Sparkz’ – Arcane Secret Hunter [Feat: N’Zoth] (Season 38, WIld)

        Prepare to forget everything you have ever learned about playing hunter… This deck takes swings from putting your opponent down to 16 health by turn 5 or possibly still have them sitting around the 20ish mark at turn 10. The way this happens is based off of the secrets we pull. We have the hyper control Snipe and Freezing Trap secrets, but we also have some high tempo secrets of Bear Trap and Cat Trick. In addition with the power of having four 1 drops that can get us more beasts. Jeweled Macaw and Webspinner become very important cards in control match ups. Using Mad Scientist we can get seamless transitions between board presence and help thin our deck out. The only negative, but becomes obsolete, is that Scientist’s secrets he puts on the battlefield don’t count towards Arcane Giant. 

No Eaglehorn or Highmane?

        First things first… Eaglehorn Bow doesn’t work with this deck. You can’t drop Polluted Hoarder because that takes away from N’Zoth, and from needed draw power. You can’t drop Unleash the Hounds or KFC (Kill Command, lets be honest the bird in the background could totally be a giant chicken lol) Both of those cards are needed removal and count for Arcane Giants. Maybe if you are playing standard you can drop Mad Scientist for your beloved bow. In this deck he is needed for our board control and tempo. So no bow for you people (I told you to forget everything you know about hunter).

        As for your even more favorite Savannah Highmane he’s great and all but Cairne Bloodhoof and Sylvanas Windrunner are still better cards. Highmane is great because he is a beast but the only “Beast synergy” we have in the deck is KFC. I have yet to experience a time where I had a Cairne or Sylva down and couldn’t use KFC’s 5 damage strength. We have a plentiful amount of beasts already with 16 total, and 8 of those beasts come from the Macaw and Spider.

How does it fare?

        Currently this deck has done best against: Pirate Warrior (9-0), Dragon Priest (Moderately positve), Quest Rogue (Very Positive), Mech Mage (Moderately Positive). I haven’t played a lot of games yet with the deck, and I only know it struggles against two meta decks (mentioned below). Pirate warrior is definitely a walk in the park though. A turn 3 Cloaked Huntress with 2+ secrets catches us up and then puts us very far ahead. 

        This deck has a difficult time against token druid (moderatly poor) since a lot of their minions start at 2 health first MoL (mark of lotus) and our AoE explosive is out of range. Then the problem becomes they just have to many minions for our Bears, Cats, Companions, Scientists, and Hoarders to trade with. The deck though I have been having a really hard time beating is taunt warrior. It really comes down to since we hardly ever flood the board so once he completes his quest we don’t have enough ways to appear on the board. I don’t see nearly as many in wild as I do pirate warriors because the wild pirate decks with ship cannon + coin + Southsea Deckhand + Patches the Pirate is just crazy good. Currently this deck has slowly been doing better taunt warrior but on the other hand can destroy the pirates. (I doubt Black Knightcould help.)

Mulligans are pretty simple aside from the secrets. 

Unleash the Hounds and Explosive Trap

        ~Keep every time against Warrior, Hunter, Paladin, Druid, Shaman, and Warlock. 
        ~Druid and Warlock you have to make the call of whether it will be the slower control or the faster swarm decks. Against these two only keep one of the two different AoE control cards because if you make the mistake against the slow decks to keep the AoE then you’ll suffer more than only having one against the fast decks.
        ~Against the other 3 classes (warrior is different) if you already have our 1 drop, and a beast secret or Huntress then go ahead and limit yourself to 1 AoE clear.
        ~Against those Warriors keep 2, if not, mulligan for 2 of those AoEs. I think part of the problem for dealing with Taunt warrior is because this deck just has such a hard time to mulligan for one and then reacting for the other. Personally I always mulligan against warrior as if they were pirates with this deck, as I would rather lose to a person playing taunt warrior than a low-life Pirate Warrior, so far though its paid off, as I am 7-0 against pirate warrior.

Snipe and Freezing Trap 

        ~Keep every time against Priest, Rogue, Druid, and Warlock. (Keep if decent hand against warrior).
        ~Against Druid and Warlock only keep Snipe but balance with your decision on keeping your AoEs.
        ~Against Warrior only keep Snipe if you have a Huntress and a 1 drop, beast secret, and/or AoE.
        ~Against Priest keep Freezing Trap as well because creating a 6 mana Twilight drake, a 3 mana northshire, or even a 5 mana deathlord all makes very bad plays. Against the slow decks do your best to force them to attack with the minion you want “trapped”.
        ~Lastly combing Freeze + Snipe can really throw someone’s game plan off and allow you to push forward to their face until they finally re-appear on the board. This is especially important against priests, and slowed versions of Druid and Warlock.

No matter what, always keep these

• Jeweled Macaw and Webspinner
• These two need no explanation other than #Value!
• Bear Trap and Mad Scientist 
• A 2 mana 3/3 and a 2 mana 2/2 that plays a card
• Animal Companion
• Probably the most normal hunter like thing about the whole deck. 4 mana value minions for 3 mana…

        ~If Scientist dies to a spell and pulls Cat Trick from your deck. Cat trick will activate in according to that same spell.
        ~Playing Explosive Trap and Freezing Trap at the same time and in that order. If an enemy minion attacks you triggering explosive trap and would die to it, freezing won’t trigger at the same time, but if it would remain alive, freezing activates as well.
        ~Mad Scientist does not count towards Arcane Giant. Because we didn’t personally play that secret (no big deal though)
        ~Thanks to the help of RNG and lack of AoE’s this deck as managed to rack up a 22 Damage Burst a couple times. 2xKFC + 2x Cat Trick + 1x Huffer.

Card swaps to make a “Standard” version (no guarantees on standard effectiveness)

• Webspinner –> Hungry Crab and Fiery Bat
• Bear Trap  –> Snake Trap
• Mad Scientist –> Bloodmage Thalnos (combos with Explosive trap) and Loot Hoarder
• Sylvanas Windrunner –> Savannah Highmane

Don’t have something?

        Aside from the high end of the curve we have generally a pretty cheap deck but in-case you didn’t pay or grind out the gold for the expansions here are card swaps you can do. Webspinner and Scientist not included because they are cheap naxrammas crafts.

• Cat Trick –> Snake Trap
• Cairne Bloodhoof and Sylvanas Windrunner –> Savannah Highmane
• Arcane Giant –> Call of the Wild
• N'Zoth, The Corruptor –> Yogg-Saron, Hope's End (only if you did the CotW sub otherwise I don’t recommend playing this deck.)

Edits

5/21: Added “interaction Notes” and updated deck statistics against pirate warrior. No Card Swaps.
5/24: Updated Warrior match-up stats