Hmm, on reading this I feel like we're not that different haha. I hope you know that the burn mage skeleton is not one that's about saving up for combo pieces and mostly playing card draw (you may be thinking of Exodia mage). When you play it with DK Jaina, it's just about using removal effectively until you can build a board of water elementals. This was effectively how I won almost all the games I played early on - with 6 water elementals just freezing everything and healing me to full life, like some sort of undead vampire army. You'll also notice my deck from earlier doesn't even include fireball, because it wants to remove stuff on board with spells instead of going face.
I think realistically this also depends on your goal for the deck. If you want a legend-viable deck with Jaina, I can only imagine that it will be a deck that wants to go through most of the deck, since if it can reliably win before pulling Jaina then it probably can't complement her. So the deck has to be comfortable manipulating the board until we can find Jaina, which spells are good at because some of them can do 2-for-1 and it doesn't have summoning sickness. If you play minions to control the board, you HAVE to be on the board first - you will need 4 1-drops, 6-8 2-drops at least to start building momentum. But a lot of mages only ever ran mana wyrm, and thats because with a quick frost bolt, ping, arcane missile, arcane blast, etc. you quickly gain back tempo. Once you start wanting to go to turn 10 and beyond, you start needing more value, where Arcane intellect, meteor and flamestrike become stars of the show. And it's really important to know that mages have excellent spells, but they have poor minions. An example of the opposite is hunter, and hunter has an abysmal win-rate in high ranks, but in low ranks it dominates because playing hunter minions on curve beats everything else.
SO (sorry for the long way around this argument), your predicament here becomes this: You said you wanted to freeze things to win the field, but freezing something doesn't give you the field, it either gives you a window to go face (like the aggro deck I linked) or it lets you develop in safety (like arcane intellect or Jaina). If you freeze their board, and start trading into it, you waste the freeze. If you freeze and go face, Jaina doesn't help you, she just slows you down.
If you want to be able to reach rank 10, then I think it's possible with almost any deck that you'd be willing to work with critically and get to know.
Now luckily, your deck isn't that midrangey - if we go over it - what it wants to do is
Pyros on 2, AI or Tar creeper on 3, Water elemental or Steam surger on 4, Servant or Cryomancer on 5, and then use a combination of removal spells and minions to trigger the coldwraiths and dig for Jaina, This is like an elemental burn mage, let's say. In terms of this gameplan, I think the weakest cards are Ice Walker, Frost Nova (unless you wanna run the doomsayer combo, but I assume not), Cone of Cold, Steam Surger, Cryomancer.
What I want the most to find space for:
I understand that probably Ice block might not be a card you have but goddamn does it synergize HARD with Jaina. Running them also enables Arcanologist to dig for Jaina (through thinning). Meteor is good removal that, unlike volcanic potion, leaves your own elementals unscathed. Firelands portal is a highly regarded card will help you remove something AND give you board presence and is cheap to craft. If you do end up keeping some of the pure freeze cards like frost nova, I just realized you can potentially run Frozen Crushers and then freezing will buy a turn for them to unfreeze haha. Fireplume pheonix I actually like more than Steam Surger, just because it can be removal for aggressive decks, but also help Jaina ping something at 1 health. Babbling book used to be good but I don't know if the new mage spells was a 'nerf' to it. I think its wholeheartedly worth it to change one fireball to a polymorph. So many BIG decks are not intimidated by fireballs. If you happened to open a skulking geist, I would try to include it against Jade druid. I know - I know! I said just earlier in this thread that Geist doesn't improve your winrate against jade druid - that's because most decks still can't deal with the 9/9ish jades that they will still need to if they can't kill them fast, but I absolutely think this deck can if you think ahead and get to kill them with ping. Also Ice walker has negative synergy with Jaina since it wants to ping something alive and Jaina wants to ping something dead.
Looking at the dragon deck (really quickly I don't have as much to say on that type since I never played anything like it), I can say that: Cobalt scalebane wants to have the board and capitalize on it. You have no 1-drops (glacial wants to be combo'ed). Primordial Drake wants to stall. It's also a real shame you can't run blackwing corruptor anymore. One virtue of the dragon deck is that it has the element of surprise, which is not to be underestimated in a net-deck era where most people can line up removal for the threats they already know are coming (gotta save this polymorph for tirion).
Anyway, I think that's about as much help as I can be - I hope you figure out what you wanna play and if you want my opinion on whether or not to craft one card or another then I can always say what I think but I'm not an expert on that since I don't play on a budget.
Thanks again for the additional thoughts. I have quite the predicament, don't I? lol. Too many plates to juggle, so it's basically inevitable that something has to go. Oh and I was thinking of Exodia Mage; you're right.
The more I look at it, the more I'm thinking of going with the Dragon deck idea, if only because it seems very different to what everyone else is doing. If I lean into that idea, I could perhaps go for Alexstrasza. Or, I could go for a slower route with Wrathion, The Curator, the Primordial Drakes, etc. I still want my Water Elementals and DK Jaina, though. If only Coldarra Drake wasn't in Wild...but if we're going into that realm of thinking, Wild has so many of the things I'm looking for lol >_< I will buy Blackrock Mountain...one of these days.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
^ Coldarra drake DK Jaina in wild sounds fun. It's like giving her win condition steroids, but probably over the top most of the time. The 3/2 that makes hero power do 2 damage is actually something I wanna try eventually though.
Regarding the evolve shaman. Another archetype I never played (except as as a niche before it was popularized), so take my suggestion lightly. I think you have a pretty small chance to get on the board early since you have mistress and loot hoarder other than claws, but your deck curves out at 6, roughly like a midrange hunter, so you can't afford to wait for a lategame win-condition because you can't go toe to toe with most control decks. I think your problem of inconsistency comes from only sometimes getting on board early (so aggro can trade away the minions you want to evolve, where you'll be dead by the time you have a combo), and not having the weight to pull through if your first 'evolve batch' gets removed, because then your Jade Druid or Highlander Priest opponent is gonna start developing enormous jades or Kazakus sheep potions alongside dragonfire potion, and then you'll be hard pressed to keep up.
So my a priori instinct would be to remove Elise, Hallazeal, 2x Acolyte of pain ... maybe mistress (depends on the matchups), and put in 2xFire Fly, 2xSaronite chain gang (Firebat was very enthusiastic about chain gang+DK Thrall). I could also say stuff like 'I think Stonehill defender is better than 'Hot spring guardian' but at some point that's gonna meld together with the meta deck.
The alternative is to experiment in the greedy direction with second volcano, thing from below, jade chieftain, at the expense of loot hoarders and hot spring guardian. Might even make it more consistent against aggro (it might also be garbage I really have no clue haha).
If you wanna do something weird try to evolve Rattling Rascal.
^ Coldarra drake DK Jaina in wild sounds fun. It's like giving her win condition steroids, but probably over the top most of the time. The 3/2 that makes hero power do 2 damage is actually something I wanna try eventually though.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
If fallen hero, plus the dude that lets you hero power twice (garrison commander?), lets you kill twice in a turn, that's a 2/3, a 3/2, and 2 3/6s with lifesteal and freeze for 8 mana. That's an 8 Mana 11/17 deal 2x2 damage. That's 4 cards in your deck that risk being dead cards until you have Jaina I suppose, but none of them are understatted and you can run 2 of each. I don't know... Once I get some more golden heroes than just Jaina I'm going back and exploring that!
If fallen hero, plus the dude that lets you hero power twice (garrison commander?), lets you kill twice in a turn, that's a 2/3, a 3/2, and 2 3/6s with lifesteal and freeze for 8 mana. That's an 8 Mana 11/17 deal 2x2 damage. That's 4 cards in your deck that risk being dead cards until you have Jaina I suppose, but none of them are understatted and you can run 2 of each. I don't know... Once I get some more golden heroes than just Jaina I'm going back and exploring that!
If only there was a way to cheese DK Jaina out faster :^)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
Thanks for the feedback!, it does need some more early game for sure, but getting rid of the card draw would be suicide, so I can't do that, but I will make a few of the other changes you mentioned.
Oh, and I have Elise instead of the second Volcano because once I make a board, no one's getting rid of it.
Hmm... that's a hard one. The jade package is very rarely weak in shaman, so there's always that. I think Stone Sentinel might underperform, but the rest could be solid. One funny thing here is that you don't have carddraw, but if you have something on board you like, you can Moorabi, Hyldnir, Evolve. Or Moorabi, Frost Shock (your own or the opponent), Frost Shock, Evolve. The evolve will remove the freeze effect and you get a hand refill. It's a shame Hyldnir Frostrider doesn't freeze itself or it would just be like an infinite generator engine, and it costs 10 mana to frost shock the frostrider so you can't evolve on top. I know I pitched this before but man I would love to have Frozen Crusher, trade with it, Moorabi, Hyldnir, evolve. Then you can play another frozen crusher, wait a turn again, and before trading, Moorabi and get it back.
I think I know how I wanna do Frost Shaman now haha. But honestly I don't have that much input on the deck, I think it's ready to be playtested and see what works and what doesnt.
I would really be happy to discuss this deck I theorycrafted as soon as I saw the first priests cards of the expansion, and that I'm currently experimenting on the fields haha !
Opinions on this deck?
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/901471-value-evolve-shaman-ladder-ready
Sometimes it get's steamrolled, sometimes it is unstoppable, I'd like to bring a little more consistency to it.
(up-votes plz?)
This space is intentionally blank.
Hmm, on reading this I feel like we're not that different haha. I hope you know that the burn mage skeleton is not one that's about saving up for combo pieces and mostly playing card draw (you may be thinking of Exodia mage). When you play it with DK Jaina, it's just about using removal effectively until you can build a board of water elementals. This was effectively how I won almost all the games I played early on - with 6 water elementals just freezing everything and healing me to full life, like some sort of undead vampire army. You'll also notice my deck from earlier doesn't even include fireball, because it wants to remove stuff on board with spells instead of going face.
I think realistically this also depends on your goal for the deck. If you want a legend-viable deck with Jaina, I can only imagine that it will be a deck that wants to go through most of the deck, since if it can reliably win before pulling Jaina then it probably can't complement her. So the deck has to be comfortable manipulating the board until we can find Jaina, which spells are good at because some of them can do 2-for-1 and it doesn't have summoning sickness. If you play minions to control the board, you HAVE to be on the board first - you will need 4 1-drops, 6-8 2-drops at least to start building momentum. But a lot of mages only ever ran mana wyrm, and thats because with a quick frost bolt, ping, arcane missile, arcane blast, etc. you quickly gain back tempo. Once you start wanting to go to turn 10 and beyond, you start needing more value, where Arcane intellect, meteor and flamestrike become stars of the show. And it's really important to know that mages have excellent spells, but they have poor minions. An example of the opposite is hunter, and hunter has an abysmal win-rate in high ranks, but in low ranks it dominates because playing hunter minions on curve beats everything else.
SO (sorry for the long way around this argument), your predicament here becomes this: You said you wanted to freeze things to win the field, but freezing something doesn't give you the field, it either gives you a window to go face (like the aggro deck I linked) or it lets you develop in safety (like arcane intellect or Jaina). If you freeze their board, and start trading into it, you waste the freeze. If you freeze and go face, Jaina doesn't help you, she just slows you down.
If you want to be able to reach rank 10, then I think it's possible with almost any deck that you'd be willing to work with critically and get to know.
Now luckily, your deck isn't that midrangey - if we go over it - what it wants to do is
Pyros on 2, AI or Tar creeper on 3, Water elemental or Steam surger on 4, Servant or Cryomancer on 5, and then use a combination of removal spells and minions to trigger the coldwraiths and dig for Jaina, This is like an elemental burn mage, let's say. In terms of this gameplan, I think the weakest cards are Ice Walker, Frost Nova (unless you wanna run the doomsayer combo, but I assume not), Cone of Cold, Steam Surger, Cryomancer.
What I want the most to find space for:
I understand that probably Ice block might not be a card you have but goddamn does it synergize HARD with Jaina. Running them also enables Arcanologist to dig for Jaina (through thinning). Meteor is good removal that, unlike volcanic potion, leaves your own elementals unscathed. Firelands portal is a highly regarded card will help you remove something AND give you board presence and is cheap to craft. If you do end up keeping some of the pure freeze cards like frost nova, I just realized you can potentially run Frozen Crushers and then freezing will buy a turn for them to unfreeze haha. Fireplume pheonix I actually like more than Steam Surger, just because it can be removal for aggressive decks, but also help Jaina ping something at 1 health. Babbling book used to be good but I don't know if the new mage spells was a 'nerf' to it. I think its wholeheartedly worth it to change one fireball to a polymorph. So many BIG decks are not intimidated by fireballs. If you happened to open a skulking geist, I would try to include it against Jade druid. I know - I know! I said just earlier in this thread that Geist doesn't improve your winrate against jade druid - that's because most decks still can't deal with the 9/9ish jades that they will still need to if they can't kill them fast, but I absolutely think this deck can if you think ahead and get to kill them with ping. Also Ice walker has negative synergy with Jaina since it wants to ping something alive and Jaina wants to ping something dead.
Looking at the dragon deck (really quickly I don't have as much to say on that type since I never played anything like it), I can say that: Cobalt scalebane wants to have the board and capitalize on it. You have no 1-drops (glacial wants to be combo'ed). Primordial Drake wants to stall. It's also a real shame you can't run blackwing corruptor anymore. One virtue of the dragon deck is that it has the element of surprise, which is not to be underestimated in a net-deck era where most people can line up removal for the threats they already know are coming (gotta save this polymorph for tirion).
Anyway, I think that's about as much help as I can be - I hope you figure out what you wanna play and if you want my opinion on whether or not to craft one card or another then I can always say what I think but I'm not an expert on that since I don't play on a budget.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
^ Coldarra drake DK Jaina in wild sounds fun. It's like giving her win condition steroids, but probably over the top most of the time. The 3/2 that makes hero power do 2 damage is actually something I wanna try eventually though.
Regarding the evolve shaman. Another archetype I never played (except as as a niche before it was popularized), so take my suggestion lightly. I think you have a pretty small chance to get on the board early since you have mistress and loot hoarder other than claws, but your deck curves out at 6, roughly like a midrange hunter, so you can't afford to wait for a lategame win-condition because you can't go toe to toe with most control decks. I think your problem of inconsistency comes from only sometimes getting on board early (so aggro can trade away the minions you want to evolve, where you'll be dead by the time you have a combo), and not having the weight to pull through if your first 'evolve batch' gets removed, because then your Jade Druid or Highlander Priest opponent is gonna start developing enormous jades or Kazakus sheep potions alongside dragonfire potion, and then you'll be hard pressed to keep up.
So my a priori instinct would be to remove Elise, Hallazeal, 2x Acolyte of pain ... maybe mistress (depends on the matchups), and put in 2xFire Fly, 2xSaronite chain gang (Firebat was very enthusiastic about chain gang+DK Thrall). I could also say stuff like 'I think Stonehill defender is better than 'Hot spring guardian' but at some point that's gonna meld together with the meta deck.
The alternative is to experiment in the greedy direction with second volcano, thing from below, jade chieftain, at the expense of loot hoarders and hot spring guardian. Might even make it more consistent against aggro (it might also be garbage I really have no clue haha).
If you wanna do something weird try to evolve Rattling Rascal.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
If fallen hero, plus the dude that lets you hero power twice (garrison commander?), lets you kill twice in a turn, that's a 2/3, a 3/2, and 2 3/6s with lifesteal and freeze for 8 mana. That's an 8 Mana 11/17 deal 2x2 damage. That's 4 cards in your deck that risk being dead cards until you have Jaina I suppose, but none of them are understatted and you can run 2 of each. I don't know... Once I get some more golden heroes than just Jaina I'm going back and exploring that!
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
You can use spirit echo for essentially the same effect and cheaper
Thanks for the feedback!, it does need some more early game for sure, but getting rid of the card draw would be suicide, so I can't do that, but I will make a few of the other changes you mentioned.
Oh, and I have Elise instead of the second Volcano because once I make a board, no one's getting rid of it.
This space is intentionally blank.
Hmm... that's a hard one. The jade package is very rarely weak in shaman, so there's always that. I think Stone Sentinel might underperform, but the rest could be solid. One funny thing here is that you don't have carddraw, but if you have something on board you like, you can Moorabi, Hyldnir, Evolve. Or Moorabi, Frost Shock (your own or the opponent), Frost Shock, Evolve. The evolve will remove the freeze effect and you get a hand refill. It's a shame Hyldnir Frostrider doesn't freeze itself or it would just be like an infinite generator engine, and it costs 10 mana to frost shock the frostrider so you can't evolve on top. I know I pitched this before but man I would love to have Frozen Crusher, trade with it, Moorabi, Hyldnir, evolve. Then you can play another frozen crusher, wait a turn again, and before trading, Moorabi and get it back.
I think I know how I wanna do Frost Shaman now haha. But honestly I don't have that much input on the deck, I think it's ready to be playtested and see what works and what doesnt.
Hi guys ! !
First, thanks for taking the the time to review my decklist, it is always helpful to get some feedback on our work !
Here is the link to my decklist if you want some details about the idea behind its creation :
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/912910-skeleggroadin-breaking-some-shells
And hereunder is the simplified list :
I would really be happy to discuss this deck I theorycrafted as soon as I saw the first priests cards of the expansion, and that I'm currently experimenting on the fields haha !
See you in game guys !