Dinomancy Zoo Token/Buff Hunter (April 2017, Season 37)

Hunter is back! (EDIT: or maybe not yet)

(EDIT Update: I’ve been losing more and more with this deck after a couple days more, am going to redesign it after I analysed what the issues are in the current meta, although it is rapidly changing)

Hello everyone, this is a deck with which I’ve been getting very solid wins in the ladder at the start of the Year of the Mammoth. I’ll probably be tweaking it as I keep playing, but here’s the gist now.

The deck revolves around Beasts, and specifically getting many Beast tokens to fill the board quickly and buffing them and your regular Beasts. In fact, the only two minions who aren’t Beasts themselves are the buffers Shaky Zipgunner and Houndmaster.

Cards

Dinomancy definitely is a very nice one in Un’Goro for us Hunters. With this deck full of Beasts it’s very powerful to have the ability to give a +2/+2 buff to any minion (as almost all your minions and all your tokens are Beasts) every turn.

Scavenging Hyena is potentially the most powerful card in the deck. You can almost always get one of them at least to 8/5, and using Dinomancy often at least 10/7. Unleash the Hounds is very useful there, although you can also use it with Dinomancy, Houndmaster or Crackling Razormaw buffs if at some you need to gain back control against other aggro decks.

These cards are all your other buffing abilities. Extra possible synergy exists with Rat Pack and Dispatch Kodo.

A lot of token generators. All cards are Beasts, and the tokens are Beasts as well.

There are the only 2 target spells in the deck, as you can mostly just use your many Beasts, with a little buff where needed, to clear nasty opponents. Hunter's Mark feels kind of like another buff (I haven’t seen the word ‘debuff’ used much around Hearthstone, is it used?). Often, I just use Kill Command or even two of them to finish off the opponent by turn 6 or 7.

If you don’t manage to get your opponent down by turn 8, these Beasts can help do the job, or at least buy you enough time to finish them off in other ways.

Finally, I think Stampede can do a nice job of quickly filling the board with Beasts if you can use is together with 2 low-cost beasts expecially around turn 6.

Strategy

Go for the face as much as you can. You should be able to keep hitting your opponent while also keeping board control because of the overwhelming number of tokens in the deck.

Don’t be afraid to lose some tempo if you can only play Scavenging Hyena as a normal 2/2. If you keep it, it is almost always worth it later in the game.

If you don’t get Dinomancy, it’s still very possible to get good wins simply out of the synergy of overwhelming numbers and Beast buffs.

Sometimes you really need to, but mostly try not to use Tundra Rhino without any token minions or Scavenging Hyena. If you do, try to get it buffed so that it becomes much harder to clear and you can use its ability on the next turn.

Swaps

For this aggro deck, the higher cost cards are less important, I’m still looking to see if Swamp King Dred is worth keeping in but for now I do like him quite a bit. If you don’t feel like crafting him, you can swap him out for another Savannah Highmane. The same goes for Volcanosaur.

Variations

Some things I’m trying out in variations of this deck, is putting more Adapt cards in. Though there aren’t that many, quite some of them also have a Beast synergy.

Also, I’m going to revisit our old pal King Krush to see if he could have a solid spot in this deck, especially if you can buff and/or Adapt him.

I hope you like it, and feel free to comment of course!