Hearthstone - Hybrid Hunter

Gaining massive amounts of popularity during recent tournaments, most notably the HTC Invitational, Hybrid Hunter has exploded in popularity during the May season. This article will go through the reasons the deck has seen popularity.

Popularity

The largest factor of Hybrid Hunter’s popularity is the popularity of hunter as a whole. Thanks to Face Hunter collectively creating more hatred for a card game than ever seen before, Hybrid Hunter offers the early pressure of Face Hunter, with a solid midrange option if needed. The founder of the deck, Protohype, hit #1 legend with the deck at a 70% winrate, which speaks for itself on the strength of the deck, and propelled many players into using it. In addition, the deck being used at tournaments and by popular streamers such as Trump certainly helped the deck reach the mainstream. Plus the deck plays relatively fast, meaning more ladder games overall.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I want to preface this deck with some comments. In my opinion, both Hybrid Hunter and Face Hunter are top tier decks, but Hybrid Hunter has shown itself to be a better deck throughout the last few weeks. Yet, Face Hunter still has a great win rate, and with the right curve can win every game. Hybrid Hunter on the other hand, has a more solid win rate against every deck, but it doesn’t have the same potential of a perfect game that face hunter can, which was often the best way to win against control decks.

Hybrid Hunter still offers the strong early game of Face Hunter.

Strengths

One of the most important parts of the deck is how the first turns will make you appear as though you are a Face Hunter, due to similar decklists. Even if you don’t manage to mulligan into Leper Gnome or Abusive Sergeant, it isn’t too uncommon for Face Hunter to miss a first turn play. Only once your opponent sees Freezing Trap or the higher mana cost minion will they realize. However, it’s entirely popular to see a Hybrid Hunter game where you draw only Face Hunter cards, which still works well.
In addition, you can mindgame the opponent into playing around Explosive Trap instead of Freezing Trap early on. Freezing Trap over Explosive Trap also serves better against Grim Patron Warrior, which has been a large amount of the ladder lately. Lastly, you can force your opponent to play around charge more than they should due to the 1/1 split of wolfrider and Arcane Golem rather than two of each.
Freezing Trap and Loatheb are also two important cards in this deck due to messing with your opponent's tempo. Since early minions like Zombie Chow and Voidwalkers can hinder your early game tempo, Freezing Trap is a powerful tool to ruin their early game. If you’ve ever had a 4 mana Haunted Creeper in your hand you know the feeling. Piloted Shredder giving an insane amount of value for just four mana also helps tighten up the deck's curve, and can lead to fun interactions.

Fun interactions with Piloted Shredder

Weaknesses

As I mentioned, against control decks you often need a solid early game to win with hunter. However, by turn 5 or 6, when Hybrid Hunter becomes more powerful than Face Hunter, you want to have already won the game almost, and playing nothing but Savannah Highmane on turn 6 gives your opponent another turn to armor, heal, or taunt up instead of doing direct damage. Now you would have to rely on your Highmane to do the dirty work, which is your best card in the matchup against control.
In addition, having such an early game focused deck with some higher cost mana cards thrown in can lead to some clunky, unfortunate hands. Already in Face Hunter you could have hands with double Kill Command that mess up your entire game, but now you can have Kill Commands and Savannah Highmanes in your early hands, which generally leads to a loss. Of course this is possible with every deck and you’re going to get bad hands, but there's a lot more possibility in an early game aggro deck.
Finally, this deck is more difficult than Face Hunter. You might have to trade your minions to get the most value out of Freezing Trap or to survive until late game and use your better minions. This isn’t necessarily a weakness per se, but you can’t just hit face and hope for the best.

Mulligans

Unlike Face Hunter, you shouldn’t be mulliganing aggressively for your one drops, and Leper Gnome is the only relevant one regardless for a turn one play. Due to the abundance of two drops in this deck, keeping them is generally your best bet, but keeping Animal Companion, Unleash the Hounds, or Eaglehorn Bow are often good options with the correct curve. In tournament settings, if you know you’re going against a control deck, keeping Highmane can even be a good option since it’s your best chance to win the matchup. Use your best judgment and always remember how your curve looks.

Conclusion

Due to such a strong debut onto the Hearthstone scene, Hybrid Hunter is quickly gaining notoriety as a top tier deck. When playing the deck, you have to remember that your biggest advantage is not revealing to your opponent if you’re Face or Hybrid until it works in your favor. Mindgames are your best friend, and thanks to the amount of direct damage along with constant pressure from hero power, this deck has an easy time closing out games.

Brandon Rendina