(Standard) The End of Hope SARON Control Shaman (Season 26)

Yogg-Saron, Hope's End brought great hype pre-release and certainly corresponded to its expectations. Unfortunatly, most of the decks I’ve seen are mage types.

That’s when I thought of shaman!!

Another great AOE cleaning class with Elemental Destruction and Lightning Storm that can also spam spells and heal a bunch with its new Legendary Hallazeal the Ascended. Another really talked Legendary that has not seen much play.

I wanted to bring all this to use and after a whole week of test playing I think I found a great result to play with them competitivly.

Saron Control Shaman (Standard) Mulligan Guide and Strategy

Aggainst Aggro:

• Generally you will do pretty good aggainst aggros due to your big AOE and heals.
• You can’t be sparing cards thou, you need to ignore value and lightning bolt any high damage target, despite having a good lightning storm next turn or not. Tempo is key!
• Since this kind of decks escalate really quickly you need to maintaint the maximum health possible until your drops outrun theirs. With this, I add a quick note, Healing Wave can also be searched in mulligans in case you already have two of the above drops.

Aggainst Control:

• IMO this is the hardest match-up for this deck.
  This because usually you don’t have enough boost to kill the opponent if you didn’t make an early impression.
• The key here is to keep up constant pressure with creatures while not overextending and, of course, try to get the maximum value out of your cards, Specially elemental destruction and Saron.

Aggainst Midrange:

• Midrange is a fine match-up that can turn out for both sides.
• I think that if the person playing this deck realizes he is going aggainst midrange he has a higher chance of winning.
• This because midrange decks in standard don’t seem to have great burst, so you can play on outvaluing the enemy since you can easily wait for a great opportunity to use your AOEs, massivly heal and then recover from overload with Eternal Sentinel.

Saron Control Shaman (Standard) Play Strategy

Usually you want to start slow and never have more than 2 drops on board. You want the opponent to overextend so you can bring on great board clears with huge damage and low cost. Making it possible to make a sort of counter-attack!

I would advice getting an HS tracker so you can always know the count of spells for Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.

Remember you can easily get more than 30 HP with Hallazeal the Ascended and Elemental Destruction combined.

The early drops in this deck are just so you have a good way to win vs aggro type decks.

Ancestral Knowledge and Azure Drake are more than enough to keep up your game value and search for the cards you need.

Bloodmage Thalnos and Azure Drake, besides cycling, they can turn over the game with just the +1 Spell Damage when you are playing you AOEs, specially if you have spell damage totem.

Earth Elemental is here just to stall the game, it is great vs aggro due to its taunt and low costand works wonders with Eternal Sentinel or Healing Wave. I don’t find this body can be replaced at all.

Sylvanas Windrunner is IMO one of the best 6 game drops but it can easily be replaced by other card of your like The Black Knight or Emperor Thaurissan.

Alexstrasza is here because usually you don’t deal damage to the opponent early on, most of the times it worked as a 15dmg + threatning body for only 9 cost. Of course this depends on choice, you can replace it with Ysera Ragnaros the Firelord or any other big Legendary of your like.

Card Replacements

• Bloodmage Thalnos serves two purposes: Cycle and spell damage. He is unique because he is the only card to provide both of this things for such low cost.
  There are two substitutes: Loot Hoarder and Kobold Geomancer which both for the same cost serve one of the two purposes you run a Thalnos for.
• Hallazeal the Ascended  can be replaced with Cult Apothecary, it won’t heal you that much, but should be able to give you some good health aggainst aggros and it also has a good body for 5.
• Eternal Sentinel can be replaced by a Lava Shock, there is no other card to unlock your crystals so, if you don’t have 2 of them, you can either add another Ancestral Knowledge  or a Doomsayer for even more board clear backup.
  

Deck Changes (v1.2)

I have replaced Sylvanas Windrunner with Emperor Thaurissan. Sylvanas is really strong but also very situational. Thaurissan is able to get used as bait for big removals and setup for great combo next turn.

One Ancestral Knowledge has been replaced with Lava Shock. Most of the times we have the cards on our hand and we lose because we aren’t able to play them all right, so there wasn’t needed the extra draw that much, thou it is essential sometimes. On the other hand, Lava Shock is a great card that is able to give that extra damage on a bigger minion when you AOE and even clear the overload. 

Deck Changes (v1.1)

The deck was having the bigger issues aggainst control type decks, and most of the time, fatigued out, specially versus priests or warriors. On the other hand, aggainst aggros, I wasn’t having much problems so I decided to make this changes:

Totem Golem for Elise Starseeker, this fights fatigue, adds another taunt and another spell to your deck, it has been working wonders and even adds more fun to the deck!

Flamewreathed Faceless is a great card but it didn’t seem to fit that much due to not having taunt and easily being ignored, so I switched it with Thing from Below. It is played below 4 cost most fo time and its taunt and non-overload feature makes it more reliable.

Alexstrasza for Ragnaros the Firelord. Alexstraza wasn’t fitting the job quite well and after the BGH nerf, Ragnaros has become way stronger and is really hard to deal with if the big removals have already been wasted on your other cards. Nefarian or Ysera are also great and better than Alex due to value you immideatly obtain from them.

I will be continuously updating this deck so please feel free to give your opinions on the comments.

I hope you enjoy this deck as much as I do! Good games!