Control Hunter (saviors of uldum edition)

Hi. Are you sick of control warrior? well guess what? this deck has never lost to it! 

The way this deck beats control warrior is because it has a ton of pure value engines that no amount of omega assemblies, delivery drones, or even elysianas can beat. and then you cast EVERYTHING again with zul’jin.

The value mvp’s include dire frenzy, nine lives, and unleash the beast. 

The early game tempo counters include secret plan, desert spear, snip snap, marked shot, bone wraith, and unleash the hounds.

Now. BEFORE you get all up my ass about how this could easily be a highlander deck, I just want to make it clear that if you make it a highlander deck, you make dire frenzy MUCH worse, as it shuffles three copies of something into your deck, turning off zephrys and brann. I will still post a highlander version of this deck later, but be warned: It’s gonna be way more expensive (as all highlander decks usually are). 

Let’s talk about the different matchups are and what you want in your mulligan. But before we start, I wanna say that if you have a hand with synergies like whelp, nine lives, and ziliax, it is WORTH keeping, because once you are able to magnetize ziliax to a whelp, your opponent can give up on trying to kill you in the early game. The only other insane combo in this deck that you always want to keep if you start with it is scalehide plus dire frenzy.

1. Druid: Quest druid, token druid, heal druid.

Druids usually play quest druid, so in that matchup you want to win the board early with cards like animal companion, snip snap, marked shot, unleash, and desert spear. bone wraith is always good, but it gets hard countered by oasis surger. 

Against token, you need to try to get unleash the hounds, desert spear, and snip snap. after you survive its early game, you need to push on turns 5,6, and 7 to kill him before you run out of aoe for his the forest aids.

Against lucentbark, you need to push him down before turn 8 with animal companions and a lucky dire frenzied huffer. If you don’t, you will not be able to clear six 4/8 taunts 10 times in a row. Not even a freaking warrior can do that. I’m sorry, but this is by far this deck’s worst matchup. (luckily noone plays it tho because it sucks against aggro tho 🙂 

2. Hunter: Highlander, secret, midrange, mech.

Highlander hunter is basically meta right now, but I have a 55% winrate against it with this deck. I have to admit though, it was always really close. And this is where the questionable tech card of flare comes in. it feels so great to have your opponent set up one or two secrets on turns two and 3 to set up for hyena alpha and then you just yoink his dreams away. besides, it works extremely well in this matchup with zul’jin, because when he plays zul’jin, he basically fills his board and plays 5 secrets. And then when you play your zul’jin which casts flare and swings the board into your favor, it will never fail to make your opponent concede. So yeah, flare definitely stays in your hand. Other good mulligans are deadly shot, desert spear, acolyte, unleash, snip snap, marked shot, and bone wraith.

I haven’t really ever been able to recognize when my opponent plays secret or highlander hunter. I suppose when they play weird filler cards like ursatron i can tell it’s highlander, but secret hunter is basically a worse version of highlander anyway, since the secrets are only really extremely valuable in the early game.

Noone ever really plays midrange hunter, (except for me because it is insane against mage) but i suppose i should include it in this list because you might run into it by accident. Against midrange hunter you mostly just want deadly shot, unleash, desert spear, and marked shot, because the only real way you can lose to midrange hunter is if your opponent gets a huge hyena early in the game. marked and deadly shot deals with that quite nicely. 

Mech hunter is bullshit, but it does get completely countered by freezing trap, so be sure to keep secret plan for a chance at one of those. If mech hunter somehow becomes super meta, then I suppose you just run freezing trap instead of like flare as a tech card. But anyway, the top mulligans are unleash the hounds, snip snap, desert spear, deadly shot, secret plan, and bone wraith.

Ummm, i kinda got bored of typing this much and I still have 7 classes to go, so…… here are some tech inclusions if you are tired of losing to the same deck every frickin time.

tempo rogue: multi shot. bet ya never thought of that one eh? It is basically restless mummy except less flexible, but it still does the trick against rogue. 

control warrior: emeriss. (like it shows in the decklist) this particular list is designed to counter the meta right now, and the meta rn is control warrior so yeah that’s why i run it.

in general: vulpera scoundrel if you want an early body instead of 4 dmg on marked shot, applebaum if you want to get the healing deathrattle in the pool earlier or just create one more power worth of pressure, ursatron if you want your whelp-ziliax combo earlier or just more draw in general, houndmaster shaw if you have him (I’m too broke :(), spider bomb for big target removal & nine lives synergy, tunnel blaster if you really just wanna outvalue token druid instead of playing the midgame (+ nine lives synergy), nechromechanic for some omega value nine lives turns, etc etc. 

you get the idea. If the meta shifts, this deck shifts too, because hunter really barely has any bad cards to work with.