Nine Lives Hybrid Hunter Theorycraft

This is a theorycraft for a hunter which can speed up or slow down depending on the opponent. The aim is to exploit Nine Lives as either a draw engine or a value engine, depending on your needs.

Most of the card choices can be considered optional, and this is an exploration of utilizing 2x Nine Lives, 2x Loot Hoarder, 1x Ursatron, 2x Mechanical Whelp as the core of a flexible Hunter deck not restricted to the limitations imposed by Master’s Call or a heavy Mech package.

That said, here are some examples of how this particular deck can be played.

Moving Fast

Use the beast package and Headhunter's Hatchet to control the board early and pressure the opponent with your hero power. If you run out of steam, play Nine Lives to trigger either Loot Hoarder, Ursatron or, if neither have died, Shimmerfly.

Nine Lives into Loot Hoarder effectively draws 3 resources for 5 mana (bootstrapped pre-nerf Nourish). 2x Ursatron is obviously very popular with Nine Lives in Mech hunter, however this requires running a very heavy mech package, since you can possibly trigger 6+ mech draws. This runs a single copy to increase the consistency of drawing Mechanical Whelp.

Moving Slow

When you need to generate large value, try to exclusively hit Mechanical Whelp with your Nine Lives. This can result in 6+ 7/7s during the course of the game, depending on how you utilize Archmage Vargoth and how lucky you get with Zul'jin. Basically a baby version of Mech hunter.