Quest Hunter Deck List Guide – Witchwood – May 2018

Quest Hunter Mulligan Strategy & Guide

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• The Marsh Queen – Your deck is built around the Quest, so you always keep it.
• Fire Fly –  Your best way to finish the Quest + a solid 1-drop in general.
• Prince Keleseth – If you play a deck with Keleseth, you obviously want to get it as often as possible. Keep it.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Elven Archer – Against decks running 1 health minions in the early game, so mostly against some of the Aggro decks.
• Gluttonous Ooze – Against weapons decks.
• Ravencaller – Against slow decks. It’s something to drop on T3, which accelerates your Quest.

Quest Hunter Play Strategy

Vs Aggro

Your game plan vs Aggro decks is to control the board and survive. When you play this deck for a bit, you’ll notice that it’s surprisingly slow. While you want to try to rush the Quest as quickly as possible, remember that falling behind means that you most likely lose the game. Unleash the Hounds is your only early-mid game comeback card, and it works only against a wide board of low health minions.

Your minions aren’t exactly… of the highest quality. Your 1-drops get much better in the mid/late game when you can combine them with Toxmonger, but they are pretty weak early. Similarly, your 3-drops are either tech cards or cards with low stats that speed up the quest (Ravencaller, for example).

Try to clear the board constantly – Flanking Strike and Wing Blast should help a bit with clearing medium-sized minions, while Unleash the Hounds and Deathstalker Rexxar will work better against wide boards.

Sticking a Houndmaster Shaw or Toxmonger is going to help you greatly. The first one gives Rush to each one of your minions, meaning that it will be easier to catch up and clear the board. It also has solid vanilla stats, meaning that your opponent might not have a good way to clear it. Toxmonger is even better, as it turns your 1-drops into deadly removals. Elven Archer in particular – not only it clears something right away, but also leaves a 1 mana 1/1 with Poisonous.

Deathstalker Rexxar is actually great in the fast matchups. Between the initial AoE, Armor gain and a much better Hero Power, it’s a great card to have. Your basic Hero Power is pretty much pointless against Aggro, since you won’t rush them down anyway, but the upgraded one can give you all sorts of useful minions – with Rush/Charge (immediate removal), Taunt, Lifesteal etc.

Generally, the deck doesn’t work too well in fast matchups. Since your early game is rather slow and clunky, and you spike in power only after you finish the Quest, you will often get rushed down by a faster deck, but there’s not much you can do expect trying your best to not fall behind.

Vs Control

The deck works better vs slow builds than against fast decks. Since you have more time, instead of focusing on surviving, you can try to finish the Quest as quickly as possible instead. Your deck is pretty weak for the first few turns, but it gets a huge boost in power after you shuffle all of the 3/2’s in.

Early game is all about trying to draw and play as many 1-drops as possible. The only exception is probably Stitched Tracker. If you’re close to finishing the Quest and can pick a Fire Fly, you should do that, but generally, a Toxmonger or Tol'vir Warden picks might be better.

One interesting thing to consider is your Prince Keleseth timing. The thing is – it buffs all of the minions that are CURRENTLY in your deck. So if you play it before Queen Carnassa, you don’t buff the 3/2’s. If you get him on Turn 2 – play him. But if you draw him in the mid game, when you’re close to finishing your Quest already, it would be a better idea to wait a turn or two and drop him after playing Carnassa. This way the 3/2’s turn into 4/3’s, which are even more deadly.

One of the best cards in slow matchups is actually Toxmonger. Not only you can easily remove a big minion or two, but you put a high priority target on the board that your opponent just has to remove – it usually buys you an extra turn. Remember that he works only with the minions you PLAY from your hand, not the ones you summon, so it won’t buff the Unleash the Hounds.

After you finish the Quest, you want to constantly re-flood the board with your 3/2’s, as well as some other small minions. Basically, force your opponent to remove your board every turn instead of developing. Once he runs out of removals, you should get a big advantage.

In the late game, you can combo the 3/2’s really, really well with Tundra Rhino. The Shaw combo is also great if your opponent has a board you want to remove immediately, but that is better versus faster decks. In the best case scenario, you can drop Rhino + five 3/2’s for 17 burst damage and a huge board your opponent has to clear right away. Even better if you’ve dropped Keleseth AFTER Carnassa – this way the combo might deal way over 20 damage!

Deathstalker Rexxar is your alternative win condition. Your basic Hero Power can be good in some matchups, like vs Warlock, but having a way to create a powerful card each turn is even better. Between keeping your opponent busy with all of the 3/2’s, you might also create some powerful Zombeast to put even more pressure. Your deck’s pretty high tempo, but low on value, which means that you want to pick some “bigger” cards – creating 4-6 mana Zombeasts should be optimal, they should still let you drop some smaller minions, but also be out of range of the regular AoEs. After that, drop a mix of mid-sized Zombeasts and smaller minions, so your opponent will need to BOTH AoE and single target removal your board.

Quest Hunter Card Substitutions

Quest Hunter runs some expensive cards, but some of them can be replaced with budget options. Below, you will find a full list of Epic & Legendary cards with potential replacements (IF they can be replaced).

• The Marsh Queen – Playing Quest Hunter without Quest would be kind of pointless, wouldn’t it?
• Prince Keleseth – Pretty much necessary. There aren’t many 2 mana cards you want to play in the deck anyway, and Prince Keleseth works really well both on Turn 2 and after you finish the Quest. But if you don’t have it, you want to remake the deck a bit and run more 2-drops instead – at least 4 I’d say. Some of the options are Crackling Razormaw, Plated Beetle, Scavenging Hyena, Dire Wolf Alpha or Vicious Scalehide.
• Houndmaster Shaw – Can be replaced with a second Tundra Rhino. Rhino is generally worse in faster matchups, but might be better in slower ones if you combo it with Carnassa's Brood.
• Deathstalker Rexxar – Also pretty much necessary. You COULD run the deck without it, but it will be much worse in both fast and slow matchups. You can try Dire Frenzy instead – it will give you some tempo vs fast decks and an extra win condition vs slow decks. Alternatively, you can use any of the other replacements listed next to other cards.
• Gluttonous Ooze – Weapon removal is great in the current meta, and you can’t replace it with Acidic Swamp Ooze if you run a Keleseth deck. If you replaced Keleseth too, you can put Ooze instead. If you haven’t – Harrison Jones is an option. If you don’t have Harrison, you can use another tech card such as Silence (Ironbeak Owl or Spellbreaker).
• Toxmonger – Another card that’s hard to replace. It’s your main big minions removal. You can try using Hunter's Mark or Deadly Shot instead, but they won’t be as effective. Also, if you get rid of this card, you should also change your 1-drops. Both Elven Archer and Stonetusk Boar are played because of the Toxmonger – if you don’t run Toxmonger, replace them with other cards, such as Dire Mole, Jeweled Macaw, Argent Squire or Feral Gibberer.