Hearthpwn

Any changes with blackrock release?

Emperor Thaurissan can be a good inclusion for reducing the cost of Ancestor's Call and the combo pieces.  I would try him in place of an Unbound Elemental or Gnomish Inventor.

I think that a one of for ancestors call is better. You do not have that many late game threats. I have not read all the comments so Im gonna make some suggestions because I want a heavy spell damage shaman control deck to exist. I think Call is gonna help that by getting Maly out early. So I would get rid of the Windfury minions...even though you want damage early on this is not going to help you survive the early game. Instead of Al' Akir use Doomhammer, it comes out earlier and can be used for removal. Another problem is gonna be card draw so I would add a mana tide totem or a gnomish inventor. This will help you get to your combo and removal faster. The problem is going with this deck is surviving the early game and finishing in the control matchups, especially in the control matchups-for example warrior getting to 40+ health. Possibly Adding Alexstrasza would help and exploding sheep for more aoe...possibly doomsayer.

you dont understand how this deck works i'm guessing?

I have to say, this changes the deck dramatically.   And I like it.

After the changes, I went back to compare, and first thing I noticed is that those reincarnates would probably start sitting in your hand when you need to be surviving early-ish game.  Or else they would have to rot because they weren't pulled early enough in the game to have them around when you start having to drop Sylvanas to survive. 

Also, the common fear of Ancestor's call pulling Defender of Argus is present.  Those things will happen, but not always.  But that fact makes it so the deck is much less consistent. 

I hated to see Sneed's shredder go, but I see why.  More inconsistency.  Rag is straight beast, and when you pull him into a game, people take notice, and he makes you pay dearly.  And he doesn't require a card to do it.  Plus you get him for 4 mana.   Bam.

As for the new stuff, this is interesting synergy between spells and minions.   It reminds me of my miracle shaman.  All the spells can support minions very well.   The weakness, of course, is that miracle rogues, mages etc frequently don't use a lot of minions, and they just take out your minions with spells anyway.  

The great thing?  Very little overload early.   People seem to not understand crackle.  Sure, it has variance, but when using it in early game, I will take it!  I will count on 3, usually at least 4 damage, which is fantastic.  Anything more is gravy.  It will be very valuable early game for taking out those 3-4 HP minions. 

And that is a great change for this deck, relooking at it.   Good spells, good both early and later game, which will support your working toward pulling your legendries out.   Pulling them early, turn 6/7 is still the goal, especially if you have a removal or strong board control.  

I have written about Dune Mauls as a late game minion, if everything goes right, and that is the case in this deck.  However, it is also a damage and removal soaker upper.  I like them.  They are powerful if you have the support behind them.  And yes, all those spells should support it just fine. 

I will write more later, just initial thoughts.  Looks great!

I main shaman since a really long time. And you lack early game potential. I would suggest removing the nerubian egg, adding 2 spiders and then it will at least be better. Ancestor's call should be good enough to replace your low amount of card draw (1 azure and bloodmage) I hope. If not, perhaps adding 1 azure drake and removing 1 ancestor's call might be better. You can also put questionmarks for Lava Burst in case. It's a good card but I think you need to test it first with your deck.

To validae this "just survive early game" approach, that is how the Crusher Shaman is.  Sure, once in a while you pull grat cards and dominate, but usually you are just hanging in there until you start dropping bombs.  When the dominos fall, they fall fast and hard. 

I like your initiative to make a deck using one of my favorite card revealed so far! From the get go, I wanted to be able to play Ancestor's Call as early as turn 4. My issue is that I wanted to be able to deal with whatever creature would drop on the other side of the battlefield on the same turn. So I thought about running Emperor Cobra and hopefully dropping him on turn 3. Unless the opponent can deal with the Cobra right away, you just use him to attack into whatever they get on the next turn when you cast Ancestor's Call. Then you can find ways to protect your cobra like using cheap 2 costing Taunts like Annoy-o-Tron as it also plays nice as an early minion to use with Flametongue Totem. The nice thing about doing this also is that they will have to spend quality spells to remove the cobra that they wont be able to use later on your more important minions. This is just talking for talking, but I'm definitely testing this as soon as the expansion comes out. =D

I like this deck and see how it could be viable but the no fire or earth elemental part of the deck worries me a little. Don't you think that ancestors call into earth elemental could be huge? Anyway cool ideas I'm looking forward to seeing more new decks

Quote from Beonitas »

You seem to solely focus on this one combo with Malygos and misunderstand the concept this deck is provoing. First of all this deck has plenty of combos and not just one. I didn't go all in on the OTK thing, because I obviously don't want to. It would just clunk up my hand even further. I cannot understand your reasoning why you prefer to have more OTK-potential for it massively lacks consistency, which is the exact reason why I have decided that it doesn't want to be a gimmicky deck and organized it  in such a way that it has an early game to reckon with, facilitating us with the time and board we want to have, when we have assembled our combo.

You have this backwards. I am not overfocusing on it. I specifically said that you should have other ways to win in your deck. And yes, it's very inconsistent. That's why I said it was too unreliable by itself. You need something else to win in your deck. But if it's an element in your deck, then you should make it as consistent as it can be. Otherwise, why bother? That's why it struck me as odd you would decrease you odds by only having one Lava Burst. Even if you don't use it for the OTK, it's still a good card to help your removal or burst damage.

Quote from Beonitas »

A note on Azure Drake. Playing two of them is outright bad. They're too clunky, as they cost 5 Mana and draw another card that may be another minion, further delaying your combo. Crusher himself says, he wouldn't even play one of them in here.

I cannot agree with this logic no matter who says it. The card draw, spell power, and 4/4 body is great value at 5. Is it a bit clunky? Perhaps. But in spell heavy decks like this one it's highly potent to run two. And if you think it's too clunky to justify more than 1, why are you relying on it?

Quote from Beonitas »

Yet if I were to go all in on this particular combo, I would play this deck, include Far Sight and all that stuff, which I assume is your preferred version: LINK.

Once again you miss the point. That deck is too heavy on the Malygos OTK without allowing for the best use of Far Site, despite it being included in the deck. My point is your best bet for having a good deck with Ancestor's Cal is to have a good balance of both. You want more acceleration from that with Far Site and some minions that work off that. But you also want the ability to fully utilize the OTK idea. Your deck doesn't do either as well as it could.

The only reason I kept suggesting far site is because it's acceleration. In addition to that, it's also card draw. It's not very good currently. But then again, ancestor's call doesn't look very good either. But I digress. My point is that they are both acceleration cards so perhaps they would be better in that setting. So if you are going to build a deck benefited by acceleration, than why not include acceleration?

I realize you are not sold on Azure Drake. But it's a very good card for a deck with a lot of spells. I think you overrate the clunkiness and underrate the value for spell based decks like yours. Either way, I fail to see the point in relying on only one.

I am somewhat puzzled by your lack of room statement. You have a number of cards in here, such as Nerubian Egg and Flametounge Totem that, while are great for the typical Shaman you see now in the current meta, do not necessarily fit the concept I had thought your deck was going for. It appears to me like you have a deck that has not committed to what it wants to be. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were trying to do. I just assumed that you were trying to make Ancestor's Call viable, and I felt the best way to do that was make an acceleration deck with the Malygos OTK option utilizing both of the only two decent idea's I have heard for the card. Personally, I don't think either one is completely viable by itself. You aren't really utilizing either concept, though. Somewhat the Malygos OTK, but even that you aren't fully invested in it. So I ask you, what is the concept you have for you deck? No offense, but it just seems like a generic shaman deck with a Malygos and a Ancestor's Call half-heartedly thrown in.

I feel like you MUST include Deathwing in this deck !

but it doesnt trigger the battlecry when its summoned with ancestrals call, does it?

and imo, it can shift the game around pretty hard lategame if you are against the wall.

This makes a lot of sense.  I was very excited when this card came out, then started to realize the difficulty of setting this up.  However, because I am still interested, I began playing my legendary rich, 2x Far Sight deck again to watch the dynamics.  It, too, uses a lot of deathrattle and such for a strong early game, then a smattering of middle ranged minions before hitting the heavies later.

Now, I am definitely more top heavy then this deck, and because of the far sights, I have various reincarnate combos and spell combos in the deck, given Far Sight's more effective use as a combo maker rather than a mana saver.  However, the dang RNG is so uncontrollable that it can pull anything out of the deck.  I would have been thrilled if Far Sight would just pull a minion from your deck, but being able to pull anything is way too random.

Now this card, however, has two ups and one down from Far Sight.  It is much better in that it only pulls a minion, which gives you some control, then as an added bit of control of its usage, only pulls from your hand.  That is actually fantastic!  The down, of course, is pulling a minion from their deck.   But if any class could deal with pulling a badass from their deck, it is shaman.  My legendary rich controlish deck goes toe to toe against the legendary rich control warrior every time.  And this is with Far sights...lol  It is the abilty to deak with the big minions.

Ok, so this brings me to my point with this deck and similar.  Obviously, you can control the outcome somewhat.  What I notice playing my big-boy deck is that almost always, I come down to a couple of cards in hand by post-turn 8.  The likelihood of controlling the outcome of ancestor's call would be pretty high.  And yes, commonly there are just big minions and a hex.  I already am in the habit of saving hexes as long as I can. So this is definitely enough to warrant exploring if a shaman can make a deck that works.  But as I see you are doing, it would nee to be a solid deck on its own, but with the added bonus of the combo with  ancestral call.

But this brings us to the Shaman's common dilemna.  Card Draw.  High card draw would be needed to get the cards you want.  but high card draw would start to work against you as dropping an ancestor's call with a full hand is randomizing the outcome much more.   This would put me in the oh-so-familiar situation of near-top-decking a lot, hoping you pick up what you need. 

I can't wait to try this and my own version of this deck (I may try a spell heavy version).

Keep up the good work!  Gets pretty negative in these shaman areas of the forum :(

Thanks for your thoughts.  If you will allow me to nerd out a bit more :)

Good point on the more big hitters because of the FE Fire Elementals (God they are great for soaking up priest's SW: Death).  I also have an Earth Elemental.  Ultimately that dude soaks up any sheep etc they are holding, so he's preparation for Rag etc.  However, the -3 overload always stalls that a turn, which is very, very tricky.  Same when wanting to drop a KT the turn after E.E (which I ratrely drop the E.E. before turn 8, so at least I have 6 mana next turn).   I don't have Malygos, Deathwing or Ysera, unfortunately...because I think about adding thema lot.  Even an Alex, though not for your deck for obvious reasons.  So I have a ton of 6 drops, with the 2 FE, Cairne, Sylvanas, and KT and Rag and Al'Akir.  Plus the Earth Elemental.  The Far Sights help a lot with making these affordable.  Everything else is devoted to early to mid game survival and card draw.   But just like the crusher shaman, so many resources are devoted to this huge minions for crushing late game (so fun!). 

That being said, I would love to have fewer heavy hitters if I can focus it into a somewhat dependable set of combos.   Really, that is the key to your deck, I am starting to notice.  This would allow one enough resources to have a viable early to mid game that doesn't depend on RNG.  That is what is missing when people criticize.  I have played plenty of mid range, and just wanted to change it up, which is why I play around with my greey deck.  Sure, I am not ranking up that far with the current build I have, but who knows what more tools will do.  What if I can balance the mana curve a bit while still maintaining effectivness late game?

So in your deck, getting a removal and legendary by turn 6/7 as the core gameplay makes sense.  And since the world doesn't always do what we ask of it, we just need to be able to survive and stall while working to obtain that.  This reminds me of the latest iteration of the Crusher Shaman, which I am enjoying immensely.  Sometimes, holy crap you just plain don't get one of your big minions and/or berzerker/ancestral healing until turn 8.  Insane!!  Sometimes it is instant loss.  But sometimes you can stall with your spells and such until you drop the game changer.  I don't see how your deck would be any different, except that this deck is actually better built to trade and play the early-mid game than is the Crusher.  Again, the differnce is being a more focused combo that doesn't require all of those cards (2x EE, 2xancestral healing, 2x Ancestral Spirit, 2x FE, Rag, KTetc.)  those guys are the core feature of the deck, but you use a lot of cards to get it.  If one could use fewer cards for a similarly strong effect, it would be great.  Obviously, card pull to get the required componants is important, so yeah, all you have are needed. 

I wanted to add a few points:  

I have found the Al'Akir plus reincarnate a go to combo in multiple situations.  Sometimes I use it for late game board clear, especially if a FT totem is already present.  Even without it, you hit the big minion first, then a smaller minion that won't kill you, then reincarnate, hit whatever needs to be hit again.  It has been phenomonal against control warriors and handlocks.   Obviously, in its native form the Al'Akir + Reincarnate (no FT totem or rock biter, it is will a quick 12 to the face, still leaving an intact taunt/shielded 3/5 on the board).

Removing Malygos to put in something else will probably trigger a chain reaction with your other cards.  Fewer magic cards?  But then more minions may affect the chance to pull a large minion, unless you can drop them on the board to keep hand relatively this except for your legendaries.  You would be using board presence and primary early/mid game.  If one was to do this, then perhaps KT would be the replacement for Malygos.  Almost a totally differnet deck though, but still based around your turn 6/7 Legendary + removal theory. Spin-off city!

With regard to the comments below me, I think the risk of dropping this right at turn 4 may be too great, even if it seems you have the perfect scenario in hand.  Remember, they are getting a minion too, and you don't know what it is.  So you MUST be prepared for the worst when you drop this card.  I think that is the whole idea of the deck.  I also think that is why people are skeptical about this card, that they envision this unpreparedness.

I am a weird shaman, pretty much always hated the unbound elemntal, not sure why.  It just never semeed to help as much as a harvest golem with defender of Argus and/or FT totems.  That being said, it may be key to early game in this deck, and it will certainly attract attention.  Perhaps an early firball from mage, silences or removal would be used if you can buff that thing once or twice.  All those spells certainly make it viable.  Also, if in worst case senario you drop an unbound in late game with your Ancestor's call (believe me, sometimes this is your best move, which would suck but it will happen), if you have a collection of spell, perhaps 2-3 overload spells would buff him to a 5/7 while taking out their summoned minion. Bt the overload next turn...

Finally, here's a little wish list of basic desires for shaman in the cards we don't know about in GvG.

1. A small minion or two that is a good minion with one overload.  Crazy, I know, but that would help create board presence for your 1 overload instead of just removing opponent's board presence.  Choices are good.

2. More spells without overload.  We certainly have enough spells with overload.  An average strenagth dmg spell that doesn't use overload would create options in deck creation.

3. More card draw options.

Quote from Beonitas »

Quote from Mhantra »

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Therefore I conclude that adding Malygos gives us a nice combo potential without adding too many cards, we wouldn't already have. This is rare and that's why I see Malygos as an important bridge between a considerable amount of cards, removal on the one hand and Ancestor's Call on the other.

Yeah, very high mana deck that is oddly effective, though yes, haven't gotten past rank 10 with it.  It is my "fun" deck.  My "Magiburst Shaman" is also a fun deck.  Very high spell deck with multiple combos by both magic and minion (even an ancient mage!! Dropped 9 damage Lava Burst once...lolz).  The idea behind playing these is that I am learning a lot, even if they aren't staight ranking decks, but the experience is invaluable.  this is why I strongly believe that even one new card can change a ton about what decks work.   

Very well said on the value of Malygos to this deck.  I may have to make sure I craft him before GvG comes out.  I am a long way from 1600 dust, though, but once I start obtaining the GvG decks, I will get almost no dust for a while because I won't be getting all those duplicate cards (40+ dust on most packs nowadays).   But I really want to try this deck, or at least this theory, as we don't know all the other cards coming yet, which will no doubt reshape this deck.

I was chiming in on the "New Card" thread and noticing that the main defense people against this card seems to come with the assumption that you will play it right at turn 4, and that it loses value badly as the game progresses.  That was shocking to me, because I believe just the opposite.  If you can line up the turn 6/7, that's great, but as you stockpile spells/removal and use up your smaller minions, your chance to get a favorable situation to use this rises.   Differnet deck, but I imagine you would play it similarly as I played last night:

I beat a control warrior (AGAIN) with my Crusher Shaman last night because as he continued to use up his legendaries and I removed, them as I stockpiled both hexes and my Faceless manipulator.  I used one Hex on his Ysera, expecting him to drop another bomb next turn (hoping he would).  He dropped his gromm, took out the earth elemental I had up, leaving a charged up, injured grom on the board.  Faceless --> charge grom to face for 10, Hex his grom, drop Injured blademaster with a preexisting healing totem. 

In this deck, I can see the same dynamic:  Drop Malygos via Ancestral call, lava burst or hex their minion (assuming it is even a threat), or minions with lightning storm and still have 3 mana for LB to face, ferals to protect your face and malygos etc etc.  I just don't understand why people aren't getting it.  I really appreciate your creating a deck that can at least demonstrate the theory. 

Lastly, was thinking about the Sylvanas combo.  Interesting that if it pulled sylvanas instead of Malygos if you had both in hand, you would really want either defender of argus or reincarnate in hand.  reincanate especially.   Of course, if you have argus in hand...Ancestor's call may pull it instead...so I am thinking I would have to be desperate to use that in that circumstance.  Dropping your smaller mininons early game instead of just using all your spells seems paramount in this deck.  In fact, do you mulligan for those early game smaller minions?  Maybe an unbound, flametongue and rockbiter sounds great against many classes.

I definitely feel that Ysera and Rag should be in this deck, while the combo otk enders are good, if you hand ends up turn 4 with one of those two and no other minon cards, I'd drop it straight up turn 4 and hope the battecry answer gets puled too.

I mean how good would you feel if rag drops, and your opponent's BGH hits the ground too.

I'd feel kinda amazing.

Ancestor's Call won't see the light of day ever,only in theory crafting decks like this one,no one will risk playing this card except in gimmick deck

Well, people are trying really hard to make the card viable. Still wasn't worth the vote. And I don't think this is the right approach. This Malygos OTK combo is too unreliable by itself. Then again, so is Ancestor's Call. People suggested adding Far Site and some beefy minions to the deck to give it a bit more versatility than just relying on the Malygos mage burst OTK. The deck has to be able to do something else besides just try to hang on until then, because chances are you won't get it in most games before you die.