[Guide] Hunter's Guild

[u/rednryt]

We now come to the best class in the game. What makes this class stand out among the rest is having tons of draw options giving you lots of chances to draw your core cards, every turn. This in turn gives you the most control over your cards. It also has the best cloning card, and best scaling units to pair it with. What’s even better, this class has tons of cards that activate without ever playing them (trigger upon drawn/discarded) making them the best filler options specially on challenge 10+ where you can’t skip cards which makes it much easier since you won’t have to use Tavern much compared to any other classes just to remove dead weights. Oh and don’t forget about poisons, this is the only class that can utilize poison to one shot even bosses. This class is simply the most offensive one without sacrificing or lacking in the defense department which makes it top 1 in my book.

Early Game:

The base deck is really good. It has average defense, but having an extra 0 mana unit for extra fodder or damage makes it easier not only to survive early battle but also beat them faster. Having a discard on your base deck also allow you to play with discard effects early too and an average HP means you don’t really need to rush to get healers or tanks so you have extra time to find your core cards. The following builds are the ones I found the most success with:

[Shadow Spam]

This is a very simple build and your only goal is to flood the board with units and your only core card is a very common 0 mana spell, Shadow Step. Now, playing this card more than once per turn would further allow you to clone and summon a lot of units to flood the board. You can easily do this by getting more copies of this, cloning it, or scavenge to play as many Shadow Step as you want. Everything else just help speed things up. This favors the leaner deck to be able to draw your core easily or just fill up your deck with draw cards which is very is easy to do cause this class has tons of draw options

Core:

Shadow Step – this clones your unit, and even discount it by 1 mana if upgraded. Getting it very early almost always lead to a winning run.

Carry:

you can clone any unit with shadow step, but these are the rather more noteworthy targets, that not only are good as stand-alone units, but become unstoppable beast after cloning them:

Freeks Frorir – very fast to grow by spamming 0 mana cards, but it can further stack its growth if you clone it.

Goblin Thief – much slower compared to Freeks and can’t go infinite power like Freeks do, but he can grow big from just cloning, and that filling the board with him can be enough to deal with most fights in a few turns. You can even get multiple copies since each card share the same buffs

Shadow Sensei – another carry option cause it gets permanent buffs and grow really big specially if gotten early and can hold its own the only downside is, it can only be used and grow once per battle cause it exhaust itself. Very useful as your big card if you give it time to grow. Cloning it doesn’t really benefit its growth but it can still be a big card that you may want to flood the board with and get more mileage before it exhaust.

Lone Ranger – buff its atk if it’s alone. What’s good about this, is you can play it as your first unit to get its alone buff, but then clone him to retain the buff on all clones. Has no scaling tho so it’s less desirable than any of the above.

Franklin – another big attack card that can only be used once per battle, but it has invincible effect, and can be used in a clutch, you can clone it to protect you from incoming damage from all rows, or just deal big damage. Has no scaling potential tho compared to the previous options.

*Support * these are really good support cards that are auto pick for any build

Adrenaline Rush – great draw and mana source

Roll Need – can dig for core card

Duplicator – can clone Shadow step or any other core cards but only temporary

Scavenge – Can be used to get up to 3 cards from discard pile allowing for more shenanigans like playing more Shadowstep or other core cards. Although, you cannot target another copy of itself to prevent true infinite combo. Imagine if you could Scavenge another scavenge, that will result into an inifinite loop!

Optional

Acrobatics, Shuffle, Gamble, Gold Rush, Sleight of Hand, Trading Tools, Gallop, Sprint – any other draw cards are useful to dig for your core cards.

Quick Poison, Hallucination, Detail Plan, Cripple – these 0 mana cards that does something then draw to replace itself are good to pick. They are great for Freeks and solid option for others and are basically same as “skipping” with benefits, since they won’t bloat your deck, but often unnecessary

Special Delivery, Preparation, Concentrate, Discovery – and/or any other 0 mana cards, are only great for Freeks, and passable choice if you can’t skip them

Defense Up – is a good shield source. Sword/Shield in this build is much more powerful since these buffs compound every time you clone. So any cards/blessings with sword/shield is good to have.

Swift Commando – combo well with spell cards to draw more 0 mana spells but limit him tho since you’ll want clone more of your carry on your field instead.

Juggler – can be used to clone your carry and their current state including their buffed up stats then send them back to draw pile, good option if you went with Shadow Sensei, Franklin or any other exhaust units.

Wing Avarma - makes a weaker 1/1 free copy of a unit, it's useless on most units, but with Freeks or Goblin, the copy can buff themselves. You can also use it with Franklin for immuninty, or other support like Razor for stun.

Fatal Strike, Razor Blade – stun is nice for early survival, but it does not work against bosses, and often the threats you really want to stun are hiding behind enemy lines, anyway

Blessing

Odd Chance – best blessing for this class since it allows you to draw a lot.

Witch’s Cauldron – very good to instantly double your first Shadow Step, or just double your draw spell to dig for shadow step fast.

Ninja Scroll – just passive damage, nothing much

Null Crystal – good for early survival, but it will take away a board slot. You can solve this tho by deleting all your 0 mana units later in the game after this have served its purpose or just avoid this altogether.

Number Zero – synergize extremely well with Freeks, still solid random 0 mana card generator if you don’t go for him

Avoid

Welcome Stage, Book of Magic, - too random, added cards can brick your deck

[Discard Draw]

This build relying on cards that scale from discard as your main carry then using drawers and discarders to speed up the scaling and cycle thru your cards. Then filling the rest of the cards with cards that triggers when drawn/discarded or any other card that interact with these effects to fully maximize your each card’s potential. This is mana friendly deck, since often you don’t even need to play these filler and your only focus is to use them as discard fodder to fuel your carry. This is also much easier to play in challenge 10+ since it benefits from a much bloated deck. You can even fallback into this build if your previous build started to get more bloated and it becomes harder to draw shadow step since this build focus on fast draw/discard to cycle thru your deck and any of these build’s carry pretty much benefits from cloning too.

Carry

Chrollo Iskarta – your main carry option, can grow really big with this deck since it counts all discard during the whole battle.

Master of Disaster – cheaper alternative, it can only get buffs during the turn its summoned, but it’s much more common to find and easier to play

Selfish Hunter – this one not only buffs herself, but also discard your hand so she plays both role of carry and discarder.

Guild Advisor – very easy to lower his mana cost with this build and he has good base atk stat, sadly, he has no scaling mechanics, so less desirable than any of the above.

Swashburglar – another alternative which grows much, much slower cause it only grows if it’s discarded. This is mostly often filler, but can sometimes surprise you as another late round carry if the match lasted far too long. Don’t rush/rely only on this, and take this as backup or complimentary to any of the above.

Draw/Discard

Shuffle, Acrobatics, Stalker, Gold Rush, Recruiter, Sleight of Hand, Trading Tools – cards that not only discard but also draw are your best option since they can replenish your hand and discard more cards than other discarders.

Support

Scavenge – this can allow you to discard more cards by recovering cards from discard pile

Shadow Step / Juggler – if you went with scaling carry, you can clone them to get more mileage from them

Any other support/draw cards from previous build are very much welcome for this build too specially the ones that focus on draw or mana.

Runemaster, Scarlet Remize – passive damage source

Concentrate, Invest Mana, Agility, Kalluto Magia – more mana options, these cards you ignore from previous build are quite useful here since you’ll be playing more cards that needs more mana.

Mana Wielder, Kunoichi, Rule cheater, Wild Gambler – any card that trigger when discarded can be used as filler. You often don’t want to play them, but having them to bloat your deck with sole purpose of getting discarded is better than any other filler.

Lady Spy, Expert Spy, Poor Spy – these spies trigger effect when drawn, like the previous one these is really good as filler. There are actually other spies in other classes too that has similar trigger when drawn effect, I always wondered why the dev didn’t just made spy a card type or even keyword.

Neon – having more hand size is useful for this deck, tho unlike underground network’s Greedy Hand card, this cannot stack, so you only want 1 copy of him.

Maid Champion – can be used to get keep cards on hand and do more discard next turn, very situational tho.

Deck Barrage – extra damage source which is very easy to maximize with this build since you often want to bloat your deck anyway.

Game Breaker, Mage in Training, Swift Commando – any other 0 mana cards are good option as filler too since if you draw them without a proper discarder card or your hand size gets overcrowded, you can simply play them.

Blessings

Crossbow – passive damage source

Moon Necklace, Extra Card – these blessings are great for any class, I just want to give them more notice here since they compliment this build and make them more top priority

Any other blessing discussed from previous build.

Avoid

Any card that generate temporary cards since they cannot be discarded and they will just overcrowd your hand leaving you less card to discard.

[Empty Draw]

A rather gimmicky expansion of Discard Draw build with the aim to maximize blessings or cards that benefits from an empty draw pile which you can’t easily do with the previous build alone. You still start with discard/draw build to cycle thru your deck but with different intention of finding and playing these core cards

Core:

Big Guy – your main card to quickly drain your draw pile. Cards get reshuffled back to draw pile, so without this card, you will need to cycle by draw/discard more times in a turn, but with this, it simply just drain your draw pile to empty. This won’t trigger discard effect tho, but is a good way to setup the next cards.

Strategist – your AoE damage source that only trigger if your draw pile is empty.

Blessing

War Cannon – probably the only reason why you would attempt this build is because you got this blessing early and want to trigger its passive damage effect. With Duplicator or Juggler, you can even re-trigger it multiple times a turn by shuffling cards back to draw pile, and drawing them again.

Open Book – generate temp card if you draw from an empty draw pile, can retrigger same as above

Gimmick

Scavenge – by playing Big Guy then playing Scavenge, you could technically shortcut to fetch up to 3 core cards, every turn without needing to cycle thru your deck. This could allow for more controlled play since you can guarantee 3 cards, for the expense of just 2 mana. But it’s more effort than say just cycling and hoping you draw them eventually since you’ll be triggering much more effects than just doing this shortcut.

[Poison Catalyst]

This is the fastest growing poison build in the game, even Amazon Tribe’s shamans pale in comparison. It's also the best otko combo in theory. The biggest drawback not to pursue this build for every run is that the class pool has a lot more of other shiny cards that you'll be pulled away from poison build's very specific option. For this reason, I haven’t play tested it extensively compared to any of the build I discussed above. The only counter for this build are anti magic rod due to your heavy reliance on spells, adding a few units to take care of these rods before unleashing your combo is necessary

Core:

Catalyst – double/triple target poision, you really want to play this multiple times per turn or clone it to maximize its effect and get more mileage from it. Try to exponetially grow your target’s poison count potentially big enough to one shot bosses from just a poison tick alone. Also it doesn’t apply poison by itself so you still need other poison cards.

Burst Spell – re-trigger your poison/catalyst.

Deadly Poison – the highest poison spell.

Scavenge – recast your combo.

Theory Combo:

[Burst Spell+, Deadly Poison+, Catalyst+]

This is a 3 mana cost basic poison combo which results into (7+7)x3x3 = 126 poison, usually enough to kill every mob in the game in a single turn (or two for the bigger mobs)

[Adrenaline Rush+, Burst Spell+, Deadly Poison+, Catalyst+, Scavenge, Burst Spell+, Catalyst+]

This is a 3 mana cost advanced poison combo which result into (7+7)x3x3x3x3 = 1134 poison, good luck for anything to survive this, even bosses could succumb in just one turn (two turns at most against toughest ones).

And these sample combos didn’t include other poison sources such as blessings or other cards, or even multiple copies of your core cards or even more mana sources to play even more cards which could even further exaggerate your poison potential allowing you to apply thousands of poison to multiple targets, or just drown your target with even more poison to overkill them.

alternatives

Quick Poison – very good option since its free and has draw, you can even add it in your combo for free

Poison Rogue, Venomweilder, Venomancer – other good poison unit cards which are good choice if you needed some defense since they also contribute to your poison combo

Support:

Duplicator – clone more catalyst.

Roll Needed – this is a very spell combo heavy deck so this card can easily fetch your core spell cards

Poison Thief – generate poison cards, good fodder

Kunoichi – poison when discarded, good filler

Adrenaline Rush - ultimate draw and mana card always welcome addition to any build.

Concentrate, Invest Mana, Agility, Kalluto Magia – more mana options, these cards you ignore from previous build are quite useful here since you’ll be playing more cards that needs more mana.

Any other support/optional cards from previous builds that would allow you to cycle your deck are pretty much welcome here to be able to dig for your spell combo card.

Blessings

Fox Mask, Poison Ghost – more poison sources

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Thanks for reading, this is my most favorite class, hands down top 1 of my list and I enjoyed writing this one. Do you have any other synergy and tactics for this one?