Cost-efficient Hogger

Roles

Build Cycle

2

2

2

3

Shortest Cycle

9

3

3

4

Playable Anywhere

N.B. When I created this build the PvP rotation was standard Guard Towers, Clean Fight and Adrenaline Rush (if I'm not mistaken). This deck struggles heavily against Dragon Tower and I haven't tested it yet against Rocket Towers.

Card Breakdown
Hogger
The man, the myth, the legend! He's the absolute star of this deck and with the Ham Hock talent there's little room for losing once the game has extended too much. However, with great power comes great responsibility: he's the only physical damage dealer and that means that he's our only hope to bring down Resistant minis so play it wisely. Don't get cocky and play it carelessly just to make him scale one time more. Last but not least, remember that its passive only scales up to 3 times (while it seems that Ham Hock scales up to 5 times, according to Reddit).

Chain Lightning - CL
Use it to take down kobold or use it on large spawns of low HP units to have a breath window with the Brilliant Flash talent.

Spiderlings and Harpies
Use them to defend the base with the efficient damage brought by poison and a total cost of 5.

Chimaera
This beast can do massive damage, especially with the Fiery Rebirth talent. I play together with the Gargoyle or Hogger but I try to keep a little distance between them. It can also be used for defense since the poison will stack hugely with Harpies or Spiderlings.

Gargoyle
I use the gargoyle to pressure the secondary lane, usually playing it after placing Hogger on the pushing lane. Its main purpose is to force the enemy on spending gold to defend the other tower, since the Gargoyle can easily take it down all by himself.

Pyromancer
Our main source of damage thanks to the Pyroblast talent. The same said for the Chimaera goes for this mini: place it defended by Gargoyle or Hogger.

Strategy
Notes
I don't know if there's a specific naming convention for PvP maps but I'm going to use the following:
- our lane: the lane on our right that holds our outer tower;
- enemy lane/his lane: the lane on our left which holds the enemy's outer tower.

Abbreviation
LB - Living Bomb

Rotation
Every Hogger deck has the same goal: to play as much as possible its Leader. However, as I've said before, don't try to commit too much in spamming just to cycle Hogger. This deck pays off if you start slow and build pressure as time ticks: there's no need in rush Hogger just to be left without gold after a non-sense minis spam.

At the beginning, we are going to wait for our 10 golds to stack and then we will play accordingly to one of this scenarios:
1) The enemy plays the kobold to mine the vein on his tower > We play CL to dispose of it or we play our kobold to bait enemy's CL. If the enemy plays his Kobold on a lane where there's no gold at the moment or he plays it on our lane, ignore it.
However, try to save CL like I've said before in the card breakdown and try to prioritize gold advantage while trading. A CL to kill a Kobold that is going to mine a 1-gold vein will put us in a negative trade of -1 gold and will open a window for the opponent to play a swarm unit, forcing us to play something to counter it thus enhancing the enemy's gold advantage.

2) The enemy plays a unit (non-tank): we play Hogger the enemy is playing on our lane or Gargoyle if the enemy is playing from his lane. Our goal with this plays is to ensure the following lane pressure build-up. The only thing that matters is that we can slowly push, forcing the enemy to spend more gold to stop us.

3) The enemy plays a tank:
3.1) Abomination/Molten Giant/Cairne Bloodhoof: before Hoggers gets at least 3 stacks of Ham Hock, we don't have units to soak their AoE cleave. For this reason, we will wait for it to start attacking the tower. As soon as it starts, we play Harpies and Spiderlings to stack as much poison as possible and nuke him. Place them carefully to avoid LB, SAFE and CL.
3.2) Gargoyle: if it's pushing alone, play Harpies and Pyromancer whenever you want but place them carefully to avoid LB, SAFE and CL.
3.3) Warsong Rider (Siege Specialist)/Earth Elemental: they will ignore your troops but play as 3.1 tips.

You will learn how to manage other defense scenarios with experience but more or less, it is always like the 3 tips above.
The rest, is up to you.
A few examples:
1) You're feeling overwhelmed by a swarm: play the Pyromancer or switch Harpies with the Chimaera, making use of the latter's Lightning spit.
2) Fearing an enemy spell on your defensive minis combo (Harpies+Pyro/Harpies+Spyder)? Try to bait the enemy spell! If you're afraid of CL, play a kobold while holding the defense so that the enemy has to choose if use the CL to wipe your defending swarm or the kobold to prevent gold mining. If you're afraid of a LB then keep in mind that if the enemy he's playing it on Harpies + Spiderling, you're facing a 6 gold vs 5 gold trade and you've got the upper hand. Surely you might sustain some damage to your base but it won't matter if you'll be able to make that 1 gold advantage worth.

These examples weren't covered before but by reading the guide and mixing the concepts with your experience and time spent playing this deck, you'll figure out new combos tu successfully defend your base.

After the first phase you will now have room to play something:
1) Hogger + Chimaera/Pyromancer (Pyro only if its AoE is needed) on your lane > If you do this and the enemy is countering your pushing wave, play the Gargoyle on the enemy lane to split the pressure.
2) Gargoyle + Pyromancer/Chimaera (Chimaera only if there's a specific need for its poison/lightning attacks) on enemy lane > If you do this and the enemy is countering your pushing wave, play Hogger on your lane to split the pressure.

In both cases, we make use of Hogger's running speed to pressure the enemy into playing hastily, giving us gold advantage.

The secret to win lanes and keep pressuring the enemy into giving us gold advantage lies in patience: wait for your moment to attack and make use of the momentum that your minis are going to build.

Conclusion
More or less this is what I had in mind when I started writing my first guide for a deck: to give some insights about every card and some tips about some scenarios in which this deck might be lacking something.

Just keep in mind that this is just a guide and for this reason it's unlikely that you'll understand every little detail of this game. To fully unleash the potential of this build I only have one recommendation: PLAY, PLAY AND PLAY!
Don't be afraid to experiment and don't be afraid to dive into PvP!

See you out there!

Edit 07/06/24
I've encountered difficulties against Pyromancer so I switched Gargoyle with Prowler and the Chimaera with Gryphon Rider. I'll test the build around and eventually edit the build again!