Over the past few expansions, Shaman as a class has largely been defined by the Evolve mechanic and, after its release, by Shudderwock. By and large, The Boomsday Project did not change anything for Shaman. Sure, there are multiple cards from the expansion that see play in various decks, but they generally take a supporting role and do not define their archetypes.
Shaman can still be a solid performer. On the ladder, Even Shaman has achieved the most success, while in tournaments the OTK Shudderwock Shaman has found a niche role. There are also some other archetypes that may be worth exploring, especially Midrange Shaman that uses Shudderwock as a refill, not as a combo piece. Aggro Shaman has also found occasional success as a true blast from the past. Other attempts at Shaman, such as Murloc Shaman and Overload Shaman (a modern take on the good old Crusher Shaman), seem to be doomed to roam the meme land.
Be that as it may, in this article we are going to dive in to all of these archetypes and check out what their current form is.
We have explored viable laddering options for multiple classes beyond the obvious meta decks over the past few weeks. If you’re interested in other classes, you can check out our previous articles on Paladin, Priest, Mage, and Warrior.
Even Shaman
Even Shaman is like a house in the suburbs. It’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with. It’s maybe a bit dull and uneventful. Some enjoy it a lot, others wish for more action, but it is what it is. In the middle of all the evolving and Shudderwock madness, Even Shaman stands out as the most uneventful Shaman deck, and, ironically, also the most powerful Shaman deck.
Atome piloted this list to #1 Legend during September:
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Even Shaman is a board-centric midrange deck, which is the most traditional archetype in Hearthstone. Minions fight for the board and the player who wins board control wins the game.
This list has a good balance of early game, where the Genn-buffed one-mana Hero Power helps the Shaman establish a board in combination with damage buffs from Flametongue Totem and Dire Wolf Alpha, a minion buff from Earthen Might, and direct damage from Murkspark Eel and Fire Plume Phoenix.
Corpsetaker is the first major offensive threat to hit the board – especially potent when it has Windfury and gets any damage buffs – and if multiple minions survive, Sea Giant is not far behind. Powerful mid-game plays, such as Fire Elemental and The Lich King, solidify any advantage gained, and Argent Commander and Al'Akir the Windlord provide burst damage.
The only major random element in the deck comes from Hagatha the Witch, which can be used in the late-game as an additional value engine.
Even Shaman is a good deck also for learning and reinforcing many card game fundamentals: It takes on the beatdown role against slower decks and the control role against faster decks, so you need to recognize what kind of game you’re in and plan accordingly. Positioning is also crucial with the deck thanks to multiple cards that buff adjacent minions. Cards that force you to choose between tempo and value, such as Earthen Might, require correct decisions depending on the matchup and board state. Finally, the changing cost of Sea Giant requires correct ordering during the games.
It may be a little dull, but there is a lot to playing Even Shaman properly and it can produce extremely good results in competent hands.
For full details on how to play Even Shaman, check out our Even Shaman Deck List Guide.
Midrange Shaman
If you were expecting Shudderwock Shaman as the number two Shaman deck for ladder, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Shudderwock Shaman is actually not that successful on the ladder right now, although there is a Shudderwock in this deck too. The #2 Shaman deck for ladder is Midrange Shaman that uses Shudderwock for a refill and board-generation, not for immediate face damage.
There are a few lists floating around, and this is one of the most successful ones:
While Midrange Shaman and Even Shaman are both Midrange decks, their approach to the game could hardly be more different. Sure, they share a few powerful key cards, such as Corpsetaker and The Lich King, but other than that they play their games in a very different fashion.
First, Midrange Shaman is a Prince Keleseth deck. That’s the first check point that may give it a sweet +10% to win on turn two. On the other hand, Keleseth decks have a bit of a slow start, and Midrange Shaman can be more vulnerable to aggressive strategies than Even Shaman. Hence, the deck includes two copies of Mind Control Tech to regain the board.
Second, Midrange Shaman is the current heir of Evolve Shaman: Unstable Evolution and Thrall, Deathseer are in the deck and there are lots of good targets for them. Corridor Creeper is the classic Evolve target, but many Battlecry minions, such as Fungalmancer and Giggling Inventor, also leave behind a weak body that can evolved into something much more powerful.
Third, Midrange Shaman has a Shudderwock refill available. At best, Shudderwock can gain Taunt, Divine Shield, Windfury, and Lifesteal and make multiple copies of itself alongside some 1/2 Taunt minions with Divine Shield and buff some of these new minions by up to +4/+4. There are lots of Battlecries in the deck, and it is important to keep track of the ones you have played.
This means that in Midrange Shaman games, there is much more randomness involved. There are glorious victories pulled out of thin air and there are miserable losses rescued from the jaws of victory.
The key to mastering Midrange Shaman is controlling the level of randomness. For example, the decision on when to play Thrall, Deathseer is a crucial one. Because Shudderwock stops casting battlecries when it is evolved, you may not want to have Thrall Battlecry in your pool if you intend to play Shudderwock for a refill. Planning out your Unstable Evolution turns is another key point: you need to think quickly which results you want to reroll and which ones you will be happy with. You can also expect to use Hagatha the Witch much more frequently in Midrange Shaman than in Even Shaman, and making the most out of your random Shaman spells decides games.
Midrange Shaman is a love it or hate it kind of a deck. There is tons and tons of randomness, and even when you master controlling it, it will still decide games. At the very least, Midrange Shaman is never a dull deck to play.
Shudderwock Shaman
This is the deck that has largely defined the class over the past few months. The OTK combo deck that stalls, stalls, and then just ends the game. Shudderwock Shaman peaked during The Witchwood, but has been left behind a little in The Boomsday Project as new, faster combo decks from other classes have risen in popularity. It is not a great deck to ladder with right now, even though it can climb in the right meta. It sees more use in tournament lineups where it can target specific decks.
The Shudderwock Shaman list is almost completely solved. There are a few cards that are switched back and forth, but overall the differences between lists are small. Electra Stormsurge, Gluttonous Ooze, and Sandbinder may or may not appear in the lists, and lists may run one or two copies of cards such as Earth Shock, Acolyte of Pain, and Mind Control Tech. It’s all about fine-tuning to exactly match your meta.
Looking at statistics, this is one of the top-performing builds right now:
Shudderwock Shaman is a combo deck. It wants to draw cards, clear boards, and win with its combo.
In this case, the combo is just Shudderwock, although it requires several cards to be played on previous turns, at the very least Saronite Chain Gang (to make at least one copy of Shudderwock), Grumble, Worldshaker (to return that copy to hand costing only one mana), and Lifedrinker (to deal damage to the opponent). Then you just play more and more Shudderwocks until only dust remains, assuming that you managed to return a Shudderwock back to the hand the first time: the order of battlecries is random and the Shudderwock that you play from hand cannot immediately return, so you need to have a copy effect go off before the return effect.
It is possible to build a Shudderwock combo that never whiffs, but it requires more cards and eventually players simply accepted that sometimes the combo will fail to return a Shudderwock back to hand and will be incomplete, but it is better to have more card draw and removal in the deck over more combo pieces.
For full details on how to play Shudderwock Shaman, check out our Shudderwock Shaman Deck List Guide.
Aggro Shaman
Aggro Shaman used to be a big player a long ago. The power of Doomhammer and Rockbiter Weapon was known and feared throughout the Hearthstone universe. Eventually, it kept losing damage spells in Standard rotations and did not get anything impressive to replace all of its losses with, and it fell by the wayside.
Aggro Shaman finally got new damage cards in The Boomsday Project, even though they do not look like damage cards on the surface: Elementary Reaction and Electra Stormsurge can multiple your existing damage spells and therefore result in more face damage. It’s better than nothing, right? In practice, actually, Electra is very reliable in dealing additional damage, and while Elementary Reaction is less so, it still pulls up more damage fairly often in an aggressive deck.
Blizzard’s off-meta spotlight highlighted this Aggro Shaman build:
The deck gets on the board earlier than any other Shaman deck and seeks to control the board and get the damage rolling. Unbound Elemental can grow to be a significant threat when the smaller tokens sacrifice themselves to allow it to hit face and Thunderhead creates heaps of said tokens that can then be buffed with Flametongue Totem for a solid trading engine.
The deck even includes the good old Doomhammer and Rockbiter Weapon combo alongside the damage spells Shaman currently has access to. No Hex in this one, Taunt is cheat!
This is truly an aggro deck. Eventually, not too long into a game either, you will run out of steam, so you’d better win early. Of course, some of the multi-card plays can come out fairly late in the game, but you need to see progress in the first few turns or it will not be enough. Get that chip damage in so that spells can finish the job.
As an anecdote of the deck’s burst capability, my personal record with the deck is 20 damage from hand for 10 mana. How, you may ask? Simple. Elementary Reaction gave me an additional copy of Lava Burst and Menacing Nimbus gave me a Leyline Manipulator that discounted the Lava Burst to one mana. Therefore, I was able to play Electra Stormsurge into triple Lava Burst for ten mana. Take that, Druid.
In most cases, however, Druid and Odd Warrior are fearsome opponents. You have burst, but the overall damage is not there if the opponent is able to amass tons of armor. Living on the edge, like an aggro deck should. Statistics sites place Aggro Shaman at a roughly 50% win rate, so climbing with the deck can be difficult, even if it is not impossible.
Overload Shaman
Old-school players may remember the days of Crusher Shaman, a Shaman deck that wanted to play Earth Elemental, buff it with Ancestral Spirit, and copy it with Faceless Manipulator. That was a lot of Earth to dig through!
Many players have attempted to recreate the same theme since, especially so after the release of Snowfury Giant and Lesser Sapphire Spellstone. A board full of big minions that come back if killed sure sounds like fun!
This is the most successful build of the archetype I was able to find. Now, there’s some good news and some bad news about it. The good news is that it can actually win games. The bad news is that it wins around 44% of its games.
The game plan is to stall, draw, and buff up the Spellstones until you are ready to build a huge board with them. There are enough big minions in the deck so that some can be sacrificed in order to stall and you can try to set up Eureka! plays to cheat out big minions before their time.
It’s fun when it works. I’ve had boards with five Earth Elementals. I’ve even had a board with four The Lich Kings, each with a Deathrattle to be resummoned if killed. Getting there can be very difficult, though. For example, I’ve had to take a chance playing Eureka! several times, because I have not been able to get rid of all the unessential minions in my hand and I have needed a Taunt on the board.
I’m sure this deck can be improved. I’ve tried Ancestral Healing to give Snowfury Giant Taunt so that it can defend. I’ve tried cutting some of the earlier minions to make Eureka! more consistent. My overall experience so far is that the deck can probably be improved to get to around 50% win rate, but I cannot see how it could become dominant. I suppose that is why the list has not been improved further yet, it’s a ton of work to make it match whatever meta you are facing for a small potential reward.
If you play this deck, do not expect to climb. However, do expect at least some hilarious games amidst multiple defeats.
Murloc Shaman
Fine, Murloc Shaman is not even a thing. I have not seen anyone else play Murloc Shaman in The Boomsday Project or even in The Witchwood. I happened to play some in both, so I figured I might as well let you know how it went.
In The Witchwood, Murloc Shaman was actually fairly decent. It was slightly better without the Quest, as you could have more tempo, but the Quest version could also win slightly more than half of its games. Not enough to climb at any sort of sane pace, but win some nonetheless.
The Boomsday Project has improved the meta decks, and Murloc Shaman got nothing, so it is worse now. I played a bunch of games with it on Rank 3 and ended up with exactly 50% win rate. That might not sound too bad, but each game was a struggle and I needed to jump through all the possible hoops to get those wins. Rank 3, on the first week of a new season, should not be a terrible place to test a deck, so maybe there is some hope low enough on the ladder, but it’s a lot of work for sure.
Here is my current list:
The main problem of a Quest-based Murloc Shaman is the lack of tempo in the early game. If you keep and play Unite the Murlocs on turn one (and you should), you are not developing a board. From there, it can be difficult to get into the game if the opponent is able to get control of the board early on. On the other hand, a non-Quest build does not have enough steam to close out games in the current meta.
Furthermore, there are very few flex slots in the deck, as you need to summon ten Murlocs to complete the Quest. The deck includes a large Murloc package, and it is difficult to cut any of them (although maybe there is some way to fit in Primalfin Lookout). There are two tech slots, and I chose to put in Zap! and Mossy Horror for the current meta. Zap! can potentially help with the early game: you have hardly any one-drops anyway, so Zap! + a two-drop is perfect for turn two. Mossy Horror can clear Spreading Plague or Giggling Inventor. Sure, sometimes you may lose some of your Murlocs too, but you have some attack buffs for them, so they may also get above that two-attack threshold and survive.
As for its overall game plan, the deck attempts to create buffed-up Murloc boards, or alternatively use its resources in such a way that it can repopulate the board after a clear. Ghost Light Angler is a small refill in a single card in the midgame and eventually Megafin will give you a new handful of Murlocs to play with – and Shudderwock will give you yet another one as well as buff existing Murlocs on the board.
Megafin rolls are particularly important. If you get multiple damage buffs or Charge minions, you may be able to simply close out the game after playing Megafin.
The threats Murloc Shaman is able to create may not always be huge, but there are definitely lots and lots of them.
Nonetheless, this is a deck that you would craft and play at your own risk. Performance not guaranteed.
Laddering with Shaman
In this article, we have taken a look at six different Shaman archetypes.
Two of the decks are good, perfectly viable climbing decks: Even Shaman and Midrange Shaman. Both are board-centric midrange decks, but they offer a completely different experience regardless, with Even Shaman being a solid performer and Midrange Shaman embracing the power of randomness.
Two of the decks are situational, potential climbing decks: Shudderwock Shaman and Aggro Shaman. They can find themselves in metagames that they just cannot handle – Aggro Shaman in a Druid/Warrior meta and Shudderwock Shaman in a Druid/Quest Rogue meta. Yet, they also have a number of good matchups and can climb in the right circumstances.
Finally, two of decks are not reliable for climbing: Overload Shaman and Murloc Shaman. Both have potent win conditions, but their overall power level is not good enough in the current meta. Neither is fully figured out, so they have potential for improvement, but their ceiling may be too low to be successful.
How about you? What Shaman decks have you enjoyed in The Boomsday meta?
Old Guardian
Ville "Old Guardian" Kilkku is a writer and video creator focused on analytic, educational Hearthstone, and building innovative Standard format decks. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian
I played a bunch of Murloc shaman similar to your list (but at lower ranks than you). Great fun. Nobody expects the ‘Wock. For what people assume is an aggro deck it has a surprising amount of refill.
I played a greeder version that yours that included: 2x saronite chaingang, 1x zola, 1x hagatha in, for 1x zap, 1x mossy horror, 1x ghostlight angler, 1x primalfin totem out
Saronite Chain Gang is always an attractive card, and sometimes I have missed having Taunt minions in the deck. I have just found it hard to cut any Murlocs in order to ensure timely quest completion. Zap and Mossy are tech cards, they can easily be replaced if something better is available, so maybe there is a spot for those taunts.
Any viable deck that can use Runespear? Such a waste of a legendary weapon.
I have not been able to find any really good use for Runespear, sorry.
That said, it can sometimes get things done with good rolls, so you can put it in a Shaman deck as a support card even if not a key card. HSReplay recognizes one deck with it, an Even Shaman build that uses Runespear instead of The Lich King, but the are no statistics for it for ranks better than 10. Even Shaman core is strong enough to carry one random weapon, so you can put it in that archetype, if you really want to.
At least it’s better than the Priest weapon, which is utterly useless.
The shudderwock list dilemma is far from over. For example if there some odd Paladin and token Druid in the ladder / tournament the Pyromancer variant becomes a lot better than the keleseth (see the american seasonal playoff for example). Acolyte of pain is also a lot stronger (it draws cards more consistently) with pyromancers vs slower decks.
*there are
*the keleseth one
While it is true that the Wild Pyromancer variant has seen occasional play, its heyday coincided with the peak of Odd Paladin. Right now, Wild Pyromancer is a niche inclusion at best, and all the Shudderwock decks brought to Fall Championship are Keleseth lists.
… I must just roll a Wild “Everyfin is Awesome” Shaman deck for the nostalgia 🙂
I miss Everyfin and Call in the Finishers. Good times! I’m afraid the power level of Wild is too high to roll with them anymore though.
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I know, right? The commentary is super detailed and I love the number of articles like this, around three to five every single WEEK! It’s pretty darn impressive and it’s made me appreciate the game more and become a better player by understanding all this. It’s so cool that unlike strict Hearthstone tools this one has commentaries and reviews with lots of personal opinions and analysis and sometimes humour, which really enriches stuff, and it’s more wholehearted, like website by players for players. Great job, keep it up!
Thanks to both of you!