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Mulligans
General Mulligans
Early game, try to build a decent curveI see posts all the time about how bad Hunter is, and how it’s not viable in this meta. Because of this I took it upon myself to make a good Hunter deck to prove everyone wrong. After a ton of trial and error with the new cards I finally got a winner. The sample size maybe small, but in 20 games the deck has a record of 16-4 (80% winrate)! I’m positive this is going to drop as the sample size grows, but obviously the deck has merit. The idea was to use all of the zoolike annoying deathrattles available to hunter to create the stickiest board of all time, then finish them off with N’zoth if the game goes the distance. The Tundra Rhinos also allow you to play a deathrattle, run it into something, then run the spawned minions into something else. Aggro decks can be a problem (3 of the loses), but those matchups are far from unwinnable. I was running Zipgunner for the Barnes and buff synergy, but I feel like the Hunter’s Mark and Unleash are really good at helping take back the board. I need a bigger sample size to really determine which two cards are better in those spots (I’m also thinking about possibly taking out a Deadly shot as one of those spots but they help with Miracle and Jade).
Love the deck!
Shaman/Faster decks really step all over it due to a lack of comeback mechanisms.
Would you consider it possible to put the ‘pirate package’ into the deck to have a better early presence (Buccaneer gets buffed by Bow)? Maybe adding Explosive Trap, although it is most likely way too slow.
Finally, what do you think -1 Deadly Shot and either +1 Unleash the Hounds or +1 Ragnaros? DS doesn’t work as well as I’d like most of the time, especially against Jade decks that tend to end up with big boards. A second Unleash helps with clearing those big boards or setting up a 2-turn lethal whilst Rag buffs Barnes’ Battlecry and further improves performance v slow decks.
I’m not about to turn this into another degenerate pirate deck myself, but you can do whatever you want with the deck. With the STB nerf coming soon I wouldn’t advice it tho. I have experimented with Ragnaros in the deck, and while it performed ok, it was a dead draw in most aggro matchups. You say deadly shot isn’t performing well for you, but it was the opposite for me when I play tested. Against miracle it let you kill a stealthed minion, and against Jade I was almost always able to keep board control and then Deadly Shot a giant Jade to give myself one more turn before it got out of hand. I think running two unleash might be a bit much but it could work. I have several versions of this deck built, one of which was -1 Deadly Shot and -1 Unleash to add +2 Shaky Zipgunner. It improved Barnes odds while at the same time giving hand buff synergy. However, to date I think this list is still my highest winrate version. I play the Zipgunner version the most though because I really like the card.