At this point in the meta most decks have be already established but here and there still we see new discoveries pop up. One of the most recent is Mech Hunter. Well, in the first week we saw a Mech Hunter deck but it was built so much differently than this one. It seems that someone got it right this time since the deck is climbing the meta stats for the past couple of days.

Unlike the last variant of Mech Hunter that was focused on Nine Lives into Oblivitron combo for a massive Tempo plays this time it comes in more of a Midrange form and the deck is comprised of many different Mechs and taking the advantage of Goblin Bombs as Magnetic targets to get a pseudo charge effect, there are also some neat combos that can be pulled of. Okay, let's take a look at the list:

Just keep in mind that this deck is fairly new on the ladder and there are a couple of similar versions of it but this one at the moment had the most success with around 55-56% win-ratio. The first thing that we can see about this deck is consistency in terms of how it plays out, with only four 1-ofs that also have a greater impact on the game.

Star Cards:

I picked these three as "Star Cards" because they appear in every Mech Hunter list and it is pretty clear why.

Zilliax is the best Mech in the game. How strong it is you can see this with its appearance in many decks in the meta for the past year. Not only is it strong but now it is in the full-fledged Mech deck. Magnetizing Zilliax on pretty much any target feels good, Upgradable Framebot as a 1/5 is pretty bad but with Zilliax it is 4/7 Taunt that heals you, sometimes when Mechanical Whelp dies you can immediately Magnetize the leftover 7/7 and give it Rush that free trades any minion and heals you for 10! Yeah, I think you got the point, Zilliax is awesome and strong definitely a Star Card.

Fireworks Tech is a card that always looked like it had potential because triggering stronger Deathrattles and giving +1/+1 for 2 mana with even a minion attached to the effect is so strong. I guess it needed just a bit more to get pushed to the point where it is played on a meta level. Ursatron, the next Star Card seems to be enough of a boost for this to happen. Not to mention how good it goes with Spider Bomb for a free Deadly Shot and with Mechanical Whelp for a 2 mana 7/7.

Ursatron is a good card, not a broken or too strong of a card but just solid. It is on this list because it in some way makes the deck. When Boomsday Project came out Mech Hunter was almost at the right place in terms of power level but it was missing a bit more steam. This card not only does it give that it is also a Mech that draws Mechs specifically which strengthens the synergy effects like Magnetic gives to this archetype. It is sort of glue for this decks consistency.

Also worth mentioning is Houndmaster Shaw. Giving Rush to so many Mech is showing to be quite strong. Spider Bomb, Whelp, Venomizer, Replicating Menace or any combination of those can give so much Tempo while also giving an opportunity for some value trading. Also, with his body of 3/6, it makes a lot of sense in this Midrange plan the deck has in taking the board and then finishing the opponent.

Match-ups:

This deck excels versus Control decks because it maintains constant pressure and also with Magnetic it creates huge minion out of many small ones which are good against board clears. It struggles with aggro decks because it can't handle wide boards that easily and it doesn't have too much sustain besides Zilliax.

Rogues at this point are the easiest match-up for this Hunter with over 57% wins for Hunter. This is due to the Tempo style of play that Rogues play. They usually have a minion or two on the board and often it is easy to clear that with Magnetic effects if you have a leftover Mech on the board and that happens quite often because of Mecharoo and Replicating Menace. Another thing is that with this deck you are making chip damage to Rogue almost every turn and that disables them from using their weapons to fight for the board and at that point, you win because you are Hunter that is good at finishing low health targets. Tip for this match-up is that you should be wary if you want to Magnetize your Mechs to not run into Sap, so most of the time it is wiser not to do it but play the Mechs individually.

Warriors are also an easy match-up because of what I already mentioned and that's is the strength against board clears. Best defensive tools of Warrior are Warpath, Brawl, and Supercollider. These tools are all made to help Warrior fight wide boards with many smaller or mid-sized minions. So the way to play against him is constantly lowering his armor total to avoid Shield Slams and Magnetizing your Mechs to make big minions. Also Warriors these days always run Dyn-o-matic which is basically useless in this match-up. Warrior isn't that good versus Mechs in general so this is definitely favorable for Hunter.

Shamans have the same problem, they have good AOE removal but they can't really deal with too many big targets. Yes, they have Hex but with only two in their deck that is simply too few to deal with so many Mechs. Slow decks just don't have too much of a chance versus this one. Constant pressure keeps them on a lower health total and because they play so few minions they are easy targets for Venomizer and Spider Bombs.

Mages haven't changed too much, they all play Khadgar decks that are so slow and good at beating other Control decks, in this case, they are really in trouble. There is no general direction to play versus Mage but to just play out the normal Midrange style and take the board control immediately and with constant pressure just go for a fast kill. Don't really have a good tip in this match-up, just focus on their face rather than trading too much. Spider Bomb and Venomizer just like in Shaman match-up are for trading their big stuff and because Mages only play huge and slow minions they can hardly play around those two.

Druids and Warlocks are primarily Zoo/Token decks and they are the hardest for this Hunter. The problem is that they go wider and because this deck lacks taunt minions they usually run you over in this match-up. They are also faster going out on the board so they are easily clearing good Magnetic targets to reduce the value and disable that pseudo charge Mechs can create when Magnetizing. The way you can possibly win in these match-ups is by trying to take over the board control but that will be a hard task. Because of this Mech Hunter decks tech in Unleash the Hounds to help them fight on the board versus Token centric decks and also Leeroy to finish the game quicker in the pinch situations.

Paladins are about an equal match-up, without any major advantages nor weaknesses. The way to win this match-up is in good use of Spider Bombs because they use a lot of Divine Shield Taunts that get revived with Redemptions and clearing them that way is the most cost-efficient that you can get. In the other cases, always have at least a couple of smaller minions that can pop the Divine Shield before trading it with bigger Mechs.

Priests, haven't seen any in the last couple of days, so I'm not sure what to say about this one. I've seen some stats online that suggest that Ressurection Priest doesn't have a lot of chance against this deck.

Mulligan:

Versus Aggro: Keep Mecharoo, Galvanizer, Upgradable Framebot, Ursatron, and Zilliax
Mecharoo is the only 1-drop so it is good to have it on turn 1 versus faster decks, Galvanizer also gives you so much speed needed in these match-ups and Upgradable Framebot can easily become a trading machine when Magnetized. Zilliax is the only sustain card in the deck so it will most likely help, especially because you will tend to lose to those aggro decks burning you out of the game rather than winning the board.

Versus Control: Keep Ursatron, Houndmaster Shaw, Spider Bomb, and Venomizer
Also, good keep is a Fireworks Tech if you already have something that goes well with it. Spider Bomb and Venomizer are good in these match-ups and that's why you would also want to keep Shaw that goes really well with them both. Ursatron is a good keep to give you more sustainability in pressure.

This is all for this review. Here are my stats in Legend ranks around 2000. This deck is recommended on days that you see many Warriors and Rogues because it can give you some easy wins. Not unbeatable but a solid tier 2 deck right there.

Thank you for reading!

, z3ll