Hearthstone Deck Tech: Beast Hunter - The Strongest Budget Deck In the Meta!

Last week, Blizzard announced the first balance changes after The Lost City of Un'Goro came out. Patch 33.0.3 nerfed a few popular cards from the strongest decks in the meta.

As a result, new options became viable and started standing out. Today, we'll discuss one of them: Beast Hunter. This deck stands out for many reasons, including for being cheap and simple and for playing cards from the new set. All of these factors made Beast Hunter quite attractive to beginners who don't have many resources or don't know much about the game yet. However, it also made this list popular among veterans who want to play something different or are looking for lists with new cards.

So, we, at Cards Realm, decided to playtest this list and show you how to play the main cards, the win condition, and how to mulligan with it. Check it out!

As the name suggests, this is a Hunter deck that only plays Beasts. The only exception is City Chief Esho, which, when played, gives all your other minions +1/+1 if you only play a single tribe in your deck. As you'll have it in your hand when you play it, the other cards in your deck will only be Beasts and its effect will be active.

Please note that City Chief Esho is also the only legendary card in this list. But don't worry about spending Arcane Dust to craft it because it is uncraftable and all players already have it. This is another reason why Beast Hunter is a budget list.

As this list only plays a single tribe, the main game plan is simple: play as many Beasts on the board as you can and buff them whenever you can. Now, let's see the main cards you'll use for that.

Main Cards

Obviously, this list plays many cards to fill your board with Beasts as fast as possible. For instance, it plays Remote Control and Shepherd's Crook, as well as Workhorse and Mother Duck, which create tokens.

Some spells, like Ball of Spiders, R.C. Rampage, and Patchwork Pals, also do that.

Now that you know how you'll fill your board with Beasts, it's time to buff them. City Chief Esho, which we mentioned before, and Supreme Dinomancy are your main ways of buffing your minions.

Beast Hunter stands out for not only its AoE buffs but also for a few tools that take advantage of the number of Beasts you'll control at the same time. A good example is Painted Canvasaur. When you play it right after you fill your board, you'll put even more pressure on the opponent, considering five or six of your minions will get keywords such as taunt, elusive, divine shield, and many others.

Of course, at times the keywords you'll get will be great, and at other times they won't. For instance, one of your minions getting rush when they can attack already won't be too incredible. In that sense, you'll have to rely a bit on luck to get the best effects, but, as each minion will get a different keyword, you'll have decent odds of getting something useful.

Another minion that can give keywords to your other minions is Dreambound Raptor. However, unlike the last card, you must play this one before you put any cards in play. Please note that Dreambound Raptor only buffs the Beasts you play, so Beasts summoned by spells like R.C. Rampage, and Workhorse's and Mother Duck's tokens won't get a new effect.

Finally, Jungle Gym also fits this list perfectly. It deals 1 damage to a random enemy (including the enemy hero) for each Beast you control, and you can use it twice. As you can use it whenever you prefer (as long as it's not two rounds in a row), Jungle Gym is a versatile tool. You can play it on the first few rounds as burn, then play it in the midgame to control the board, and then play it in the late game as burn again.

Your win condition is clear: create an unstoppable board. So, the buff cards we've already mentioned, such as Supreme Dinomancy, City Chief Esho, and Painted Canvasaur, are critical.

Please note that Supreme Dinomancy and City Chief Esho don't affect minions you'll summon in the future - just the ones that are already in your hand, board, or deck. So, if R.C. Rampage's dogs are already on your board, they'll all get buffs, but that won't be the case if this spell is in your hand still.

So, try to use these buffs after you cast a big spell. Try to make the most out of them.

Your mulligan is pretty versatile. You can go for 1-cost and 2-cost cards to play something early on, for instance. Scarab Keychain, Remote Control, Jungle Gym, and Workhorse are great options in that sense.

You can also keep a powerful combo, such as R.C. Rampage on turn 4, Supreme Dinomancy on turn 5, and City Chief Esho right afterward. In the best-case scenario, this will give you a board full of 6/6 minions that you can buff even further with Painted Canvasaur or another copy of Supreme Dinomancy.

Both options are viable. You'll have to decide between them according to your opponent. Let's see them.

To beat different opponents, you'll have to adjust your game style.

Aggro

Against aggressive decks, you won't have time to set up the R.C. Rampage, Supreme Dinomancy, and City Chief Esho combo. You'll have to worry about playing cards as fast and cost-efficiently as you can to deal with enemy pressure.

Scarab Keychain, Remote Control, Jungle Gym, and Workhorse will be a lot of help in this case. You'll have many ways to fight the board: either by blocking with your face, removing cards with your location, fighting with your minions or the tokens Workhorse creates, or fighting with the resources Scarab Keychain gives you. You should keep these cards in your mulligan.

You can also keep a few other useful tools if they show up in your opening hand: Catch of the Day, Shepherd's Crook, and Mother Duck are very similar to the cards above, for instance, so you can keep them in your opening hand.

After surviving the first four or five rounds, you should start considering your combos or keeping your Beasts in play to evolve them later on. Early on, you must focus on surviving, though.

Control

As for slower decks, they often give you a lot of time and space to set up strategies with more mana. In these cases, you can just wait and try to get as much value as possible in the mid to late game.

Of course, R.C. Rampage, Supreme Dinomancy, and City Chief Esho will still deal a lot of damage to your opponent if they let it. Particularly if you also play Jungle Gym.

However, there's also a lot more you can do with Beast Hunter. For instance, you can use Patchwork Pals or Shepherd's Crook to get more resources for the next few rounds. So, don't get attached to the four cards we mentioned above. Just focus on creating a great board until the mid-game.

Beast Hunter is relatively simple to play, as well as extremely cheap. It also plays new mechanics from The Lost City of Un'Goro. I'm sure it'll be a viable option for you, particularly if you're a beginner.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!