Hearthpwn

https://www.twitch.tv/atralb

Guys, I am proud to present to you the highlight video of my first day playing this outrageously funny deck !

PS : - As this is footage of games played during the release of the expansion, this is an old version of the deck and does not match current's decklist.
      - I am very sorry for the sound of the video. I don't have good headphones for streaming right now, and enabling desktop sound would cause some echo so I just disabled it. I hope you don't mind and that it doesnt kill off your entertainment watching the deck in action.

**** COMMUNITY FEEDBACK : Just wanted to express my thoughts on the community's judgement of the card. This is a very slow combo and is even more difficult to achieve than Quest Mage while this combo was strictly a "Win the game" and wasnt hated by the community for the fact that its winrate was not high. This one has an even lower winrate and should have not gathered all the hate it did, because this by far not an overpowered deck.The reason it is complained in the community is because of the animation time but people confuse it with overpoweredness and asking for nerfs. The only thing where I completely agree and definitely ask for is to fix the animation by making the Battlecry cast all effects at once, or only cast those that actually do something.              ****

 

WHAT NOW : Thank you to all of you who watched Day One stream, this has been one heel of a ride haha, 11 hours uninterrupted stream  ! I'll be back on it starting from Monday evening (in Europe).

So how did the deck performed ? Well, now we know the combo is even more busted than we thought and even Primordial Drake doesnt really breaks our combo even if killing Murmuring Elemental, since as soon as you pull off the first Shudderwock (while having emptied your hand before), your very next turn should be exponentially more powerful. However, as expected, it suffers the weaknesses of any combo decks which is the difficulty to survive against aggro decks and being completely anticlimactic when not drawing all the key cards needed.

According to my experince now, there will be 2 archetypes of the deck. The one I made which will be better against aggro decks and the build around bogshaper with cheap spells which will be better against slow decks. The prevalent version will be determined once the meta settled. For now, at least in legend, the meta has been extremely aggro centered. With decks such as Odd Face Hunter (I swear, you can see Wolfrider played in legend now), Odd Dude Paladin, Rush Tempo Warrior being very popular. Thus, my version (which I updated now to beat them, all changes explained at the end of the guide in "1ST PLAYED EDIT") seems to be more efficient atm. However, I do believe the meta will slow down, when people are gonna pick Cubelock again (cause it is still overpowered) and that other will want to beat them and make refined control decks. If a meta like that is happening, then the Bogshaper Build could be better. I will be showing this second version I tried to refine below if you are interested. (In "Discussion")

Hi guys, Atralb here.

So this deck revovles on a pretty busted combo doable with the new (really OP) shaman legendary Shudderwock : You want it to basically recast the battlecries of Lifedrinker + Saronite Chain Gang + Grumble, Worldshaker. 

This indeed lets us Step 1 : deal damage to the enemy's face while healing yours, summoning another copy of Shudderwock that would get put back to our hand for only 1 mana. And, then as you all know it :

• Step 2 : Repeat
• Step 3 : ???
• Step 4 : Profit !

The most efficient way to consider this deck during deckbuilding is to compare it to a Kingsbane deck. Both are extremely similar in concept. You need to quickly assemble all your combo pieces that will eventually create an infinite value card in the late game.

So, in order to be doing so consistently, the deck contains (as any classic combo deck) card draw and removal. Let us begin !

Key Cards :

The cards making our wombo combo are Lifedrinker, Saronite Chain Gang, Grumble, Worldshaker and of course Shudderwock.

To help with our plan, two other cards come into play : Murmuring Elemental and Fire Plume Harbinger. The latter one reducing the cost of the first one allows us to cast another Shudderwock's battlecry (a battlecry that will cast a battlecry that will cast battlecries, Battlecryception boys ! Well no it won't work that way since it specifies "other battlecries" ^^, too bad !) for basically the double the damage and healing and the double 1 mana shudderwocks in hand ! When you think about it's really pretty insane. In fact, since Shudderwock's battlecry has a random order , this combo is actually necessary if you want to ensure you get at least 1 Shudderwock back in hand.

Let's talk about the best possible outcome for 1 Shudderwock. When all those key battlecries are alreday done :

• 2 Saronite Chain Gang's + 2 Lifedrinker's = 2 copies of Shudderwock + 6 face dmg + 6 own face healing
• times 2 with Murmuring Elemental = well the double you get it

So basically with 10 mana you are  dealing 12 face dmg + healing yourself for 12 and getting back FOUR 1 mana shudderwock that will also deal that same amount of damage and healing !!! This is actually a legit 48 DMG OTK combo (at maximum, which means it can surely attain 30 health on average) AND can aslo be split in smaller part each turn if not all has been assembled. The consistency of this deck's combo seems to be really great to me !

Even if you only get the most basic version of the combo, it's still 6 face dmg and 6 face healing per turn for 1 mana starting from the second Shudderwock, which is exactly like a 6 atk Kingsbane who can only attack face, and any veteran Kingsbane player will easily understand you are already in a pretty good shape when you are constantly attacking face with a 6 atk lifesteal Kingsbane while having great shaman removal tools in hand instead of weapon buffing in hand. And there's even more !

Board control tools

Board clears : Lightning Storm, Volcano and Primordial Drake. Basically all the premium board clears available for shaman as of the upcoming rotation. (Avalanche is rather meh and the 4 mana spot is already crowded)
    Primordial Drake is actually bonkers in this deck in the fact that it is already a great control tool, but it is also a battlecry that will get recast by Shudderwock each time he is played. If you have already played both your drakes, this means each Shudderwock you will play will deal 4 dmg to the board, which now, if killing the opponent'hero while healing ours wasn't enough lets you also clear the opponent's board with this single card ! Guys I'm so hyped for this deck !

Hard removal : Hex is insane against Cubelock and we surely will need this in Witchwood's meta.

Stalling tools : Some spots of the deck were chosen to add some taunts and healing, namely Feral Spirit, Hot Spring Guardian and Healing Rain. 
Brrrloc is also a good early game stalling card to enable better board clears, and its battlecry can only target enemies which yet again adds a cool disrupting battlecry to Shudderwock.

Card draws

Many card draws in the deck to help us achieve our goal as soon as possible : Mana Tide Totem, Sandbinder which fetches one of our 3 key elementals and Witchwood Piper is another good card draw card that kind of achieve the same goal as Sandbinder, even though in a lesser way, but the fact that it pulls out the lowest mana-using card of our deck is pretty valuable. And moreover, shaman doesnt have any other good card draw.

 

Potential Replacements and Discussion :

The cards i'm thinking could be changed are

• REMOVING Brrrloc if it doesnt proove to be an efficient addition to Shudderwock
• REMOVING Witchwood Piper if it happens to be too much card draw and not enough removal tools.
• REMOVING 1 Fire Plume Harbinger and 1 Murmuring Elemental if we feel they tend to remain too much dead cards in hand, waiting for the combo, or simply want to add removal and/or card draw for better consistency over higher combos. But keep in mid this also reduce sandbinder's consistency.
• REMOVING the last Fire Plume Harbinger because you can discount a Murmuring Elemental with Grumble, Worldshaker too. BUT Not playing Harbinger means you need to have a turn somewhere in the game where you're gonna pay 8 mana for only a 7/7 on the board, and that you can't drop your Grumble, Worldshaker when it is a good opportunity if you can't combo it with Murmuring Elemental. Not only that, but a Grumble, Worldshaker turn generally needs you to play some bounced minions on the same turn to let you stabilize the board a bit since himself doesn't do anything on it for more than half your mana, and with 2 mana availabe instead of 4, it's even harder. Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty good idea but this strategy has its weaknesses too.
• REMOVING Hot Spring Guardian which isn't bad but isn't great either. DONE
• ADDING 2 Doomsayer if Aggro is prevailing.
• ADDING Zola the Gorgon not for another shudderwock as everyone seems to think, but instead a third Lifedrinker which empowers all our casting of shudderwock greatly, but is a really weak tempo play (7 mana 2/2 + 3/3). The same possibility with Saronite Chain Gang. This choice will be a balance between greed and survival consistency. 
• ADDING Acolyte of Pain for a mighty 3 card draw right away in combo with Volcano. I've already done this in my jade/evolve control shaman deck last season which had some success in Rank 5-4 (i changed decks from rank 3) which prooved to be quite consistent. And Potion of Madness is out now !
• ADDING some weapon removal like Gluttonous Ooze or Harrison Jones will most likely be needed in the meta ahead of us, but I will leave it like that for now since it is indeed a Theorycraft deck.
• ADDING Bogshaper too draw our Lifedrinker Saronite Chain Gang and such. It can be discounted with Fire Plume Harbinger aswell and seems like it was kind of meant for thisdeck. However, as it is now, the deck doesnt have low cost spells to combo with, and i would need to change quite some cards to be adding this one. It will be part of the testing phase without a doubt.  Here is my updated version of the deck centered around Bogshaper 

  Boggerwock (Atralb's Bogshaper Shudderwock Build) Shudderwock Shaman Deck by Atralb - Apr 13, 2018 View Deck String Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
  Minion (15) 1x Grumble, Worldshaker 1x Shudderwock 2x Bogshaper 2x Sandbinder 2x Fire Plume Harbinger 2x Lifedrinker 2x Murmuring Elemental 2x Saronite Chain Gang 1x Brrrloc	Ability (15) 2x Unstable Evolution 1x Blazing Invocation 1x Lightning Storm 2x Volcano 2x Earth Shock 2x Healing Rain 2x Hex 2x Lightning Bolt 1x Zap!
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  Props to Yinghao, for getting the idea ! (see his original deck : https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1066129-shudderwock-otk)

BEWARE when (even if it primarily seems good for shudderwock and overall deck) adding elementals with battlecries such as kalimos primal lord, Stone Sentinel, or Blazecaller. Damage that can target anything is too risky, and summoning multiple small minions is too since, you have good chances to put them back in your hand and clog it up, possibly burning combo pieces like a second Lifedrinker or a Murmuring Elemental.

PRIMORDIAL DRAKE ISSUE : The fact that Primordial Drake's battlecry to Shudderwock can easily kill Murmuring Elemental, and in extreme cases Shudderwock copies (only during double battlecry) before they get back to hand is indeed a concern. However, the drake addition to our overall survival package and the infinite board clear with Shudderwock is still an extremely good addition. Whether with or without is better will be determined after playtesting and I don't think we can settle this matter now. I will then leave the deck as is for now.

1ST EDIT : Removed the Hot Spring Guardian, 1 Fire Plume Harbinger and 1 Murmuring Elemental to improve the consistency of Sandbinder in drawing our key cards. Replaced by card draw : Bloodmage Thalnos (for potential bigger Lightning Storm), Far Sight and Acolyte of Pain. Testing will tell which one of these two will be the best, cause they both have pros and cons in theory now. (far sight for potential discount on combo cards and being a spell leaving witchwood piper a better pool to draw, and acolyte for drawing multiple cards and a combo with volcano). Thanks for the feedback Optimatum :).

1ST PLAYED EDIT : 

- 1 Far Sight - 1 Feral Spirit - 2 Witchwood Piper

+ 2 Doomsayer + 1 Murmuring Elemental + 1 Healing Rain

I needed both Doomsayer because of the ladder swarming with aggro decks, and Healing Rain specifically for Odd Face hunter. At this moment, Witchwood piper wasnt good anymore, since it couldn't consistently draw key minions anymore, and as some people truthfully said, the deck had a bit too much of card draw. 2 Feral Spirit was a bit overkill with already 2 Saronite Chain Gang, so I dropped one. And Far Sight was too much of a tempo loss as expected. The second Murmuring Elemental is very good because it can give an additional battlecry of something you want for Shudderwock, and gives you a second chance to get the combo quickly.

Conclusion

As this is a new archetype, this decks needs a lot of playtesting and card swapping at the beginning to see which build will be the most consistent in Witchwood's meta. I actually really trhink this deck will be a viable deck in the meta, even if not past tier 3. But I still have the feeling this has a slight chance to become in high tier meta if Cubelock, aggro decks, or other new archetypes don't get out of hands. Remember we get one of the best cubelock's hardcounter in the card of Hex.
Overall I'm pretty fucking looking forward to play this deck, and will surely test this out on Day One of the release !! Hope you love it guys, I'm out !