6 Great Budget Hearthstone Decks for Late Season Climbing in Voyage to the Sunken City

As the April season ticks away, it's possible you're not yet as high on the ladder as you'd like to be, but don't want to commit to crafting a more powerful deck with the meta in flux after the recents nerfs. Fear no more! Whether you're a free-to-player who doesn't have much Gold for packs, or a cautious crafter waiting to see where they should spend their hard-earned Dust, we've collected six Budget-friendly decks for your last minute climb up the ladder.

Ol' Reliable: Face Hunter

Face Hunter is often the "go-to" deck for Budget players who need to climb in a hurry, thanks to its aggressive gameplan and cheap set of core cards. While Legendaries like Barak Kodobane and Raj Naz'jan have recently added more expense to the fully-teched version of the archetype, Budget players can easily find cost-effective replacements for them.

First, we have this Naga-centric list from Hearthstone streamer Old Guardian, who often builds competitive Budget decks and showcases them on his YouTube channel. If you're going to learn one thing from this article, we hope that it's this: Twinbow Terrorcoil is a heckuva card, boosting Piercing Shot or Aimed Shot or doubling virtually any spell you want. The rest of the Naga core (Vicious Slitherspear, Murkwater Scribe, and Naga's Pride) is very good and is on full display here.

Another Face Hunter option is this deck that plays some of the same tune by going with the powerful Naga core but gives it a little twist by adding in 4 Mana 7/7 Selfish Shellfish and ways to find it with Selective Breeder and Harpoon Gun. Protip: it doesn't matter how many cards your opponent draws if they're dead.

The New Hotness: Drek'Thar Demon Hunter

Demon Hunter has found a couple of ways to abuse Drek'Thar and his army of cheap minions, thanks mostly to the amount of powerful 1-, 2- and 3-Drops the class has access to. Your Hero also has a chance to weigh in on the fun thanks to powerful aggressive tools Dreadprison Glaive, Multi-Strike, and Bone Glaive.

Your first choice is this Token deck that, outside of Drek'Thar, has a ton of ways to summon small minions (Wings of Hate, Coordinated Strike, Battleworn Vanguard) and ways to profit from their death (Feast of Souls, Wrathscale Naga, Flag Runner).

Your other option is this straight-forward aggressive Demon Hunter list that uses Drek'Thar as a way to get more of its scary minions onto the board but, unlike Token DH, would rather those minions don't die (with the possible exception of Treasure Guard). While Pufferfist was recently nerfed, we don't expect the loss of one health to change these decks that much.

And the Rest: Tribal Ties

If you're looking for something with a little more strategy, we've grabbed two decks that lean on the inherent synergy between minion types to win the game.

First up, it's Murloc Shaman! The nearly-there strategy of "Build a board, then buff it with Nofin Can Stop Us" got a huge boost from the re-addition of Bloodlust and new expansion Murlocs Twin-fin Fin Twin and Gorloc Ravager. Thanks to the Ravager, you no longer have to worry about running out of steam and have more ways to close out the game once you've built a big board of fish.

Old Guardian put together this budget-friendly Mech Mage list that accounts for the loss of powerful minions like Amalgam of the Deep, Gaia, the Techtonic, and Ini Stormcoil by replacing them with the disruption of Blademaster Okani and Explosive Runes for a more aggressive strategy. Besides, Gorillabot A-3 and Deeprun Engineer can make it seem like you're always running Gaia.

We wish you the best of luck in your late season ladder climb, whichever deck you choose to play. May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind ever be at your back, and until we meet again, may your opponent never top-deck lethal.

What's your choice of deck for a last-second surge through the ranks? Share your thoughts in the comments!