[Legend] Midrange Darwin Shaman + Evolve Stats!...
- Last updated Aug 20, 2016 (Karazhan)
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Wild
- 19 Minions
- 11 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Midrange Shaman
- Crafting Cost: 4500
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/22/2016 (Explorers)
- Serology
- Registered User
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- 9
- 17
- 34
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
EU
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Total Deck Rating
2046
Guide Updated: 20/08/16
Intro
Welcome to those who are new to the Darwin Shaman deck and to those who have been following this deck since WotOG and giving constant great feedback. The deck has now been updated to include a number of new ONiK cards that are surprisingly synergistic with the evolve mechanic.
Darwin Shaman is an aggressive midrange deck built around the evolve mechanic in which two cards, Evolve and Master of Evolution, upgrade your minions (including totems) to those of a higher mana cost.
The strategy revolves around maintaining tempo and building a large board of minions and totems, using them for their initial purpose to gain maximum value out of them, before evolving them into large boards of strong minions.
One Night in Karazhan has already introduced three new cards perfectly suited to the deck: Barnes is a 4 mana 3/4 that summons a 1/1 copy of a minion from your deck, that copy retains the original mana cost of the card and so a 1/1 Fire Elemental will become a random 7 drop when evolved.Moat Lurker assassinates a target minion and response it as it's deathrattle, unless of course it is evolved into something else. Finally Maelstrom Portal combined with Wrath of Air Totem or Bloodmage Thalnos becomes a cheaper, more consistent Lightning Storm that summons a token for evolution. Whether or not Spirit Claws makes the cut next week we shall see!
Strategy
When looking at the state of Shaman in Standard with the release of WoToG your first thought should be.. Where do I make room for all these great cards? Shaman already had some of the strongest cards in the game likeHex, Earth Shock, Flametongue Totem and Al'Akir the Windlord, but it used to have holes at various mana costs along the way and ran into trouble with it's curve due to overload.
The question is then which cards make the cut. Do we go all out totems or all out evolve? The answer is we use the best of both as these cards offer such strong tempo plays. This is primarily a tempo-based midrange deck that relies on building a strong board of minions and totems before buffing them and overwhelming the opponent, so the priority must be to maintain board control in the midgame to do so.
Mulligan & Early Game
- Mulligan hard for Tunnel Trogg, Totem Golem and Flame Juggler, if you have the coin it is acceptable to keep Tuskarr Totemic, Feral Spirit and Barnes.
- Remember that Feral Spirit is not just a defensive card, it is intense early game pressure and when evolved will give you two 3 drops.
- Keep Maelstrom Portal against Zoo/Aggro
- Do not keep Thing from Below, Evolve or Master of Evolution in your starting hand
The priority in the early game is not face damage but board control. It's useful to keep your Troggs alive as long as possible but play it safe and trade them off to maintain board control if needed as losing board presence is the primary counter to this deck. If needed, use Hex aggressively to ensure you keep tempo.
Midgame
In the midgame you are looking to evolve your board of flooded minions and totems into a more substantial army capable of pushing overwhelming pressure on your opponent. Remember to trade before evolving eg. send your Totem Golems in their 2/3s before you transform them.
Evolve should be saved until you have usually 4-5 minions on the board. The possibility of Doomsayer is small but does exist so if you have many 1 drops being evolved in 2 drops, it may be advisable to have something in your hand that can deal with it before the end of your turn, for example Hex or even another Evolve.
Try to use your Evolve on a minion first before then casting Master of Evolution for the obvious extra value.
Sometimes you may have such great drops from your Tuskarr Totemics that it is better to hold off on evolving your board in order to gain maximum value from those summons.
Flamewreathed Faceless is an option choice for this deck. It may seem counter intuitive in an evolve deck however evolve really synergises with anything overstatted in health. Just like Totem Golem, your can sack these minions into other minions and when they are near death, then evolve them. You should therefore only look to evolve your Flamewreathed Facelesss after they have attacked one or two targets, as the "upgrade" will likely be a downgrade. Similarly Jewelled Scarab if you're facing a meta in which playing a 3 mana 1/1 isn't going to cause a fatal tempo loss (currently it is).
Card Choices & Key Plays
Why Tunnel Trogg? You might be thinking that Tunnel Trogg is an aggro minion but it is actually more flexible than that. 1 mana 1/3s are hard to deal with and with Shaman's overloading burn spells, including the new Stormcrack, Tunnel Trogg can allow for strong early game tempo plays. Essential in Shaman.
Can I still run Jeweled Scarab? Part of the difficulty in deciding which Shaman cards to cut from the midrange deck is that the class has strong cards versus aggro and control, but often not both. Lightning Storm and Healing Wave is often a dead draw against control but essential against aggro, and the opposite is true of Hex against control. Scarab is an essential Shaman card that let's you adapt according to the deck you're facing, and it synergises strongly withEvolve and Master of Evolution.
Why Bloodlust? Whilst it is very possible to find yourself evolving your larger minions into game ending legendaries, a more common scenario is that (when played correctly) you will often find yourself with a large board of weak/midgame minions. Remember that just 4 bloodlusted minions deal 12 damage before their own attack value is even included, this card wins about half of all games with this deck. In a clutch it can be used for value trades but this should only be done as a last ditch effort to maintain board control in the late game.
When do I Evolve/Master of Evolution? The best minions to upgrade are those with battlecries, of which Midrange Shaman typically runs many, plus the hero power totems that each will become a 2 drop. Prime targets and the average upgrade you'll obtain are listed below:
• Tuskarr Totemic: 3/2 > 3/4 (12%+ ability)
• Jewelled Scarab: 1/1 > 3/4 (12%+ ability)
• Hero Power Totem: 0/2 or 1/1 to 2/2 (15%+ ability)
• Silenced Flametongue Totem: 0/3 > 3/4 (12%+ ability)
• Twilight Hammer Elemental: 4/2 > 3/4 (12%+ ability)
Note that Spirit Wolves and Fire Elementals in particular are bad targets to evolve unless you have already attacked with them, in which case they will effectively be healed, however they are already so competitively statted for their cost that upgrade on average adds only a single stat point. One exception to this is if you are in desperate need of taunt, where evolving a 6 mana minion to a 7 mana minion has an almost 25% chance to give you a minion of comparable stats plus taunt.
Why no Eternal Sentinel and Elemental Destruction? Whilst this combination is very powerful at getting you back into the game, it more often clogs up your hand and limits your potential to gain that early board control in the first place. Given the meta this combo has been replaced with double Lightning Storm, however should the meta change or should your mileage vary it is still a viable addition for the deck.
Why Hammer of Twilight? The pros seem split on this weapon but it is about as strong a tempo and board control weapon as you can imagine and those are the two central pillars of midrange Shaman. Producing a token on death that not only trades with any weapon removal in the game but is also a target for evolution. I doubt that the 4 damage this card does will be an issue given Shamans strengths in dealing incremental damage to finish off any minions with more than 4hp.
WhY NoT OnyXIa? Blizzard's EU servers are not powerful enough to compute this level of value.
Darwin Award Winners
(The following players have achieved legend with this deck, if you have too then do let me know and I'll add you to the list)
This is a fantastic deck. Currently undefeated from rank 12 to 8.
I don't have Elemental Destruction so I replaced it with Lightning Storm
Works fine so far.
So many times I've been winning onboard state and as turn ends I evolve into a doomsayer and lose haha, fun deck tho
Won pretty much every single game with this deck,but I also lost EVERY.SINGLE.GAME against Hunters,I don't know if they are OP or this deck isn't great against them or I suck.
Hunters have always owned the Mid Range Shaman :(
Nice deck! I actually preferred the previous version with the thunder bluff valiant, hallazeal etc. I have to admit that making full use of hallazeal is rather difficult, i have only managed to use lightning storm with hallazeal once ( don't get me wrong, it was amazing. I screwed the murloc paladin over) but I just keep it because it was pack pulled and I wanted to try it out. Thunder bluff valiant has actually come up really big for me. He gives that nice damage push and actually nakes the totems great for trading! It helped me win against a cthun warrior as it kept churning out damage during fatigue, i brought him down from full health and 36 armour. Overall I've had a pretty good winrate after changing some stuff around, fun deck to play, would recommend.
The following changes have made the deck much smoother for me (rank 4 currently):
-2 Stormcrack; +1 Lightning Bolt +1 Lightning Storm
-1 Bloodlust; +1 Ancestral Knowledge
-1 Nerubian Prophet; +1 Eternal Sentinel
Reasonings--stormcrack isn't that good. Paying an extra mana vs. Bolt for one more damage doesn't make a difference nearly often enough for it to be a superior choice (early game it's typically overkill and will destroy your curve). Lightning storm is added for a second time to the deck so as to better combat zoo/general aggro. Knowing when to drop the two Storms and the lone Elemental Destruction will win you games.
Nerubian is often dead/an extremely bad topdeck late game. It's cool if it shows up in your opening hand, but outside of that the card doesn't pull its weight hard enough for me to care for it. Sentinel will help you keep up the aggression after dropping your AoE/card draw.
Bloodlust is clunky and expensive--a "win more" card for me more often than not when I was testing it. Typically if you have the board such that the boost to attack will give you lethal, you'll still have lethal in the near future regardless. As such, I've removed what it often the dead draw Bloodlust in favor of Ancestral, which provides the card draw this deck so desperately needs at times.
P.s. Try to combine the overload of the Lightning Storm with that of the Ancestral Knowledge if you have the room to do so lategame, then remove the overload with an Eternal Sentinel. Also, never forget the spell boost your Azures provide. Very potent when combined with our AoE.
Let me know your thoughts, both empirically and theorycrafting wise.
I'm still testing 1 stormcrack + 1 lighting bolt for now. Stormcrack helped me deal with Imp Gang Boss pretty well. I'm still not sure if you really need 3 AOEin this deck.
Bloodlust is really clunky most of the time. However, it's not always used in "win more" situations. Many times it helped me reverse the game from losing to winning. For example, I have 3 totems created from hero power with no ATK damage. Bloodlust turns them into 9 damage burst and help me finish the game. This situation is not that rare.
Agreed about Nerubian. This deck really depends a lot on your mulligan luck. When it works, it just works perfectly. When it doesn't, you just lose. haha
Lost 3 in a row with this deck, not enough card draw which seems to be a common theme in standard. At one point my hand was 2 Masters of Illusion and 1 stormcrack. I probably should of master of illusioned 1 of the masters, instead i played stormcrack on something I couldn't even kill (didn't have spell totem), he played C'Thun, and I was dead
Were you on 10 mana? If so there was a clear correct play that may have saved you (and definitely would have been better than using your lategame turn to non-lethally injure 1 minion ; ): hero power, master #1 targets the totem, master #2 target depends on what the totem turns into (master already has good stats for the mana so he's not a great evo target despite having a strong battlecry - he's just that good - so it's probably best to evo the totem twice, unless the first totem evo is really good and you want to keep it). That would leave you with either two 4/5s and a random 3-drop, or a 4/5, a random 5-drop, and a random 2-drop. Not as good as using master on one of your 6-drops, but that would have soaked up a bunch of C'Thun shots at least in your situation, and in general that's a pretty good turn worth of board presence.
I do agree though, this list needs draw. I'm running 1 AK right now and I'm thinking about making it 2. Hmm, or maybe Gnomish Inventor for another sick evolve target? Not sure if that synergy makes it worthwhile though, sometimes you're just gonna play the Gnome to cycle knowing it will die. Combo synergy and weak card draw isn't an ideal combination of things from the same card -you play draws because you don't HAVE your ideal combo pieces yet, but Gnome would be best to play when you do have an evolve card ready to play immediately - it's just an overpriced cycling card when you really need to draw, but it's a way to get lots of value from an evolve... Maybe it's more of a tech replacement for Nerub Prophet, as opposed to dedicated card draw? Hmm. There's obviously a ton of room to optimize and test out different techs of this deck - lots of 1 drops, lots of other class cards and neutral battlecry minions that are reasonable choices...
I don't think this deck is gonna be t1, probably not even t2 since it's such an RNG-fest... But it's so damn fun to play I'm gonna try my best to make it work anyway :D
I don't agree. I think you're probably just pretty bad. I've played the deck abit and it's worked out well. It's super fun too, which is always great. So, you know, learn to play. ^^
What rank are you at?
he is right, i have played it around 10 games and it is shit as hell, no i dont missplay