 4/4 is roughly 3.5 mana, so you need a 3+ cost spell for technical value. Bump this up to 4 or 5 as a minimum, and now you've got two 4/4s for 6. If you were behind on the board, you certainly aren't now. But even bigger spells, like Flamestrike, or Ultimate Infestation, and now you've got a 2.5 mana Y'Sharrj.
Raven Familiar is similar to one of my favorite cards, King's Elekk. It was used in hunter as a 2 mana 3/2, maybe draw a card, but is so powerful in the right deck as it can draw you specific cards. (See this deck:
, a good demonstration of a crazy hunter draw engine). This effect is great because it could be a guaranteed draw of your game winning card, or it could just be something that keeps you alive. In a deck full of minions you would be most likely not to draw a single spell (or visa versa), but these cards mean that you can!
. It should be able to hold the board very well with the elementals, and use Jaina as an endgame win condition if you can't beat your opponent with your elementals. It also should have very consistent board clears (by using 'random' cards! wow!) if it finds itself being swamped. Some other ideas include replacing Grand Archivist with Firelands Portal, and some others mentioned in the decklist itself.
tl;dr: All in all, I think Blizzard have outdone themselves with their card design this expansion. Lots are very niche, but incredibly powerful in the right situation. They are introducing cards that require more thought in deck building, having to make compromises for consistency. There is also much more interaction with your deck during play, and there are many complexities this brings up (don't remind me about Gnomeferatu). Unfortunately, this probably means none will see play. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to making some crazy decks this expansion.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter and what crazy theorycrafts people have come up with.
It may look odd, especially due to the lack of spells and Yogg, but I assure you it works. It's an odd combo of all sorts of archetypes, like elementals, dragons, and a handlock-style element. I've had a reasonable amount of games with it and gone 50-50 so far, so it's not great, but is by no means terrible.
All-in-all I've found these archetypes to really complement each other, elementals create a lot of cards to put into your hand, which makes mountain giant and twilight drake good. They also provide good early/mid-game. Netherspite works off of twilight drake, which puts another card in your hand and a big scary one at that, (I admit there's not much dragon in there, but there isn't at all in standard at the moment. KFT might change this though). There's also some spell and other card generation which works great (most of the time), as you get minons and spells, and keep your hand size large.
All in all, I'd love for you guys to help me test and refine the deck, as I think it could get better. It's mostly for fun at the moment, but could maybe have an over 50% winrate.
If you do want to test it (which would be fantastic), there's a better guide on the deck page.
I've also though about the expansion too, I think bone drake works well with the deck and perhaps I could then get N'Zoth in there too xD
So with some amazing luck I got both mage legendaries in the few I opened and immediately put this to the test.
To be honest I found it ended quite disappointingly. The 1 mana 1/2s created by the elementals in no way stand up to a full mage spell. So I often had to play them to have a board, and had less efficient removals. This leads to a smaller hand, and lowers the effectiveness of the hand cards.
I had based this deck off of one I had been using (mostly for fun) last year:
I had much better luck with it. I think the cards that really made it were the Jeweled Scarab andSpellslinger, as they were good earlygame, gave you options, and a card space. This meant you could more easily play giants early.
With the new cards, like Pyros and Shimmering Tempest, their card addition is a deathrattle, with messes with the amount of held cards and doesn't give you immediate options. Primordial Glyph's problem is that it doesn't give you a body.
Essentially, the problem is that you can't generate enough spells reliably.
Nice to see you were looking a N'Zoth deck too. I've made one as well:
This at least seems to be more effective than the hand mage, but still isn't great. Mage lost a lot of great tools, and now a lot of their older and very good cards are getting quite slow.
As for some of your queries, Mountain Giants are brilliant if you enjoy very controlling decks or just some handlock, or plantlock as it is now. Open the Waygate is in no way essential to this deck. I actually had better luck mulliganing it for some better earlygame and doing it later in the game.
Anyway, thanks for the comment, sorry for the long reply, and I think I might fiddle with this deck some more now!
There's a bunch of cards at the bottom that can be replaced. I would suggest replacing Barnes with Spiritsinger Umbra.
As for Hunters Mark, you could try replacing Sated Threshadon, but that would make the deck much more aggressive as you lack lategame. Either that or Explosive Trap, which doesn't do too much when you have board dominance.
I was considering replacing brewmaster with shadowstep and I can't really doubt your reasoning, so I'll swap that out now.
I'm curious though, what would you replace Sylvanas with? Another shadowstep, deathratte minion or something else? Personally I'd keep her in, but that's probably just because I think she's cool.
0
Yeah, midrange hunters have kind of been pushed out of the meta right now. It's not going to help now that most of their 1-drops are rotating out. Maybe the new 2/1 lifesteal beast Swamp Leech would work?
I suppose you could add in stonetusk board and dire frenzy to hopefully get 3 to 6 1 mana 8/8 chargers with Emeriss, but that would need more stalling and draw to work consistantly.
0
Thanks! Replying to your other comment too, hunters have really poor draw atm. Perhaps countess ashmore would work, there is a rush/lifesteal minion, and also deathrattle dragons. Maybe also add the vilebrood skitterer for removal and a draw of 3 cards. Although you risk becoming a bit top heavy.
0
The highest I ranked purely running this was 15. It's a pretty fun deck to grind early ranks with, but it slows down later on. I found it doesn't have enough tools to cope with spiteful priest's huge minions, and warlock's copious amounts of taunts counters having a few large minions extremely well. Win/loss pretty much devolves into draw highroll. I just rode an 80% win rate spiteful priest to rank 10, so maybe I'll try it out at that floor. Anyway, I have found this deck fun, but I wouldn't craft much to build it. Especially with the new expansion coming up.
0
It is in there, under the few neutral cards. Oaken summons also has pretty severe anti-synergy with Twilight Drake too unfortunately :( . 4 mana 4/1 gain 6 armor's pretty poor.
0
So I made this deck a while ago, (actually pre-wild) and whilst it wasn't the best, it was extremely fun and very satisfying to actually win with. Possibly because it wasn't face hunter. Anyway, now some decent tools have come out with K&C, I've updated it to look more like this:
It's done surprisingly well in wild, I've won all four of the small sample size I've played. However, I would very much like to make it a standard deck.
Now, as Quick Shot can become Flanking Strike, there are only really 2 cards that need replacing, and they are King's Elekk, and Azure Drake. The problem is that they fit so well with The Curator, he draws 3 minion cards from your deck, all of which (potentially) draw you more cards. I think this means that the whole curator draw engine needs replacing, but I'm not sure what with. Maybe stitched tracker, thalnos and some spells like call of the wild (or to my side haha).
So any help or ideas for replacements would be greatly appreciated, and even just checking out the deck would be cool, especially if you could give me some feedback or improvements for wild.
1
Is it just me, or are some of the cards people are complaining about being random trash (*cough Yogg-Saron, Hope's End cough*) actually really good? Stuff like Grand Archivist and Spiteful Summoner, and even Raven Familiar.
Ok, let me explain. Grand Archivist is obviously utter trash in most decks. "Whoops, just used my last Hex [/card]on my [card]Snowfury Giant... At least I have a taunt now!" But in the right ones, it can be insane. I'm going to use mage as my main example is it probably has the best synergies. Imagine just having spells like Blizzard and Flamestrike in your deck. Not drawn a board clear against evolve shaman? Just drop Grand Archivist, now you've got a big body with good trading stats, and a guaranteed board clear at then end of your turn, which was practically free (~3 mana?). Or Raven Familiar on turn 2, and have a flamestrike in hand for whenever you need it. Your opponent won't even fill the board if they play around it, meaning you can probably last long enough to use it. Or something less aggressive than a flamestrike, what about Cabalist's Tome, Ultimate Infestation, Nourish, Call of the Wild?
Another aspect of Grand Archivist that I too thought was a huge downside, was that is removes the card from your deck. But in reality, this is not different that if you were to draw it, and in fact is better! It's effectively like topdecking a free flamestrike. You just play Grand Archivist when you would play flamestrike, and then you 'play' flamestrike at then end of your turn. And now it's not in your deck you can't draw it as a dead draw against two 1/1s, but is also won't be the last card in your deck when you really needed to draw it to win the game. And now your chances of drawing a key card have increased, similarly as to why Patches was so good (apart from the extra 1/1 body on turn 1).
These all work incredibly well with Spiteful Summoner as well, it's now a neutral and far superior Faceless Summoner, providing your deck is built correctly. A 4/4 is roughly 3.5 mana, so you need a 3+ cost spell for technical value. Bump this up to 4 or 5 as a minimum, and now you've got two 4/4s for 6. If you were behind on the board, you certainly aren't now. But even bigger spells, like Flamestrike, or Ultimate Infestation, and now you've got a 2.5 mana Y'Sharrj.
Raven Familiar is similar to one of my favorite cards, King's Elekk. It was used in hunter as a 2 mana 3/2, maybe draw a card, but is so powerful in the right deck as it can draw you specific cards. (See this deck:
Here's my current proof of concept deck:
tl;dr: All in all, I think Blizzard have outdone themselves with their card design this expansion. Lots are very niche, but incredibly powerful in the right situation. They are introducing cards that require more thought in deck building, having to make compromises for consistency. There is also much more interaction with your deck during play, and there are many complexities this brings up (don't remind me about Gnomeferatu). Unfortunately, this probably means none will see play. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to making some crazy decks this expansion.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter and what crazy theorycrafts people have come up with.
0
...And it's surprisingly effective
I'll cut to the chase, decklist:
It may look odd, especially due to the lack of spells and Yogg, but I assure you it works. It's an odd combo of all sorts of archetypes, like elementals, dragons, and a handlock-style element. I've had a reasonable amount of games with it and gone 50-50 so far, so it's not great, but is by no means terrible.
All-in-all I've found these archetypes to really complement each other, elementals create a lot of cards to put into your hand, which makes mountain giant and twilight drake good. They also provide good early/mid-game. Netherspite works off of twilight drake, which puts another card in your hand and a big scary one at that, (I admit there's not much dragon in there, but there isn't at all in standard at the moment. KFT might change this though). There's also some spell and other card generation which works great (most of the time), as you get minons and spells, and keep your hand size large.
All in all, I'd love for you guys to help me test and refine the deck, as I think it could get better. It's mostly for fun at the moment, but could maybe have an over 50% winrate.
If you do want to test it (which would be fantastic), there's a better guide on the deck page.
I've also though about the expansion too, I think bone drake works well with the deck and perhaps I could then get N'Zoth in there too xD
0
Hey! Nice to see a comment!
So with some amazing luck I got both mage legendaries in the few I opened and immediately put this to the test.
To be honest I found it ended quite disappointingly. The 1 mana 1/2s created by the elementals in no way stand up to a full mage spell. So I often had to play them to have a board, and had less efficient removals. This leads to a smaller hand, and lowers the effectiveness of the hand cards.
I had based this deck off of one I had been using (mostly for fun) last year:
I had much better luck with it. I think the cards that really made it were the Jeweled Scarab andSpellslinger, as they were good earlygame, gave you options, and a card space. This meant you could more easily play giants early.
With the new cards, like Pyros and Shimmering Tempest, their card addition is a deathrattle, with messes with the amount of held cards and doesn't give you immediate options. Primordial Glyph's problem is that it doesn't give you a body.
Essentially, the problem is that you can't generate enough spells reliably.
Nice to see you were looking a N'Zoth deck too. I've made one as well:
This at least seems to be more effective than the hand mage, but still isn't great. Mage lost a lot of great tools, and now a lot of their older and very good cards are getting quite slow.
As for some of your queries, Mountain Giants are brilliant if you enjoy very controlling decks or just some handlock, or plantlock as it is now. Open the Waygate is in no way essential to this deck. I actually had better luck mulliganing it for some better earlygame and doing it later in the game.
Anyway, thanks for the comment, sorry for the long reply, and I think I might fiddle with this deck some more now!
0
There's a bunch of cards at the bottom that can be replaced. I would suggest replacing Barnes with Spiritsinger Umbra.
As for Hunters Mark, you could try replacing Sated Threshadon, but that would make the deck much more aggressive as you lack lategame. Either that or Explosive Trap, which doesn't do too much when you have board dominance.
0
Thanks for the feedback!
I was considering replacing brewmaster with shadowstep and I can't really doubt your reasoning, so I'll swap that out now.
I'm curious though, what would you replace Sylvanas with? Another shadowstep, deathratte minion or something else? Personally I'd keep her in, but that's probably just because I think she's cool.