When Rexxar Hunts Alone - Diving into the Kobolds Spell Hunter Archetype
Spell Hunter is a new archetype brought to us with Kobolds & Catacombs. Let's look at what makes it tick and why you should be giving it a shot.
The Face is the Place
Rexxar does not, typically, hunt alone. Hunter has been an aggressive class since Hearthstone was in beta, providing players with minions, spells, weapons, and a hero power that collude to deal damage early and often. So-called Face Hunter decks were a force years back, when Knife Juggler and Leper Gnome aided Rexxar's beasts, and the archetype has surged back time and again. It's usually what Hunter does best.
That hasn't stopped Blizzard from promoting other Hunter archetypes. Cloaked Huntress and Professor Putricide inspired decks that leaned heavily on secrets to keep tempo and win games. Deathstalker Rexxar and its Build-A-Beast mechanic gave players perhaps their first means to keep up in control match-ups. But these cards lack consistency. While other classes had decks of 30 cards working in synergy, Hunter decks attempting anything other than aggressive gameplans felt like an amalgam of disparate parts: a fast opener, Savannah Highmane on turn six, Deathstalker Rexxar late. Reinforcing this stagnancy is a hero power with no flexibility, unlike Warlock, Paladin, and Mage. For a while, this formula hasn't competed with tier 1 decks.
No Minions Allowed
Enter Spell Hunter, the newest Hunter archetype not-so-subtly presented by Blizzard. Not to be confused with Secret Hunter, Spell Hunter runs zero minions—just spells, weapons, Spellstones, and the Death Knight. Two new cards promote this archetype. To My Side! summons two random animal companions for six mana (only one if your deck contains minions), while the legendary weapon Rhok'delar features a Battlecry that fills your hand with random Hunter spells. Both have so far over-performed expectations, making Spell Hunter an immediate threat on ladder.
The best part? Although Hearthstone is increasingly criticized for being expensive, Spell Hunter is a relatively cheap deck, requiring just a handful of cards from the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion.
Kibler immediately popularized the archetype, piloting his list to seven straight wins on stream after Kobolds and Catacombs went live. It's worth noting that most of those matches were against Tempo Mage, which fares poorly against this deck (especially Freezing Trap). It struggles to combat Warrior's armor gain and removal and hits a wall (after wall after wall) against Control Warlock. But competitive viability aside, the deck is just plain fun. We'd wager this is the reason for its popularity anyway.
Kibler's list runs a lot of cards that will get Hunter fans excited. The secrets confuse opponents and often force awkward, sub-optimal plays, triggering the new Lesser Emerald Spellstone in the process. These Spellstones flood your board with Beasts after you have committed secrets, making their removal difficult without a timely Hellfire, Dragonfire Potion, or Whirlwind/Sleep with the Fishes combo. If your Wolves manage to stay on the board for a turn, they deal repeated damage and threaten buffs by both To My Side! and Call of the Wild. Flanking Strike provides a means to protect these wolves and regain tempo if you have lost it. And fewer things are more satisfying than using Hunter's Mark and either Candleshot or On the Hunt to remove a Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound or Deathwing unscathed.
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Which RNG Is Best?
People can argue about To My Side! all day, but there's no denying that Rhok'delar is ultimately what persuades players away from sticky minions like Savannah Highmane and toward low-cost spells like Hunter's Mark. It's effect feels reminiscent of Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, only it will always fill your hand with things to play—and never kills you. It can even give you more secrets, in case you haven't had an opportunity to trigger your Spellstones.
[Side note: In Wild, the existence of Lock and Load makes Rhok'delar better by a lot.]
There's merit to the argument that the benefits of Rhok'delar and To My Side! do not outweigh those of playing, say, Yogg and Arcane Giants, even Cloaked Huntress, in the same spell-heavy package. Yogg provides a last-ditch win condition, the Giants provide much-needed late-game threats, and Cloaked Huntress, in the right hand, can trigger an overwhelming early tempo swing. Or will these decks fade out entirely as control decks tech in the AoE they need to keep Rexxar's arcane Wolves at bay?
The answers to these questions will be worked out over the next few weeks, as the meta continues to change and players continue to experiment. But for now, Spell Hunter has asserted itself as the new, fun, and inexpensive deck to beat.
I agree with you that Hearthstone is expensive, definitely. Coexisting facts.
After a week, I don't think Spell Hunter is as powerful as many other decks out there. But it's still a ton of fun to play while you're grinding to, like, rank 10.
I like the build with Cloaked Huntress and a some key minions better than the no minions version. Mind you, I think this is a lot of fun. For my money, it's Lesser Emerald Spellstone that makes secret hunter a real beast of a deck. It lets you turn that tempo from huntress into a big value play as well.
Mirrors were my toughest games, but I did lose games where my opponent got an early signature weapon and was able to milk it for mega value. I put in anti-weapon meta to try and shut that action down.
lol at everyone trashed "To my side" when we saw it.
I lose alone!
Well at least it is a fun deck.
dunno man what your saying yesterday when i saw kiblers video i decided to give it go , and i was like HTF is this deck winning (went from rank 18 to rank 12 with 14/4) , so yes if you don't try it , it may look like meme deck but its strong especially cause opponents don't expect it
I don't think when the meta settles this deck will survive. It is just to slow for hunter which is a class that has terrible removals. But I am happy to see that you can climb the ladder with it for now. I wish I had the cards to try it myself.
It Has its up and downs , ultimatly the important thing is if it becomes a viable archtype for hunter it can bring versatility if people play both ,You can counter no minion hunter with cards like Counterspell, Eater of Secrets, Doomed Apprentice besicly any card that punishes heavy spell use. On the other hand it bypasses Mirror Entity,Snipe,Repentance any effects that require your opponent to play a minion. The deck id say is decent for now and if other cards were to be released supporting the archtype it can get better (I know it almost never happens) , But there are spells that support both hunter archtypes.
I don't understand how the deck actually wins games. I've played big priest and control warlock against it and it doesn't seem like I can conceivably lose.
Building up your Spellstone, feeding your Eaglehorn Bow and pinging your hero power.
It depends what rank you are, really. Things tend to slow down the higher up you go, so this deck is borderline worthless 20-10.
I'm enjoy the memes, but the deck really suffers against control warlock and dragon priest. Well, any class that has 3+ dmg removals. Has decent tools against anything else. So, if those 2 decks become meta, then spell hunter will be pushed to a tier 2 or top tier 3 at most. But it's really fun to play. Hope they can build the archetype like they build highlander priest. We hunters spect something more of this.
Yes, it possibly. I did it on almost same deck, but with Y'Shaarj and Barnes in deck.
In the future I'm almost sure that this archetype will get replaced by a Hunter deck that... just plays Minions, Secrets and the spellstone.
P.S. And don't listen to the yellow pony! You'll be crippling yourself. By including the "combo" you'll make the deck swinger and even less consistent (basically, you'll win almost every time if you drop Barnes on 4, but you'll lose if you don't draw both of those cards or draw and play Barnes by, like, turn 6).
It's a pretty damn good archetype, but I think most of that is due to Flanking Strike, Wandering Monster and Lesser Emerald Spellstone being such great cards.
I'm playing minion free, but am already getting outrun on ladder by people running it with Cloaked Huntress or Professor Putricide instead of To My Side! or the weapon. We'll see what the meta shapes up to, though.
Blizz trolled us with the reveal but what we didn't see coming was that finally Hunter got a archetype worth playing holy shit this deck is off the walls it's the most fun I've had playing Hearthstone all these years. Hunter was the first class I loved playing since pre and after Naxx and those were the days..since then Hunter fell off and we've been begging for blizzard to make Hunter good again and now it's finally happened! glad hunter has made a splash in the meta and with such a cool deck too.
I am missing alot of the cards for that list, but created a wild deck that draws its entirety on a reliable basis and runs both minions and spells.
The minions can all be draw straight from the deck with card effects though so you don't have to worry about cards stuck on the bottom.
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That moment the community whines about a special card (pre-release) and if an expansion goes live that special card becomes UBER.
Remember the time before FROZEN THRONE went live and UI was voted (by the community) as one of the worst upcoming cards???
:-D
edit: Sorry for not posting links to the cards. Im on cellular right now.