This article was written before the Forsworn expansion was released. -- Editor.

This article discusses one of the most powerful archetypes currently in the LoN metagame, Barbarian Hunter control. There are a myriad of variations on this mechanic, and while I will not discuss all the subtle differences, this should provide a relatively detailed overview of the core deck and how it approaches its matches. This list is a Scout version that I piloted to a 1st place finish after the 8 Swiss rounds of the first day in the December Championship Qualifier. My only 2 losses out of 12 total rounds were to other Scout Barbarian Hunter decks played by Leto and Kensu, who went on to face each other in the finals.

Avatar

Gnome Scout 1/3/1/11 Exert this Avatar > Exert a Unit

Quests

• Aiding the Storm Callers
• Sleeping on the Job
• Seek the Adventurer's Stone
• Replacing Grandmaster's Vials

Abilities (7)

• Lethal Resolve x4
• Disable x3

Tactics (11)

• Pick Off x3
• Sidestep x4
• Snare x4

Items (0)

Units (32)

• Dwarven Cleric x3
• Dwarven Soldier x4
• Dwarven Sentry x4
• Hoard Hound x3
• Galebreaker Maiden x4
• Barbarian Hunter x4
• Moon Shaman x2
• Dwarven Champion x4
• Elven Summoner x4

Overall Strategy

I will start the discussion of this archetype by presenting an overview of its overall strategy and its approach to matches with other popular archetypes, and afterwards I will delve into more detailed assessments of the cards themselves.

At its core, this is a control deck. It is designed to stall and disrupt your opponents’ game plans while you achieve light faction and then set up the recurring use of Barbarian Hunters to finish off the opposing avatar. The linchpin combinations that enable the deck are to have a Barbarian Hunter ping the opposing avatar and then heal the damage it dealt to itself with a Moon Shaman or to let the Barbarian Hunter die and recur and replay it with an Elven Summoner. The latter method is generally preferable for this build, as it eventually results in a 2 damage per turn clock, at the cost of 2 resources. These combinations allow you to deal the 9-11 damage necessary to kill off opposing avatars with just a single Barbarian Hunter, although additional Barbarian Hunters and the damage that their avatar takes from your units and tactics will hasten your victory.

Against unit rush decks, your best strategy is a strong defense. To combat their attacking units, simply play more health-worth of your own units than the damage that they can deal each turn, accruing a large army of units with damage distributed amongst them. This is not as hard as it seems, as the deck has a variety of low cost, high health units, including the all-star Dwarven Sentry who brings 3 to the table for the small cost of 1 resource. Once Lethal Resolve is in play, it will be very difficult for any opponent to deal more than 1-2 damage at any quest a turn, which your units can easily outpace or heal. When you combine this strategy with the efficient use of Pick Off and Snare to remove opposing units with high damage bonuses and Sidestep to mitigate damage from questing avatars, unit rush decks typically find themselves locked out from attacking you directly. This gives you plenty of time to set up your Barbarian Hunter + Elven Summoner / Moon Shaman combo to put them on the clock. Be conscious of strong opposing draws where you find yourself losing the health race at a quest. In these situations, you need to accelerate your use of Barbarian Hunters to race their units, often playing only token defenses to stall them where they have broken through your lines. A few well-timed Snares or Pick Offs on their avatar may also shift the tide of the race in your favor.

Against questing decks, you need to go on offense a bit. This means that you will be looking for opportunities to hit their avatar with Pick Off and Snare, as well as ensuring that your units can always win on defense when their avatar quests. Dwarven Champions, with their +2 damage bonus on defense, are a serious threat to questers, but simply dealing their avatar 1 damage per questing attempt often gets them low enough that your Barbarian Hunters can finish the job. The strategic use of Disable is key to this match, especially against those opponents who make use of the avatar power that allows them to avoid combat by destroying one of their abilities. If you can use Disable to leave them with just a single ability, they will be forced to quest into your team, hopefully with disastrous results. Against these (generally Priest) decks, you will need to look for or create opportunities to directly attack their avatar with your units to sneak in a few points of extra damage. Also, if you are locked out from attacking against a Priest opponent, be sure to save a Disable for Divine Aura. The Aura prevents the damage to their avatar from your Barbarian Hunters as well, and you need to be able to remove it to win.

Against decks that focus on directly assaulting your avatar, you will need to walk the line between defending yourself from their attacks (and units if they use them) while at the same time keeping up your own damage. These games are often races against time, and they can be the most technical and harrowing of any match up this deck will face. Playing Lethal Resolve early is important to winning this race, as it not only mitigates the opposing damage bonuses that many avatar assault decks try to achieve, but it also provides you with an additional source of defense when they attack you. A static 5 defense (3 from your avatar itself, 2 from the ability) can be a high hurdle to overcome for a deck that wants to exert itself and play abilities that increase its damage, not just to win combat. Occasionally, a well-timed Sidestep or 2 can let you steal a combat, but most times you will only be able to tie attack and defense while in direct combat with their avatar. While not ideal, tied combats are still very important, as they will then take a point of damage in return when they come after you, which shortens their clock. The careful use of your units on offense and defense (when their avatar inevitably quests from their direct assault abilities) will help to ensure that you score several points of damage each turn, which when coupled with Snare and Pick Off can let you emerge as the last one standing. This is one match where Dwarven Cleric really shines, as being able to heal even 1 health a turn after the initial attacks can help keep your avatar out of range of death while your units finish the job.

Card Evaluations

Avatar

This list opted for a Gnome Avatar with the Exert this Avatar > Exert a Unit ability. This race/ability pairing offers the highest possible statistic choices, enabling the avatar to have both a 3 defense value as well as 11 health. These are both important statistics for controlling decks, as they need to survive into the late game in order to win. Additionally, as this deck rarely quests and (ideally) blocks both quest channels with its high health units to prevent being attacked, this avatar’s power enables the player to use the avatar itself for some purpose. While attacking is not the forte of this deck, well-timed precision strikes can be key to victory, and exerting a defending unit so that your relatively low attack value team can score a hit can be important.

Other race / power combinations that have merit include the Gnome power that allows the avatar to pay 1 power and exert to draw a card, the Wood Elf one that provides a +2 light faction bonus, and the Dwarven ability to pay 2 power and exert to ready all your units at a quest. For each of these avatars, statistic points should be assigned entirely to health and defense.

Quests

The quests are the least important and consequently least interesting part of this deck. Most Barbarian Hunter control decks do not want to quest much, if at all, since much of their strategy revolves around not exposing their avatar to damage. Additionally, as the only abilities with level tokens that the list has are 3 Disable, the deck does not even have the ability to complete more than its initial quest. This means that the only relevant quest choice at the moment is the level 2 quest, Aiding the Storm Callers. This provides your units (the vast majority of which are light faction) with a small, but not inconsequential, defense boost. While this is rarely relevant against opposing units in anything but the earliest turns, it can maintain its usefulness against opposing avatars when they quest into your units at this location. Preventing damage to your units from avatars as well as earning a few points on defense along the way can be an important part of winning games with this deck.

One quest that could find a slot in this deck is Job of the White Rose, but it sometimes disrupts your team as much as it can help mitigate opposing unit strategies. Barbarian Hunter control decks are generally strong against unit rush strategies, which is where this quest shines, while the deck is weaker against avatar assault and questing opponents. As edging out a few extra points of damage by attacking with your units can be an important factor to winning certain matches, you want to be careful about providing your opponents with a tool that they can use against you.

Abilities

Both abilities are relatively self-explanatory. Disable is a powerful, all purpose tool for disrupting your opponents’ game plan, and it provides an answer to many troublesome abilities (Divine Aura and repeat-use avatar assault abilities like Assail and Celestial Strike come to mind). It also gives the deck the ability to stall opposing quest decks and even to prevent unit rush decks’ avatars from attacking into your units or revealing Collecting Gnoll Bounty for a turn or 2. Lethal Resolve is an incredibly powerful defensive ability which dramatically mitigates the damage output of many aggressive decks. Coupled with the high health of your units, it can single-handedly turn the tide of many games. Not to be underestimated, the 2 defense that this ability provides is extremely useful, making it a powerful, if not preferable turn 1 play against any aggressive deck, especially when coupled with a Dwarven Sentry or Soldier. Put simply, LR is the reason that many Barbarian Hunter control decks choose Scout as their class.

Tactics

The tactic suite is primarily defensive in nature, but as mentioned in the strategy overview above, these versatile cards can also provide the few critical points of damage to win certain games. Both Snare and Pick Off are generally used in the early game against unit rush decks to remove high damage bonus units, like Chipped Bone Skeleton, and Igneous Adept. While focusing on mitigating damage bonuses instead of just killing units is advisable, be sure not to miss opportunities to win combat on defense by removing low health, high attack units before they get to exert to add to the fray. This can sometimes allow you to steal combat victories, which can be more devastating than simply preventing a point or 2 of damage. Sidestep serves the damage mitigation role in much the same way, by allowing your team to win combat on defense. This is generally most effective against opposing avatars when they quest into your units or attack you directly, but as with Snare and Pick Off, always look for opportunities to disrupt any attack if it will provide you with a big board swing. Winning a defensive combat when attacked with Boots of the Storm or with a Dwarven Champion at the quest can spell doom for opponents, so sometimes it is best to hold your defensive cards to plan for most opportune moment.

An ability that sometimes finds its way into controlling decks, but is absent from this list, is Sunder. For a control deck, it is important to have answers to all manners of threats that opponents may field against you, and being able to destroy opposing equipment fits into this strategy. There are a few pieces of very troublesome equipment, with Boots of the Storm and questing items such as Flowing Black Silk Sash and Journeyman’s Boots topping the list, that it can be very beneficial to remove, but the reason that this list did not include Sunder was generally due to its cost and situational requirements. Sunder costs 2 power, which is a lot for a deck that has wide array of important to play, high cost units. It also requires the opposing avatar to be in combat, whether with you or your units, and as this deck plays very defensively, this is not always easy to achieve. That means that in order to play Sunder, you often have to leave resources open and hope that the opponent engages in combat this turn, which can stunt your board development, especially if those resources go to waste.

Units

Units are the core focus of a Barbarian Hunter control deck, and as such they take up usually 30+ slots. Without discussing every card, the general mantra is to focus on units that have high cost-to-health ratios, as these will best survive on the board, which creates a large incremental advantage and buys you the time to set up your win condition. Other units should have powerful abilities, even if they have fragile statistics, as you can often develop a board position that can protect them. Some key considerations include the use of one half of your Barbarian Hunter combo, the Moon Shaman and Elven Summoner. Both of these units have 3 health for their 3 power cost, but they can also provide substantially more defensive value to your board in addition to enabling your Barbarian Hunters. The Moon Shaman can heal a unit for 1 the turn she comes into play, which effectively means that she added 4 health to your board for her cost, and the Elven Summoner can recur your best units that have gone by the wayside. Dwarven Sentries are generally the best non-Barbarian Hunter targets to get back, and it is accordingly advisable at times to assign lethal damage to one during combat so that you can replay it later. The Hoard Hounds are also very valuable to this specific build, as they provide both a 3 health for 2 cost unit to the board as well as a powerful draw selection ability. Barbarian Hunter control decks rely on the interactions of specific cards to win the game, so using the Hound early and often will help ensure that you assemble the right cards quickly. They can also help you find other necessary cards, such as Lethal Resolve and Disable, in the situations that may require them.

Other strong unit candidates for a Barbarian Hunter control deck include additional 2 cost units like Furious Berserker and Truth Captain to provide a bit more offensive/defensive punch, and strong utility units such as Dwarven Gladiators to disrupt opposing questers (including delaying Collecting Gnoll Bounty against rush decks) and Barbarian Chieftains to shift your team to the most appropriate locations in addition to providing a small damage bonus. Rabid Hound can also be useful in decks that use their units more offensively, and Barbarian Spiritualist can be handy to fetch specific combo pieces or other utility units, although she does cost 4 power.

Closing Discussion

I hope that this article has provided some useful insights into what this archetype is, how it functions, and what card choices exist for its creators to make. As I mentioned before, my list is just one variation on this mechanic, and I have seen successful lists that are both more and less aggressive with their units, as well as other classes like Mages making use of the deck’s synergies. As the Forsworn card set hits its stride it will surely change the metagame, as both this and other archetypes will evolve, so this overview may help guide evaluations of the new cards, both for inclusion in this deck and for use against it.