Hybrid hunter: It lasts like a mid range, but SMOrcs like an orc.
Hi I'm hunts, and I'm here to tell you about hybrid hunter. Sorry for the late post, this is the deck I used to get to legend last season but was too busy to write this guide in a timely manner due to finals and other obligations. Now first off I am not the creator of this deck, although I made 1 fairly minor change. The credit for the deck goes to Protohype. I however did hit legend with it last season for now the 2nd time and was hoping to use this opportunity to maybe help out some people trying to learn the deck, and get my name out there as a new streamer.
So first off let's go over the deck.
This is as the name suggests, a hybrid, a mix of face and midrange hunter. The early curve looks a lot like face hunter, with the exception of freezing traps instead of explosive. The leper gnomes are much more aggressive than webspinners, who I feel are currently just too slow and don't offer enough from their deathrattle in the current hunter builds.
The abusive sergeants are very useful in letting your cheap minions like leper gnomes, haunted creepers, or mad scientists trade up with something like an armorsmith or acolyte, can be used to buff up a wolfrider to kill a sludge belcher.
Freezing traps help you keep the board and gain tempo, and while they can backfire by having your opponent get soemthing like a keeper of the grove or sunfury protector or healbot frozen and replayed, it can still buy you a lot of tempo, and is often harder to play around than explosive trap, which can be taken advantage of with things like eggs and armorsmiths. Overall it plays into this decks style better than I think explosive trap would, by allowing you to keep the board longer to get that face damage in, rather than only focusing on face damage at the expense of board like a lot of face hunters do.
Other than that many of the 2 and 3 cost cards are all very standard and don't really need explanations in my opinion.
Arcane golem and 2x wolfrider help a lot with burst, and as I mentioned wolfrider buffed with an abusive can be a way to deal with an untimely belcher if you don't have any better way to do it without having to sac a minion or a lot of damage.
Pioloted shredders, loatheb, and highmanes are all fairly sticky minions that are going to be hard for you opponent to deal with, especially if they have to use a lot of their removal dealing with your aggro opening. Loatheb can also be really good at getting in damage by not allowing your opponent to play board clear spells, it can be absolutely huge against many decks if you play it when you already have the board.
The change I made to the general hybrid hunter deck was removing 1 glaviezooka and replacing it with a 2nd unleash. I often felt that I really needed to draw unleash vs the large amount of zoo and tempo mage decks that I was facing on the ladder, and it is also very strong vs paladin and shaman, which were less abundant on ladder but still present.
Because of this deck being a mix of face and midrange hunter, it has 2 fairly different archetypes in it. This means that based on how you draw, your play and win condition can change. If you are only drawing the small aggro minions and not seeing your sticky minions that are shredders and highmanes, you will need to play more like face hunter and abandon the board early in order to finish your opponent off before you run out of steam. If you see a highmane or shredder in your hand, you then would want to play more for the board control, to give your high impact minions the most favorable board that you can (without sacrificing too much.) I've been usually using weapons to clear minions if I can do so instead of trading in my minions, unless I know that my minions will just die easily anyway.
As such this deck has 2 different win conditions. One of them is the good ol' face hunter where you mostly go face and only trade where it's very favorable for you or protects one of your bigger threats by trading a smaller one. The other is more of the midrange style, which you do if you are drawing your bigger minions like the highmanes and shredders. This win condition is more about fighting for board control early on to make it as hard to deal with your highmane as you can and hoping to get to attack face with said highmane, or use it to take out something like a sludge belcher and then still force your opponent to deal with it.
Now, if you recall, it was only about a month ago that face hunter was at the top of the rankings, before plunging faster than the stock market in 2008. If you're wondering how that's possible, it's because face hunter is a very aggressive deck that can run out of gas very quickly in the face of taunts and heals. It runs 2 bows and 1 or sometimes 2 glaivezooka's, explosive traps, 2 quick shots, and plenty of charge. Face hunter doesn't have much in the way of card draw or big sticky minions, but plenty of charge minions and burn spells. Because of this, face hunter is weak to decks that can just stay alive with heals and taunt. As such, when a deck like face hunter got too popular, the meta shifted to counter it, and it plunged from the top.
Now, if face hunter would be that obnoxious teenager that always challenges people to fights when he feels wronged in any way, then midrange hunter would be the more calm and collected adult, who patiently waits for his chance, and then puts laxatives in the lunch of that co worker that took his nice parking spot that 1 time.
Midrange hunter generally has a significantly slower start than both face and hybrid hunter, and as such has a much stronger mid and late game. This, however, makes it weaker against aggro decks than its faster hunter counterparts, and also makes it less likely to have those blowout games where it wins a game very early due to an explosive start. Mid range hunter Runs sludge belchers, a hunters mark instead of owl, and a houndmaster for more mid game power.
Hybrid hunter on the other hand while having the potential for the same explosive starts as face hunter, and also similar amounts of burst (although a bit less), it also has the bigger sticky threats that make it much harder to just tech against. As such, the highmanes and shredders make it much harder to simply chase out of the meta by teching into more healing. Hybrid hunter does not have the slower mid range cards that are sludge belcher and houndmaster, instead it has wolfriders and an arcane golem to help get that last bit of damage through for the win.
One weakness hybrid hunter does have is that it does not have any card draw. It's only card draw is in the form of 1 quick shot which only draws a card if you're already out of gas (not a good spot to be in if you're not already extremely close to winning) and pseudo draw in the form of mad scientists thinning out your deck by pulling traps from it. This makes it so that if you have a very bad draw you do not have the card draw mechanics to help you draw into cards that you need more. On the other hand, almost every card in this deck is in some way relevant, so even a bad draw will still not leave you with a hand full of completely unplayable cards, unless you are up against an aggro deck and drawing your highmanes, loatheb, and shredders.
Now let's take a look at some of the matchups. You will of course generally want a strong early opening. JAB said in his midrange hunter guide: " Generally you want to search heavily for 1 and 2 cost minions so you can get a quick start and apply tons of pressure on your opponent." And that is even more true for hybrid hunter. This deck has more 1 drops than midrange, and also relies more on a powerful opening.
Vs Druid:I believe this matchup heavily depends on what the druid draws. If they get an amazing start with turn 1 zombie chow into turn 2 wild growth or innervate keeper, it can be very hard to come back and win. On the other hand if they don't draw their strong plays, or the ramp to be able to play them in a timely manner, hunter can quickly get out of hand and get too much damage in for druid to be able to deal with.
Mulligen: it's important to always have 1 drops, so leper gnome and abusive are important to have, if your only 1 drop is abusive sergent I would still play him turn 1. The exception is if you have a 2 drop and coin, then I would save abusive and coin the 2 drop. I would always keep 2 drops, if possible I would play mad scientist turn 2 instead of knife juggler, because druids seem to almost always have a wrath. Also if no mad scientist, I would keep freezing trap in case of a big innervate, but a better player may correct that as being the wrong play. It is much better to get the freezing trap for free off a mad scientist, but sometimes if you don't get the mad scientist and they turn 2 shredder you can be in an extremely tough spot.
Vs Hunter:Hunter vs hunter is a very delicate matchup. Like a game of chess, where the 2 players are beating each other with the chess pieces, which are actually just knives. Ok so maybe they're nothing alike, but you get the point.
In this matchup an early tempo advantage seems to be very important, as well as getting a better unleash than your opponent (drawing unleash while your opponent doesn't also counts as getting the better unleash.) Taking the board early and doing a lot of damage is often the deciding factor, as strong late cards such as highmanes will often be too late and will not do enough damage to turn a loss into a win. That being said, face hunter will generally beat you, unless they have a bad draw and you have a very good one.
Mulligen: Mad scientists, weapons, and unleash seem to be extremely important in this matchup. Abusive can also be very good in some situations, namely in letting a leper gnome or mad scientist trade up with a misha or leokk. I would not keep loatheb, highmanes, or shredders. I would maybe keep animal companion if I already have at least 1 1 drop and 2 drop, and I would probably keep unleash in almost all cases because it is very strong vs hunter.
Vs mage:I feel like hybrid hunter has a fairly strong matchup vs most mage decks. Vs freeze mage I try to deny their card draw if I can, in the form of killing acolytes early on in 1 attack if possible, to stop them from getting more cards from them. I try not to flood the board too much once I know it's freeze mage, and mostly play deathrattle minions when I already have stuff on board. If you draw owl, I would save it for doomsayer.
Vs mech mage and tempo mage I try to fight for board control early on, putting high priority on clearing the mana wyrms, sorcerer's apprentice's and flamewalkers. Those are the cards that allow tempo mage to get great tempo and get out of hand. vs Mech mage I would put emphasis on taking out the mech warpers and snow chuggers. Also because of their tendency to flood board and because of mirror image I've been really fond of unleash vs both tempo and mech mage.
Mulligen: I would keep 1 drops, leper gnome turn 1 can force them to ping instead of playing a strong turn 2 minion, and if you go first can force coin ping. I would keep abusive as it lets you trade up with all of their 3+hp minions. I would also look for 2 drops, glaviezooka, and unleash. I would maybe keep an animal companion if I already have a 1 and 2 drop, or if I have coin and a 1 drop. Juggler unleash can be a very strong combo to go for vs mage.
Vs Paladin:I feel like hunter is strong vs paladin. They are not such a fast deck that they are likely to have an explosive start and kill you, and they don't run too high an amount of heals, not to mention their hero power and muster for battle play into unleash. In general I would try to fight for board early on and try to play around concecrate. If you draw owl I would hold on to it for either a big taut or if they peacekeeper your highmane, and I would try to get a big unleash at some point if possible.
Mulligen:
I would be looking for 1 drops, 2 drops, and unleash. Paladin can be tough to play against in the early game due to zombie chows and mini bots, and even hero power which can trade with your 1 drops. Because of the nature of zombie chows and mini bots I would really want to have haunted creeper and glaviezooka or abusive here. This would let the creeper or one of the spiderlings from it to trade up with a minion.
Vs Priest:I have faced very few priests so I don't have a good feel for who is favored in the matchup. In general though it feels like a lot of the priests ability to do things is based on combos. There also does not seem to be a main version of priest, so the priests I did play against were running different types of decks. A deathlord early on or something like a zombie chow with power word shield can absolutely wreck your ability to do anything early game, and late game can be pretty tough unless you get your highmanes and loatheb without them getting shadow word death's or other strong answers.
Mulligen: As always 1 drops are important, but vs priest I've found abusive to be extremely important because it allows you to clear their problematic minions such as zombie chows and northshire cleric's which can otherwise give you a hard time. One twist is I personally would keep highmane vs priest, because it is such a strong card and priest is generally very hard to kill quickly as hunter, and generally they also won't kill you very early.
Vs Rogue:I'm not sure if either deck is really favored here, it seems to depend on the draw. Depending on if they run violet teacher or not unleash can be very big here. It feels like this matchup depends a lot on how many effective ways they draw to deal with your early game. If they can say kill your turn 1 play with their face, backstab your turn 2 play and SI your turn 3 play it can get very tough. However likewise if they don't draw into the early answers it can be very good for you.
Mulligen: I would keep early minions like usual, 1 and 2 drops. I feel that vs rogue you often have to race them to get the kill before they draw the pieces they need to do a combo and kill you, and before they get the mana to do so.
Vs Shaman
I feel that the hunter is favored here. Shaman generally don't have any ways to heal, and their hero power and board spamming style really plays into unleash, and juggler unleash if you are able to get it. One thing to watch out for is lightning storm so try not to over commit to the board if you don't have to. Also they have several ways of removing weak minions, so I would prioritize playing stickier minions such as haunted creepers and shredders over things like jugglers if you can. If you have highmane in hand it can be very useful to get them to use their hex/earthshock on your smaller minions such as animal companion or shredder.
Mulligen: I would keep 1 drops and 2 drops as usual, and also unleash. I feel that animal companion is also very strong against shaman due to crackle having a chance not to outright kill misha or leokk, and also rockbiter on themselves not being able to kill it either. Unleash is very powerful vs shaman and I would definitely keep it.
Vs Warlock:I believe this deck is fairly strong vs both handlock and zoo lock. Vs handlock I try and clear their early minions if possible, to play around a shadowflame blowing us out. Also beware of flooding the board because of hellfire, or after turn 6 ancient watcher+shadowflame. One area where playing vs handlock starts to vary is when they start getting low and you have to decide whether or not to play around molten giants or not. This will largely depend on what you have on board and in hand. If your board is hard to wipe out with a board clear, and you can say play a highmane I would probably try to not get them into easy molten giant range. However if your hand is mostly burn or weak minions, you will need to sometimes just go for it because waiting will just give them the mana and card draws to make the plays they need to stabilize.
Vs Zoo, fighting for board early on is pretty important. At one point if they are drawing their ways of dealing with your board and you are not drawing your bigger stickier minions, you may have to abandon board and try to finish them off before they finish you off. If you have highmanes in your hand, I would try extra hard to keep the board as much as possible, because losing the board early and taking a lot of damage can mean being dead or too far behind by the time you can play your highmane(s).
mulligen: While both handlock and zoo play differently I would still mulligen fairly similarly. The main difference is if I suspect it's zoo I would keep unleash. I would in general keep weapons and 1 and 2 drops. If I see the warlock keeping most of their cards, I would also keep unleash. Vs zoo juggler unleash can be absolutely devastating, so being able to get that is very good, although you can't always hold out until turn 5 or turn 4 with coin to play that if you don't have good plays until then.
Vs Warrior:Both grim patron and control warrior seem like decent matchups for this, although grim patron can be rather tough if they get a good draw. In both cases what you want is a strong curve and being able to play highmanes and shredders since they can be tough for warrior to deal with, especially if you can force executes before the highmanes come down. Also I would try to play the lower attack minions early on and if you are against patron warrior trade them in by turn 8 in case of charge+patron. Also I would always get rid of armorsmiths ASAP, even if you have to attack an armosmith with a highmane, there's still the posibility that not doing so will let him gain more armor from it than the highmane to the face would do.
Mulligen: I would keep the 1 and 2 drops against warrior. Also if you have early plays I would keep animal companion because it can be quite hard for them to deal with and may draw out an execute, and I would also probably keep highmane. Abusive can be quite important in allowing you to clear an acolyte or armorsmith with only 1 attack, minimizing the value he gets from them. Other people have said they would not keep highmanes against warrior, and yet some others have said they also would. I think it comes down to what kind of deck you are playing and what other cards are in your hand. If I have no 1 or 2 drops I would not keep a highmane, but with something like a mad scientist/leper gnome opening I would.
I hope this guide was helpful in demonstrating the difference between the different hunter decks, and how to play the hybrid hunter deck. If you liked this you can follow me on:
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https://twitter.com/huntssstvThis post was edited by huntss on Jun 19 2015 11:04am