Elemental Shudderwock Shaman Deck List Guide – Witchwood – May 2018

Elemental Shudderwock Shaman Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Fire Fly – Against fast decks, 1-drops are very important. You need something to contest the board in the early game and Fire Fly is your best 1-drop.
• Prince Keleseth – Obviously, if you play a deck with Keleseth, it’s the best card you can mulligan for.
• Tar Creeper – Good anti-Aggro option, your opponent has to get through it and he will often have to sacrifice a lot of resources to do that.
• Hot Spring Guardian – Not as good as Tar Creeper, but having a 3-drop is not bad at all.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Lightning Storm & Mind Control Tech – Against board flood decks such as Paladin. Good cards to drop on T4-T5 after e.g. Call to Arms.
• Tol'vir Stoneshaper – If you have Fire Fly, Tar Creeper, Hot Spring Guardian, great card to play on the curve with Elemental on T3 (either a 3 mana one or Totem + Fire Fly if you have no other T3 play).

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Fire Fly – Even though 1-drops are not as important as versus faster decks, you still prefer to drop something on T1.
• Prince Keleseth – Obviously.
• Mana Tide Totem – Against slow decks, you want to cycle to find the right late game pieces.
• Tar Creeper – Good stall card, even vs slower decks. Should give you more time to find the right cards.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Tol'vir Stoneshaper – Keep with T3 Tar Creeper or Fire Fly. Good 4-drop if you can activate its effect.
• Hex – Keep versus Cube Warlock – that early Mountain Giant or Doomguard can really hurt if you don’t deal with it.
• Harrison Jones – Against weapon decks, mostly vs Cube Warlock to deal with Skull of the Man'ari.

Elemental Shudderwock Shaman Play Strategy

Elemental Shudderwock Shaman is a bit like a mix of Midrange and Control deck. On the one hand, it runs a lot of reactive and high value cards – especially after you turn into Hagatha, you can actually outvalue lots of your opponent. On the other hand, Elemental tribe is generally a proactive one – you want to play on the curve and drop minions onto the board. Funnily enough, thanks to the Hagatha, both of those strategies can be combined.

Vs Fast Decks

Against Aggro, you don’t have to worry about the late game value – you just need to survive. Clearing the board is most important. It’s not like clearing it once or twice will be enough – most of the Aggro decks have multiple ways to refill. That’s why you will be putting Taunts and dropping AoE clears all the time. And you have a few different ones, but the two most important ones vs Aggro are Lightning Storm and Volcano.

Storm is generally better against smaller minions. Since it doesn’t hit your board, it’s also better when you have a board yourself. Volcano, on the other hand, is useful either against a bunch of small minions, or a few mid-sized ones. Remember that it deals exactly 15 damage – I know that it might seem like an obvious thing, but always calculate how much health your opponent’s minions have before using it. Volcano is better when you’re behind – if you have no board. If you have a board yourself, you should probably trade it first in case you get some unlucky rolls (your minions might die, while the ones you wanted to kill might survive).

Hagatha the Witch is, funnily enough, played mostly for her AoE in the faster matchups. It’s a good board clear + some immediate Armor gain. Of course, the random spells might come handy sometimes, if you roll another AoE or healing.

Talking about healing – Healing Rain is great card against Aggro, but only once you’ve already stabilized. Healing when your opponent has a big board is pointless, you will just buy one turn or something. Of course, if you can’t clear it, you should still heal and hope that you will draw something, but if you can choose between clearing and healing, generally you want to clear first.

Kalimos, Primal Lord is kind of a bit of everything. If you need a board clear, you have 3 AoE damage. If you need healing, you can heal for 12. If you need to refill the board, you summon the 1/1’s. Pick the right option for the situation.

Shudderwock, if you survive long enough, can also be a Taunt minion IF you’ve played Tol'vir Stoneshaper, since it will reactivate its Battlecry. Getting a 6/6 Taunt with Divine Shield can be great. Plus, if you get the right roll, you might even get another copy thanks to the Saronite Chain Gang (although, since the order is random, you might FIRST get a vanilla copy and only then it will put Taunt + DS on itself. Of course, Shudderwock can also repeat all kinds of other Battlecries. For example, if you’re Hagatha already, you will have a guaranteed 3 AoE damage.

Vs Slow Decks

Against slow decks, you need much more than just survive. You won’t win the game by stalling it forever. Your early and mid game is quite weak in those matchups. Yes, you can drop some minions, but nothing threatening. It’s very rare to win the slow matchup by simply putting the pressure. It MIGHT happen if you get a perfect curve with Prince Keleseth and your opponent gets almost no answers, but that’s rare. The only times I won slow matchup with pressure was Tar Creeper into Tol'vir Stoneshaper into Cobalt Scalebane, because that’s a really solid curve.

So how do you win slow matchups? Well, your best bet is Hagatha the Witch, actually. Playing her early means A LOT of value over the course of the game. Every time you play a minion, you get a random spell. Let’s be honest – random Shaman spell might not be best, but it’s still a free card. Every time you play minion, and you play lots of minions. You will have so much value that you will have to throw away the spells just to not overdraw sometimes.

Since you want to get Hagatha as soon as you can, drawing is very important. Shaman’s card draw is very limited – this deck runs 2 copies of Mana Tide Totem, and you want to protect them as well as you can. For example, do not throw them on the board if they will just die to a minion your opponent has. Just cycling it is not good, you want to draw 2 or more. Or at least force your opponent to waste some resources – a removal spell, Silence, anything.

Your second win condition is obviously Shudderwock himself. Dropping him should be a great swing turn. Between things like buffing your board, freezing stuff, stealing something, destroying weapon, dealing damage and such, it’s a very high impact card. On top of that, it should create a solid board if you have played Saronite Chain Gang before – it will copy itself, creating multiple 6/6’s. While it’s rare that your opponent won’t have a way to clear it, if it happens, you pretty much just win the game with the pressure.

Remember that if you somehow get close to killing your opponent, you actually have some sort of reach – Kalimos, Primal Lord can deal 6 damage to the opponent, while Blazecaller can deal 5 damage to anything, including your opponent, obviously. If you get lucky, Shudderwock might repeat those too when you need the final points of damage.

Elemental Shudderwock Shaman Card Substitutions

Elemental Shudderwock Shaman is a pretty expensive deck, and sadly, most of the cards are required. You still might be able to make some budget choices, but keep in mind that they will reduce the power level of the deck (and it’s already not the best build in the meta). Here is a list of the more expensive cards and the potential replacements:

• Prince Keleseth – The main reason why you run this card is that Elemental/Control Shaman doesn’t have many good 2-drops anyway – you would often play Totem on T2, and with Keleseth you might be able to upgrade a big chunk of your deck + possibly repeat the Battlecry again with Shudderwock. If you don’t have it, you can’t just replace it 1-1 – you have to re-build a part of the deck, because you want to run more 2 mana cards. Some of the options you can use are: Doomsayer, Earthen Might, Loot Hoarder or even Flametongue Totem (although it doesn’t fit that much into the build).
• Harrison Jones – Can be replaced by other weapon destruction card – Gluttonous Ooze. You CAN’T run Acidic Swamp Ooze, since it’s a Keleseth deck. If you want to run the 2 mana Ooze, you also need to replace Keleseth (look above).
• Hagatha the Witch – Absolutely necessary. It’s your main win condition in slower matchups.
• Kalimos, Primal Lord – While it’s not necessary, if you run a deck with lots of Elementals, not putting the Kalimos in would be silly – he’s the ultimate Elemental synergy card. You could try running a Primordial Drake instead, or possibly another Blazecaller, but both are Epics anyway.
• Shudderwock – Similarly, a significant part of your deck is built around Shudderwock – you can’t just replace it.
• Blazecaller – You can run Fire Elemental instead, but 5 damage is much better in the late game than 3 damage, it just clears more targets.