Unseal the Vault

Unseal the Vault is a legendary hunter spell card, from the Saviors of Uldum set.

Strategy
Unseal the Vault is a powerful quest card from the Saviors of Uldum expansion. Whereas most other quests were immediately embraced, the quest bestowed upon the Hunter class is yet to see serious play. This is mostly due to the initial state of the meta, wherein the quest was far too slow to complete in time to be relevant, but also due to the fact that it was overshadowed by the ever-powerful highlander (singleton) Hunter decks.

In spite of the relatively large chunk of the game which is to be sacrificed in favor of quest completion, Unseal the Vault offers an extremely powerful play style. The quest reward hero power gives your minions a permanent +2 attack, allowing an already aggressive class to make an extremely powerful push directly to your opponents life, a fact easily exploitable by the cheap board presence cards the class has to offer. Hunter uses a lot of cards which fit well into this deck archetype, due to the fact they simultaneously give the player board control (valuable against faster aggro decks) and summon minions (the requirement for the quest). Two most valuable cards to be considered are:

Unleash the Hounds: a flexible board presence card which both gives the player up to 7 damage to distribute as they see fit and completes a large chunk of the quest

Swarm of Locusts: similar to Unleash the Hounds, but gives the player 7 minions even if the opponent's board contains only 1 minion.

These two cards are convincing enough, as not only does playing both provide 8-14 quest stacks for 9 mana but also give an immediate answer to the opponent's board (due to the rush mechanic of Swarm of Locusts and the charge mechanic of Unleash the Hounds). Their real strength in this deck, however, lies in the amazing synergy they have with two other cards:

Knife Juggler: enhancing the minion swarm effect provided by the aforementioned cards with randomly distributed damage ticks for each minion summoned

Revenge of the Wild: a two mana spell which not only doubles the instant board clear, but also doubles the quest stacks given.

Powerful plays such as Knife Juggler + Swarm of Locusts/Unleash the Hounds or Locusts/Hounds + Revenge of the Wild are at the core of this deck, along with other powerful low cost Hunter cards such as Springpaw, Animal Companion, Snake Trap and other cards which provide synergy with the quest. Given the recent arrival of a few powerful Quest Hunter lists, especially after the big nerf Mage received, it would be likely that the archetype will emerge from the fog of overlooked decks and climb to a more-than-playable level, taking its rightful place among the other well-represented decks of higher-tier ladder play.

Patch changes

 * (Undocumented) Generated hero power renamed to Pharaoh's Warmask from Ramkahen Roar.
 * Added.