EPTThe cards I'm currently playing around with to combo with UTH are:
Card Draw
Starving Buzzard - As long as your opponent has at least two creatures in play, UTH+Buzzard will pay for itself in terms of cards drawn vs cards spent. Anything more than that and it will become crazily cost efficient very quickly.
Cult Master - The more expensive version of the Buzzard combo, although Cult Master is at least harder to ping off the board after the combo goes off.
Superbuffs and Other Big Minions
Sea Giant - If your enemy has a number of minions in play, UTH will make Sea Giant very cheap very quickly.
Scavenging Hyena - Combo these two cards together against 2 or 3 enemies and Hyena becomes a 6/4 or even an 8/5 for 2 mana.
Flesheating Ghoul - The poor man's Ghoul, although if your Hounds are killing enemies (which they should be) it will still get some very hefty attack buffs
Damage
Hunter's Mark - Its a 0 mana targetted equality that will let a Hound remove even the beefiest minion (barring divine shield).
Timber Wolf - For 1 mana, add 1 damage per Hound. Effectively becomes a 3 mana consencration in most situations. The cheap cost makes it easy to toss this in with a Buzzard or Hyena to make combos even stronger
Knife Juggler - +1 damage per hound, but distributed randomly unlike Timber Wolf. Good for pinging divine shields.
I think some combination of these will be the core of the finished deck, though I'm still playing with the exact numbers. Around them I'm filling it out with some relatively inexpensive taunt like ironfur grizzly to help me not die while I'm stalling for combo cards and waiting for my opponent to fill their board (Grizzly also works well with a number of these cards, not only the beast ones but also ghoul and cult master, since they'll usually have to kill him first before they get to them which will trigger their abilities), card draw to cycle my deck early, and removal to keep things from getting out of hand on those games where I'm slow to draw combo cards.
So far its been pretty successful, although tbh I'm still working my way back up to my old rank (4) so opponents may not be good enough to punish me for its weaknesses yet. I'm finding a few things about it though:
-It is extremely matchup-dependent. All decks have good matchups and bad matchups, but this deck takes that to an extreme. Against aggro anything, against murloc warlocks or any other low curve warlock (i.e. not giants), against any standard midrange beatdown deck, against shamans and against Paladins...this deck is just crazy. I will regularly have games that go from being "behind" in the midgame to clearing my enemy's board, drawing a ton of cards and putting massive creatures in play for me, all in a single turn.
Meanwhile, in matchups where the opponent isn't trying to play creatures early (like control druid or paladin), or where they can deal a ton of direct damage to me without relying on minions (rogues and mages mostly), it really sucks. Without combos the deck doesn't have enough punch, and these decks can deny me from getting any good combos while they either kill me directly or play creatures I can't deal with that well in the lategame (hunter's mark helps some, but it still seems tough). So far, I've only played a few decks who played against me properly, but those that did were very hard to beat, and I suspect if UTH decks become more common more players will understand how to beat them.
-Its tricky to play. Sort of like a Koyuki-style control paladin, you're often ceding the board early on in hopes of flipping it to an advantageous position later. But unlike that deck, there's no healing, which means you have to walk a fine line of maximizing value without taking so much damage that your opponent can just kill you. On the other hand, if you do get the combos rolling, I think this deck spirals out of control for the opponent much faster than the Koyuki deck does. Like, it will literally go from "your opponent is in the lead" to "your opponent is WAY behind" in just a single turn. But knowing when to take advantage of an opportunity vs waiting for a better one is definitely key, and tbh its something I'm still getting a handle on.
Also, occasionally this deck will simply have an insane amount of card draw, especially because early rounds often see you hoarding cards.In these situations I'm finding I tend to make the most mistakes, because the Hearthstone UI doesn't handle 10 card hands that well, I'll need to use them or it'll force me to start discarding, and they'll all combo together in different ways, so sussing out the optimal play is often tough. Thats definitely something I'm focusing on now, trying to better understand how to maximize a super stacked hand like that (I might end up running Mountain Giants too for this reason).
So, is anyone else playing around with UTH combos? Any tips?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9JbtV4S.jpg)
but no dust
