Affordable Hunter Meta Decks

The Meta

The ‘meta’ – it’s one of those terms that you hear often in any form of online gaming that has a competitive scene. In general, it describes strategies that are most commonly played within a game at any given time. It will first find success in professional play and then spread through the ranks of all players. Hearthstone has a relatively well defined meta that consists of decks with certain general strategies or card combinations that have the highest success rates in the competitive scene.

Regardless of how long you have been playing, you have probably noticed that obtaining enough cards to build multiple ‘meta’ decks can be a very challenging task. While this can be made easier with a large chunk of spending money or tons of free time to grind gold to purchase card packs or adventures, it still relies heavily on your luck in what cards you happen to open or the sheer number of disenchants you need for the required dust to craft some of these decks. Currently, the meta decks range in dust costs from about 1,600 to 14,000. We will look at some Hunter meta decks that are on the lower end of this range. Rather than providing deck lists, I will give brief concepts of each deck so that you can go about constructing your own.

The Hunter Decks

The majority of Hunter decks popular in the current meta tend to be relatively cheap. There are three general strategies: Face, Midrange, and Hybrid, which is something in between. 

The Face Hunter strategy revolves around damaging your opponent right out of the gate while passing up on trades. The deck is comprised primarily of low mana cost cards that let you get early board presence to pressure your opponent. Since this deck lacks mid to late game pressure, you will typically use any damage available on your board to directly attack your opponent (his/her 'face') in order to end the game early. If played correctly, you will have so much damage pressure on the board that your opponent is forced to trade with your minions leaving you free to pass up on trades during your turn. The cards that you should play in this type of deck are lower cost minions with charge, stealth or damage dealing battlecries/deathrattles and direct damage spells. 

Some of the key cards in the Face Hunter Deck provide early game damage, damage boosts, and direct damage.

The Midrange Hunter strategy replaces the early pressure of the Face Hunter with more midrange mana cost cards. This deck scales well into the later turns of the game by having a larger mana curve. Unlike the Face Hunter, this deck will trade more frequently to protect both you and your minions' health. The idea is to have a hard to clear board presence during the mid and late game which allows you to sustain your midrange minion damage over multiple turns. Since it is a Hunter deck, it still contains some of the classic direct damage spells, but with this deck they tend to be used to clear your opponent’s minions in order to preserve your own board. While midrange minions are at the heart of this deck, it is important to still include some cheap minions from the Face Hunter deck to allow you to survive the early turns and get to the mid game. Your midrange minions will typically have deathrattles that summon additional minions which your opponent must spend additional resources to clear, stealth to prevent their immediate clear, or buffs to surrounding minions to boost their damage. One of the main cards that can instantly provide you a huge board and result in lethal is Call of the Wild.

Some of the key cards of the Midrange Hunter provide the mid to late game pressure that the Face Hunter lacks.

The Hybrid Hunter combines both of the Hunter strategies above. If described in the simplest terms it is a Face Hunter deck that adds mid and late game pressure with cards like Stranglethorn Tiger and Call of the Wild. It is a very interesting deck to play because it can either be played fast and aggressive like the Face Hunter or slow and steady like the Midrange Hunter. While playing this deck it is important to remember that this deck is a hybrid deck. That means that it is not the best at either of the playstyles it combines. I have found the most success with the Hybrid deck when I play it aggressive like the Face deck. This usually makes my opponent think that I have a standard Face deck which makes them play defensively until the mid game at which point Face decks typically fall off in strength. At this point I surprise them with my midrange minions to finish out the game. With the limited number of midrange cards in this deck, it makes it difficult to extend the game past your first few midrange minion plays.

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