Our Malygos Hunter Deck List Guide will walk you through the ins-and-outs of this new deck in the Rise of Shadows meta! We’re featuring the most popular deck list, mulligan guide, play strategy, card choices, and even substitutions if you are missing some of the cards.

Malygos Hunter is a bit of a surprise deck that has shown up in the early stages of the Rise of Shadows expansion. It seeks to use Jepetto Joybuzz to get a couple of your powerful cards as low cost so you can play them in combination with spells. The ideal situations is you get your Malygos and Alexstrasza , so you can drop your opponent down in health and burn them out with your spells. While this is the ideal situation, there are other cards in the deck that give you possibilities for other win conditions.

Malygos Hunter Rise of Shadows Deck List

This archetype has shown promise in the very early stages of the Rise of Shadows set. Keep in mind it is likely to be very weak to aggressive decks, so if you are running into a lot of those you’d be likely better off not playing it.

Malygos Hunter Mulligan Guide

We’re mainly looking for either cards that will protect us in the early game, or hoping to find our main combo generator.

Always Keep

  • Secret Plan
    • Give us something to do in the early game, because honestly we don’t have any early drops or cards to really play. We get a free Secret out of the deal, and we can play it on turn two most likely.
  • Animal Companion
    • Must keep if you get it in your mulligan, we have very little to do in the early game and this card gives us a minion to work with that our opponent will have to deal with.
  • Jepetto Joybuzz
    • Arguably the most important card in the deck. We need Jepetto to hopefully pull out our Alexstrasza and Malygos. If we can get both of those, then we have a pretty clear path to victory if we have enough spells.

Situational Keeps

  • Master’s Call
    • Allows us to look for Jepetto, and potentially Vereesa Windrunner if we already have Jepetto and want to take it out of the pool of cards that he will give us for 1-mana.
  • Marked Shot
    • Give us the ability to get rid of a minion relatively early in the game and gets us a spell. Better to keep with one of our other early game cards, but we don’t have a lot of options.

Malygos Hunter Play Strategy

This deck has a whole lot of nothing in the early game, so we’re generally looking to get into the mid-game as unscathed as possible. This means you are utilizing just about all of your spells to quiet down the board and not allow our opponent to overrun us too early. If you can avoid it, try to save Rapid Fire which does a ton of damage when combined with our cheap Malygos . That’s one of the most important spells we’ll need to burn out our opponent, it will do 8-damage for each one we can cast if we’ve got Malygos and Vereesa’s weapon.

Like I said in the opening, the early game is just to survive. You might end up using those Arcane and Deadly Shots against small minions, but it’s worth it to keep yourself from getting too far behind. Secret Plan can be a good early play just to get a Secret our opponent might have to deal with. Animal Companion is going to be one of your better cards, it gives us an early minion to get trades with or delay our opponent. Unleash the Hounds is another solid one for clearing boards or at least removing a minion or two. If you can, save your cheaper direct damage like Arcane Shot , Rapid Fire , and Kill Command for us on our opponent.

As we transition into the mid-game, we do have a bunch of spells that can protect us. Stuff like Marked Shot , Wing Blast , and Baited Arrow work well for removing minions. Unleash the Beast is surprisingly good here as well, and can quickly dispatch a minion and force our opponent to deal with it rather than damaging us.

As we head into the late game, we’re hoping to have drawn Jepetto Joybuzz at some point. The ideal situation of this deck is having Jepetto on turn eight, and being able to plop him down and get a low cost Alexstrasza and Malygos . On the next turn, we’ll be able to reduce our opponent’s health to 15 with Alextrasza, drop Malygos on the board, and burn them out with spells. This won’t always happen though, so sometimes we’ll have to improvise. Also in the deck is Vereesa Windrunner , and her weapon gives us +2 Spell Damage for the turn if we attack with it. That gives us additional firepower if we didn’t get the Alexstrasza or Malygos, or we just need a bit of a boost in damage.

If worse comes to worse, we still have Zul’jin in our deck. By the time we’ll be able to play him we should have cast quite a few spells, so he’s going to potentially clear the board and give us some minions that we’ve gotten from cards on the board. There will be times when this potentially puts us in a winning position, or give us enough time to delay until we can get our combo pieces.

Malygos Hunter Card Choices

In this section, we’re taking a look at why each of the cards has made it into the list.

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  • Arcane Shot

    • Cheap damage that can remove minions early and pairs with our combo into the late game.

  • Rapid Fire

    • Maybe the most important damage card in the deck, we can get quite a bit of damage out of this because it splits itself into two spells. Try to save this for the late game combo.

  • Secret Plan

    • Good for getting an early Secret to help protect ourselves in the early game. Just getting something like Freezing Trap can delay our opponent long enough for us to get one step closer to our combo.

  • Tracking

    • If we’re needing a specific card right now then Tracking is a good card for this. You will need to be careful though, you could end up pitching part of your combo if you get both of them as options. Using this earlier in the game gives you less of a chance for this to happen.

  • Animal Companion

    • Great early game card that gives us a fighting chance in the early game.

  • Deadly Shot

    • Takes out a problematic minion for us, but also just removes something so we’re not under so much pressure.

  • Kill Command

    • Good burn spell, we don’t technically have a Beast in this deck but there will be times when we have a token on the board that has a Beast tag on it.

  • Master’s Call

    • No beasts in this deck, why is this here?! We aren’t looking to get the full three cards, we’re just looking for a way to get Jepetto Joybuzz in our hand and this card can do it.

  • Unleash the Hounds

    • Punishes wide boards and hopefully allows us to clear minions.

  • Marked Shot

    • Decent minion removal, and we also get the big benefit of Discovering a spell.

  • Wing Blast

    • Can be awkward at times when a minion hasn’t been killed, but getting 4-damage onto a minion for 1-mana is great.

  • Baited Arrow

    • High cost card, but if we can get a 5/5 Devilsaur it ends up being worth it.

  • Unleash the Beast

    • A bit slow, but we don’t run too many minions in this deck and this give us something to trade with as well as something for our opponent to have to remove.

  • Vereesa Windrunner

    • The weapon alone can sometimes win you a game if you’ve been chipping down your opponent a bit with your hero power. It gives our win condition a boost, and means we aren’t completely married to the combo.

  • Jepetto Joybuzz

    • The key to the deck in most cases, if we hit that Alexstrasza and Malygos roll then it’s very likely we’re going to be able to win on the next turn.

  • Alexstrasza

    • One of the few times you want a card to stay in your deck! Alexstrasza enables you to burn down your opponent much easier, especially if you have Malygos in hand and are going to rely on Vereesa’s weapon to win.

  • Malygos

    • The big damage enabler, we don’t want to draw him because it’s unlikely he’ll survive a turn to give us enough mana to do much. It isn’t always going to be required to have Malygos to win the game, but he certainly is going to make it easier.

  • Zul’jin

    • We’re playing tons of spells, so Zul’jin fits in perfectly to this deck. Hunter is one of the few classes with a Hero card in Standard, so let’s make sure to take advantage of that.

Malygos Hunter Card Substitutions

This deck is pretty specialized, so you aren’t going to really be able to replace much in terms of the legendaries. There are some different spells you can run, and this archetype hasn’t been completely figured out yet.

  • Explosive Trap
    • Helps protect you against wider boards, and is useful against more aggressive decks.
  • Freezing Trap
    • Delays our opponent a turn hopefully, whatever it takes for us to get closer to our combo turns.
  • Eaglehorn Bow
    • If you’re running the secret package you can run Eaglehorn Bow for additional ability to deal damage and trade down minions.