I know many people dislike the Evolve-mechanic, but I'm actually really thrilled that we're going to get two new Evolve-cards with the new Expansion - and one of them even a weapon!
I've been trying to get some competitive Evolve-Deck running since Frozen Throne and the new additions might finally do the trick.
Yes, in know: It won't be Top Tier. It won't be consistent and reliable. But it will be fun! I simply love clown fiesta!
Don't worry! I already booked a room in the Asylum! (And I'll play my Evolve Shaman and will surely have a great time!)
Anybody else?? No one?? Okay. I can live with that...
New evolve cards are pretty bad imo. They cost way too much. If you want to play this kind of deck you need to play for tempo, meaning you want to create big board on turn 3 to 5. If you try to setup a board to then play that 3/3 you are gonna have bad time. The same applies to weapon. Turn 5 do nothing is pretty bad unless you got a board to evolve in which case you are better off playing unstable or just loatheb to counter aoe.
Edit:
The spider card is bad.
Mutate is far better than explosive, put second copy in.
Why did you put so many return effects? You want to create big boards not remove em.
What you also might consider is putting in some lackey generators (using grand lackey is potentially great value to get back into game after board sweep)
If you got two unstable evolutions you might as well use kragwa and yogg.
Also, you lack draw. You need either spirits or Mana totems and/or far sight.
New evolve cards are pretty bad imo. They cost way too much. If you want to play this kind of deck you need to play for tempo, meaning you want to create big board on turn 3 to 5. If you try to setup a board to then play that 3/3 you are gonna have bad time. The same applies to weapon. Turn 5 do nothing is pretty bad unless you got a board to evolve in which case you are better off playing unstable or just loatheb to counter aoe.
Edit:
The spider card is bad.
Mutate is far better than explosive, put second copy in.
Why did you put so many return effects? You want to create big boards not remove em.
What you also might consider is putting in some lackey generators (using grand lackey is potentially great value to get back into game after board sweep)
If you got two unstable evolutions you might as well use kragwa and yogg.
Also, you lack draw. You need either spirits or Mana totems and/or far sight.
Thanks for your comments!
I don't think that the new cards are that bad - at least not for the deck I'm planning to use them in. You might be right about Boggspine Knuckles being too expensive - I'll try that out. The only upside might be that you can equip the weapon and use the effect a round later - so you can save some mana afterwards. (for example: Round 9 Chaingang + Knuckles, Round 10 Doppelgangster + Barista). That's something I couldn't pull off so far. We'll see how that turns out.
Bogstrok Clacker is quite useful imo, because first of all it's a minion! And we need a lot of minons to make this deck work. That he also evolves up to two minions might turn out pretty strong, too.
On your other comments: I like Pantry Spider a lot. In the early game it's even better than the hares, because aggressive opponents usually won't care to waste ressources to remove both of them. So you usually got at least one of the spiders left to evolve the round after.
I'm not sure about Mutate being better than Explosive Evolution. I've been swapping them for quite a while. Mutate is nice, because of the 0 Mana cost. But pushing a 4 Mana to a 7 Mana Minion has worked better for me. That's why I'm sticking with that version at the moment.
The Copy/Return effects (Youthful Brewmaster, Zola the Gorgon, Barista Lynchen) are in the deck to ensure that we always have enough minion-generators ready. (The Barista on the Hares or Doppelgangster gives you three copies - which will again each summon three minions. That's pretty strong in the later phases of the games - especially, if we are already Thrall, Deathseer)
You're right about the card-draw. I've tried different variants, also including instant-draw-minons (which are in this case better than Mana Tide Totem, because we can directly evolve them). But so far, I seldom ran out of cards (especially with the copy-generators as mentioned above).
Lackey generators are not really useful for me, because you don't want cheap minions. I know, the only Evolve-decks that ever worked in HS-history were the more aggressive ones (like Jade Evolve Shaman, back after MSoG). But this deck is constructed as a midrange deck. It works better for me and is more fun to play. I've tried out different variants with cheaper minion-generators. But those are mostly useless in the later game-phases. So starting off with at least 3 or 4 Mana-cost ones is more effective on the long run.
Also tried out Kragwa (which is admittedly insane with Unstable Evolution), but having a hand full of evolve-effects is not that strong, if I lack minions to play them on. So I went for the "Copy/Return-Package" instead, which definetly works better for me.
And Yogg is too much RNG - even for me.
Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate your advice! And I honestly thank you for actually looking into my deck and sharing your thoughts!
I'm kind of excited for the Boggspine Knuckles. I tend to think of it as an on-curve play, where if you're evolving only one minion on the turn you play it (particularly if it can value trade), that's great. The second swing next turn is when you do a reload. Trying to save it for late game seems like you're missing out on the tempo of a 4-attack weapon swing.
New evolve cards are pretty bad imo. They cost way too much. If you want to play this kind of deck you need to play for tempo, meaning you want to create big board on turn 3 to 5. If you try to setup a board to then play that 3/3 you are gonna have bad time. The same applies to weapon. Turn 5 do nothing is pretty bad unless you got a board to evolve in which case you are better off playing unstable or just loatheb to counter aoe.
Edit:
The spider card is bad.
Mutate is far better than explosive, put second copy in.
Why did you put so many return effects? You want to create big boards not remove em.
What you also might consider is putting in some lackey generators (using grand lackey is potentially great value to get back into game after board sweep)
If you got two unstable evolutions you might as well use kragwa and yogg.
Also, you lack draw. You need either spirits or Mana totems and/or far sight.
Thanks for your comments!
I don't think that the new cards are that bad - at least not for the deck I'm planning to use them in. You might be right about Boggspine Knuckles being too expensive - I'll try that out. The only upside might be that you can equip the weapon and use the effect a round later - so you can save some mana afterwards. (for example: Round 9 Chaingang + Knuckles, Round 10 Doppelgangster + Barista). That's something I couldn't pull off so far. We'll see how that turns out.
Bogstrok Clacker is quite useful imo, because first of all it's a minion! And we need a lot of minons to make this deck work. That he also evolves up to two minions might turn out pretty strong, too.
On your other comments: I like Pantry Spider a lot. In the early game it's even better than the hares, because aggressive opponents usually won't care to waste ressources to remove both of them. So you usually got at least one of the spiders left to evolve the round after.
I'm not sure about Mutate being better than Explosive Evolution. I've been swapping them for quite a while. Mutate is nice, because of the 0 Mana cost. But pushing a 4 Mana to a 7 Mana Minion has worked better for me. That's why I'm sticking with that version at the moment.
The Copy/Return effects (Youthful Brewmaster, Zola the Gorgon, Barista Lynchen) are in the deck to ensure that we always have enough minion-generators ready. (The Barista on the Hares or Doppelgangster gives you three copies - which will again each summon three minions. That's pretty strong in the later phases of the games - especially, if we are already Thrall, Deathseer)
You're right about the card-draw. I've tried different variants, also including instant-draw-minons (which are in this case better than Mana Tide Totem, because we can directly evolve them). But so far, I seldom ran out of cards (especially with the copy-generators as mentioned above).
Lackey generators are not really useful for me, because you don't want cheap minions. I know, the only Evolve-decks that ever worked in HS-history were the more aggressive ones (like Jade Evolve Shaman, back after MSoG). But this deck is constructed as a midrange deck. It works better for me and is more fun to play. I've tried out different variants with cheaper minion-generators. But those are mostly useless in the later game-phases. So starting off with at least 3 or 4 Mana-cost ones is more effective on the long run.
Also tried out Kragwa (which is admittedly insane with Unstable Evolution), but having a hand full of evolve-effects is not that strong, if I lack minions to play them on. So I went for the "Copy/Return-Package" instead, which definetly works better for me.
And Yogg is too much RNG - even for me.
Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate your advice! And I honestly thank you for actually looking into my deck and sharing your thoughts!
Cheers!
The thing is that three 6 drops on turn 10 won't win you any games. You want three six drops on turn 5. You need to think about evolve shaman as a poor, random and fun cousin of darkest hour warlock. You can win only by doing truly unfair stuff. Like turn 3 hare + coin + evolve. You want to get ahead early because you have got no comeback mechanics.
Bogstrok Clacker does seem like a good card, but to make it playable you need to have board, and your pre-evolve boards are pretty... well.. shit. 3x 2/2 or 3x 1/1 is far too easy to remove. Otherwise its just a 3/3 do nothing. Same goes to Master of Evolution, its just a bad bad version of evolve lackey. I dont think either of them is playable in a deck like this.
About spider.. the point of this deck is usually to play understatted minions (or discounted ones) and eveolve em straight away, otherwise you are going to fall behind. If you are facing aggro and basically do nothing for the first 3 or 4 turns you basically lost anyway. And spider is just two bodies. Rattling Rascal is far superior option with mutate since you end up with two 5 mana bodies on turn 4, while you would need to evo two spiders to get something decent.
Mutate - it's a 0 mana spell, you can play it anytime. Explosive Evolution is ok if you do something absolutely ridiculous like turn 4: Coin + Electra Stormsurge + Explosive Evolution resulting in turn four 9 mana drop. Otherwise its just an expensive mutate, that alot of times just feels awkward to play.
About returns.. You should worry about creating unfair board rather than preparing for a long game. The goal for deck like this is to get ahead and outtempo the opponent. If you plan for turn 15-20 you are basically losing to any kind of deck. Aggro will destroy you early on and control will do the same late in the game.
Lackeys are insane in this deck. All of them generate insane value for you (perhaps apart from the dragon one). EVIL Totem is stupid good, so is Sludge Slurper. Barista in deck like this basically reads turn 5 do nothing. You don't want your pre-evo minions sticking around hoping you will get to evolve them at some point in the future.
Also, don't read into my comments as hostile. I kinda fell in love with evo shaman sometime ago since I basically only play meme decks. Yogg is pretty great and can provide board clear/reach in the endgame if you push the opponent hard enough and then run out of steam. I basically created my deck for the Unstable Evolution + Yogg-Saron, Hope's End combination.
Here's the list im running now. It's not a top tier deck (never will be tbh). I dont care about climbing the ladder, so just dont bother counting winrate/matchups etc. The list is a slightly changed list of Roffle's deck (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDrdJon3oEA). Its not refined at all, and I put some stuff just for it to be extra stupid like electra and Deathseer. Works out pretty ok-ish. Gets beat pretty bad by all the "tryhard" deck but that just how it is with meme decks.
Neither of them worked for me, but in principle they are both good cards for this kind of deck.
As to making it a highlander. No, I dont think there is. "Reno" decks are usually either universal control decks or endgame combo deck. Neither of those approaches works here, and you lose alot of consistency. I wouldn't approach it.
The thing is that three 6 drops on turn 10 won't win you any games. You want three six drops on turn 5. You need to think about evolve shaman as a poor, random and fun cousin of darkest hour warlock. You can win only by doing truly unfair stuff. Like turn 3 hare + coin + evolve. You want to get ahead early because you have got no comeback mechanics.
Bogstrok Clacker does seem like a good card, but to make it playable you need to have board, and your pre-evolve boards are pretty... well.. shit. 3x 2/2 or 3x 1/1 is far too easy to remove. Otherwise its just a 3/3 do nothing. Same goes to Master of Evolution, its just a bad bad version of evolve lackey. I dont think either of them is playable in a deck like this.
About spider.. the point of this deck is usually to play understatted minions (or discounted ones) and eveolve em straight away, otherwise you are going to fall behind. If you are facing aggro and basically do nothing for the first 3 or 4 turns you basically lost anyway. And spider is just two bodies. Rattling Rascal is far superior option with mutate since you end up with two 5 mana bodies on turn 4, while you would need to evo two spiders to get something decent.
Mutate - it's a 0 mana spell, you can play it anytime. Explosive Evolution is ok if you do something absolutely ridiculous like turn 4: Coin + Electra Stormsurge + Explosive Evolution resulting in turn four 9 mana drop. Otherwise its just an expensive mutate, that alot of times just feels awkward to play.
About returns.. You should worry about creating unfair board rather than preparing for a long game. The goal for deck like this is to get ahead and outtempo the opponent. If you plan for turn 15-20 you are basically losing to any kind of deck. Aggro will destroy you early on and control will do the same late in the game.
Lackeys are insane in this deck. All of them generate insane value for you (perhaps apart from the dragon one). EVIL Totem is stupid good, so is Sludge Slurper. Barista in deck like this basically reads turn 5 do nothing. You don't want your pre-evo minions sticking around hoping you will get to evolve them at some point in the future.
Also, don't read into my comments as hostile. I kinda fell in love with evo shaman sometime ago since I basically only play meme decks. Yogg is pretty great and can provide board clear/reach in the endgame if you push the opponent hard enough and then run out of steam. I basically created my deck for the Unstable Evolution + Yogg-Saron, Hope's End combination.
Here's the list im running now. It's not a top tier deck (never will be tbh). I dont care about climbing the ladder, so just dont bother counting winrate/matchups etc. The list is a slightly changed list of Roffle's deck (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDrdJon3oEA). Its not refined at all, and I put some stuff just for it to be extra stupid like electra and Deathseer. Works out pretty ok-ish. Gets beat pretty bad by all the "tryhard" deck but that just how it is with meme decks.
Shudderwok - doesnt work too well with Thrall Hero
Thanks a lot! I'm not taking your comments as hostile - on the contrary! Actually being able to discuss Evolve Shaman Decks is great!
Thanks for the Video-link also! Seeing a deck in play is always better than just discussing it in theory.
I think your analysis is absolutely correct. The Evolve-idea surely works best, if you are able to develop a strong board early on and keep evolving it. I've just been facing so many Control-Decks lately that keeping the early board has been almost impossible. (The available boardclears in wild for Priest and Warlock are insane by now...). So I had to find a way to make it work with my whole board being swiped away every other turn. Under these conditions having 3 minions on board with mana values around 4/5 worked fair enough. And starting off with 1-Mana-Lackeys beyond turn 5 just didn't work out for me.
My games usually take around 10-15 turns, so including Barista Lynchen to create more minion-generators has worked quite well for me.
I had versions running Rattling Rascal. The problem is you wouldn't want to play him on turn 4 if you didn't have Mutate in hand. But for later game phases he'd surely provide more value. (Greedier versions could also include Former Champion or even Big-Time Racketeer - but those really turned out to be too expensive for me).
I'll surely try to implement some of your ideas. But as you said - we won't be able to beat Top-Tier decks on a regular basis. (But actually I just got a winstreak from Diamond 10 to Diamond 9 with my deck. Might have been pure luck, though...)
Anyway: Good luck and have fun! And thanks again!
Edit: Just realized, that Serpentshrine Portal might be a nice addition. Being able to remove an enemy-minion and summoning a 3-Mana-minion for yourself might turn the tide in some cases. The Overload might turn out as a problem, but I'll definetely try it out.
The Outlands are near!
I know many people dislike the Evolve-mechanic, but I'm actually really thrilled that we're going to get two new Evolve-cards with the new Expansion - and one of them even a weapon!
I've been trying to get some competitive Evolve-Deck running since Frozen Throne and the new additions might finally do the trick.
Yes, in know: It won't be Top Tier. It won't be consistent and reliable. But it will be fun! I simply love clown fiesta!
Don't worry! I already booked a room in the Asylum! (And I'll play my Evolve Shaman and will surely have a great time!)
Anybody else?? No one?? Okay. I can live with that...
Putting Deathseer in a Deck...
A bold move, but a foolish one nonetheless.
Anyway random evolutions can be fun for sure.
Yeah, I'm a happy fool!
Told you so... :-)
I am, i want this thing in golden aswell
Yes, my friend! That's the spirit!
Let's get ready to evolve!! :)
Why would you NOT put Deathseer in a deck? I'd rather pay 2 mana to evolve a minion, than for a Totem
New evolve cards are pretty bad imo. They cost way too much. If you want to play this kind of deck you need to play for tempo, meaning you want to create big board on turn 3 to 5. If you try to setup a board to then play that 3/3 you are gonna have bad time. The same applies to weapon. Turn 5 do nothing is pretty bad unless you got a board to evolve in which case you are better off playing unstable or just loatheb to counter aoe.
Edit:
The spider card is bad.
Mutate is far better than explosive, put second copy in.
Why did you put so many return effects? You want to create big boards not remove em.
What you also might consider is putting in some lackey generators (using grand lackey is potentially great value to get back into game after board sweep)
If you got two unstable evolutions you might as well use kragwa and yogg.
Also, you lack draw. You need either spirits or Mana totems and/or far sight.
Thanks for your comments!
I don't think that the new cards are that bad - at least not for the deck I'm planning to use them in. You might be right about Boggspine Knuckles being too expensive - I'll try that out. The only upside might be that you can equip the weapon and use the effect a round later - so you can save some mana afterwards. (for example: Round 9 Chaingang + Knuckles, Round 10 Doppelgangster + Barista). That's something I couldn't pull off so far. We'll see how that turns out.
Bogstrok Clacker is quite useful imo, because first of all it's a minion! And we need a lot of minons to make this deck work. That he also evolves up to two minions might turn out pretty strong, too.
On your other comments: I like Pantry Spider a lot. In the early game it's even better than the hares, because aggressive opponents usually won't care to waste ressources to remove both of them. So you usually got at least one of the spiders left to evolve the round after.
I'm not sure about Mutate being better than Explosive Evolution. I've been swapping them for quite a while. Mutate is nice, because of the 0 Mana cost. But pushing a 4 Mana to a 7 Mana Minion has worked better for me. That's why I'm sticking with that version at the moment.
The Copy/Return effects (Youthful Brewmaster, Zola the Gorgon, Barista Lynchen) are in the deck to ensure that we always have enough minion-generators ready. (The Barista on the Hares or Doppelgangster gives you three copies - which will again each summon three minions. That's pretty strong in the later phases of the games - especially, if we are already Thrall, Deathseer)
You're right about the card-draw. I've tried different variants, also including instant-draw-minons (which are in this case better than Mana Tide Totem, because we can directly evolve them). But so far, I seldom ran out of cards (especially with the copy-generators as mentioned above).
Lackey generators are not really useful for me, because you don't want cheap minions. I know, the only Evolve-decks that ever worked in HS-history were the more aggressive ones (like Jade Evolve Shaman, back after MSoG). But this deck is constructed as a midrange deck. It works better for me and is more fun to play. I've tried out different variants with cheaper minion-generators. But those are mostly useless in the later game-phases. So starting off with at least 3 or 4 Mana-cost ones is more effective on the long run.
Also tried out Kragwa (which is admittedly insane with Unstable Evolution), but having a hand full of evolve-effects is not that strong, if I lack minions to play them on. So I went for the "Copy/Return-Package" instead, which definetly works better for me.
And Yogg is too much RNG - even for me.
Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate your advice! And I honestly thank you for actually looking into my deck and sharing your thoughts!
Cheers!
Corridor Creeper and Thing from Below? Also, maybe there is a way to make this a Highlander deck?
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
I'm kind of excited for the Boggspine Knuckles. I tend to think of it as an on-curve play, where if you're evolving only one minion on the turn you play it (particularly if it can value trade), that's great. The second swing next turn is when you do a reload. Trying to save it for late game seems like you're missing out on the tempo of a 4-attack weapon swing.
Also, don't read into my comments as hostile. I kinda fell in love with evo shaman sometime ago since I basically only play meme decks. Yogg is pretty great and can provide board clear/reach in the endgame if you push the opponent hard enough and then run out of steam. I basically created my deck for the Unstable Evolution + Yogg-Saron, Hope's End combination.
Here's the list im running now. It's not a top tier deck (never will be tbh). I dont care about climbing the ladder, so just dont bother counting winrate/matchups etc. The list is a slightly changed list of Roffle's deck (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDrdJon3oEA). Its not refined at all, and I put some stuff just for it to be extra stupid like electra and Deathseer. Works out pretty ok-ish. Gets beat pretty bad by all the "tryhard" deck but that just how it is with meme decks.
[deck]AAEBAYHaAwqBBPUE6awCtssC688C8+cCmfsCjIUDwYkDx7YDCrIG+qoC9r0C+b8C3+kCtJcDxpkD+aUD2KkDorYDAA==[/deck]
Other cards I tried in this deck that didn't work out for me, were too clunky or just felt too tryhard-ish:
Neither of them worked for me, but in principle they are both good cards for this kind of deck.
As to making it a highlander. No, I dont think there is. "Reno" decks are usually either universal control decks or endgame combo deck. Neither of those approaches works here, and you lose alot of consistency. I wouldn't approach it.
Thanks a lot! I'm not taking your comments as hostile - on the contrary! Actually being able to discuss Evolve Shaman Decks is great!
Thanks for the Video-link also! Seeing a deck in play is always better than just discussing it in theory.
I think your analysis is absolutely correct. The Evolve-idea surely works best, if you are able to develop a strong board early on and keep evolving it. I've just been facing so many Control-Decks lately that keeping the early board has been almost impossible. (The available boardclears in wild for Priest and Warlock are insane by now...). So I had to find a way to make it work with my whole board being swiped away every other turn. Under these conditions having 3 minions on board with mana values around 4/5 worked fair enough. And starting off with 1-Mana-Lackeys beyond turn 5 just didn't work out for me.
My games usually take around 10-15 turns, so including Barista Lynchen to create more minion-generators has worked quite well for me.
I had versions running Rattling Rascal. The problem is you wouldn't want to play him on turn 4 if you didn't have Mutate in hand. But for later game phases he'd surely provide more value. (Greedier versions could also include Former Champion or even Big-Time Racketeer - but those really turned out to be too expensive for me).
I'll surely try to implement some of your ideas. But as you said - we won't be able to beat Top-Tier decks on a regular basis. (But actually I just got a winstreak from Diamond 10 to Diamond 9 with my deck. Might have been pure luck, though...)
Anyway: Good luck and have fun! And thanks again!
Edit: Just realized, that Serpentshrine Portal might be a nice addition. Being able to remove an enemy-minion and summoning a 3-Mana-minion for yourself might turn the tide in some cases. The Overload might turn out as a problem, but I'll definetely try it out.