Hellion Handbuff

I first got interested in handbuff decks watching Roshi, and this list is pretty close to the Stonescar versions he put together. I figured it was time to update the list with the addition of Unstable Hellion! This card is just made for brewing.

The gameplan of the deck is pretty simple overall. Each card you play helps out with the next card you play. Starting at the bottom, we have Glen Pathcutter and Makkar's Quiver. They're cheap, Pathcutter provides some early offense, and Quiver gives some nice removal.

Next up, we've got Passionate Stonehammer and Syl, Cabal Strongarm. Both of these have Plunder, which in addition to Exploit means we have all the power we need as well as Troves when we've got extra. This is good since the deck functions best with a lot of power. Stonehammer is a great buff target if Pathcutter dies early, thanks to his having Flying and Berserk. He also combos quite well with Syl's Stronghold out of the market, which gives a separate buff for each attack in a turn.

Syl gives you tons of bats in this deck since we end up with plenty of high-powered units. The bats also benefit from Quiver and can be buffed further with it's second ability, which should be at least +5 with Syl gone. That leads to plenty of life gain.

After those, we start to get into the real meat of the deck. Wretched Rats gives us even more Lifesteal, and it can pass on all the strength it picks up from its own effect and Quiver. Arach, Razorshaper is an MVP in this deck, churning out huge armies of Deadly blockers (that can push damage, especially with Quiver in play) and passing along buffs to every card in your hand when those units die. And those buffs bring us to the final 4-drop: Unstable Hellion!

Hellion can push major damage in the air, since it also has Overwhelm. And even if your opponent kills it, they're still probably taking massive damage and losing a unit to its effect! Finally, even if you just play it out with no buffs, on your next turn its own effect makes it big enough to trigger Syl's effect, giving your opponent yet another reason to hesitate to kill it.

Rounding out our list of units is Riva, Crimson Blur, another Swiss-Army knife of a card. It can kill X/1s and X/2s or finish off a unit that blocked, all while swinging in with Charge and giving you more power. If you direct all 4 points of damage it does to the face, you can follow up the attacks with an Arach or Hellion to lock your opponent down. And this card dovetails beautifully with Makkar's Quiver: the higher you pump its attack, the more power you get back, which leads to more activations on Quiver! Generally I try to spread those activations around after the first one so the opponent has more to block.

We round out the deck with a strong toolbox. Stronghold and Raniya, Miviox Maniac are the typical go-tos in the market, with Open Contract and Wildlands Scavenging serving as situational help. Explosive Potential can be incredibly strong if you have a few 4 drops and/or a Riva in hand so that you get the value off of the Amplify, but it's a bit slow so you want to be sure you have time to make the play. It's a rare pull, but it does have its uses. Could be changed out if you want.

Finally, we've got Sinister Rumors and Voprex's Choice. Both are incredibly useful early-game removal, and both can recycle our buffed units (with Voprex being used exclusively for Hellion, obviously). I have used Rumors to get rid of spells from the opponents deck when I've made a read on what deck they're playing, usually by influence, but that's more rare.