More New DH cards - Kurtrus the Gunslinger

Multiplayer Discussion
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Pocket Sand, 2 mana spell

“Deal 3 damage. Quickdraw: Your opponent’s next card costs (1) more.”

Fan the Hammer, 4 mana spell

“Deal 6 damage split among the lowest health enemies.”

Gunslinger Kurtrus, 5-mana 4/6

“Battlecry: If your deck has no duplicates, fire 6 random 2 damage shots at minions in the enemy’s hand.”

Kurtrus almost makes up for the 2nd DH reveal being so bad! In the video reveal, it literally destroys the minions like Patchwerk does. So you can damage, or even destroy enemy minions before they hit the board. Very cool, if stuck in a weird class for Highlander.

Fan the Hammer just seems a bit weak. It’s a Fireball, in 2023, and isn’t even Fel. I guess it’s a board clear of sorts? But the 5-mana AoE from FoL is much stronger. I suppose this goes face for a finisher. But it’s too expensive to work well with Blindeye Sharpshooter.

Pocket Sand is funny but seems unlikely to be very impactful. A weaker Cult Neophyte/Speaker Stomper.

I’m very skeptical of any Highlander DH deck. Every strategy revolves around accessing particular cards that work well with themselves (Naga synergies, double Momentum, Relics, Outcast cards, etc). Plus DH doesn’t currently have a single satisfactory archetype, let alone one that can afford to run single copies. There’s nothing binding anything together yet.

Overall this set seems like another dud for DH, and is highly reminiscent of Warrior from Sunken City through Festival of Legends. A smattering of cards for different archetypes with no unifying strategy or theme.

Outcast DH was the best deck in the game in FoL but quickly got overtaken when literally everybody and their moms got great control tools (cough Star Power cough). As long as Hunter and Warrior are good and relevant, Outcast DH won’t be a thing. And there’s no other archetype that can stand on its own - Relics are outdated. Plague DK practically deletes the whole class. DH needs the standard rotation more than any other class, imo.

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Gunslinger is an annoying bandaid on the problem that is the sif/odyn/sargeras/ignis cards of the world.

Pocket sand is pretty much that DK curse. Fan the hammer is disgusting given the amount of mana reduction DK can do. 2/2, fel, fel, +16 damage = 22 damage from hand and if you get your opponent low enough it ignores minions (sure it takes some luck… but it also gets cast by that 4/5 guy if you get even more lucky, all it takes is 1 of the fan the hammers or the 3 mana 2/2 spell damage guy getting discounted)

Just what the game needed more from hand potential OTK damage. Warlock, DH, mage, shaman, blah blah. They really need to reconsider their design philosophy on minions in this game because they’re downright irrelevant at this point

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This screams Neutral to me.
Also it screams Control.

Kind of weird they decided to put this on DH, I don’t see it.

Agreed with the rest.
DH got robbed of an Expansion … again.

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Seems Demon Hunter joins mage and priest in the classes that don’t get very exciting cards from this set.

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Legendary · Minion · Showdown in the Badlands · Battlecry: If your deck has no duplicates, fire 6 random 2 damage shots at minions in the enemy

We hate dying to Combo decks on turns 5-8.

We love trashing our own deck just so we can kill Combo decks with 1 card on turn 5.

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If there’s any deck that can draw through itself fast, it’s DH. So you’d regularly access any given card.

But…having single copies of your draw cards? Seems iffy. Especially when a couple of them are Outcast or depend on having an empty hand.

I just really don’t see how a Highlander DH deck can work. The class is always hyper-focused on some specific strategy, and diluting it will surely be costly. The Highlander payoff would have to be insane to justify it, and Kurtrus really doesn’t seem to be.

Either Highlander DH doesn’t work, or DH does the janky strat where it actually isn’t Highlander, but draws itself so well that it quickly gets to a state where the deck has no duplicates. Maybe that’s how it could work for the class? No other class can draw as well when you build for it. Except for Druid at the worst of times…

EDIT: Oh, not to mention that Plague DK already largely destroys all kinds of DH. Now DH is Highlander, too? Double whammy.

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DH has a lot of overlap. Redundant cards that you don’t run only because there’s a slightly better option that does just about the same thing. Sigil of Time and Weight of the World are both very good draw cards, but you only usually run one of them if you run them at all. So instead of 2 copies of 1, you run 1 copy of each.

Seems straight forward to me. You can make it work. The problem isn’t making a highlander deck work, it’s more about why to run it in the first place. A single hand hate legendary isn’t going to attract people.

I’ve been playing my PDK into a bunch of DH lately. One played Jotun on 5, after I played Helya on 4. He proceeded to draw 1 plague per turn, and each plague activated twice thanks to Jotun. It really destroys them, you’re so right on that.

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The highlander cards need to have far more powerful effects these days. I don’t think the designer took power creep into consideration. Where the DH deck might shine is playing these in a mostly normal built deck and use their draw to just pull everything out of the deck and utilize anything “Highlander” keyed.

On a side note if they can get it working this is an absolutely soul crushingly good card to play on curve against virtually any aggro deck. No DR triggers and no DS on minions to deal with.

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Eh, but it kills minion swarms and like… fireball isn’t bad. Fireball is largely just outclassed by Frozen Touch and now Molten Rune.

If you wanna just murder your opponent Fireball still has the best mana-card-damage ratio in the game.

…in other words I think this card is okay and is being kind of underrated.

Just kind of a mandatory 2 mana deal 3 with a minor upside. Might just be a necessary evil, but also improves the quickdraw pool.

Kurtrus is just so neat. Love the flavour. If the deck’s ever good, that might get really annoying.

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Pocket sand isnt cult neophyte, or speaker stomper.
Its a reprint of the shaman spell, frostbite or whatever it was called. Makes your opponents next card cost 1 more. Not just next turn but also the turn after that and the turn after that. Until they play something.

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I will sit back and wait for the spam of nerf Kurtrus when salty players lose to it and its tier 4 deck.