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Blizzard locked me in a personal hell with Hearthstone’s Demon Hunter, and it was greatLicense to Illidan
License to Illidan
Hearthstone’s newAshes Of Outlandexpansion is out this evening, and having spent a couple of days last week playing with the new card set, I can confirm it’s really, really fun. Completely ridiculous, as isincreasingly the casewithHearthstone, but undoubtedly a solid expansion - and in my opinion at least, more fun than any of last year’s three.
The Demon Hunter class, as Adam put it, is “a bit of a brute”. Mostly, I played it as a face/rush deck, built to batter an opponent directly before they can get a chance to build any late game momentum. Illidan’s one-mana-cost hero power ensures he’s never short of an opening move no matter your opening hand, and you can ensure good tempo even if your mana curve pretty much starts at two. Plus, with a lot of cheap cards that focus onweapons damage,weapon synergies, andflooding the board with low-cost gits, it’s easy to overwhelm most foes early. Plenty of lifesteal effects will keep your big purple lad in good shape as he siezes control of the board, and if you can keep it, you’ll likely be able tobeast your opponent into the groundwithburst damagebefore they can really get their deck mechanics going.
As far as we determined, the Demon Hunter’s main weakness is fatigue. While they’ve got access to a good amount ofcard draw tools, they don’t have many ways to replenish their decks with new cards. Because of this, any opponent capable of weathering the initial monstering with plenty of board clears and taunts has a decent shot of knackering Illidan in the long run. Still, it’s no guarantee - some of the Demon Hunter’s late game cards arepretty hefty, and really help you keep up agruesomeleveloftempolong past turn ten. And then there’sthis guy, who’s clearlyBatterhead’smore aggressive drinking buddy. Look at this ridiculous situation, for example, which I will remind you came about using only one of Illidan’s default deck recipes:
After Gul’dan got mangled for the umpteenth time in a row, Adam and I decided to abandon the terms of our original battle, and settle on a new plan: we would each take it in turns to play the Demon Hunter - still restricted to the standard deck recipes - while the other person built a ludicrous meme deck from any class (no netdecking allowed), in a bid to counter it. We tried some fairly hilarious, but disastrous stuff: Adam had a good try to get a Thief Rogue deck going in a world withoutTesspionage, but made it as far as turn six before getting fel-fired into a pile of ash. Meanwhile, I had a go with the Mage class’sreinvigorated “no minion” archetype, but just couldn’t keep Illidan’s knives out of my face for long enough to make the magic happen. Every game with that deck pretty much boiled down to desperately freezing Illidan’s demon hordes while I fished frantically through random spells, until the inevitable ganking:
Still, in the end, we did find two decks capable of giving Demon Hunter a good hiding, even in the limited time we had - powerful as the new class is, it’s not without its weaknesses. And with more time to experiment when the expansion launches tonight, I’m sure we’ll find more. One of these decks was an updated version of the majesticAlbatross Priest, a deck which first spread its wings in Descent of Dragons, and which I’m sureAlice Bell would approve of.
Albatross Priest has a blissfully simple MO: replicate as many albatrosses as you can, until you’ve filled your opponent’s deck with the useless bastards, and they’re drowning in Coleridgian hubris. Illidan is particularly susceptible to a good ‘trossing, as he’s reliant on bringing out big toys from his deck quickly, and he can’t do that if it’s full of big shit birds, can he? Albatross Priest uses a lot of ancient-Egypt-ish resurrection cards from the Saviors of Uldum expansion, but has some powerful new tools inOutland:Psyche SplitandApotheosis, for example, allow you to make your albatrosses bigger and more healthsome as you endlessly photocopy them.
The three amigosBut the real star of the show is the almost astonishingly overpoweredReliquary of Souls. This beast of a card seeds a massive, lifestealing ‘prime’ version of itself in your deck when it dies (each class has its own take on this new mechanic), and so gives you something else to use your many, many copying cards on if you don’t happen to have a ‘tross to hand. Having a load of lifestealing 6-attack taunts in your deck really helps with survivability against the Demon Hunter onslaught, and ensures you’ve just got more cards to draw than Illidan, even if you don’t get many big birds off.
The three amigos
Adam also found an Illidan-busting deck, however. It was a Hunter deck, and it couldn’t have been more different to my solution. I don’t know if there’s a proper name for the archetype, but he called it “dinner at the Beast Row”, and it worked on the principle that the best form of defence is a good attack, aiming to outdo the Demon Hunter at its own board-presence game. The Beast Row is a handbuff deck, like the ones from the Gadgetzan meta of 2016, only it’s actually good this time. Almost too good, if I’m honest. It only has a few, very powerful minions (King Krushis arguably the must-have), and uses some powerful buff cards from Outland - particularlyScrap ShotandScavenger’s Ingenuity- to get some big nasties lurking in your hand. A couple of cost reductions withScarlet Webweaver, then a bit of photocopying withRamkahen WildtamerandHunting Party, and… well. This happens:
(At this point, the Beast Row had already bungled Illidan about five times over, so Adam sent it up against my beloved Holy Albatross Legion.)
