Viable Hunters for Competitive play?

[replenishjg1]

Right now, Hunters seem weak in competitive play. Human Hunters only have ley line for item kill, which is better than nothing before, but you can't deal with card drawing for mages, priests, or rogues, all of which are 4 and under. Bazaar is good for hunters but really good for the elemental meta right now too.

For Shadow, Banebow has a good ability with cheap cost, and the change to unpreventable damage keeps armored sandworm from completely wrecking it, but not eneough damage late game to make a difference. Baduruu still needs some help. The most viable version seems to be resource control with the free bow, but you have to keep it up every turn or you get nowhere. It lacks the finishing blow.

The only viable hunter right now seems to Victor Heartstriker. Gwenneth seems to be more popular, and I would put her as the best if her ability was permanent like Amber Rain, not sure why it isn't, but loses to easily to cheap item kill that warriors, rogues, and priests all main 4 of, and isn't fast enough to race mages, especially if they have one ley line to counter the bow.

Victor is not dominate, but is the most consistent to deal with early threats and the big beasties that come late game because of his ability. There isn't anything much better than giving Aeon 1 defense and attacking with a kristoffer wyld. You only need 3 damage to kill a sandworm which is easy to be done with a two drop and aldon, or Aeon or Raven. Victor is not bow dependant, but can use the bow to gain life and sustain against the mages. Use and resuse poison arrow, one turn disable is 2 damage before they can move. Gives you the stall for that one extra turn, and it goes straight to the graveyard so you can get it right back via Victor. I've seen versions that reuse death trap which is quite strong as well, better counter to portal mage, they just have to be in play to work.

Card drawing is weak for hunters because they lack that two drop, Battle Plans is bad, better if you could use ability more than once, but bad because its resource heavy and you don't draw a card for it. The hunter could go bazaar, but bazaar gives mages auto-win, and it's almost always a loss to anyone if you play it when your opponent went first. In Victor, you get to reuse hunter cards, which includes surprise attack, typically thought of as weak, but you don't have many options. You have surprise attack, and Wrath of the Forest as your Best Options. I love playing against a deck that refills my hand with bad santa for 2 of their resources. Wrath of the Forest is the make or break card. Tidal Wave can't beat you with Wrath of the Forest in play. Kill all creatures and my opponent draws 4 cards! They can't focus prayer and tidal wave until late game, and if they focus prayer first, they take too much damage for one more turn. Testing all decks types, the best card drawing engine where only you draw cards (not bad santa or bazaar) is this combo, Wrath of the Forest/Surprise Attack. Better than Mage's Tome of Knowledge (2 mana can slow mage down a lot), but I think ill-gotten gains competes well as best card-drawing engine. Both Wrath/Surprise Attack and Ill Gotten Gains have the potential to outrace/outdraw bood frenzy for card advantage.

Surprise attack has some strengths. It can give your opponent choices. Do I attack the 2/3 puwen and kill him or do I kill that pesky Kristoffer Wyld who is drawing him cards? Or if you play puwen first, then they play puwen for their 2 drop, you can surprise attack turn 3, and attack their puwen (if you don't have aldon to kill him). Without surprise attack, which gives ambush, you don't attack puwen cause you can't kill him and then he will kill yours with his next attack. And if you attack the player, then he drops alden and kills your puwen. If you've play-tested at all, you would know how much puwen vs puwen comes up. Late game, you can drop surprise attack on any of your creatures anytime. This is better than wulven tracker who always seems to die before any damage is dealt because everyone of your creatures becomes a tracker at a moments notice. You bring it back via victor, play on puwen when you have Aeon in play and that puwen does 2 undefended damage and nets a card. If he dies the next turn it's well worth it. That one suprise attack has been used at least twice for at least 2 additional cards (minimum). The creature is was on first attacked, drew you a card and sometime later it died, then you bring back Surprise Attack, play it on someone else, and they draw you a card and maybe they die again. Play surprise attack to make them kill the little guys instead of the big guys, or to sustain you as they focus the big guys and ignore the 1/1 card drawer. This card can't be killed by focus prayer, stop! theif, smashing blow, ley line, or shriek of vengeance. Only sever ties(which is a waste of a card in a deck, needs to draw like ley line to be good), or Jericho can kill it, or they kill the creature (and you draw a card from that via Wrath of the Forest). Strategy abounds.

Overall, I think Hunters are weak for competitive play and I look forward to stronger cards in future releases, but right now, Victor is the only viable hunter who might be able to hold his own in the current card pool and meta.

[Harakhte]

Ok, short answer: Gwen and Banebow. Victor is viable, but kind of niche to those that want to play him, and Baduru is hobby-ish as well though some have done cool things with him.

There aren't really any completely useless Heroes anymore, just unpopular ones.

[Seth]

Nice post! I always enjoy it when people post out their logic rather than just saying "X is bad, please fix." Respect to you, sir

I must, however, respectfully disagree. I think hunters are quite viable in the present meta, with Banebow being the strongest, imo. He has access to Shriek of Vengeance, which is an important tool, as you note. His ability combined with the high survivability of the early Shadow allies makes his early-game setup very favorable, even against current popular archetypes, and hunter cards like Poison Arrow can do wonders to sustain his position in the game. If you're unsure about this, I defer to A1 Sisyphos' Banebow deck, which has been trading back and forth for the #1 ranked spot in QM (I believe he's at #2 on the top 20 as of this post).

I agree with you that Gwen is somewhat weak in this current environment, especially with Rogues and Warriors running around everywhere. I believe you're correct, though, that Victor has stron potential and is underrated by a lot of players right now. I personally would not be too surprised if some Victor deck came out of nowhere and upset the meta in the near future, tbh.

Wrath of the Forest and Surprise Attack make for some very strong card draw options. In addition, Human hunters can run Tainted Oracle and Shadow hunters have Sacrificial Lamb, both of which are strong in their own right and AMAZING when combined with WotF. Honestly hunters have some of the best and most versatile options in their cardpool in terms of drawing, in my opinion. One thing my Banebow deck almost NEVER does is run out of cards.

Sure, Gwen and Baduruu are a bit down and out in the current environment due to being forced to depend on their weapons with all the rampant item destro running around (though for the record, Gwen is *awesome* to run against mages, especially of the human variety), but the other two give you a perfectly strong and viable alternative to play.

[Ballyworld]

Intersting question.

I've played mostly Victor and Gwyn, but some extrapolations can be made to Banebow and balrudu.

Victor and Banebow are indirect heros. Your ally strategy is key and your hero's ability is there to supplement them.

Victor ability to recycle arrows and traps is very useful and can often times be key. Banebow too with his ability to ignore armor coulpled with shadow allies can be quite formidable. This makes these two more flexible and better able to handle several differnet opposing playstyles.


Gwyn and Balrudu are both up close and personal heros. There success depends on getting and keeping weapons and armor in play to directly damage your opponent. Only Darkclaw can come close to the damage Gywn can dish out in a single turn. While the ability to play rapid fire and a bow on the same turn is very powerful.

Personally, I like victor, with ability to nail big allies (Ogluth, Aeon, PB, Raven) get back a card and polish them off is very strong and plays well against a variety of decks.

Good Luck out there.

[davidwm18]

Anyone know how to beat rogues both Lance and Serena? They are too OverPower with IGG and Anklebreaker. Serena still can discard ur cards once every 3 turn, and when you finally get board controll they play Assassination and instant kill the Aeon or whatever you have. Not to forget they can play gravedigger and Night prowler to steal enemy cards. Put a weapon or armor and take a "stop, thief" giving 1 resouce to rouge and loosing that weapon. Rogues are very hard to beat in this 1.5 version I think they put much power in rogues deck, they are invunerable, sadly.
If someone know one strategy to beat rogues please tell me.

[Seth]

The strategy for beating them is different depending on which hunter you are playing. Which one are you using?

[davidwm18]

The strategy for beating them is different depending on which hunter you are playing. Which one are you using?

Im playing a Victor deck with 18 allies, 4 SS and 4 WotF. Generally I have good draw but against rogue I dont. They disarm me, Stop thief'ing WotF, put IGG and begins to kill my allies (which makes them draw cards unstopable).

[Seth]

Do you run Tainted Oracles or Bad Santa? WotF is a totally amazing card, but as you say, you can't count on it against Rogues. They will keep destroying it. This will be a pretty hard matchup for Victor either way, but I think if you skew your deck to favor allies over a bow strat, that will help you. Victor gets a lot of benefit from Soul Seeker, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal if he gets denied from it. I actually would say in a lot of cases I would be happy if my opp killed my Soul Seeker as Victor, because that is a WotF they did not destroy instead. Another key will be the use of arrows. Since Victor can keep recalling arrows from the graveyard, you can use that to disrupt the ally strategy of your opponent. As long as you have a way to keep drawing cards and continue to recall the arrows, you should have a fighting chance.