(52% WR to Legend) Crew Demon Hunter + Guide

Important Deck Notes

•  If you’re concerned with climbing in the most efficient Dust-to-Win manner possible, just play Pirate Aggro. It’s a much better deck, far easier to pilot, and does not require spending 2600 dust on new Crew cards that will almost certainly never get any further support.
• I do not want to misrepresent this deck as a list that is easy to climb with. While I was successful in reaching Legend with a roughly 52% win rate following the recent balance patch, it was very difficult and was likely influenced by other players testing as-of-yet unoptimized lists with other buffed cards.
  Record via HSReplay: 18W – 17L, with the wins skewed toward the end as I became more comfortable piloting the deck.
• This is a hyper aggro deck, and I know many people simply don’t enjoy playing lists that either win by turn 8 or forfeit. The most common mistake I’ve seen in other lists while researching for this one is trying to get extended value out of the Crew cards. Filling the board with 4/4s late in the game is pointless in a meta where every deck has numerous efficient board clears. Your win condition is an aggressive curve followed by one or two Crew drops on turns 4 through 6.

Mulligan Guide

As an incredibly aggressive deck that lacks many of the tools other aggro packages use to refill their resources and push for the win after seizing tempo, an efficient mana curve will make or break your games. This makes understanding your mulligan incredibly important for any kind of consistency.

Going First

When going first, your mulligan is simple: look for an efficient mana curve. You will always want to see a 1-drop minion or spell (other than Burning Heart, which does nothing turn 1). In order of preference from best to worst, I would prioritize:

1. Sock Puppet Slitherspear – A tough to kill 3 HP minion that provides increased damage on following turns if you end up floating mana and have nothing to spend it on besides your Hero Power
2. Patches the Pilot – While this deck lacks the powerful card draw of other Demon Hunter lists, even one or two lucky pulls can be enough to swing games
3. Starlight Wanderer – Takes priority over Patches above if you have a 2-drop Draenei to immediately follow it up with
4. Through Fel and Flames – Though useless on its own, making any of your important 1-drop or 2-drop minions stickier with the extra HP can be very powerful
5. Illidari Studies – While better than Burning Heart or Headhunt, which are essentially useless turn 1 and should be instead used for clearing opponent minions without having to trade, this spell is your only form of extension in the deck and is better saved for the mid-game when you can get card-draw, removal, or extra damage to push for the win.

If you already have a 1-drop, generally good cards to see are Spirit of the Team, Voronei Recruiter, Sigil of Skydiving, Burning Heart (easily clear early enemy minions while also providing extra damage), and Zilliax Deluxe 3000 (only if paired with multiple Crew generating cards or Sigil).

Going Second

Your mulligan is far less restrictive with access to the Coin, but with more options comes the price of needing match-up knowledge and experience piloting the deck so that you can prioritize as strong a start as possible. There are too many options and niche scenarios where certain cards become stronger to list each and every one, but as a few notes on the more common choices (in addition to the cards above, which remain good choices):

• Spirit of the Team – Against other aggro decks, coining out Spirit can be game winning on its own by allowing you to clear low HP minions for free each turn without having to Hero Power
• Troubled Mechanic – If you also have Through Fel and Flames, coining out Mechanic and buffing it turn one is surprisingly powerful. While it does burn three cards, the end result of a 3/2 Divine Shield minion that draws another Draenei is quite good, especially when noting that 70% of your potential draws are playable next turn to keep up tempo
• Stranded Spaceman – Against aggro decks, a 2/3 that follows itself with a buffed Rush minion is huge for controlling the board. If playing against slower decks I recommend saving it to pair with your Crew drop later, so that you have more immediate board impact to make the tempo swing stronger
• Voronei Recruiter – Only against slower decks to either force them to use inefficient removal to get it off board ASAP. Turn one Voronei is not as strong as you’d think by itself, since drawing for turn will split up your Crew and can force you to play awkwardly getting rid of those cards from hand to set up a drop of more than 2 of them.
• Emergency Meeting – Similar to above, only good against slower decks as it has no immediate impact. However, the lack of enemy board presence gives you more room to manipulate your hand so that your Crew drop is as large as possible

Class Specific Notes

The list below is entirely anecdotal and based on my games rather than extensive data, but I’ve found these notes to be fairly accurate. Keep in mind that my games were all played in Diamond rank and this advice is aimed toward the common lists I saw at that level. Ranking the classes below from easiest to most difficult.

Rogue: Your easiest match-up, as Rogue is one of the few classes without efficient board clears. Try to drop two or three Crew right on curve turn 4-5 and you should be good.

Warlock: Not many of these to test against, but one of the only match-ups where keeping Kayn Sunfury in your mulligan can be worth it, as their main defense other than getting lucky with board clears will be playing / resurrecting large Taunt minions from Dark Alley Pact. Otherwise not too much of an issue since their best board clear, Table Flip, requires self-damage and loss of tempo through using Hero Power to fill up the hand.

Priest: Similar to Warlock I didn’t encounter almost any Priest players, but as all of their relevant lists are Aggro right now Spirit of the Team and Burning Heart are incredibly strong at being able to clear their early minions and put out extra damage for free while you develop your board.

Demon Hunter: Same as Priest above because every relevant Demon Hunter list is aggro. Pirate DH is one of the few match-ups where trading is necessary, because their cards are simply more efficient and deal more damage than yours.

Hunter: When I got a good curve I didn’t have much trouble with Hunter aside from when they got lucky with powerful Discovers or managed to get an early + Tidepool Pupil to create an unbreakable board.

Shaman: Incredibly irritating to play against because the game often comes down to whether they’re running a list with
Malted Magma and draw it early, which can’t be planned around. Nostalgia lists are less of an issue and can be played
against similarly to Demon Hunter or Priest.

Mage: The only relevant list is Elemental, which is usually not too much of a problem if you get a good curve and one or two removals. The issue is that, like Shaman just above, winning or losing will often come down to whether or not they draw one of their two copies of Solar Flare early on.

Death Knight: While my win rate against DK was surprisingly even, 3W – 3L, I rate them this difficult because none of them matches felt like they were really within my control. I absolutely stomped the more aggressive lists that could not keep up with my tempo, but even with nerfs a single Threads of Despair in slower lists would beat me and could be reliably found with Buttons.

Paladin: With the recent buffs to Librams and reliable strength of the older Handbuff list and both lists playing Tigress Plushy, it’s deceptively difficult to burst them down and I expect it to get worse as lists are optimized.

Warrior: Only ran into one and had a very bad time, but that’s just going to happen against a control deck with seemingly never-ending efficient board clears. Thankfully many people seem to be dropping the class, so they’re a rare encounter.

Druid: Pray they don’t mana ramp on curve and drop Unkilliax turn 6. This match-up is unfun and entirely out of your control, depending solely on the opponent’s draws. Get pranked dummy, imagine trying to play a non-tier 1 aggro deck in 2024 Hearthstone.