Classic Face Hunter Deck

Classic Face Hunter Deck Mulligan Guide

Face Hunter is a hyper-aggressive deck that aims to rush down opponents as quickly as possible, showing complete disregard for the board. To facilitate this you should use your mulligan to find early-game minions that can deal damage before opponents can develop a board presence.

• General Mulligan (keep regardless of what your opponent is playing) — Leper Gnome, Animal Companion.
• Mulligan against Aggro (also keep if you think you are playing against an aggressive deck) — Eaglehorn Bow, Explosive Trap.
• Mulligan against Control (also keep if you think you are playing against a slow deck) — No further cards required against Control.

Classic Face Hunter Deck Strategy

The overall strategy of Face Hunter is to piece together your cards and Hero Power in such a way to deal the maximum amount of damage directly to your opponent over the course of the game.

In the early game, the optional Turn 1 play is to throw down a Leper Gnome, followed up by either Abusive Sergeants or, if you have The Coin, a Wolfrider or Animal Companion. If you do not have a Leper Gnome, dropping an Abusive Sergeant onto an empty board is also fine on Turn 1. The rationale behind these plays is that early-game minions deal recurring damage by attacking your opponent directly each turn, resulting in more damage the earlier they are played. Conversely, if they are played later in the game they will often be removed immediately.

As you start to enter the mid game, you should start evaluating your hand each turn by counting how much direct damage you have available from Charge minions, weapons, and spells as it will influence how you play your future turns. If you have a large amount of damage stored up, you can freely play out your cards to maximise your damage first, prioritising Charge minions first over spells to avoid damage being blocked by Taunt minions in the future. In most cases, however, you will not quite have enough damage available and will therefore need to find a source of those few extra points of damage. This can often be done by weaving your Hero Power into some of your turns for additional damage. To achieve this, you should try to complete the most important parts of your turn, such as playing minions, while leaving enough Mana to use your Hero Power for 2 damage on your turn. This allows additional actions like playing Tracking or Misdirection to be used to efficiently spend Mana on a future turn.

When playing against Control, or decks with healing in general, you should take consideration when planning out your Mana and weaving in your Hero Powers. In particular, it is best to avoid any unnecessary actions on your turn if you are able to squeeze in additional Hero Powers as you can expect games to last several turns longer compared to playing against decks without healing. Whilst taking this slower approach, you may also allow your opponent to develop several, ideally small, minions. Doing this will allow you to use the combniation of Starving Buzzard and Unleash the Hounds to rapidly draw through your deck and provide you with the damage needed to continue pushing for the win.

Against Aggro, games will be much quicker and you will therefore have little or no opportunities to weave in your Hero Power. A common misconception is that Face Hunter has the fastest damage output of all Aggro decks, but this is unfortunately not true. Decks like Zoo Warlock or Aggro Paladin can easily out-damage a Face Hunter due to recurring damage from their minions. This means that uncharacteristic trades may sometimes need to be taken. As a general rule, Knife Jugglers should always be killed as well as high-Attack low-Health minions, such as those buffed by Blessing of Might. Despite a few key trades, other Aggro decks will inevitably be able to take control of the board, however, for these situations, the deck does have a few tools available. First and foremost, Explosive Trap offers a great way to normalise the board state, punishing aggressive decks that go wide on the board. In this case, it may sometimes be making a trade or two to ensure key, high-Attack minions are at 2 Health or less. The second anti-Aggro option is Unleash the Hounds, which can be used in two key ways. If control of the board seems salvageable, in particular with multiple 1-Health minions, the card can be used to help take out key minions, whilst also being able to do some damage to face, this is best combined with Knife Juggler which can also help clean up the board in the process. Alternatively, if you have good from-hand damage, you can completely forgo a board presence and continue to chip away at your opponent's Health. From here, Unleash the Hounds can be used to close out the game as, when combined with Timber Wolfs, it can deal significant damage scaling with the number of minions on your opponent's board.

Classic Face Hunter Deck Card Swaps

As with most Hunter decks, the Secrets present are interchangeable. Explosive Trap is recommended to be kept, but Misdirection can easily be replaced for Snake Trap to help generate more board presence or Freezing Trap to improve your matchup against decks that use big minions like Handlock and Midrange Combo Druid.

You can also opt to add in a copy of Ironbeak Owl, in place of a Wolfrider, Arcane Golem, or Timber Wolf, which can can provide a proactive alternative over Hunter's Mark to get through Taunt minions or deal with big Edwin VanCleefs from Miracle Rogues.

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