Control Demon Hunter Deck Guide – Ashes of Outland

Our Heartstone Control Demon Hunter Deck List Guide takes a look at this archetype from the Ashes of Outland expansion! We've got a look at the best list for the deck as well as mulligans, play strategy & combinations, and card replacements!

The new Demon Hunter class is now available and it appears to be pretty powerful just based on a first look at it. You would think right off the bat it would be more suited for aggressive decks based on the hero power, but it seemingly makes for a pretty good control option as well. While only time will tell how Demon Hunter does in the meta, based on early gameplay from streamers it appears to be pretty strong!

Control Demon Hunter Deck List

Our early look at this list is a deck created by Kripp! We'll be updating this list with more refined lists as the meta starts to shape up. We also have more decks for the class in our Best Demon Hunter Decks post!

Control Demon Hunter Mulligan Guide

Always Keep

• Netherwalker - Not great stats, but gets us additional resources and gives us a choice we can base off of what our opponent's deck/class ends up being.
• Sightless Watcher - This is kind of like Tracking, but on a body and we don't lose the other cards. This card is pretty nutty and will hopefully give us something we need in the upcoming turns.
• Umberwing - Good early game weapon that gets us a board state we can work with. It also pairs well with our hero power, so we can hopefully control the board in the first few turns.
• Overconfident Orc - Solid card to keep against most decks, and it's particularly good versus aggressive lists.

Possible Keeps

• Ashtongue Battlelord - A bit on the slow side, but is an aggro stopper that will heal you up if you've been using your hero power or just taking damage. Keep if you've got something else you can play early in the game.

Control Demon Hunter Tips & Play Strategy

Demon Hunter makes a surprisingly good control deck due to its ability to sweep boards with multiple AOE spells, but also can heal itself up with some Lifesteal cards. While it doesn't have a huge blow out one turn damage, the sustained damage from a card like Priestess of Fury and burst from Imprisoned Antaen gives us multiple options to get to the finish line.

In the early stages of the game, we're mainly just trying to keep the board pretty clear. We have Overconfident Orc , Immolation Aura , and Umberwing to help us out with that. For anything with higher health, a top decked Eye Beam in particular will give us a big tempo swing and heal us up if we've taken any damage. Even if our opponent is able to reload the board, we'll be heading into turn five with the possibility of a juicy Chaos Nova .

Sightless Watcher is a powerful card, but it's even more powerful due to the new Outcast keyword. If you aren't aware of what this mechanic does, it gives us a bonus if we play the card if it is on the left or right most side of our hand. So, anything we top deck with Outcast will get the bonus. That means you can put a card like Skull of Gul'dan on the top of your deck and guarantee that you're able to get the reduction in mana cost on the three cards you draw.

A card to look for early is Raging Felscreamer . If we can get a reduced cost Priestess of Fury , it could spell disaster for our opponent. We would be triggering an AOE each turn they can't deal with it, so that would give us heavy control of the board. The 7-health makes it very hard to destroy, especially against decks without hard removal.

As mentioned in the introduction, our win condition largely revolves around Priestess of Fury and Imprisoned Antaen . These are both big minions that deal pretty crazy damage at least once. They help keep minions off the board from our opponent, and will be chipping away at their life total. We've also got Pit Commander as a big card that can pull out some more power from us. Combine that with our hero power chipping away at our opponent, and we should be able to deal enough damage to finish them off!

Control Demon Hunter Card Options & Replacements

• Crimson Sigil Runner - Decent early game card that can get us draw if we get it in the right position. The problem is that this is a pretty bad card if we don't get the draw, which isn't going to always happen.
• Feast of Souls - This card pairs pretty well with Umberwing and Command the Illidari , but I'm not sure it synergizes well enough otherwise.
• Furious Felfin - Pretty strong card, but it's always going to be best if we can attack first to get value out of the Battlecry. We do have a weapon in the deck, so it is possible the combination would work well together.
• Metamorphosis - If we start to have trouble getting enough damage in to finish our opponent, then this card is a possible inclusion that gives us additional ability to find lethal.