Boomzooka Hunter

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off-meta deck each week with an in-depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards. To see past decks in this series with updated cards guides, check out the Wild Deck Guide Compendium.

Boomzooka Hunter is a deck that uses Flark's Boom-Zooka, Maxima Blastenheimer, and Barnes to get Deathrattle minions into play with maximal impact. It then continues with resurrect effects and Deathrattle synergies to get more value out of them and win the game through their various effects including stealing enemy minions, firing missiles, generating Taunts, gaining Armor, and more.

This deck got a great new card from the latest miniset: Ozumat. When Ozumat is shot out of Maxima Blastenheimer's cannon or summoned from Boom-Zooka, he will deal damage from his attack and then die and trigger his Deathrattle immediately, destroying up to 6 enemy minions in the process. He gives this deck something that Hunter generally lacks: good removal and a one sided board clear. In addition to these ways to get his effect off immediately, he provides great stats with Barnes and can generally be used with Deathrattle synergy cards like Play Dead to get his effect off more often.

Overall, this is a well rounded, unique, and vibrant deck with lots of Secrets for more early game protection (as well as the new Emergency Maneuvers from the latest expansion to bring your Deathrattle minions back to life), 2 Hero cards, and lots and lots of Deathrattle spells and minions.

This is my favorite Hunter deck, and if you like big minions, Deathrattles and Deathrattle synergy, Secrets, and blasting stuff out of cannons, give this deck a try!

Big thanks to anchorm4n for help in developing this deck!

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.

Deck Ratings

Strategies

Boomzooka Hunter generally starts off slow - it has its power turns in the midgame and transitions into a very strong lategame. In the early game, it will use Secrets to stall and protect itself.

Early Game Survival - Your 2 key early game survival cards are Explosive Trap and Wandering Monster. Rinling's Rifle can be used to discover more early game survival Secrets.

Midgame Survival - Midgame, you have multiple big minions you can use for survival: Ozumat to clear enemy boards, Mountain Bear as a sticky Taunt, and Mo'arg Forgefiend as a Taunt and Armor gainer. Flark's Boom-Zooka is a great survival tool as well as it can clear 3 enemy minions.

Pressure - This deck can go on the offense in addition to defense, and the main minion to do this is Darkmoon Tonk. A few Deathrattle activations on these guys can create quite a lot of pressure against Control and Combo decks, and you can manipulate Emergency Maneuvers such that if a Tonk is killed you will get a Dormant copy up on your turn and can then play any Deathrattle activators like Play Dead, Feign Death, and Nine Lives for more offensive damage. The deck can also generate pressure by board tempo, and Sylvanas Windrunner stealing enemy minions is key for this. Maxima Blastenheimer with her shoot a minion at the opponent's face ability is great for pressure as well.

Boomzooka Hunter starts off slow and passive but becomes very powerful in the midgame where it can quickly switch to an offensive role.

Highlights

 
Highlight against Big Priest - Sylvanas Windrunner and activating her Deathrattle with your various synergy cards can be very very good against Big decks. This image also shows Feign Death being ready to play and about to activate 7 Deathrattles at once. 

Mulligans

• Keep Barnes, Maxima Blastenheimer, and Flark's Boom-Zooka - you can keep the 1 lowest cost of these you get if against an Aggro deck or the 2 lowest cost if against a slower deck (even all 3 if against a really slow one).
• If you don't have one of either Barnes or Maxima Blastenheimer, keep Master's Call.
• Keep Dun Baldar Bunker (one copy).
• Keep secrets - Explosive Trap and Wandering Monster against Aggro (which and how many of each is better depends on what type of Aggro deck you think you're against) and an Emergency Maneuvers if you have Barnes.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is to balance survival, value, and tempo with your Deathrattle synergy cards. Especially for something like Feign Death, it's often better to use it even if it's on only one minion if you're against Aggro but it's often better to save it for a board where you can activator as many high pressure Deathrattles at once against Control.

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

Deathrattle Synergies

Play Dead, Feign Death, and Nine Lives are excellent and low cost tools to trigger high quality Deathrattles from your high costed minions.

What minions you use this on depend on the matchup and situation - you can use them more on survival minions if you're on the defensive or on pressure generating minions if on the offensive.

Jewel of N'Zoth resurrects 3 Deathrattle minions.

Barnes can get a Deathrattle minion into play for cheap. Sometimes it's better to delay playing him a turn so that you can use Play Dead on the 1/1 Deathrattle minion immediately, but in general you don't care if it gets destroyed as you can either set up Emergency Maneuvers beforehand to resummon a full statted copy or just get its Deathrattle effect off and then have it in the pool for Nine Lives and Jewel of N'Zoth.

Maxima Blastenheimer and Flark's Boom-Zooka are also great tools for getting Deathrattle minions into your Nine Lives and Jewel of N'Zoth pool as well as activating their Deathrattles. In addition they have the bonus effects of face damage and board clear, respectively.

Barnes and Maxima Blastenheimer have a bit of anti synergy with each other, so you may want to try and use Master's Call to get one if you have the other. In general, Master's Call is most useful for getting one of these 2 minions. If you have both, then use it to get the minion you least want pulled from them or from Boom-Zooka into your hand or get a minion that you want to play soon.

Zul'jin can be a very powerful finisher - he can summon a full board from repeating Jewels of N'Zoth and trigger a bunch of Deathrattles as well as add more Deathrattle minions to your hand. He will also cast any secrets you cast this game.

The Secrets

Explosive Trap and Wandering Monster are generally good Anti-Aggro cards.

Emergency Maneuvers is a very interesting card as if it triggers on a Deathrattle minion, you can use Play Dead and Feign Death on it the following turn. This can be used in combination with Wandering Monster against Aggro if you really need early game tempo, but it's best used before Barnes and before playing key Deathrattle minions you want resurrected. If you have Taunts on the board, it may be hard for minion based decks to avoid triggering this Secret on one of them even if you have other minions without Taunt.

Rinling's Rifle and Beaststalker Tavish are both useful because of their flexibility to get any useful Secret depending on the situation. Tavish in particular though is great for this deck as he can quite often get an Improved Emergency Maneuvers into play. Him doing this on turn 6 into a followup of either a Mountain Bear or Darkmoon Tonk the following turn can be very powerful. This results in 3 of the same Deathrattle minion which you can then potentially resummon all 3 of on turn 8 with Jewel of N'Zoth, or use Feign Death and Play Dead on the 2 Dormant copies to really get a lot of damage in in the case of Tonk.

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.

The Deathrattle Minions

These minions are the meat of the deck, with effects useful for both offense and defense to provide tools for any situation.

Deathrattle Synergy - Getting Deathrattles into Play

These cards get Deathrattle minions into play from your deck and allow you to trigger their effects. Flark's Boom-Zooka and Maxima Blastenheimer trigger the effects immediately, then put those minions into the Nine Lives and Jewel of N'Zoth pools. Barnes has special synergy with Emergency Maneuvers to potentially summon a full statted version of the 1/1 and to be able to trigger its Deathrattle with Deathrattle activators. Master's Call is in the deck to get to Barnes and Maxima Blastenheimer more consistently.

Deathrattle Synergy - Activators

These cards activate Deathrattles in the case of Play Dead, Feign Death, and Nine Lives. Jewel of N'Zoth summons 3 Deathrattle minions, and has extra synergy with Feign Death because of that. Zul'jin is the ultimate Deathrattle activator as he will replay all of these spells, as well as Secrets you've played this game.

Secrets

Secrets support the main gameplan of the deck by both being survival and by synergizing with the Deathrattle gameplan directly in the case of Emergency Maneuvers.

Boomzooka Hunter is a deck that uses Deathrattle minions and synergy and ways to get them into play early. 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!

Looking for more decks? Look no further than the Wild Deck Guide Compendium to see more decks and guides.