Freedon’s Legend Mid-Budget Even Shaman (Season 54)

Mid-Budget Even Shaman deck that I used to get to Legend from September 1st – 13th with a decent win rate and progression.

A version of the popular Even Shaman lists with a few alterations due to playstyle preference/insight, and limitations to my collection. Having long been a F2P player and only recently forking out to buy the mega bundle for the Boomsday expansion. 

By the time I hit legend I felt really comfortable with this deck, it brings a good rhythm to your play and gives you flexibility and consistency in your playstyle, playing like an aggro, tempo, or mid-range deck depending on your mulligan and opponents plays. You’re mulligan will dictate your game plan, but there are a variety of good combinations that can deliver you good value in securing the board early game. The highlight is undoubtedly combining a thunderhead and zap for a 4 mana play, which provides a major tempo swing and against other aggressive decks can almost guarantee a win as a 3/5, 1/1 rush, 1/1 rush, deal 2 damage to a minion, 4 mana play. 

Match-Up Win-Rates: 

My perception was that my win-rates were aligned with the general match-up stats of Even Shaman on HSReplay.

Match-UP Strategies:

Generally speaking early game board control is the focus, in order to both survive against the more aggro builds of Odd-Rogue and Zoolock, and to give yourself a platform to go lethal against the control and combo setups, hoping they don’t get enough board clears in hand. 

I would say dealing with the board clear threat level is the most important aspect of this decks playstyle. Against those more aggro/midrange decks that lack strong board clears, i.e. rogues, hunter, zoolock, you should play all out to get a strong board presence, and then use value trades to keep it whilst putting pressure on face.

Against decks with board clears/spreading plague your primary strategy is to hope they draw badly and don’t have them in hand. If you don’t build a strong board you will lose regardless to any control or combo decks. Anticipate what board clears your opponent’s deck might have, and what threat that poses to your board, if you have a strong board already then consider only adding minions that might strengthen your board’s durability against the board clears you might face. If you have a wide board of small minions then it is likely good to go tall, but not to add more low health minions. Likewise, if you have a couple of tall minions you can afford to add some more small minions. Once you have a threatening board it is a good idea to hold back some minions for a quick reload. My experience has been that after one board clear you should be able to reload strongly, after 2, however, you will need to be in a position of finding lethal from top decks unless you get lucky with your draw, or your opponent still doesn’t contest the board. If you are getting wiped, then arcane dynamoing The Storm Bringer is a good late game hail mary, with even 2-4 random legendaries a potential game-winner. Bloodlust is better if you anticipate maintaining a strong board and/or are within sight of lethal. 

Popular card that I lacked from my collection were:

Epics: 1 Corpsetaker, & 1 Sea Giant

Legendaries: Hagatha, Kalimos, Runespear

IMPACT: 

Missing Hagatha and Kalimos means missing late-game value. If I had them I would likely include them, however, I think it is probably not too much of an issue to instead focus on the aggressive aspect of this deck, replacing these late game cards with more early/mid-game pressure. Sure some matchups would be better if you could keep more pressure in the late game, but many matchups might also be lost with the increased chance of more 8 drops sitting in your hand in the early game. 

Cards I chose to leave out based on playstyle were: 

Knife Thrower: I chose not to include knife thrower for a few reasons, 1. The win rate stats on HS replay seem average, 2. It requires a playstyle of being onboard before other minions in order to gain value from its pings, which is the opposite of flametongue and dire wolf, which you can play optimally once you have 1 or two minions on the board, this impact is especially big in the early game, exactly when it matters for this deck. 3. The randomness of pings is just too annoying and unpredictable compared to the ability to plan around dire wolf and flametongue. Ping Rng dependent, one play might be either game winning or game losing, especially when it comes to board control. Statistically it might work out decent enough on average, but I want to enjoy playing the deck and feel like I have some control, and this added rng makes it too aggravating when it backfires. 

Menacing Nimbus: Gaining value from the card feels nice, but half the time the elementals generated don’t gel with the game plan and just sit in your hand until you run out of better cards to play. With all the synergies possible from the token generation this just seems like too slow a play and a missed opportunity to instead use cards that build on the deck’s strengths. 

REPLACEMENTS: 

Dire Wolf Alpha: I would consider this an almost exact replacement and improvement on knife juggler unless you want to include both. For consistency I feel you need the additional activation for your 0 attack totems, with the flametongues not a consistent enough presence by themselves. I don’t know the stats, but I feel the added 1 attack buffs can more then make up for the random 1 attack pings of knife juggler, and its predictable, so no unneccessary rng heartbreak. 

Stormforged Axe: In trying to secure the board a 2/3 weapon can make a huge impact early in the game, or act as up to 6 face damage later. It is also a third trigger for Thunderheads, which can make a huge tempo swing, even if it isn’t as cheap as the 0 cost zap. I feel consistency wise this is far better than knife juggler or menacing nimbus. I only included one, however, with the 3 turn effect normally feeling sufficient, and not wanting to be stuck with one in hand, or have too many overloads.