Introduction
Hello everyone I’m Spark, Legend player from Hearthstone and today I’m sharing with you some adaptation of popular ladder Decks with the release of GvG, your beloved Cancer Decks : Zoolock and Huntertaker.
Those concepts will probably remain in the metagame because of their aggressive nature which allows players to grind the ladder efficiently by playing a numerous amount of quick games, so get your hatred prepared and most importantly, be ready to adapt 😉
You will either choose to run some variants of these or build some totally new Decks that will hopefully change the metagame. I’ll probably do both, but one thing is for sure, we will certainly have to consider beating those Decks when working on new designs, so here they are !
Zoolock : Mechanical Zoo
Deck Breakdown
The Deck’s strategy revolves around playing sticky minions to control the board and pressure the opponent’s life, powering up undertaker with Deathrattles and play some cheap Mechs thanks to mechwarper.
clockwork-gnome, harvest-golem and piloted-shredder are perfect cards for this design as they synergize with the 2 direction of the build while providing some value when dying.
tinkertown-technician is bringing another interaction to work with your load of Mechs for the raw value of its Battlecry and enhance-o-mechano is here to make use of your board for different purposes : Windfury is helpful to hit the opponent’s face, Divine Shield will allow for some good trading and Taunt, while being the weaker effect, can sometimes protect some of your threats.
Older interactions like haunted-creeper, knife-juggler, dire-wolf-alpha and abusive sergeant are still in the Deck because it will help controlling the board a lot.
flame-imp, soulfire and doomguard are still used because of their raw power and the fact that the downsides aren’t hurting the Deck at all.
Note that annoy-o-tron is replacing the good old voidwalker for its Mech status and sticking power.
Finally, Loatheb is used to protect your board as your main concerns are board wipes and you don’t necessarly want to run doomguard straight on turn 5. Its effect can set up some really nice board for an enhance-o-mechano play the turn after to increase your momentum.
Cards Considerations
cogmasterIt has some interesting synergies with Mechs but the fact that it’s not a Mech itself made me feel like flame-imp is a safer bet.
micro-machineThis minion is competing with annoy-o-tron but the stickiness made me choose this one and the fact that it can protect your early threats is not be underestimated.
This card will always be a consideration for Zoo if you’re running into a lot of painful effects or simply to get past Taunts.
darkbombThis spell is definitely a strong one but I feel like it better suits Control playstyle and soulfire remains better in Zoo despite the nerf.
It has some really cool synergies with the Deck but I feel like running into too much directions at the same time will hurt the Deck’s consistency. tinkertown-technician seems to be a safer bet.
spider-tankThis is definitely a very solid Mech to consider but harvest-golem fits the slot better because it has Deathrattle and its form of stickiness plays better around AoE spells.
defender-of-argus and dark-iron-dwarf
They have always been stapples in Zoo but I think that with the new synergies around it’s pretty hard to make room for them anymore.
Huntertaker : Beasty Zoo
Deck Breakdown
The Deck’s strategy revolves around powering up early undertaker with Deathrattles and makes use of Beasts synergies like houndmaster or kill-command.
eaglehorn-bow is still a stapple for the Deck as it will help maintaining board control or pressuring the opponent’s life while sustaining through freezing-trap and snake-trap pulled out of your Deck by mad-scientist.
Standard value Beasts cards like webspinner, which increased in value with the release of some new decent Beasts, haunted-creeper, ironbeak-owl, animal-companion and savannah-highmane are still in the Deck as a solid basis.
clockwork-gnome is just a pure improvement of leper-gnome as the spare parts will certainly be most useful than 2 damages early on, giving Stealth to savannah-highmane definitely looks like a solid play.
feign-death is a pretty sweet tech card that you can use to trigger 2 or 3 Deathrattles with it, especially with savannah-highmane to fill your board with Beasts or with sylvanas-windrunner to give you a huge momentum.
Since I restricted the number of Beasts to a minimum, houndmaster has to be played as a one of and piloted-shredder comes in the Deck to complement this spot as it synergizes pretty well with the build.
sludge-belcher and loatheb are still in the Deck to provide some efficient tempo during the mid game and sylvanas-windrunner makes an appearance in the Deck to give it a more Midrangy approach and for its nice synergy with feign-death.
Cards Considerations
hunters-markIt’s still a good consideration to get rid of big threats, I generally prefer ironbeak-owl but it could be useful if strong bodies are coming back into the metagame.
steamwheedle-sniperThis card is amazing and I will play 2 copies of it in Control Hunter. However, it doesn’t particularly fits this aggressive playstyle, especially since it is not a Beast nor a Deathrattle, but running it as one of can definitely be a very strong tech card.
If you are looking to commit less on Beasts synergies and Taunt mechanics, this is the perfect replacement for snake-trap and houndmaster to fight Aggro Decks.
knife-juggler and unleash-the-hounds
I excluded these interactions from my original build as I feel like we now have access to some pretty cool tech cards. It is still another way to tech your Deck so you can definitely consider those.
This card is competing with sludge-belcher but feels less reliable overall, you’ll probably need to include a second snake-trap or some unleash-the-hounds to justify running it along with another houndmaster.
gahzrillaThis card is not mandatory at all for the Deck to work but it can be a nice addition to provide some more late game power and it definitely looks pretty badass.
Closing
I was invited to Deck Talk With TheChiv to discuss about these Decklists so be sure check it out and head over to his channel to see more of his content.
I hope you enjoyed this article and that these Decks will help you climbing the ladder in this new environment, or at least taking them into consideration to adjust your new ideas.
I just hit Legend playing the Hunter Deck and some others that I will share with you guys soon 😉
Coming up next will be the return of my Control Hunter, it’s time to revive that Pyromaniac Secrets build so stay tunned for that !
Don’t hesitate to discuss about it in the comment section below, be sure to check out more of my work on Hearthpwn or here on HSP and follow me on Twitter to keep track of my updates 😉
