One of the most anticipated cards in One Night in Karazhan has been Cloaked Huntress. As soon as I finished the first wing of the adventure I jumped right into the collection and tweaked one of my favorite decks to include the card – Camel Hunter. The deck mostly relies on putting out Knife Juggler and Snake Trap combos to clear off some small minions in the early game and then follow up with larger threats and well timed secrets to keep your opponent guessing. You also have access to Desert Camel for some high tempo plays with Injured Kvaldir. One of the biggest problems of Hunter is that the class does not have the right amount of draw power to support the pure secret archetype. But if you mix it in with a faster Camel Hunter, it works more than fine! Yogg Hunter has also been playtested quite a bit with varying levels of success but I found the Camel archetype to be a bit more consistent in what it does.
I tried the deck on ladder and it does quite well versus popular decks like Dragon Warrior and Zoolock. Camel works great in the matchup but versus Aggro Shaman you do not really want to be pulling out a Tunnel Trogg for your opponent with Desert Camel without having board presence to deal with what your Camels bring out. Bear Trap and Explosive Trap are quite good versus aggro whereas Freezing Trap makes sure that you deal with big minions from getting favorable trades without any issues at all. On the other side of things Beast Druid has been working splendidly with the new Enchanted Raven. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that Living Roots is strictly better than Raven in any mid range or token deck because of the high level of flexibility you have in hand. But Raven shines in Beast Druid because of cards like mark-of-yshaarj which allows you to get instant use of the card and a turn 1 Raven into a turn 2 Mark is pretty good. Compared to older decks where you would have to play a 2 drop and then spend 2 mana to buff it, often leading to inefficient mana usage. The cheap 1 mana 2/2 surely does its bit allows you to gain tempo and card advantage at the same time. You often get favorable trades against the best of early game any deck can throw at you and it also trades up favorably against the Tunnel Trogg into Totem Golem opener which is considered to be the best in the game at the moment. Let’s take a look at both these decks in detail.
Tempo Trap Hunter
I have gone through multiple Twitch streams and saw what most pro players are brewing since yesterday. Most people are either going for the all out Secret oriented decks or going for Yogg Hunter builds. I did a little digging on old school Camel Hunter decklists and tried this deck out on the EU ladder. It performed quite well and I’d like to share it with you guys. The goal of the deck is to tempo out your opponents with crazy Camel combos and use Cult Master to get to your late game faster by using Unleash the Hounds or the snakes from Snake Trap. Traps seem to be very efficient with Cloaked Huntress and the tempo you gain by playing multiple secrets with a 3/4 body for only 3 mana is quite relevant in the game. Core Rager is one of the cards I tried out considering how quickly you run out of cards and I was getting value out of it more often than not. But when you do not get the best of starts the card gets clunky so I decided to cut it out in more recent builds. You might also try out variants of Yogg Hunter if you want to try out fun stuff that can be made with yogg-saron-hopes-end and Lock and Load. The ideal scenario is to do a combo on turn 5 when you have multiple secrets, using Lock and Load and Cloaked Huntress. Even if you get 2 draws out of it it’s fairly good enough. You pay 5 mana for 2 secrets, 2 card draws and a 3/4 body in the process!
Synergies
Desert Camel: Desert Camel is a great card in the deck because you thin out your deck to gain access to your secrets faster and you also have more synergies in the deck with Camel than you would with other Hunter decks. The deck runs Secretkeeper and the amount of value I have been getting out is quite reasonable. There hasn’t been a game where I’ve gotten anything short of a 3/4 or a 4/5 at least on one of the Secretkeepers. Make sure you know when to play Desert Camel. If you are facing Zoolock or Aggro Shaman make sure you are able to deal with what comes out. Most other decks do not have too many relevant 1 drops that you should be worried about because your Camel or an Injured Kvaldir is going to deal with it anyway.
Snake Trap and Knife Juggler is another combo that you can easily pull of and you get some random pings off your Juggler and possibly clear small minions more often than not. Cult Master is one of the more necessary additions in the deck because you need to get a lot of card draw to get your key combos out to keep the tempo going in your way.
Eaglehorn Bow is one of the best weapons in the game. Mad Scientist leaving did not stop people from using the weapon simply because Hunter is low on efficient removals and it also doubles up as a tool to dish out some face damage quite easily. Make sure you save 1 charge on the Bow if you have secrets in hand unless there are threatening minions on board.
Token Beast Druid
You’ve most likely seen Beast Druid being played once in a while on ladder. It has always been on the verge of being a good deck but the fact that Druid is unable to compete with aggressive early game minions of decks like Zoolock or Aggro Shaman was what kept it from being a consistently good deck. The amount of difference Enchanted Raven brings to the table is quite significant. Getting a 4/4 on Turn 2 with Mark of Y’shaarj is quite good. Fandral is also one of those minions that can cause swing turns quite easily. We all know how good Token Druid is and when I was comparing Beast Druid to Token Druid’s core cards, most of it was the same with the exception of Violet Teacher that is not run in many Beast lists.
Gameplan
You generally want to play on curve and try to pressure your opponent as much as possible. Innervate is one of the key cards that can make it happen and if you are ever behind but have a few tokens lying around you can always use Savage Roar to burst down your opponent and end the game. Versus control decks try to hold on to Fandral Staghelm and Violet Teacher until you get large swing turns and value off of these cards. The deck is very promising and with newer cards coming our way in the coming weeks we can hope for better builds to be made with Menagerie Warden being hailed as one of the best cards in the expansion.
Other decks to try
Some of the other things you can tinker with include Priest of the Feast Priest decks, Ivory Knight Murloc Paladin which can potentially draw you 2 extra copies of Anyfin can Happen with Ivory Knight which is a heal card in the deck and Discard based Zoolock using Silverware Golem and Darkshire Librarian without going for crazy cards like Fist of Jaraxxus. Hope you have a great weekend trying out fun decks and may you have a great night at Karazhan!
