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. Wednesday, the 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.
Demon Hunter has gotten a new viable archetype after the mini-set: Big Demon Hunter. As opposed to Big Demon Demon Hunter which uses big demons and big demon synergy, Big Demon Hunter is a Big deck like Big Shaman, Big Paladin, or Big Warrior and uses Proving Grounds to cheat out huge piles of stats as early as turn 5 and can use that pressure to overwhelm an opponent's minions. To counteract the negative effect of Proving Grounds making the minions attack each other, the deck uses Deathrattle, Dormant, and Divine Shield minions. Overall, it's a fresh way to play Demon Hunter which will probably only get more support in the future.
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
This deck starts off by controlling the board with powerful board clears and removals, shifts into a mana cheat strategy in the midgame, and ends with a general big minion strategy if necessary.
Board Clear - Before you can play Proving Grounds, you need to use all your board clears to focus on survival. Demon Hunter has some really high quality ones like Chaos Nova. Aldrachi Warblades and attack buffs let you maintain board control while keeping up your health total. You should also use card draw to dig for Proving Grounds if you didn't draw it.
Mana Cheat - Use Proving Grounds for a huge tempo boost and board swing. If you didn't draw it, you can use Blatant Decoy as a backup mana cheat card.
Big Minions - If your Proving Grounds tempo swing was dealt with, you can simply start dropping your multiple big minions one at a time and hope to overwhelm any hard removal.
This deck is a highroll deck, which has no pressure in the first 5 turns and then uses mana cheat for huge tempo in the midgame. Therefore, any fast combo deck will be able to beat this one before it gets going. Control decks are winnable, as it depends on trying to overwhelm their removal in the long term. Aggro decks are often the best matchups for this deck, as you can use your powerful board clears to survive and then dominate the board after a Proving Grounds.
This highlight shows the deck winning against Even Warlock, another deck that can cheat out large stats for low mana.
Mulligans
Always hard mulligan for Proving Grounds. It's your most important card by far.
If you already have a Proving Grounds, you can keep a second one if you don't think you're against aggro. Otherwise, look for Sigil of Flame, Aldrachi Warblades, and Chaos Nova.
Gameplay
This deck is pretty straightforward to play. It doesn't have a lot of synergies to think about while playing, you just need to use your survival and card draw early on and then have fun with mana cheating from Proving Grounds. If Proving Grounds is cleared and doesn't win the game you will have the mana to play big minions normally.
Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.
Aldrachi Warblade Synergies
One thing that is important to keep in mind is the synergies with Aldrachi Warblades. You can use cards discovered from Illidari Studies, Chaos Strike, and Relentless Pursuit to increase its attack and the amount of Lifesteal, Relentess Pursuit is especially great as it lets you attack a minion and not take damage.
Keep in mind that you can sometimes get surprise lethal with burst damage from hand using all of your attack buffs and going face.
Mana Cheat Synergy
Proving Grounds works well in this deck because you still get a great board even if the minions summoned attack and destroy each other. Most of the minions are Deathrattle minions with powerful Deathrattles.
In addition to rolling Deathrattles that leave stats (often taunts), you have Imprisoned Antaen which will not attack the other minion summoned due to being Dormant. Another non-Deathrattle minion you can summon is Colossus of the Moon, which will lose Divine Shield after it attacks but still be a powerful threat with Reborn.
Finally, you have Blatant Decoys which are good both from Proving Grounds and played on their own. While Proving Grounds cheats out big minions in your deck, Blatant Decoy will cheat out the lowest cost minion in your hand, which will be a minion costing 6 or higher. While it may help your opponent too, their minion will usually cost less than 6 and is often an understatted Battlecry minion. Furthermore, it can sometimes cheat out your opponent's combo pieces.
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.
Board Clears
These are your board clears.
Weapon and Attacks
Aldrachi Warblades in conjunction with attack gains allows you to have single target removal, burst damage, and self healing.
Card Draw
Card draw lets us get to Proving Grounds and removals more consistently.
Mana Cheat
These are your mana cheat cards. Proving Grounds is the superior option, but Blatant Decoy can be powerful too.
Big Minions
These are the big minions you want to cheat out.
If you like other Big decks, give this one a try. It's probably less competitive than other class' as of now because it has fewer mana cheat cards, but Proving Grounds gives Demon Hunter higher potential for immediate mana cheat than many other Big decks. In the future, this deck will probably get more support either from more ways to mana cheat big cards, more great minions to cheat out, or better spells for removal and card draw. 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? Let us know in the comments below!
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
Some nice ideas as always! Gotta love the creative titles.
Thanks, can’t take credit for the titles though.
Completely forgotten, cause never realy viable:
With an additional Plagued Protodrake, the underdog Silver Vanguard works wonders!
Not hittin your minions in a major way, while also summoning something bigger and unharmed from your deck.
Also good to play on turn seven, especially after you've done some Ground Proving beforehand. Finally this 7 mana 3/3 actually works as a threat! :D
Also in the realm of super forgotten cards, I’ve been trying a big demons version of this with a single copy of Soul Split. Copying an Inquisitor to OTK on the following turn is ridiculous, if very inconsistent.
Thanks again Swizard for the deck ideas!
Yeah I was debating between Decoy and Vanguard but even with a second Drake there would only be 4 8 drops in the deck and I didn’t find any other good 8 drops. It would be a bit inconsistent, if you drew a Vanguard after having drawn all 8 drops. Blatant Decoy can come down 1 turn earlier and it works with any cost minion in hand, your 6, 8, and 10 costs so it’s more reliable. If next expansion more 8 drops come out that fit this deck, Silver Vanguard would be great.
What if I Proving Grounds'd out a Mayor Noggenfogger? Or some ogres?
They would attack random targets.