Pharaoh Hunter

The Voyage to the Sunken City expansion has just launched, and to celebrate this milestone we're doing an event called Wild Week. Over the next 10 days, there will be one guide a day, one for each class, using as many new cards as possible. Today, we're going to be looking at Mech Mage in Voyage to the Sunken City.

What off meta deck really wants many minions to be summoned and would thus love to have the new Hunter Colossal minion Hydralodon? How about Quest Hunter? No, not Defend the Dwarven District, but Unseal the Vault. This deck requires many minions to be summoned to complete the quest, and Hydralodon is great for this. The deck uses wide boards to activate Defias Blastfisher and finishes games with the quest reward hero power, Pharaoh's Warmask. If you want to play with Hydralodon in a deck that really values its effect, give this one a try!

Past decks in Wild Week can be found here.

If you want to suggest a specific deck archetype to be covered for a particular class, you can comment it to this article and it may be covered during Wild Week or after.

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

You first complete the quest, then use the hero power along with Charge minions to win. Sometimes you can win with beasts like Scavenging Hyena and Defias Blastfisher tempo.

Quest Completion - Play Unseal the Vault, then play and summon minions to complete it.

Tempo - You have a lot of beasts, so Scavenging Hyena can grow a lot. Hydralodon can win by itself as well. Those two beasts can snowball out of control and take over the game. The Rat King coming back again and again is also great for tempo. Shan'do Wildclaw can become a strong beast or give your deck a buff to help with tempo as well. Finally, Defias Blastfisher can help you win without needing the quest as well.

Charge - Pharaoh's Warmask can give all minions +2 attack, and this can help you win board control or be used on Charge minions (either from Unleash the Hounds or any beast and Tundra Rhino) to provide burst for lethal.

These strategies allow the deck to keep having pressure even pre-quest and complete the quest at the same time.

Mulligans

• Keep Alleycats, Wolpertingers, and Scavenging Hyenas. An exception is if you have more than two of those 1 cost minions in hand and no 2 drops, in which case you should keep two 1 costs and mulligan the rest. Also, if you have no 1 cost minions, mulligan all of your 2 cost minions.

• Keep Springpaw if you have a Scavenging Hyena or no other 1 drops in hand.

• If you have a Scavenging Hyena and either a Wolpertinger or Alleycat, keep Devouring Swarm.

• Keep one copy of either Leatherworking Kit or Starving Buzzard. If you have at least 2 minions among Alleycats, Wolpertingers, and Springpaws, keep a Leatherworking Kit along with all of those minions. Otherwise, keep a Starving Buzzard.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck is to play Starving Buzzard at the right time.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Devouring Swarm Synergy

Using Devouring Swarm effectively is one of the most interesting and impactful aspects of playing this deck. It has many different uses, and you need to evaluate how much pressure you are under and what cards you have on board and in hand that can combo with it to make the right plays. 

Keep in mind that after you play Devouring Swarm, your minions will attack in the order in which they were played.

Using Devouring Swarm does not count as a minion's attack for the turn, so you can use it to make a minion destroy a taunt and then use the minion's regular attack to go face.

One use of Devouring Swarm is to establish board control by using it to give your minions another attack to remove an enemy minion. This also has the effect of giving non Rush minions the ability to affect the board the turn they are played. Something to note is it can let you remove minions that are otherwise protected by Taunts.

You can also use it to refill your hand. If many of your minions are at low hp, you can force them to trade into one big enemy minion and get more of those minions added to your hand.

Another use is to get more copies of key minions. For example, you can play Starving Buzzard, an Alleycat, and a Wolpertinger to draw 4 cards. You can then use Devouring Swarm to get many or all of those minions back into your hand to be able to draw more cards with Starving Buzzard next turn.

Here is an example of a great play you can do with Devouring Swarm and Scavenging Hyena: It's turn 4, you have no minions on board, and your opponent has a 4hp minion. Play Alleycat and Wolpertinger, then Scavenging Hyena. Then play Devouring Swarm on the 4hp minion. This will result in the 4 hp minion being cleared, you getting 2 Wolpertingers, an Alleycat, and a Tabbycat added to your hand, and a 10/6 Scavenging Hyena on the board.

Devouring Swarm can be extra good to get another copy of Shan'do Wildclaw or The Rat King.

Scavenging Hyena Synergy

Scavenging Hyena has the ability to snowball and win a game by itself. In addition to being a very strong followup to a turn 1 Alleycat or Wolpertinger, you can keep protecting it in ensuing turns by trading into opponent minions with Rush minions like Springpaw, Lynx, and Diving Gryphon while growing its stats at the same time.

Keep in mind that a card like Defile will not kill Scavenging Hyena if it had 2 hp and a 1 hp beast dies first. The hyena will grow its stats right after the first beast died and will survive. This is also relevant for a card like Perpetual Flame. However, if you are using a Devouring Swarm the hyena will not gain stats until after Devouring Swarm has resolved so having other beasts attack and die first would not save a Scavenging Hyena if it would die in its attack.

Synergies with Tundra Rhino and Charge

If you have a Tundra Rhino, Scavenging Hyena, and buffed Rat Pack, you can trade the Rat Pack into some minion and then trade all the little rats it summons into other minions. After that, your hyena will have very high attack and can go face.

You can wake up your The Rat King or multiple rat kings on your Tundra Rhino finisher turn by trading in some small beasts, and then using rat kings as face damage.

You can play small beasts along with the Tundra Rhino and then use Pharaoh's Warmask to increase the damage.

You can also use Unleash the Hounds along with Pharaoh's Warmask to deal a lot of damage.

Defias Blastfisher Synergies

Other than generally having a wide board already, you can set Defias Blastfisher up for turn 5 by playing a Rodent Nest turn 4 then trading it in.

Shan'do Wildclaw

If you copy Hydralodon with Shan'do Wildclaw, it will summon 2 Hydralodon Heads as well.

If drawn early, it's better to play this for the deck buff. If drawn late, it's usually better to use it on a The Rat King or Hydralodon.

Starving Buzzard

You can have Rat Pack or Rodent Nest on the board, then play Starving Buzzard, then trade either of those in to summon 1/1s and draw cards. This can also be done with Devouring Swarm.

Starving Buzzard also has a great combo to look out for with Unleash the Hounds.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Quest Completion

These cards allow you to summon multiple minions from one card and so help complete Unseal the Vault faster.

Tempo

These cards only count as one tick for quest completion but are great for tempo.

Charge Package

These cards help you close out games after quest completion if your tempo gets removed.

Card Draw and Generation

These draw cards or add copies of minions to your hand.

Pharaoh Hunter is a deck that benefited greatly from the new Hydralodon Colossal. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

What are your favorite wild decks? Which off meta decks have you been playing? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!