Hunter or Hunted? What it means for Huntsman - Archived 09/02/2025

Hello! Modern day Etasus here, I posted this to reddit about a month ago, and wanted to move it over to the new site. Here's the link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/FleshandBloodTCG/comments/1n6q7x6/hunter_or_hunted_what_it_means_for_huntsman/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I've been playing Huntsman for years, since the release of Dynasty, and I basically haven't played anything else since, save the occasional short burst on another hero. This long history with the hero has been tumultuous at best, as Arakni rarely falls anywhere above the low C-tier bracket. But why? Why is the hero so bad? And how exactly does Hunter or Hunted fix it? Walk with me here, and I'll lead you to the answer.

Part 1: Something Wrong

There are generally two agreed-upon reasons for Arakni being as bad as they are. The first is simple, the second is more complex.

Firstly, Arakni has a very unique hero ability that provides no direct turn-to-turn impact. While they have a very large macro-level impact, the turn-to-turn is generally outclassed by every other Assassin hero in the game. To put it another way, for most of the hero's lifespan, you could improve the deck by simply putting a different hero at the helm.

Secondly, the thing we'll focus more on is a much bigger and more intricate problem: Math. Arakni wants you to play fatigue. The gameplay and mechanical loop rely on playing contract cards, banishing the opponent's deck, and creating and utilizing silver for various effects. Winning by fatigue, though, requires you to play on a very different axis.

Imagine you're sitting down across the table from your opponent. They have 60 cards in their deck. You have 60 cards in your deck. To win by fatigue, you need to get your opponent to 0 cards in deck before you do. You can analyze this win condition on two separate channels: Macro gamewide card advantage and micro turn-to-turn card advantage. We'll focus primarily on the latter.

To more easily describe the math at work, we’re going to create a couple of variables to track how different interactions work within the fatigue framework. To describe the number of cards your opponent loses from circulation due to an effect or interaction, we will use T. To describe the number of cards you lose from circulation due to an effect or interaction, we will use P. To describe the card advantage gained due to an effect or interaction, we will use A. In equation form, A = P - T

Imagine your Ninja opponent draws up a hand of 4 cards. Their 60 card deck has become a 56 card deck. Those 4 cards are 3 red Head Jab and 1 red Wounded Blow. On their turn, they play all three Head Jab and end with the Wounded Blow. All four cards resolve to the graveyard. All 4 cards are "lost". Using the math described above, T = -4. In a different instance, though, your Ninja opponent knows the game is going to fatigue, and wants to prioritize the fatigue state. They pitch two of their Head Jabs for two Kodachi swings, attack with Wounded Blow, and arsenal the third Head Jab. In this instance, only one card is lost. Two get returned to the deck and remain in circulation, while one gets stuck in arsenal to be manipulated on a later turn. In this instance, T = -1, as only a single Wounded Blow resolves to the graveyard and becomes lost.

On your side of the field, you block with three cards in your hand, and hold on to one for your turn. Let's assume you are playing Guardian, and the card you keep is a blue to pitch for Anothos. After all is said and done, you lose 3 cards to the graveyard. Using the math described above, P = -3.

In one instance, where the Ninja swung recklessly, T = -4 and P = -3. In this scenario, you are one card over your opponent, A = +1. You have one card over your opponent and are winning. In the other instance, where the Ninja pitched and arsenaled, T = -1 and P = -3. In this scenario, A = -2. You are two cards down and losing.

To win by fatigue, you don't really care about T or P, other than as a means for A. What you need to do in a fatigue game is to keep A as large as possible as much as possible. Most gameplay and deckbuilding decisions are built around maximizing your A value as much as possible, whether you consciously realize it or not.

The interesting thing about these variables, though, is that you don't have to constrain yourself to just looking at a turn cycle. You can actually look at individual interactions to determine the interaction's impact on the course of the game. Let's look at two specific interactions to really hone in on why Arakni is bad. Anothos and Plunder the Poor.

Anothos is a simple math equation. Your T value is 0, as the opponent doesn't lose anything when Anothos is swung. Your P value is also 0, as the card you pitch remains in your deck. When looking at Plunder the Poor, most of the card effects are auxiliary and don't matter to the math equation. All we care about is the on hit. Assuming it hits, your T value is -1, as your opponent loses a card to the banish zone. Your P value is also -1, as Plunder the poor unfortunately goes to the graveyard. Both interactions carry the same A value: 0.

Having an A value of 0 is actually really good, as most card interactions usually sit at a negative A value. Remaining card neutral is a solid way to fatigue, as you can leverage additional interactions in your deck to limit your P, and your opponent typically isn't built to limit their T, meaning a neutral A in your most basic interaction leads to a solid fatigue state.

But Plunder the Poor falls apart next to Anothos for one reason: Plunder has a -1 P value. You are actively losing cards to play it. You may be draining cards at the same time, but while Anothos is infinitely repeatable, Plunder runs out. And when you're playing for fatigue, having an engine that can't run forever means you don't get to fatigue. And that's ignoring the part where the opponent can turn off the card neutral side of Plunder by simply blocking. Had they blocked Anothos the same way, the instances have a disparity in their A values, enough of a disparity to where Plunder falls off a cliff.

The reason Arakni is so bad is that they rely on this card pool. In the most basic, fundamental form of Huntsman, you cannot win fatigue without something else impacting the numbers.

Part 2: Something Else

The eternal struggle of the Huntsman player base became this single-minded goal: Find something else to impact the numbers. And we certainly stumbled upon a few good candidates over the course of the hero’s life cycle. Here are a couple of those presented solutions and why they didn’t accomplish the goal.

The first way players attempted to figure out the math is simple: Ignore it. Every time a new card is released for the hero, new players come scrambling in, and they all attempt to do the same thing: Play the hero as aggressively as possible. Using cards like Razor Reflex and Flying High, you can give contracts go again, allowing you to attack multiple times with highly rated attacks and generate more silver to pump into blacktek for more go again. The problem with this line of thinking is that Arakni is not a deck designed to convert large hands. Building your deck to play this aggressively leads to some very low-rate turns that threaten very little and rely on your opponents' incompetence to get wins. It’s super flimsy and not reliable at all. As the hero evolved, though, so did this method of thinking, and it actually became viable around Hunted’s release, due to the Mark archetype presenting such an above-rate game plan. The problem here, though, is that building into this leaves behind the entire math equation in favor of strong stealth attacks, leading to a deck that would really just be better on a different hero.

The next way players attempted to figure out the math is to actually figure it out. On release, the hero came with Mask of Perdition and Eradicate, two cards that both represent a positive A value with additional deck damage, and Surgical and Leave no Witnesses, which represent a positive A value with additional hand/arsenal damage. Later on, we even got Bonds of Agony, another strong A value card. Every single one of these cards has some flaws, though. Mask of Perdition needs silver, which, as it turns out, is really hard to make. Surgical and Leave don’t damage the deck any extra, which doesn’t really advance our gameplan. Eradicate is super easy to disrupt, and Bonds of Agony requires you to warp your deck construction around it to make it work. Every single one of these cards is good and worth running, even Bonds of Agony, but the flaws they have don’t really push the math in a direction that makes us viable.

The final way players attempted to push our A values is by using daggers. Daggers are difficult cards to work with, as their high resource cost and low damage output make them tough to activate. That said, if you can start every turn with a double dagger swing, you are leaving two cards in deck, maximizing your P value every turn cycle. Hopefully, long-term, this can leave you with an average positive A value. This became easier with Graven Call, allowing you to present decent damage numbers while doing this, and it got even better in Hunted with additional dagger support, turning the daggers into threats. Even with this, though, daggers have one very large flaw: You have to hold on to cards to swing them. Because of this, you start running into a life deficit, which can very quickly spiral out of control, causing you to lose via damage before you can win via fatigue. You have to seek out a middle ground, which becomes difficult.

Overall, there were ways to manipulate the math in your favor, but all of them pushed the hero only slightly further than that baseline, meaning that even the best players had to play absolutely perfectly to stand a chance at winning games and placing events. And when other heroes in the same class needed substantially less investment to play and do well with, Huntsman became a forgotten hero left in the trenches.

Part 3: Something New

Enter: Hunter or Hunted?

Hunter or Hunted? does a lot for such a small card. For those out of the know, the new card being released in SUP does the following:

3 cost blue defense reaction that blocks for 4

When this defends, name a card. The attacking hero reveals the top card of their deck. If it’s the named card, banish it, search their hand, deck, and arsenal for up to 3 cards with that name and banish them, then they shuffle.

Contract - While this is defending, you are contracted to banish opponents’ cards with the chosen name. Whenever you complete this contract, create a Silver token.

Firstly, this card solves the very first problem mentioned in this post: Contract as a mechanic is now hard-siloed into Arakni Huntsman (and Nuu). Due to the verbiage of the card, where you have to know the card that’s on top to do anything, Uzuri, Marionette, and Slipy do not get to play this card at all. Nuu can play it, but she’s in Living Legend, and she probably doesn’t need this card to excel.

Secondly, this card has an insane A value, better than almost any other card printed. The only other card with an equivalent A value in the game is Eradicate. Both of these cards clock in at upwards of +3, though Eradicate requires a full hit, while Hunter or Hunted? just requires the right card on top. In other words, getting to +3 on Eradicate is your opponent's gameplay decision, while +3 on Hunter or Hunted? is your opponent's deckbuilding decision. And in the state of the game, it’s much more likely you’ll hit +3 on Hunter or Hunted? than on Eradicate.

Thirdly, this card turbocharges your silver generation. It makes a minimum of 1 silver, but can reach upwards of 4 silver per play. Before this card was printed, silver was a rarity, mostly requiring a power play with Coercive Tendencies and the right contract attack to generate enough meaningful silver to turn on Graven call. Now, with this much silver, you can realistically rely on two to three buybacks per game for free. If any of those are Mask of Perdition, the extra banish from that both further moves the A value in a positive direction and generates more silver that can be dumped into more Mask activations.

Fourthly, how much does all this cost? 2 life. All this extra value comes from turning two cards that block 6 into two cards that block 4, one of which remains in the deck for later. The cost to play this is next to nothing. It really just means you have to up your blue count to put it on the chain. And if you absolutely can’t? Hey, it’s still a blue you can pitch for daggers.

But this is just what it does on paper, in a vacuum. What does it do in interaction with everything else? The short answer is: A lot.

Huntsman has, over time, been dragged further and further away from the intended release archetype. As the math didn’t work, we had to find other ways to build and play that weren’t defensive fatigue. Slowly but surely, we left that playstyle behind, favoring more aggressive cards and gameplay choices. The sheer volume of silver generation this card creates, plus the incredible A value it represents, means we no longer have to dig for other cards and gameplay loops to find our value. We can now just play what LSS intended and get away with it. Lots of sustain, lots of block, small, low-to-the-ground offensive options, a few big combo turns (We are still playing Bonds, and there is zero chance we won’t play it unless it gets banned), and a large amount of persistent chip whittling.

This card allows us to play Huntsman as we’ve all always wanted to play Huntsman: Contract fatigue.

As for what that looks like, I will be writing up another post in the near future that outlines my starting point for the decklist, as well as my thoughts on each individual card, the gameplay loops, and the intended goal. In short, I’ll be putting together a deck tech. I will also be updating my “Beginners Guide to Arakni” within the near future to accommodate all the changes that have been made to the hero in the past year since Coercive Tendencies released. If you want a faster answer, though, be sure to check out the Assassin discord and the community discord to stay in the loop on current advancements and current trajectories. I’ll link both now:

Spider's Web Discord Server

Community Discord

Part 4: Something Lost

I finished this post a few days ago, but I was in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, and didn’t have enough service to post it. By the time I made it back, the most recent Banned and Restricted announcement was posted. So, as a little bonus treat, I thought I’d write some thoughts on it.

Rest in peace, Bonds of Agony. That card was insane for Huntsman, easily one of the strongest cards in our deck. You can see how much I talked about it in the previous three parts. Losing Bonds of Agony is a huge blow to the deck. We gained Hunter or Hunted? and lost Bonds of Agony. I personally think this was a pretty crap deal, and we very much lost in this trade. But it’s not the end of the world.

Bonds of Agony is gross, but we can find a card with the exact same deck damage that we can run in its stead. As a fairer version of the card, Double Trouble represents a decent alternative for the slot. It costs one less reaction to trigger, and so has -1 power. It still banishes two from deck, though we have less selection over these two cards. And unfortunately, it loses the entire hand attack part. It’s still worth running, it just definitely feels a lot more constrained than what we were able to do with Bonds.

I’m sad we never got to see a legal Classic Constructed Huntsman deck with both Bonds of Agony and Hunter or Hunted?, but I think this step backwards isn’t far enough to drop us back into obscurity. Here’s to Hunter or Hunted?!