Who am I?

I’ve been playing Flesh and Blood since Uprising, and I have been playing Assassin since we got our first in Dynasty. I’ve earned Living Legend points for every Assassin to come through the Classic Constructed format, and I found some success on Huntsman recently by winning the Grave Troll Battlegrounds and taking second in the July AGE Open the following day. The following weekend in Vegas, I went 4-1 in Pro Tour Classic Constructed Day 1 with a draft performance that qualified me for the Calling wherein I went 9-4 landing at 37th. The original Assassin is thriving in this post-Remembrance meta, but Mastery Pack Warrior and Usurp the Shadow Throne are likely to force some serious adaptation from the Huntsman.

What the Huntsman brings

Huntsman is the patient Assassin, they remove options from the opponent and steer them towards a favorable end game. This Arakni’s hero power is not blatantly powerful, but the information and control it provides can be useful. Most obviously, it lets you set up your contracts to fulfill their condition, particularly Hunter or Hunted?. When a Contract is likely to be blocked out, like in the case of Surgical Extraction or Leave No Witnesses, leaving the card on top provides information for the next turn cycle, so remember what you let them keep and watch for it to show up on the stack, in pitch, on blocks, or stored away in the arsenal.

Some decks depend upon having a certain subset of their cards to make the turn work, such as starters for Ninjas or Go Again sources for Kassai and Runeblades. Against these decks, you can bottom everything that isn't a turn enabler and leave these limited resources on top to be banished or drawn. As you reshuffle with HoH, their deck will have a lower and lower population of these bottleneck cards, and this makes it more likely you’ll be able to full block and present something in return. Putting cards to the bottom of the deck means you have to deal with them later, especially if there are still copies of HoH in your deck, so try to deal with threats when you see them instead of leaving them to grow into a problem.

Huntsman is also allowed to play Regicide if you want a spicy concede button in your blue base.

How to Hunt Properly:

Make Money

Contract cards are required to trigger the Huntsman peek and take advantage of the hero, and they are central to generating value over the course of the game. These cards will generate Silver whenever you banish a card that meets their condition, so you wouldn’t get Silver if, for example, an opposing Vynnset banished a card of their own with Cull that met the condition of a Contract you controlled. Some contracts are just good cards, independent of their ability to make money – like Leave No Witnesses and Surgical Extraction, but most of the contracts you play will be tailored to the decks you anticipate facing. Plunder the Poor, Annihilate the Armed, and Excessive Bloodloss are among the most common for this purpose. 

Eradicate is a contentious Contract that I personally do not like to run, but other people do which makes it worth discussing. Eradicate banishes a number of cards based on the amount of damage it deals, and this can be quite powerful combined with attack reactions like Cut to the Chase and Razor Reflex. The major problem with Eradicate in my eyes is its Contract condition of banishing yellow cards, the least likely to be found in the majority of decks. This means that the cards kept to play the Eradicate (and any attack reactions to make it hit) are unlikely to convert into Silver that can be used to recoup the defensive value lost by keeping those cards. Contracts remain open as long as they are on the combat chain, so you can get Silver by playing another Contract with an attainable condition, giving it Go Again, and then playing Eradicate. I find that Eradicate’s desire for a large hand is in direct opposition to the defensive nature of the deck, so I rarely run this card. Excessive Bloodloss (Y) has the same stat line with an easier Contract to complete, and Double Trouble in conjunction with Just a Nick lets you mass banish cards more effectively despite not making any Silver on its own.

Coercive Tendency is an Arakni specialization that lets you set up the top of the opponent’s deck and can give Go Again to your whole combat chain, allowing you to trigger multiple contracts with a single banish. Setting this up with multiple Contract cards can give you a large pivot turn that can be worth taking damage for, but you cannot clear this from arsenal without attacking, so be wary. This card has a compelling ceiling with a flurry of contracts, but it can also be worthwhile to spend this on a single Contract attack to trade for a card out of the opponent’s deck and to set the on-chain Contract up to succeed.

Hunter or Hunted? is the only non-attack Contract card in the game, and its printing in the Super Slam expansion slot brought Huntsman out of obscurity. This card is functionally a Huntsman specialization despite not having those words as it requires you to correctly name the top card of the opposing hero’s deck. Provided Huntsman is playing the card, their hero ability will trigger before this becomes a defending card, allowing you to look at the attacker’s top card in deck. Nearly always, you will want to leave the card you see on top to correctly name in the next step, but some circumstances can make bottoming the card reasonable. If you know the card below is a more favorable banish, you can sink with the Huntsman trigger, and this can happen easily by having resolved a Coercive Tendency on the previous turn or less easily by memorizing their pitch stack and resolving the HoH late in the game. Against Shadow heroes, banishing a lot of their cards can be a liability – especially if they’re named Cull –, so if you see a card that’s likely to be playable from banish, you probably want to bottom the card and instead name a glue piece in their deck. After the card is looked at and a decision is made, HoH will become a defending card on the chain while triggering its banish ability and giving both players priority. This priority window is important as some heroes can mess with your information by drawing a card before you name one, forcing a blind call. If you’re playing against one of these heroes, such as Gravy Bones or Oscilio, you can set up the top several cards using Coercive Tendency so you can still name a hit after their draw. Once both players pass priority here, the Huntsman names a card and the top card is revealed. Importantly, there is no priority window between the name and the reveal, so if the opponent wants to play anything before you go looking, it has to be before a card is named. If the card on top has the chosen name, it gets banished and the Huntsman gets to search the opponent’s hand, deck, and arsenal to banish up to 3 more cards with the chosen name. This card functions differently from other cards that care about “the same name” in that it allows you to abuse Meld cards by naming ‘Shock’ or ‘Life’ and, if the condition is met, banish any Meld cards that contain the chosen name.

Hunter or Hunted? is the most reliable way to make Silver, and it will make more money the earlier in the game it is resolved as the opponent has a higher chance to have multiple copies of the named card in their deck. This compels the Huntsman to play 20-23 blues to consistently resolve this card, but you will often want to arsenal it and resolve it on a future turn as HoH is an inefficient defense in the short term. Arsenaling HoH is also important against warriors to combat Glint the Quicksilver’s Reprise ability to draw a card. Resolving HoH is initially a 2-card 4, which is quite below rate, so you need to process the Silver it generates into value to make it a worthwhile play. Despite being a blue, you don’t want to be pitching this as it will make less Silver the later in the game it is played.

Spend Money

The targets may change, but the Huntsman is almost always buying clothes. Silver converts to real value at a varying rate depending on what you’re buying with it. Each armor slot has a piece of equipment that blocks for 1 with Battleworn that can be broken for an attack reaction and – most importantly – can be bought back from the graveyard at the start of the turn at the cost of 2 Silver. Mask of Perdition offers an extra banish on-hit, which may make an additional Silver with a Contract or get an extra card while enabling Double Trouble. This is useful as a piece that starts in play to enable the purchase of other pieces, but it is infrequently the best to buy back provided you are running other options. Blacktek Whisperers are your Battleworn buyback boots, and they give an Assassin attack Go Again on-hit (of a hero), enabling multiple Contract chains to double dip on the chain link 1 Contract condition. This can convert larger hands, making it a good purchase when you expect to be able to keep multiple attacks (and ideally an attack reaction to force the issue). Redback Shroud offers a discount to the next attack reaction card you play by 1 resource, but this will struggle to compete with Tunic in most circumstances. Shriek Razors is the worst of them and not worth running.

The Graven equipment from Compendium of Rathe features an easy-to-evaluate baseline of 2 defensive value per purchase (1 per Silver) – often the most efficient way to spend your coins. This equipment set has pieces for head, chest, gloves, and boots, so you can fit this in whichever slot is the least valuable for the matchups you anticipate. The Graven armor blocks for 1 when you start with it equipped with no other effect, so the floor if you never buy it back is worse than that of the attack reaction set. Furthermore, I would not recommend you equip more than one of these at any given time. Graven Gaslight is the arcane defense piece of this set which blocks 1 arcane damage per purchase (0.5 defensive value per Silver), and this can be bought back at instant speed if you need it multiple times in a turn.

Graven Call allows you to convert Silver into offensive pressure, and the value of the purchase will vary depending on circumstance. Graven Call requires another piece to put it in the graveyard, so you need to play other equipment or cards in deck to support this. The first time you buy back a Graven Call, it comes back with 2 power instead of 1, which results in 0.5 offensive value per Silver per time you attack with the dagger for the rest of the game. This will easily outpace the value of other options provided this purchase happens early enough in the game. Getting this enabled early can swing matchups like Guardian, where you need to work their life down, or Gravy, where a 2-power weapon lets you clear more allies. You can get additional offensive value for Silver out of Graven Call by attacking with it, then your other dagger, flicking the Call in reactions, buying the Call at instant speed, and attacking with the Call again. This gets you 1 true damage from Flick and an extra 2 Go Again attack, which is functionally 1.5 offensive value per Silver. If you play two Graven Calls, you can present Piledriver math by pitching two blues into this sequence of 2, 2, 1, 2 for an evasive 7. Converting Silver offensively is most useful in longer games, such as when you face Warriors and Guardians.

Seeker Kunai is the only Silver buyable to not start in play, and it being a red non-block makes including it in the main deck have a relatively high cost. Having this in play can encourage the opponent to over block your attacks, but having the resource available to threaten Kunai's activation is not trivial and hurts efficiency if it ends up not being used. In niche circumstances, this can counter a Fearless Confrontation that is trying to save an ally. I could imagine this card being worthwhile at one copy, but it has yet to impress me enough to to be a regular inclusion in my lists.

Stay Alive

Everything the Huntsman wants to do takes time, so you’ll need to bring a number of cards to stall and disrupt the opponent. Under the Trapdoor provides some in-class defensive utility, allowing you to recycle Frailty Trap or Inertia Trap to weaken weapons or deny 5-card hands. Generic defensive tools like the 4-block defense reactions, life gain, and prevention provide good rate defensive value to buy time. Arcane Barrier allows you to convert cards defensively without losing any cards from your deck, and Arcane Lantern and the Widow set from Rosetta provide appealing choices for any slot you find expendable. Balance of Justice and Arcanite Skullcap can be useful in the head slot to provide defensive value if you expect opponents to be regularly drawing cards or sending very large arcane damage. Stonewall Gauntlet can completely deny a Spreading Flames for upwards of 5 defensive value and reliably converts to 2-block in nearly every matchup. Boots of Omnis Ward can provide a prevention effect and convert to as much as 4 defensive value against decks that deal arcane damage. While not directly providing much defensive value, Fyendal's Spring Tunic will keep you alive by letting you block more and play small hands with the resource it generates.

Disruption scales down your opponent’s offense, which lets you resolve more cards on your turn to trade for more cards from their deck. The premier piece of disruption is Leave No Witnesses, a 1-card play that comes in at a breakpoint, triggers Huntsman, threatens arsenal, and can make Silver. Command and Conquer is great in this deck to follow a dagger with Tunic or both daggers off two blues. These two arsenal disruption cards are the main Codex of Frailty targets to recycle more disruption, and the choice between them depends on the position and the matchup. Dagger pitching blue, Codex, Tunic, Command and Conquer is a line you will use often to maximize the value from Codex and play around Overcrowded. Surgical Extraction is the final bit of auto-include disruption as it’s another Contract attack that threatens the hand. This card is uniquely important to get the final cards from the opponent’s hand once they no longer have a deck to pick apart, and you can replay it with Codex of Frailty at the very end of the game for this purpose. Early in the game, Surgical is relatively easy to cover, so you will primarily be pitching this card for later when blocking is at higher cost to the opponent - unless you have a trick to force it through. This is the core disruptive suite for Huntsman, but you can flex other tech cards in as called for, such as Ripple Away, Pilfer the Tomb, and Unmake the Underlings.

Knives and Nicks

Huntsman released with Spider’s Bite, a dagger that makes defending with attack actions less efficient, and Outsiders gave three more parallel daggers for non-attack actions, reactions, and armor. These debuff daggers allow you to deny defensive value when you convert larger hands, and these are particularly good when the opponent’s life total is less important, like against Draconic Ninjas and Dio. Spider’s Bite is broadly applicable in these types of matchups, and it can pair with Scale Peeler against Mech and Nerve Scalpel against Ninjas and Assassins. Graven Call is required when the opponent has a good weapon, like Guardians and Warriors, but the second Call is rarely needed outside of (perhaps) the Betsy matchup.

Just a Nick is a compelling inclusion that forces your blue base to conform to support it. Persuasive Prognosis, Double Trouble, and Bonds of Attraction are the main targets that Huntsman would target with Just a Nick, and this card shines when the opponent is willing to block and the games go long. You can even play this on Overcrowded to convert to damage in a pinch or close a game unexpectedly. Pitching this card to second cycle lets your blues become threats, and if you can get two in close proximity, you can steal games with the pair. In faster matchups, Just a Nick on any of the mentioned targets will strip cards and potentially gain life, but this is harder to line up than in games that go to second cycle. Bonds of Attraction is functional graveyard hate when combined with Just a Nick, but it is easy to block out if you don’t have the combination. Nick can be awkward and won’t work in every hand, but it provides substantial payoff if you can make it work for you.

Battleground Targets

This is the list I played at the Grave Troll Battlegrounds which sacrificed the Gravy matchup to target Oscilio, Marionette, both Draconic Ninjas, and the slower Guardians and Warriors. The equipment suite in this deck does not have any of the Battleworn 1 attack reaction pieces which makes enabling Double Trouble harder, so the Just a Nick package is not present beyond Persuasive Prognosis. Enlightened Strike and Shred both felt mediocre during this event, so I am now favoring Just a Nick and friends in these slots. 

Oscilio

Oscilio gets relatively low value per card spent from deck due to cycling cards away with his hero power and other synergistic effects, and this makes the matchup generally good for the Huntsman. If you know the opposing Oscilio is actually playing Aurora, the defense reactions are all quite good, but there are other builds that will never attack you physically, making the defense reactions just a red pitch. Oasis and Sigil are good into both variants, and Fiddler’s Green can be discarded to your own Codex of Frailty if you present it into an arcane Oscilio. This hero has choices for loops in the end game, looping Gone in a Flash with Ominous Excavation – by targeting another Ominous in the grave, rinse and repeat – or Save the Thought combined with Tap Lessons Past, so you need to work their life down to force them off these cards should they present them. I played Arcane Barrier 3/Spellvoid 2 at all the events I mentioned at the top, but I have since played Tunic with 3 Widow pieces and a Lantern for Arcane Barrier 4/Spellvoid 3 and have found this matchup much more comfortable.

Marionette

Under the Trapdoor and Frailty Trap do tremendous work in this matchup, allowing you to give Marionette Frailty on repeat in conjunction with the Codex. Blocking a Klaive with Fiddler’s Green feels excellent, and Nerve Scalpel denies them the ability to efficiently cover attacks for 4 with a defense reaction. This matchup is good, but it can go wrong if your HoH misses the mark and if Overcrowded and Fiddler’s show up late. You can arrive in the endgame with a fatigue advantage but a large life deficit, so I like to present Graven Call to be able to match their dagger value if I find myself in one of these harder-to-convert games.

Draconic Ninjas

Stonewall Gauntlet is here for both of the Draconic Ninjas, and you should be looking to convert this when they’re on a 5-card hand with a turn-wide pump, like AoW Phoenix or Spreading Flames. This forces them to play through the -1 on the whole chain or break the chain and lose the Draconic links that their cards depend upon. Spider’s Bite and Nerve Scalpel are not particularly good in this matchup as you’d prefer to convert the pitch card on defense, but when equipping Stonewall Gauntlet over Flick Knives, they are the best options. The Graven block equipment is at its best in these matchups since your contracts are unlikely to be blocked and most conditions are satisfied by the cheap red attack actions you’re likely to find. Excessive Bloodloss yellow got into my list after the Battleground weekend to improve this matchup further by raising the ceiling of my Graven blocks to upwards of 13 value.

Dash I/O

Dash I/O spends her cards inefficiently like Oscilio, but her items off the top of the deck can be problematic. Sitting on a defense reaction in arsenal lets you block efficiently instead of covering fully while still playing around a surprise Boom Grenade, but there will be turns where trying to cover is less efficient than eating the explosive. Consider how many other attacks they have access to and, if it’s more than you’re equipped to cover, you may want to let the Grenade land early. HoH can be tricky to execute in this matchup because of their hero power, so look to arsenal it and wait for a spot where they’ve already played their item for the turn. This deck plays many copies of Zero to Sixty and Zipper Hit, so if you’re forced to blind name a card, whichever of these has fewer copies between graveyard and banish is likely the card to name.

Guardian

Graven Call lets you compete with Valda and Jarl, but you need to bring a second one to have a real game against Betsy. The first two are fine matchups where you can block efficiently and push daggers, but Betsy can Overpower Command and Conquer to print value with her hat while dealing unblockable damage. Inertia Trap is good into these heroes to deny them setup and make them susceptible to a Codex of Frailty discard. Shred can give more opportunities to push damage through blocks in the second cycle.

Kassai

This matchup is all about the Gold and the Sellswords it can become. The Gold is important enough that you don’t want to spend your Tunic resource when they could have High Current Currency, and if you’re playing completely safe, you can never tick it up until you resolve HoH and confirm the absence of HCC. Keep a defense reaction in arsenal for when Kassai is activated so you can cover the whole turn and deny the Gold. Usually the Kassai will wait to push the button until they have an attack reaction to push through, so be ready. Flicking and buying Graven Call as soon as possible is important to efficiently clear the men should they appear. Even with an army by her side, Kassai is gated by the amount of Go Again sources she has for her swords, so be aware of this number and prioritize getting rid of them to stifle her turns. Scale Peeler and Graven is my preferred loadout for this matchup to deny Dynamo value and nerf their fridge.

Gravy

I was sacrificing this matchup during the Battlegrounds weekend and in Vegas because it is quite unfavored, but you can invest some cards to improve it. Unmake the Underlings is the tailor made solution, but it’s not a huge swing on the matchup. Using it to clear an ally gets blown out by Fearless Confrontation, and it's hard to spare the action point to send it at Gravy’s face to flip an ally in the bin. Gold greases the wheels for this hero and denies our HoH with their hero power, so you’ll want to stop Gold generation where possible with blocks and Ripple Away. Pilfer the Tomb is a very narrow piece of tech that you can set to wait for a good ally to steal, but you won’t always have a priority window before the important ally gets cast from the bin when it’s too late. Enlightened Strike can be a multitool to clear wide medium men with or a single large Wailer, but it is just an okay card in other matchups.

Prospective IAR and MPW Targets

This list is updated relative to what I would change from recent experience with some speculative picks for upcoming MPW and IAR changes. Yellow Bloodloss and a third Widow piece were mentioned above and are in this version. Nerve Scalpel becomes Scale Peeler, trading Assassin equity for Warrior and Mech value, and the second Graven Call comes in for Betsy, Jarl, and the board state decks. With a second Necromancer entering the format, Unmake the Underlings is back in the deck to slow the zombie hordes and perhaps even carry a Nick to pressure life total. The Shadow heroes can benefit from our random banish effects, so pressuring their life totals with attack reactions and Flick/Call becomes more important to deny them time to set up. Including Circlet of Eternal End is speculative to disrupt combo turns from the Shadow heroes, and the maybeboard has a few tools that might be useful depending on how IAR heroes end up playing.

Olympia?

Olympia might finally be a real deck after MPW, and some of the tools he got may be formidable against Huntsman. All In is a win condition for the late game, similar to Raise an Army from Kassai, so we will want to deny Gold where possible. Keeping a defense reaction in arsenal can let you cover potential offensive overlap, but I think it will be hard for Olympia to push over blocks without spending some Gold on his own turn for draw or alternative costs. Inertia Trap is online all the time into this hero, so you can keep them off 5-card hands. Terms of Combat would be problematic for Huntsman, but Olympia doesn’t seem to be on enough attack reactions to properly capitalize on this.

Levia?

Levia is already a complicated hero to play into as a slow deck, so proper support for her in IAR could make her a Huntsman’s nightmare. The Blasmophet flip is the most important thing in the matchup, and for Huntsman to feel comfortable, this needs to happen when they have a small banish zone or early enough that there’s life to spend. With a large (10+ playable) banish zone that contains Go Again cards like Dread Screamer and Shadowrealm Horror, Blasmophet Consumed can play many turns on an empty deck. I expect the Circlet to be good in this matchup to remove one of the Go Again cards from the playable pool. If the flip happens with gas in the banish zone, you can try to pressure their hand with Surgical Extraction and Codex to deny the very big turns, but you’re likely to be forced to block by threat of death. You can look to deny the flip entirely by walking life totals down near the critical 13 and then pushing over with Flick and attack reactions. Blasmophet, Insatiable Hunger (Levia’s new token ally from IAR) doesn’t flip cards over in banish, so they can potentially cycle the same card many times. This appears to be a kill-on-sight kinda ally, but the 6 damage to clear is not always accessible.

Malice?

Malice seems to function quite differently from Gravy, but most of her kit is still unknown at this time. Graven Call clears the 3-life Decay zombies that we’ve seen so far, and if they come in larger sizes, Call will make the breakpoints more accessible. The Corrupted Corpses that she makes in banish may be a win condition for the Huntsman, but this would require denying Gate tokens with Ripple or Cutting Retort and removing her Bridge of Damnation with Hack to Reality (works with flick!) or Cut Through the Facade. The Circlet may be good here too to flip a zombie over before it can make its way to the bin, but it’s unclear how much she’ll want to have things in banish. Pilfer the Tomb notably says instant or yellow card, which doesn’t seem to be the categories Malice cares about.

Vynnset

Vynnset already exists in the meta, but I expect her presence to grow as her pool expands with IAR. Banishing cards in this matchup can be detrimental, but there are a lot of targets that you want to hit, such as Malefic Incantation and Go Again sources. Their deck is around half playable from banish at present, so you can send a Contract and bottom a playable if you see it giving you ~75% to not give a playable. HoH can sometimes overwhelm their Blood Debt, but a lot of the cards you see shouldn’t be selected. If you see something like Widespread Ruin, Cull, or Funeral Moon you are probably better off bottoming this and blind naming Malefic or a Go Again source. If they have little to no setup, you can HoH blue Runegate cards and try to pressure them with this hard-to-clear or low impact Blood Debt stack. They are likely to take off turns to set up in order to get over your blocks, so you’ll want to be ready to pressure Vynnset’s life total in these moments. You’ll want to destroy Creepers as soon as they’re activated since this matchup can be decided on how many action points Vynnset gets from them.

Viserai?

Our new Viserai cares specifically about Runechants and Gates, and the Traverse mechanic seems to separate the setup and payoff turns. Ripple Away might be an important piece in this matchup if they are tight on gates or chants, and Amnesia denies Usurp and Traverse for a turn. I feel confident saying that the Circlet will be useful in this matchup given what we’ve seen before from Shadow Runeblade. Cutting Retort might be useful to deny setup with Gates and incidentally kill a chant as well.

Conclusion

Arakni, Huntsman will need to adapt as we learn more about these upcoming heroes, but that’s what being an Assassin is all about! Moreover, LSS has given us quite a few useful tools already with more likely to come in IAR. I am going to continue exploring this deck going forward unless it proves completely fruitless, but I think Graven Call and proper tech will be able to get through these new threats. If you enjoy messing with the plans of your opponent and have the patience for a long game, I would encourage you to join the brood and take some looks.