Hearthstone: Into the Emerald Dream: Top 3 Best Hunter Decks!

2025 officially started for Hearthstone fans now that Into the Emerald Dream, the new set, is out! This set marks the beginning of the new year in the game, the year of the Raptor. With 145 new cards, this new set definitely changed the meta, and many new lists have since started seeing play!

Still, Hunter remained at the top of the meta, and three consistent Hunter lists have at least 56.80% win rate according to HSReplay on April 17th, 2025!

But, of course, this class had to reinvent itself to remain popular, and these new Hunter lists play new cards from Into the Emerald Dream. We, at Cards Realm, build this easy guide to show you a few ways you can explore Hunter with the new set!

Buff Hunter is one of the cheapest options to play right now, and can give you great results. I highly recommend it for beginners and free-to-play players. The main idea behind this list is simple: buff the minions in your hand, attack with them, and win.

To do that, you'll play Ranger Gilly. Its effect lets you play Warrior cards in this list, and, as such, is critical. After all, Warrior is known for its efficient buff spells. The three Warrior cards we'll play are Cup o' Muscle, Reserved Spot, and Char - notice how all of them are quite straightforward.

Your main win conditions are Mythical Runebear and Zilliax Deluxe 3000 - with Zilliax, in particular, you'll use the Twin and Power modules. Both can double themselves when you play them from your hand, considering you'll buff them throughout the game.

Let's see how this works in practice. The buffs will also affect the copy of the minion in question, so, for instance, I managed to put two 13/13 minions on the board:

For your initial hand, look for Cup o' Muscle, Birdwatching, and Reserved Spot.

Birdwatching will give you Mythical Runebear, and already buff it. However, if you can't find this spell, you can keep Fetch! or Tracking, as they can both draw this minion.

We wrote a deeper guide on Buff Hunter. If you'd like to see more about this deck, click here!

In the last set, the Great Dark Beyond, Hunter stood out with a deck similar to this one: Spell Token Hunter. Though it is very similar, the current Token Hunter doesn't play as many summoning spells as the other versions. The main focus of this list is to buff your board, as you can see with Amphibian's Spirit and R.C. Rampage.

The cards that will create lots of minions on your board will be Nerubian Egg, Workhorse, and Extraterrestrial Egg. As this list also interacts a lot with Deathrattle, Terrorscale Stalker is essential.

You'll have many ways to buff your pieces. Besides the spells we already mentioned, Token Hunter also plays Cryopractor and Menagerie Jug.

Look for Fire Fly, Extraterrestrial Egg, and Terrorscale Stalker in your initial hand. Activating Extraterrestrial Egg's Deathrattle on turn 3 will already put a lot of pressure on the opponent. Patchwork Pals can also be a great out whenever you run out of resources.

Finally, we have the Hunter deck with the highest win rate, 60.32%. Zerg Token Hunter has been standing out since Into the Emerald Dream came out, and is one of the most consistent lists in the meta.

This deck has the same game plan as the one above: fill your board with small minions and buff all of them at once. By the way, Token Hunter and Zerg Token Hunter play similar cards.

However, this list plays multiple Zerg cards, released in Heroes of StarCraft, the last mini-set. Resources like Zergling, Evolution Chamber, and Kerrigan, Queen of Blades will not only widen your board, but also buff your minions.

Another great card in this list is Zilliax Deluxe 3000 with the Pylon and Ticking modules. As such, it will buff your entire board and cost less.

Still, this list also plays cards from Into the Emerald Dream: two copies of Amphibian's Spirit. This spell is great in token lists.

Similar to the previous deck, you must look for 1-cost minions in your mulligan, like Zergling, Extraterrestrial Egg, and Terrorscale Stalker. This way, you'll have a great board really early on.

Once again, Hunter is dominating the meta. These decks have adapted well, and Amphibian's Spirit definitely made them even better!

What did you think of these lists? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!