It's a pretty wild win condition that may actually be viable (probably after some refinement). Please check out the deck page for a detailed write-up and give it a like if you like it.
Yep, but you could say the same about Jade Druid (for which deck geist was printed), or for any deck which has a hard counter. It would also be unusual for the opponent to play geist in the very late game, as usually geist is only useful if played as soon as possible, before the opponent has the chance to play their 1-cost spells. If Hakkar becomes a real meta archetype, and people are running and playing Geist right at the end of the game after they've waited for you to play Hakkar, then sure, you got me. But even in this unlikely scenario, you're still in a position at the end of the game where you can gain infinite armour and summon infinite boards of shudderwocks, so this is its own very strong win condition, if the matchup is slow enough that you are able to get to this point.
Thankfully this is a Shudderwock deck with healing and armor generation as well as constant board fill so it doesn’t matter if Hakkar bloods get wrecked. Also Da Undatakah can get the deathrattle and then Shudderwock gets the battlecry. One geist isn’t enough in that scenario.
It's people like you that make this community so great. I have to admit that I'm not very eager to craft hakkar or 2 ice cream peddlers, but if I pull them from packs this is the first thing I'm going to try.
Include Moorabi and I will really be impressed. You can't make a proper Freeze shaman meme without him. I would take out one of the Mana tide totems. If you want a slower OTK with Hakkar then you want to draw less from your deck and generate more cards in your hand from Battlecry and Discover. Otherwise you will draw the Corrupted Bloods faster than your opponent on average if you are closer to fatigue.
Poor Moorabi, not even used in a freeze shaman deck
I tried to make Moorabi work so much. He’s just too expensive with really shitty stats. The most amazing thing he ever did was fill my hand with totems off a enemy mages frost nova. I couldn’t draw so I played a few more, he frost nova’d again and I was stuck with a full board of useless totems, a full hand with no way to drop anything, and an emote spamming mage hero powering me to death one turn at a time.
I really wish Moorabi worked on himself. I don't think he will ever be worth including as is. You know a legendary is bad when it doesn't fit into an archetype it was designed to create.
I tried to make Moorabi work so much. He’s just too expensive with really shitty stats. The most amazing thing he ever did was fill my hand with totems off a enemy mages frost nova. I couldn’t draw so I played a few more, he frost nova’d again and I was stuck with a full board of useless totems, a full hand with no way to drop anything, and an emote spamming mage hero powering me to death one turn at a time.
Lol if that's not torture then I don't know what is.
Poor Moorabi, not even used in a freeze shaman deck
I was thinking the same thing! Poor Moorabi was dead on arrival! :,(
I wonder if they changed him to make a copy AND reduce the cost by (1) if he would be more viable? Small change but... Maybe! if it was not so slow using Moorabi to make extra Saronite Chain Gangs in Shudderwock Shaman would be great. The more copies you can create for the bounce back the better!
It's people like you that make this community so great. I have to admit that I'm not very eager to craft hakkar or 2 ice cream peddlers, but if I pull them from packs this is the first thing I'm going to try.
Aw thank you friend :) it means a lot to get such nice comments like yours and other people's. I love theorycrafting and being able to share it with others makes it twice as fun. Now I hope that by some miracle this becomes meta-viable so I can bask in the glory of having invented a functional meme deck.
Include Moorabi and I will really be impressed. You can't make a proper Freeze shaman meme without him. I would take out one of the Mana tide totems. If you want a slower OTK with Hakkar then you want to draw less from your deck and generate more cards in your hand from Battlecry and Discover. Otherwise you will draw the Corrupted Bloods faster than your opponent on average if you are closer to fatigue.
Great point about the card draw, though I would hope by the very end of the game not to still have a mana tide on board. The problem is that combo decks (which shudderwock decks essentially are, or sort of combo-control hybrid) simply need as much card draw as possible, otherwise they can't get to their combo enablers or combo (i.e. Shudderwock) quickly or consistently enough a lot of the time, or they can't draw their control tools when they need them against aggro. I already had to compromise on normal Shudderwock card draw options (e.g. Far Sight and Acolyte of Pain) to make room for all of the ice cream-related freeze shaman memes and I think reducing your total card draw options to one card would be a bit too far, in my opinion.
Also I should say that Moorabi was one of the first cards I insta-included in the deck, but I removed him quickly because he's just that useless lmao. I mean he even synergises with your gameplan - freeze battlecry minions to be able to play them again and increase the number of battlecries 'stored' in your Shudderwock. I just honestly couldn't justify cutting anything for him.
Here's my suggestion: if you want to go full meme, you might get away with cutting one Rain of Toads for a Moorabi. It would most likely make the deck worse, but the meme value is extremely high if you can make an actual functioning deck with him, so it might just be worth it.
Poor Moorabi, not even used in a freeze shaman deck
I was thinking the same thing! Poor Moorabi was dead on arrival! :,(
I wonder if they changed him to make a copy AND reduce the cost by (1) if he would be more viable? Small change but... Maybe! if it was not so slow using Moorabi to make extra Saronite Chain Gangs in Shudderwock Shaman would be great. The more copies you can create for the bounce back the better!
I think that's a great suggestion for a small, balanced buff. Honestly that may still be unbalanced, i.e. he may still be unplayable lol, so perhaps he also deserves a couple extra health. Blizzard really don't like buffing cards though. In fact I'm not sure if they've ever given a card a straight, unconditional buff. They've done things like increase cost and increase stats slightly, with the net result still being a nerf, but I can't recall a single straight-up buff. Oh well, we can only hope.
By the way Starving Buzzard is the classic example of a card which was technically buffed in one way and massively nerfed in another:
As already said in your deck comment section, what is the advantage of playing this versus the classical Lifedrinker combo? It's only slower and more boring in the end.
To some people, playing the strongest version of a deck that a lot of people are already playing is boring and playing a wacky hard to pull off combo that is extremely satisfying when it works out is fun. It's all a matter of preference. If winning is your main source of fun, this is probably not the deck for you. However, if your main source of fun is trying out weird combos, then this deck is great.
As already said in your deck comment section, what is the advantage of playing this versus the classical Lifedrinker combo? It's only slower and more boring in the end.
You think it's more interesting to deal a lot of direct face damage as opposed to gaining effectively infinite armour/healing and killing your opponent through exponentially corrupting their deck? Regardless, whether or not something is boring or fun is entirely subjective. I personally think the standard lifedrinker list is extremely boring, but I find the idea of this deck very fun.
I'll post my reply to your other comment here, too:
You're most likely correct, yes, lol. The argument for this deck is that if lifedrinker is your win condition, you need to play lifedrinker in the midgame (obviously), which is a mediocre tempo play. My combo requires you to play Ice Cream Peddler in the mid game, but while also casting Cryostasis on taunts, both of which are decent survival/stall plays. My deck should be better at surviving until the late game, I believe, and if this is correct then it's arguable that my deck has greater efficacy than the standard Lifedrinker combo, because if either my or the standard deck make it until they can cast a fully powered-up Shudderwock, either is extremely likely to win, and so by this logic the more survivable deck should usually be the more effective one. The major downside with mine is that the shudderwock win condition takes time to ramp up, whereas lifedrinker has an immediate effect. This should only matter where your opponent has an OTK they're waiting to set up, and even that shouldn't be an issue because at this point you will be gaining so much armour that non-exodia OTKs likely won't be able to kill you (my deck also has the fringe benefit of ruining Mecha'thun OTKs). This all being the case, in theory my version is only worse than the standard version versus exodia (i.e. infinite damage) OTKS, so exodia mage, exodia paladin and probably APM priest too.
The other major downsides of my deck are a) that the setup takes a lot more effort than the standard version, and b) that you have to run Hyldnir Frostrider and sort-of have to run Cryostasis, lol. I honestly believe that the pure stats bomb of Zentimo + Cryostasis on a bundle of taunts (Chain Gang or Rain of Toads) will actually be powerful though. You don't care if the taunts don't attack for a turn as long as they protect your face. Also, regarding Frostrider, a lot of the time it will just be freezing totems and so in these cases your other minions being frozen doesn't actually matter at all, in which case you're actually getting a good tempo play of a 3 mana 4/4 for effectively no downside.
Yes you read that correctly. Here is my creation, perhaps amazing, probably awful: Ice Cream Shaman.
The deck works by getting infinite armour and healing in the very late game via Ice Cream Peddler, Hyldnir Frostrider and Shudderwock, and also via 1x Plated Beetle, 1x Rotten Applebaum and 1x Hakkar, the Soulflayer + Da Undatakah + Shudderwock, while shuffling exponentially increasing numbers of Corrupted Bloods into your opponent's deck until they eventually kill themselves with card draw.
It's a pretty wild win condition that may actually be viable (probably after some refinement). Please check out the deck page for a detailed write-up and give it a like if you like it.
Thanks!
And then your opponent plays Skulking Geist
Yep, but you could say the same about Jade Druid (for which deck geist was printed), or for any deck which has a hard counter. It would also be unusual for the opponent to play geist in the very late game, as usually geist is only useful if played as soon as possible, before the opponent has the chance to play their 1-cost spells. If Hakkar becomes a real meta archetype, and people are running and playing Geist right at the end of the game after they've waited for you to play Hakkar, then sure, you got me. But even in this unlikely scenario, you're still in a position at the end of the game where you can gain infinite armour and summon infinite boards of shudderwocks, so this is its own very strong win condition, if the matchup is slow enough that you are able to get to this point.
Madness, this is absolute madness lol. If this works I’ll definitelly seek to try it out myself haha.
Add me up if you're looking for someone to play friendly matches with! I play on EU. LuckyScrub#2745
Thankfully this is a Shudderwock deck with healing and armor generation as well as constant board fill so it doesn’t matter if Hakkar bloods get wrecked. Also Da Undatakah can get the deathrattle and then Shudderwock gets the battlecry. One geist isn’t enough in that scenario.
It's people like you that make this community so great. I have to admit that I'm not very eager to craft hakkar or 2 ice cream peddlers, but if I pull them from packs this is the first thing I'm going to try.
Include Moorabi and I will really be impressed. You can't make a proper Freeze shaman meme without him. I would take out one of the Mana tide totems. If you want a slower OTK with Hakkar then you want to draw less from your deck and generate more cards in your hand from Battlecry and Discover. Otherwise you will draw the Corrupted Bloods faster than your opponent on average if you are closer to fatigue.
I tried to make Moorabi work so much. He’s just too expensive with really shitty stats. The most amazing thing he ever did was fill my hand with totems off a enemy mages frost nova. I couldn’t draw so I played a few more, he frost nova’d again and I was stuck with a full board of useless totems, a full hand with no way to drop anything, and an emote spamming mage hero powering me to death one turn at a time.
Awesome deck.
I really wish Moorabi worked on himself. I don't think he will ever be worth including as is. You know a legendary is bad when it doesn't fit into an archetype it was designed to create.
Lol if that's not torture then I don't know what is.
I was thinking the same thing! Poor Moorabi was dead on arrival! :,(
I wonder if they changed him to make a copy AND reduce the cost by (1) if he would be more viable? Small change but... Maybe! if it was not so slow using Moorabi to make extra Saronite Chain Gangs in Shudderwock Shaman would be great. The more copies you can create for the bounce back the better!
Aw thank you friend :) it means a lot to get such nice comments like yours and other people's. I love theorycrafting and being able to share it with others makes it twice as fun. Now I hope that by some miracle this becomes meta-viable so I can bask in the glory of having invented a functional meme deck.
Lmao he was one of the first 5 or so cards I added when making the deck, but he went pretty much just as quickly. He's just that useless. Poor dude :(
Great point about the card draw, though I would hope by the very end of the game not to still have a mana tide on board. The problem is that combo decks (which shudderwock decks essentially are, or sort of combo-control hybrid) simply need as much card draw as possible, otherwise they can't get to their combo enablers or combo (i.e. Shudderwock) quickly or consistently enough a lot of the time, or they can't draw their control tools when they need them against aggro. I already had to compromise on normal Shudderwock card draw options (e.g. Far Sight and Acolyte of Pain) to make room for all of the ice cream-related freeze shaman memes and I think reducing your total card draw options to one card would be a bit too far, in my opinion.
Also I should say that Moorabi was one of the first cards I insta-included in the deck, but I removed him quickly because he's just that useless lmao. I mean he even synergises with your gameplan - freeze battlecry minions to be able to play them again and increase the number of battlecries 'stored' in your Shudderwock. I just honestly couldn't justify cutting anything for him.
Here's my suggestion: if you want to go full meme, you might get away with cutting one Rain of Toads for a Moorabi. It would most likely make the deck worse, but the meme value is extremely high if you can make an actual functioning deck with him, so it might just be worth it.
I think that's a great suggestion for a small, balanced buff. Honestly that may still be unbalanced, i.e. he may still be unplayable lol, so perhaps he also deserves a couple extra health. Blizzard really don't like buffing cards though. In fact I'm not sure if they've ever given a card a straight, unconditional buff. They've done things like increase cost and increase stats slightly, with the net result still being a nerf, but I can't recall a single straight-up buff. Oh well, we can only hope.
By the way Starving Buzzard is the classic example of a card which was technically buffed in one way and massively nerfed in another:
They did once buff Unleash the Hounds by dropping the cost from 4 to 2, but it was quickly followed by a nerf that put it at 3.
Did they really? Interesting, thank you. I can’t remember that, or perhaps hadn’t started playing yet then.
To some people, playing the strongest version of a deck that a lot of people are already playing is boring and playing a wacky hard to pull off combo that is extremely satisfying when it works out is fun. It's all a matter of preference. If winning is your main source of fun, this is probably not the deck for you. However, if your main source of fun is trying out weird combos, then this deck is great.
You think it's more interesting to deal a lot of direct face damage as opposed to gaining effectively infinite armour/healing and killing your opponent through exponentially corrupting their deck? Regardless, whether or not something is boring or fun is entirely subjective. I personally think the standard lifedrinker list is extremely boring, but I find the idea of this deck very fun.
I'll post my reply to your other comment here, too:
The buff was very soon after Beta ended, and the nerf was around the time that Naxx came out. So yeah, good chance you weren't playing yet.