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Hardball Hooru

Throne Deck By
goldstarbrother

+2

Cost Curve

Type

Faction

Information

I called it this because it takes great advantage of un-nerfed cards ;)

I played the deck from D1 to Masters with a 11-4 record, it seemed pretty good. The Levitate and Aniyah buffs are very relevant, Sudden Schism is ridiculous, and Clutch of Talons is pretty clutch. It mostly plays like a midrange deck but it has a lot of reactive cards so it kind of plays like a tempo deck as well.

There are a lot of fast spells so you generally want to leave something up (even if it's just Levitate). A lot of the power in the deck comes from how reactive it is. Don't be to stingy with Unseal unless you're against Maul deck or something else with one key spell.

Planning around Sudden Schism being fast will win you a lot of games. My favorite trick as attacking with Feast-Caller into a trade, then playing a copy with the buffed attack ability right before it dies. Copying Aniyah during your opponent's attack can also be a pretty big blowout. Playing Schism at fast speed is basically one of the main wincons for the deck so it's one of the main thing to get from the market.

Clutch of Talons is a really great card. It can be a finisher or a stabilizer (or a Renown activator), so it's another great grab from the market when you're not sure what to get. I sometimes wanted it in the maindeck too, but I don't think there's room and it's not really needed. But the curve of Feast-Caller on 5 into Clutch + Amplify on 6 is NASTY.

The deck seems a little weak to reanimator (which is why I have Blade instead of Vanquish). If this is a big problem for you try switching in the Justice merchant with Adjudicator's Gavel, Avigraft, and maybe Harsh Rule in the market. This will make the deck a little less synergistic and proactive, but you'll get blown out less.

Overall this seems like a really solid deck. The Levitate and Aniyah buffs give you real, good reasons to go into Hooru for this type of reactive midrange strategy instead of (for example) Argenport or Feln. So this seems like a real player in the meta as opposed to some janky nonsense that I'm only running because I like Hooru.

Details

Shiftstone Cost
Does not include campaign cost
62,450

Premium Cost
237,600

Influence Requirements
2 3

Power Sources
18 19 12

Power Calculator
Shiftstoned Icon View Deck on Shiftstoned

Deck Rarities
19 15 23 13

Card Types
28 8 19 0 25

Archetype
Midrange

Added
January 18, 2019

Views
1,041

Eternal Version
Balance Changes

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Deck URL

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Comments

Andersph Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Nice deck! I did change some cards out just because I find them more fun:
-4x sherif Marley for 4x Svetya, 4x Levitate for 4xaquisitive crow and 1 clutch of taloons for the mirror relic
And now I have gotten 15 wins in 20 games in masters.

Mirror just seemed so nice with aniyah and svetya, you can potentially lock down the enemy for either creatures or spells
goldstarbrother Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Yeah Svetya is definitely an option. But with only 27 units the ability won't be that great. In my experience need 32+ for it to be really good. Plus the Unseals answer a lot of the same things she does, but more reliably. Also the extra cards, silence, and Aegis from Marley is pretty relevant sometimes. But Svetya will definitely work in a deck like this.

Taking out Levitate for Crow also makes sense but I don't think I'd recommend it without some other changes as it really turns this into a different kind of deck. Levitate is really good here and very nice as a Renown activator. Crow is good but it brings a lot of things to the table that this deck isn't really prepared to synergize with (Berserk and lots of extra spells), so you're not going to get max value out of it. Adding Svetya is a good start but I think I'd also add a 4th Finest Hour instead of Unseal, and maybe try Amilli instead of Feast-Caller as well. It might also be worth replacing the other Unseals with Strategize (and maybe finding room for 1 or 2 more).

Quicksilver Mirror is a card I had in the Market for a bit, but it felt too slow. Getting one extra unit a turn is nice but paying 7 to do nothing kills you a lot of the time (which is another reason not to run Svetya). I feel like when you grab the thing in the Clutch/Mirror slot you want it to win you the game, and Clutch does that more quickly and reliably than Mirror. I do like Mirror with Svetya though.

Basically it sounds like you modified it into a more explosive, combo-y deck. Crow, Svetya, and Mirror are stronger wincons when they work, but their weaknesses are more pronounced so I think the deck will be less consistent. My version won't get as many random free wins but Levitate, Marley and Clutch are more flexiable and better when you're behind so it'll be harder to lose games. Both seem good and I'm definitely going start brewing with the Mirror + Svetya combo. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Andersph Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I see what you are saying, and you are not wrong. After my modifications, the deck is harder for the renown trigger but does more disgusting things lategame. With crow, there are a lot more threats that generate value that the opponent needs to remove (alot of 1-mana spells are quite impactfull). And when they see a t2 hojan or kothon and use their removal on it, the crow usually lives to the next turn after it is dropped.
My deck is running 4 more units than yours but I do rarly get to have the option of activating svetya at 8, I like her more for making the already developed 2-3 drops to stay at least for one turn more (and to have a chance to let a living crow get one more spell off).
Mirror is very slow and is not often I take it out from the market unless we have a board stall or I can afford the tempoloss. Clutch is probably better in 9/10 times, but I wanted to find a shell for it that mirror can at least work in, which I think this deck does (so many aegis + unseal effects)

I just like to use cards that are kind of forgotten and seldom used in the meta, but not completely terrible powerlevel wise. Crow is such a card, and is super fun, as long as it wins more than loses I am happy.
goldstarbrother Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Yeah Crow is a really fun card, I've messed around with it before, I just prefer it in more aggressive decks than this. But yeah, it's pretty good in this one too.

I tried your changes and modified the deck some more to end up with this. It doesn't have Quicksilver Mirror or Crow, but it does use Svetya really well and follows the same plan of sacrificing consistency for explosiveness. The main difference is my version does that by ramping into Telut/Clutch/Svetya's ability instead of beating them down with crow and/or locking them out with Svetya + Mirror.

I do think there's a good Hooru shell for Mirror, but it's probably more of a control deck. I think the plan with that card is to survive/ramp into it with a good unit out, then just use control tools to keep surviving until you overwhelm them with value. Svetya is really good for this but so Throne Warden, and Feast-Caller is just obviously good. You could also use a Merchant, getting all your market cards is nice and with something like Thunderstrike Dragon you can generate infinite cards by swapping it in and out.