Budget Deck of the Week #5: Midrange Shaman
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
Some claim Hearthstone is Pay to Win. We believe that’s simply not true. With a little bit of practice and understanding of game mechanics you can easily find success with cheaply made decks. Each Monday we’ll give you a budget deck that you can easily craft with little to no time/effort/gold. Some of these will help you get up in the ranks early on, some may even get you to legendary. Make sure you check all our past budget decks if this one is not to your liking.
This week’s budget deck is going to be a little more expensive than our past ones, however, for 1,700 dust you can have a highly competitive deck. How competitive you might ask? Competitive enough that this deck list was used by not only the 3rd place winner, but also the overall winner of this weekend’s Tavern Takeover Tournament. Both StrifeCro and KitKatz used this exact deck this weekend and it’s the most efficient deck that was played.
The only epic of this deck is Doomhammer, and it’s a fairly important card with Rockbiter Weapon. Now you could potentially substitute Doomhammer for Stormforged Axe but it’s really going to make the deck a lot less potent if you do. The rares in this deck (especially the neutral ones) are all cards you should strive to get early on anyway as they are commonly used in many decks and you’ll get the best bang for the buck with them in future deck building.
Total Crafting Cost: 1,700 Dust
StrifeCro Midrange Shaman
Class: Shaman
Cards sorted by Low Cost
Shaman (18)
- Earth Shock x2
- Lightning Bolt x2
- Rockbiter Weapon x2
- Flametongue Totem x2
- Feral Spirit x2
- Hex x2
- Lightning Storm
- Unbound Elemental x2
- Doomhammer
- Fire Elemental x2
Neutral (12)
- Argent Squire x2
- Harvest Golem x2
- Chillwind Yeti x2
- Defender of Argus x2
- Azure Drake x2
- Argent Commander x2
Mulligan
How to mulligan should be relatively easy when you play this deck. You should always try and have a Feral Spirit if you can as it’s the card that will help set the tone for you into your late game as it’s very difficult to deal with. If you have the coin one of the best opening hands for you will be an Unbound Elemental you will play turn 2 with the Coin and then turn 3 Feral Spirit. If you have a Lightning Bolt or Argent Squire in your hand you should keep those to keep an early tempo going, but for the most part you want to aggressively mulligan for that Feral Spirit.
The Strategy
Shaman decks in my opinion are the most difficult to play because of the overload mechanic. You really have to know when is the best time to play those cards and think your turn through fully because it does have serious ramifications on what you can do next turn. For the most part, unless you have the Coin/Unbound Elemental for turn 2 and Feral Spirit for turn 3, your best play on turn 2 is simply a totem. This whole deck is around getting and keeping board presence while keeping your opponent slowed down. Once you start gaining that edge there is a lot of burst damage you can do with Doomhammer/Rockbiter Weapon, Flametongue Totem, and Argent Commander. Late game you will be controlling the game with your larger than life minions.
The weakness of this deck can certainly be aggro, especially zoo. However, with the right draw and mulligan you have a decent chance against aggro/zoo decks. It’s all about keeping the early tempo and get some well timed board clears and you’ll be taking this deck unto the high ranks in no time.
If you decide to try out this deck, let us know in the comments below on how it went!
I run a similar (and a bit more expensive) deck like this and I must say it is pretty efficient in the current metagame, even against zoo, assuming you are doing smart trades and have at least some luck. For serious ladder play, especially at ranks 20-7 I would advise to put in a 2nd lightning storm because of the abundance of zoo decks at the moment.
Shaman’s starting to become the new Druid, I think. It has a lot of neutral match-ups, and that means it doesn’t usually get stomped. Also, how sweet is Doomhammer/Rockbiter?
Yes, as a druid player myself I’d agree on your opinion there, especially since druid (both token and ramp) have relative trouble with the current meta, shaman is filing that nicely, at the current moment I’m having little trouble against zoo, and miracle is mostly forced to spend their combo cards on removal and subsequentialy I tend to starve them down. The Doomhammer/Rockbiter combo (same applies to Al’Akir/Rockbiter combo) won me quite a few games so far, occasionally it may serve even as a emergency removal (and it being a 2 attack/turn weapon means you still can hit the face if needed), while it may not seem like much, even doing 4 hp / round to the face can swing the game in your favor since the opponent might get nervous. Also, I didn’t notice much presence of Harrison Jones/Ooze in the current meta, hence the value from Doomhamer is enormous. Yet, if you suspect your opponent is saving a weapon removal in their hand, I’d suggest waiting at least to turn 6 so you can swing that 10 damage to the face.
Played this last night and had a bit of trouble with zoolock and miracle rogue, but definitely a fun deck. Hit the dream twice of Doomhammer + Rockbiter and it definitely felt good to hit that 🙂
This deck is working nicely for me. I had to improvise a Questing Adventurer in place of an Unbound Elemental, and an Ogre Mage in place of an Azure Drake due to only having 1 of each of those – but I’m having very pleasing results for a budget deck.