Aggro-Crusher Giant Shaman

When Healing Wave rotated out, my wonderful Control Shaman decks rolled along with it. Thankfully, with the new Healing Rain, released in K&C, we’re back in business in a serious way.

Board Control

Doomsayer, Maelstrom Portal, Feral Spirit, Lightning Storm, and even Jinyu Waterspeaker as a 3/6 body all work together to control any early aggression. Which, in case you haven’t noticed, is quite prevalent. Bloodmage Thalnos makes these board clears even more potent, and supplements with a drawn card upon expiration…as always. Good ol’ Thalnos. 

The new card Crushing Hand plays a huge role in this deck, serving as large threat removal in the mid-late game, and a source of fuel for Snowfury Giant. Staples Hex and Volcano also help keep the board nice and tidy, with Hex continuing to be the most effective silence/make a minion irrelevant card in the game.

Devolve serves as a quasi-silence, and a great way to either set up a Volcano or Lightning Storm board clear, or simply remove buffs/deathrattle effects from opponent minions.

*Side note, skip if you want…back when Patron warrior was running the show, i ran a control Shaman list that maintained a 70% winrate against Patron. The key cards being Earth Elemental, Sludge Belcher, and more importantly, a well-timed Lightning Storm combined with a Bloodmage Thalnos or Azure Drake for a full board clear. Point being, Patrons have 3 health, and among the aggro decks now being played, i’ve seen a lot of secret hunter that play the ‘summon 4 3/3’s card as their mid-game board flood. Lost to a few secret Hunters, so that’s kind of where this deck came into fruition.*

Healing

The ability to heal is important right now (and likely, always will be) due to the prevalence of aggro decks.

Glorious Healing Rain. Same as with the recently-departed Healing Wave, it serves as as an extremely mana-efficient source of health. Mana efficiency being of utmost importance in an overload deck. You also no longer have to worry about your Mana Tide Totem losing the joust to the opponents [insert 4+ mana cost minion] and only getting 7 health back. 12 health, every time. Spread out, if you have damaged minions of course, but extremely consistently 12 straight to the face in this deck.

Jinyu Waterspeaker. Fills the 4 drop slot as a 3/6 body that gives you 6 life back. With healing/board control being key, this card shines.

Win Condition

Once you’ve successfully stalled your opponents attack using all of the wonderful cards in this deck, you’ll look down at your hand and see that, wow, you have nearly free Snowfury Giant and some card called Lesser Sapphire Spellstone that summons one…wait, THREE! copies of any friendly minion that you choose. Best case scenario is you play a Snowfury Giant, turn it into 4, and your opponent concedes. When that plan fails, emote Wow! to your spell Hunter opponent that cleared 4 giants somehow, and do it again. Not many decks can deal well with 4 8/8 minions, even less decks can do it multiple times.

I’ll add tech choices, but basically double Maelstrom Portal, double Doomsayer is great if you’re facing a ton of aggro decks, but they can be less useful against control, where cards like White Eyes and Ancestral Spirit provide significant value, especially as a combo. Even now, taking out one of either of those cards to put in a Eater of Secrets may prove useful right now. Bottom line, though, is the deck is very flexible. You just need to keep the overload cards, spellstones, and giants.