Bombardment Shudderwock ft. Explodinator

—–Intro—–

This is a Shudderwock deck with a different win condition than the usual Lifedrinker combo. It has the same basic shell and tries to win with the Goblin Bomb‘s created by Explodinator. Since everyone knows how the Shuddy combo works, I’ll skip over that and talk about this specific combo and the cards I’ve included to make it happen.

—–Card Choices—–

A lot of people (including me) are using Prince Keleseth in their Shudderwock decks nowadays, but here I don’t think he’s very useful. He was brought in as a way to make the deck more viable and perhaps even win without the combo (3/4 Saronite Chain Gang‘s are very good), but here we cut the Prince in order to play Murmuring Elemental. 

— Just like in other Shudderwock decks, Murmuring is used primarily to double the jaws that bite at the end of the game. 

Void Ripper is seeing a lot more play nowadays in aggro decks as a way to mess with control and find extra burst damage. Here, it is used to eliminate the Goblin Bomb’s.

— I have actually had my opponents attack and kill my harmless 0/2’s before, but I think that’s because they think they’re messing up my combo or something, when in reality they’re doing me a huge favor! Having these guys stick around is worse than having a Healing Totem at the end of the game. 

Hagatha the Witch is also pretty standard in Shudderwock decks, but here she plays a very important role: filling your hand with random Shaman spells. Usually, this is a bad thing. When Gumble, Worldshaker bounces your Shuddy’s, you want as many as possible. But sometimes Hagatha has filled your hand with so many useless spells, you begin to worry that you might accidentally lose your Shudderwock! 

— This is still a problem in this deck, but Hagatha’s many spells are also a very important tool. When minions are returned to their owners hands, but the hand already has 10 cards in it, the minion dies instead. We don’t want our hand to be full of Goblin Bomb’s, we want some 1-cost Shudderwock’s and a bunch of other random stuff so that they just die instead! 

— This is also where Void Ripper and Hagatha the Witch come in handy. Sometimes during Shudderwock’s endless battlecry things play in the wrong order. If Grumble triggers before Explodinator, you’ll be left with some G bombs and nothing to do with them… that is until your Hagatha or Void Ripper triggers. 

—–The Problems—-

Like I said earlier, pretty much everyone can spot a Shudder-Shaman from a mile away, so you have that working against you. 

In addition, the Explodinator combo doesn’t work as smoothly as Lifedrinker does. It didn’t matter when Lifedrinker’s battlecry triggered during Shudderwock’s nonsense, which made it pretty reliable. I’ve had quite a few Goblin Bomb‘s reluctantly returned to my hand, and once they even blocked my Shudderwock! With a little luck, though, they will be killed by Ripper/Hagatha or by being unable to return to the hand. Grumble, Worldshaker

Also, Hemet, Jungle Hunter is a double-edged sword (like Hagatha): he thins out the deck, leaving only the combo pieces. But he also eliminates some removal, the only healing, and the very important Void Ripper, so buyer beware.

—–Conclusion—–

I have no idea what’s going to happen in this new meta, but I’m hoping that Shudderwock is still around! Thanks for checking out the deck, and please let me know what you think and leave a suggestion in the comments.