Hearthpwn

I hit top 100 NA on April 27 with this deck. I wanted to post it because it's the first time I've hit top 100, and it's an original list, even though it's not a radical departure from previous lists we've seen. Proof (using tinypic because imgur doesn't work for me for some reason):

http://tinypic.com/r/s186l0/8

A caveat though: although this was the only deck I played at legend, the sample size is small because my climb (from mid 400's to 74) was essentially a winning streak, going 11-2. I realize that doesn't mean as much as a deck proving itself over many games. Also 6 of the games were against mage (!), and I think most non-Freeze mages are a favorable matchup for this deck. I have, however, tried variants of this style in other seasons, so I have some experience trying different things out, and this version feels pretty good.

The losses were to a combo druid - which happens to have been Trump! - and a Flamewalker tempo mage. The wins were 5 mages (at least 3 tempo mages and 1 or two mech mages), a combo druid, a face hunter, an oil rogue, an aggro mech shaman, a zoolock, and a patron warrior.

Regarding the list - it's an original list in its details, but I'd like to give a shout out to NA player Simplexity - he played a control shaman with double Powermace and the legendary trio of Boom/Neptulon/Rag very successfully a few months ago, and I believe still plays that style occasionally, which is where the idea of the core of this deck comes from. He's also one of the best Shaman players out there.

The win condition of this deck is to build an overwhelmingly powerful board with strong midrange minions, followed by a heavy late game. You get there by controlling the board early with Chow/Creeper/Flametongue/Powermace/Harvest Golem. The Healbots buy you time as you're turning the tide against opponents who want to burn you to end the game, and the Azure Drakes and Neptulon help prevent you from running out of steam. Once you're able to start going face, the damage comes in big chunks. The deck lacks one-turn burst potential, but you can set up two-turn kills to take them down from fairly high health to 0 once you're safe from dying. Argus sometimes helps you start going face sooner than you'd otherwise be able to, and a Flametongue between two beefy midrange minions is big damage.

The strength of the deck is that it can often drop strong minion after strong minion, continually able to add to a powerful board and rarely getting dead draws. Fireguard Destroyer and Piloted Shredder - as well as Powermace-buffed Harvest Golems - are significant threats in their own right, and the drops get bigger from there as you go into Fire Elementals and the 3 big guys.

The weaknesses of the deck are its lack of burst - usually requiring you to get ahead and stay there in order to deliver your damage - and its lack of flexibility about how it can react to the opponent's board. There's no Crackle, for example, to efficiently take out a midrange minion (although that's something I'd consider adding to the deck, to add flexibility). This list sacrifices some flexible removal for consistent board quality, good minion curves (like Harvest Golem into Fireguard into Piloted Shredder), and in order to avoid dead draws. Your tools to deal with the board are Powermace, Hex, Lightning Storm, the one Earth Shock, and using Flametongue and Argus to enable trade-ups. Is that enough? Well, it is sometimes! But it means that you need to get your stuff out so that you can enable those trades. I did win a couple games despite bad starts, but I think in general it's a deck that's pretty reliant on getting some of your early stuff to get you started.

I will say that there are probably stronger Shaman decks one can put together - after all, it's a game that tends to revolve around getting a tempo swing and then never letting up the pressure - and this is a very minion-based deck that relies on just having better minions, and using your better minions to win. It doesn't exactly play to the strategy that the core Hearthstone mechanics seem to emphasize. But I like good stompy minions, weapon value, etc - and I guess what I like about the deck is that it doesn't compromise on those things, but is still realistic and competitive. It's a style that I find enjoyable, as long as it's working well enough.

A few notes on card choices:

-I wonder about taking out one 4-drop, probably an Argus (since the Shredders can get buffed by Powermace), for a flexible reactive card such as Crackle. That would be a way of addressing the deck's weakness. On the other hand, a nice thing about the current version is that you always have something good to drop. I'm not sure.

-Only 1 Earth Shock because I'm trying to avoid dead draws, which Earth Shock sometimes is, even though it's a great card. If you have fewer potential dead draws, you can run less card draw - and this deck runs only 2 Drakes and Neptulon for draw.

-Healbots are good in this deck because, aside from what they do, they are mechs that Powermace can buff, and because they aren't really a 5-drop - you're often saving them for later anyway. Since turn 4 Fireguard Destroyer is a common play, 5-drops are sometimes locked out due to the overload. That's a small advantage that Healbot has over Belcher, which is a true 5-drop. I also think that there are a lot of decks out there that rush you early and want to finish with burn, which is something that Healbot helps against more than Belcher.

-Azure Drakes are in there because I think some card draw is needed. Although the spellpower doesn't often come into play (although Drake/Storm is great against Patron and Quartermaster), I still think it's the best source of draw available for this deck. I could see changing one to a Mana Tide - but the deck doesn't run a lot of taunts to help a Mana tide stick, and it doesn't have anything else in the 5-slot but Healbots, so having some 5-drops is not bad. I think with six 4-drops, you're not going to want Gnomish Inventor in there. I don't think Acolyte of Pain or Loot Hoarder are good enough, and I think that the board-state-dependent draw from a Cult Master is too awkward when curving well is so important. So - Azure Drakes. They have seemed good, and fit with the idea of solid minions continually hitting the board.

-Arguses allow big minions to go face without damage coming back at you. They are also extra-good in decks that are running double Chow, because you have a cheap way to add that second Argus target to the board. Argus also turns chows into something that's a little more substantive.

-Ragnaros is good because you've got multiple BGH targets anyway, and he's the big guy that comes out with tempo. He does more the turn he hits the board than most late-game legendaries. The deck doesn't have many sources of tempo swing, and he actually provides some of that, even though we don't usually think of him as a tempo card. If you wanted to try a version of the deck with Rockbiters, then I'd put Al'Akir in - but I've found that that actually results in a pretty significant structural change to the deck, where you're becoming more reactive and might need an extra source of card draw. And then the deck starts playing quite differently.

My mulligan thoughts (I feel as if mulligans are more murky than usually presented, so I won't pretend these are all solid rules):

-almost always keep Chow/Creeper/Powermace

-usually keep Harvest Golem (always keep it with Powermace). I would only throw it back if I thought it was Chow/Creeper or bust - but tbh I'd probably keep it as a lone keep even against face hunter.

-keep Flametongue with Creeper (pretty much always) and Chow (usually - think about what you might need to trade into)

-I think usually only keep Lightning Storm if it's against an opponent you think is likely to quickly set up a broad board AND you have an early-game minion in hand. I think this is right. I might let it be a lone-keep if I thought it was important and I was on coin, because I'd have more chances to draw into an early-game minion.

-Hex seems like a good keep vs. Druid.

-Keep earth shock vs. hunter, because if it's face, you'll need that removal. I think it's probably a good keep against warlock, because if it's zoo or midrange demon there's egg and if it's handlock there's Twilight drake - and a lot of warlocks run Void Caller regardless of their archetype.

-I might consider keeping a 4-drop on coin if I had a clear plan for how my turns were going to play out. Sometimes an Argus might be a good keep with Haunted Creeper, but think it through, because there are definitely stronger hands you can get, and the idea of buffing the spiders doesn't always work out - things can change by the time it's an Argus turn.

-I don't think there's anything else I'd ever keep, although maybe some next-level players would have the intuition to know when it's good to make sure you have that Fire Elemental or Boom in hand and ready to go.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the deck - even though it's probably not tier-1, qualifier-points type of competitive, it's probably good enough to be worth running for those who like this style of play.