Hearthpwn

Hey fellow shaman players,

I'm maining shaman but in the last weeks I was in a rut playing the same-old decks with only minor variations. Other classes offer more playstyle options. Until now.

Of course, there have always been attempts at making the "ancestral cards" work. With the new season around I'd like to bring up a deck Crusher made:

It relies on taunts, copying and reviving them. Since it's a new deck I'm obviously not playing it perfectly. So this post is basically a question about how to play it and which cards could work in there as well.

Problematic matchups

After a test drive the most problematic encounters are mages, other shamans, druids and of course all kinds of aggro.

Against aggro it seems to be important to keep any kind of taunt in hand at the beginning, even if it's an Earth Elemental. I also had great success comboing with Wild Pyromancer.

Mages are difficult because they can ignore taunts and stall the board. Not much to say. Any hints?

Now, against shaman and druids which run a plethora of removals (Hex, Earth Shock, The Black Knight, Big Game Hunter, Keeper of the Grove) I find it hard to bait all of it before going balls to the wall with Earth Elemental+Ancestral Spirit.

Tweaking the deck

All the problems got me thinking about what would be good card replacements. I first thought about Far Sight, a card that I'd love to make work so hard. It could help draw into necessary combos faster and getting them out better. Out of the original deck 10/30 cards cost below 3 mana so sadly that's out of the question. Turn 2 Wild Pyromancer, turn 3 Far Sight sounds nice though.

Bloodmage Thalnos does not seem as valuable. Bringing in a second Wild Pyromancer could work a bit better against aggro. Having only one Earth Shock doesn't resonate with me, too. Imho these three are interchangable.

And how about cutting Unbound Elementals? Not many overload cards in this deck. A 2 drop could work better to delay the game some more. Nat Pagle, Mana Wraith, even Millhouse Manastorm or Lorewalker Cho may even draw removal. But they all are bad to draw later in the game. Maybe go for flavor and put in Harvest Golems.

Ragnaros the Firelord and The Black Knight are debatable. I tried Alexstrasza combined with Cairne Bloodhoof of which the first won me some games. Healing up behind a few taunts is nice. Also having two Earth Elementals out and dropping the enemy to 15HP is awesome.

I'm curious about other people's input!

I took out Feral Spirit, Mana Tide Totem and 1 Unbound Elemental and subbed in a second Wild Pyromancer and 2 Acolyte of Pain (cool suggestion).

Played 11 games so far with a 55% win rate from Ranks 14 to 13, so not very impressive. The idea was to get a more reliable card draw together. The dream is of course Pyro+Acolyte+Healing Totem.

You still get royaly f'ed by removal, losing not only the board but most definitely card advantage. At the ranks I played baiting all removal before the "Earth Elemental Lockdown" was possible, but at the higher ranks I don't know.

I got legendary #71 NA this season with this deck. It has some differences from Crusher's shaman, but the main theme of Ancestral Spirit and Earth Eles are the same. I choose to go the direction though of having stronger Ancestral Spirit targets in Cairne and Sylvanas, while he invests a bit more into Ancestral Healing (he runs 2, I run 1) with The Black Knight synergy and Ragnaros.

Ask if you have any questions.

Besides 1 Azure Drake you don't run card draw. How does this work out?

Quote from Deccman »

Besides 1 Azure Drake you don't run card draw. How does this work out?

there's also Bloodmage Thalnos 

I run a shaman deck with only 1 more card draw and it still works. Overload + totems often means you are often only playing 1 card a turn anyway until late game. 

I use this version, because the only legendaries I have are Lorewalker Cho and Sylvanas Windrunner

I see you guys have experience on this deck, does anyone have any tips for swaps or changes?