I feel inclined to recommend Immortal Prelate + Undatakah just because they synergize really well with Reoccurring Villain and Call to Adventure–and also, I might be obsessed with trying to make them work.

You should consider Shirvallah in any deck with Bells + Kangor.

I don’t think Archivist is a good fit here. Against control, I don’t think you have enough value to outlast warriors and Conjurer mage in to fatigue, and against aggro or tempo I think you prefer cards from your original deck over discovered.

Consider replacing Truesilver with Sword of Justice.

I’m nowhere near “guru” either, but I went Bunnyhoppor because he’s been placing well lately, he seems like a nice guy, and he’s got a cool name.

Roger won HCT Winter 2019, but he’s also has some..let’s say controversy. That’s what BlinkFl0yd means when he says he’s picking “the cheater”.

The other people I considered were Ike and Justsaiyan.

Interesting. My main ladder deck right now is basically a slightly more control-oriented home-brew of this with Whirliglider, Marked Shot, Baited Arrow, and Tracking in place of Mecharoo, Galvanizer, Dire Wolf, and Unleash. I can definitely see how those substitutions would help speed up the burn–although there are games where the discover from Marked Shot is really nice!

I have to say: crafting Whizbang is probably the smartest decision I’ve made in this game, if for no other reason than he keeps my games entertaining.

That said, I do truly appreciate these budget deck lists–especially this new format with the strategy and upgrade/sidegrade information. I’m already seeing so many things I want to try out… Thank you all so much for doing this and for writing it so quickly.

You should still look for one! Isn’t having fun and playing a deck you enjoy more important than an winning an extra 1/10 games?

I had an epic game against a burgle rogue where I pulled a Nozari off a roar and then did Voone -> Barista -> Second Voone. I was a few cards into fatigue while he had a deck full of burn and 1 mana espionage cards, but he still just couldn’t handle me healing to full whenever I needed to. He finally exhausted his hand, lost all board presence, and I end up just beating him down.

No Voone? 🙁

I’m guessing he’s too slow compared to everything else in this deck. Pity; it feels sooo good when you get off a good Voone and copy something like Ysera or Emeriss.

I played some of this archetype through Whizbang, which is almost identical (Totem Smash instead of Earth Shock and 2nd Rain of Toads in place of Batterhead). At first look I thought “oh look, another half-baked Shaman deck”, but it’s actually pretty effective and REALLY fun to play. You basically play turtle for the first half of the game and then come back with these explosive swing turns.

I just wish the real version wasn’t so dang expensive. 🙁

I noticed that you cut out Mecharoo from last week’s theorycraft version–I like that. Mecharoo is an OK 1-drop, but unless you just need the tempo there are so many better cards to play.

A note to anyone who might be playing on a budget: mech hunter is just a really powerful AND FLEXIBLE archetype. Unlike a lot of other meta decks which fall off hard if you don’t match an exact decklist, mech hunter can accommodate a lot of substitutions with only minor degradation in winrate. If you happen to have a Nine Lives, Oblivatron, or Zilliax, all the better–they just augment the value of your other cards. If you instead have cards like Flark, Undatakah, or Necromechanic: they work too, just not as good as the aforementioned. I highly recommend experimenting with this archetype using whatever cards you have on hand.

I get the first point with Flark not being a good synergy with this deck, but regarding the second: I was under the impression that in HS the death pool was binary, and you’ve already potentially committed Goblin Bombs to the death pool as soon as you play Bomb Toss.
In other words, if you the only things that have died on your side were Whelps, Spider Bombs, Usratron, and Goblin Bombs, then Nine Lives will pick 3 of those 4 options and you always have a 25% chance that Goblin Bomb is the option that’s left out, regardless of how MANY of each minion have died so far. At least, that’s the way Priest resurrection spells and Undatakah seem to work. (I know Hadronix is different.) Am I wrong on this?

It’s definitely good, but I’d take this week’s results with a grain of salt. Everything is still just so new: many decks are still experimental, players are still learning how to pilot around unfamiliar matchups, and everyone is being cautious on what/when they craft.

Is that sarcasm? ‘Cuz Oblivitron is actually looking kinda hot. Really good if you can combo with either Nine Lives or Shaw. If you’re interested, check out Firebat’s and/or Dog’s deathrattle hunter decks/streams.

But Lazule…yeah, I got her too. Not exactly bad, but definitely not what I was hoping to find the first week either.

Catrina is pretty flexible… If you don’t like the full resurrection package, you can try either a deathrattle package (think whelps, infiltrators, and Cairne), a wall package (Grizzly, Mosh’ogg, Hecklebot), or some type of hybrid.

I’m envious. 🙂 I got Madame Lazul, and while she technically fits into any priest deck, I can’t build anything around her and I haven’t opened enough of the key components to field any of the other interested decks I’m reading about either.

I’m not sure I buy that. First off, the last expansion had Spell Hunter, Odd Mage, and Odd Warrior–all of which were considered top-meta at some point. Second, there’s nothing that indicates silence priest, bomb warrior, or dragon paladin will be powerful–if anything, early indications are that all might be underwhelming. Finally, if there’s been any theme to which deck recipes Blizzard picks, its been that they want to showcase the new cards–for example, 5 of the 9 new class totems found there way into decks for Rumble; now for Rise its down to 2 class totems but they add in 6 of the 8 new twin spells.

I’m DUMBFOUNDED that there’s no silence priest, bomb warrior, or dragon paladin.

At least all the decks look fun, even if there are some very questionable choices. They should be good for some fun at least until the new meta settles and it becomes clearer what’s worth crafting.

The other thing about Sprint is that practically every Year of the Raven burgle deck also runs Striders, so you have the synergy of drawing your 1-mana Espionage results AND spawning 4/4 spiders. Strider is rotating out today, so Sprint won’t be as powerful.

Ugg you are correct–I was mistaking Roger’s misdeeds with Tyler’s name. Apologies to everyone.

So Roger wins HCT Winter 2018 yet isn’t up here, but Tyler who’s been caught stream-sniping and win trading, is?

I’ve played a lot of Pogo in Year of the Raven, and my experience is that it really needs early tools to keep the board reasonably managed until you get your 3rd Pogo out. I use Hench Clan Thug, SI:7, and Eviscerate to this end, and the result is playable but still nowhere near meta-worthy.

I’ll be interested to see if Year of the Dragon is just that much slower that just rushing Pogos is now viable.

Yup.

As a counterpoint: if you are playing AGAINST a Pogo deck and you do get a silence off, you want to try to take the opportunity to kill the resultant 1/1 so that your opponent can’t bounce or shuffle it.