Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started!
- Budget Standard Standard C’Thun Druid
- Budget Standard Midrange Hunter
- Budget Standard C’Thun Mage
- Budget Standard  Aggro Paladin
- Budget Standard C’Thun Priest
- Budget Standard C’Thun Rogue
- Budget Standard Midrange Shaman
- Budget Standard Zoo WarlockÂ
- Budget Standard Combo Warrior
Introduction
Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I run HearthstoneCoaching.com where our coaches have helped students around the world reach many of these same achievements.
If you’re new to Hearthstone, or just have a limited collection of cards—I feel your pain. It is often difficult to find cheap but viable decks to play on the Hearthstone ladder. Given this dilemma, I’ve set out to help those of you with a limited collection by creating budget decks for each class.
Requirements
- Reach Level 10 to unlock all of the Basic cards for this class.
- Complete the Naxxramas, Blackrock Mountain, and League of Explorers expansions.
- Have 1120Â Dust for crafting cards.
Deck Playstyle
- Aggro Shaman’s goal is to beat your opponent down as quickly as possible. The general theme of the deck is to get onto the board extremely quickly with minions like leper-gnome and tunnel-trogg, and then finish opponents off with direct damage spells, charge minions, and weapons.
Minions – 14
2x abusive-sergeant
- Unless you have no other options, the Abusive Sergeant should be used to trade up with larger minions that you can’t ignore, or to buff another minion to deal an additional two damage to your opponent.
2x leper-gnome
- An excellent minion that allows us to establish a presence on the board early. When he dies, he also hurts our opponent, which fits right in with our deck’s theme.
1x sir-finley-mrrgglton
- While Sir Finley might not seem like much. 1 mana for a 1/3 is mana efficient and can trade against 2/1s and 2/2 quite effectively. However, this isn’t the reason why we include him into our deck. Primarily, Sir Finley is used to provide us with a more tempo-oriented or aggressive Hero Power, which we can use to our advantage. With more aggressive decks, selecting a Hero Power like Hunter’s Steady Shot can win us games on its own.
2x tunnel-trogg — New!
- Finally! A low-cost Shaman minion that synergizes with overload! Unlike unbound-elemental, cards that overload do not increase Tunnel Trogg’s health, but the benefit is that its attack increases based on how much overload each spell or minion incurs. This allows very surprising turns with spells like lava-burst where you’ll be able to do much more damage to an opponent than expected.
1x flametongue-totem
- Allows our Totems to become more useful for us, and can synergize well with whirling-zap-o-matic and charge minions.
2x totem-golem
- Totem Golem is a mana efficient minion that fits well into our deck due to his synergy with tunnel-trogg.
- His downside is that the following turn, you will have 1 less mana to use. This can be frustrating because it may prevent you from playing on curve on turn 3 and 4, so you when you mulligan your opening hand, you should keep overload into account to ensure you’re not forced to use your hero power.
2x whirling-zap-o-matic
- A mana-efficient Mech with Windfury that can win games for us when combined with rockbiter-weapon or flametongue-totem.
2x argent-horserider
- A charge minion. Replaces the wolfrider commonly seen at this slot. Argent Horserider is more durable and is likely to deal more damage to our opponent over the course of the game.
Spells – 15
1x earth-shock
- Great for bypassing taunts so we can do face damage, or to delete minions like loot-hoarder and leper-gnome without triggering their Deathrattle.
2x lightning-bolt
- A direct damage spell that synergizes with Tunnel Trogg. If you have extra mana, remember to roll a totem first to see if you can get the wrath-of-air-totem for the Spellpower bonus.
2x rockbiter-weapon
- A flexible removal spell that can target our minions or own own hero. This card is generally best utilized on weapon or minion that has windfury.
2x ancestral-knowledge
- Card draw is pretty important due to the high quantity of cheap spells and minions. The overload also synergizes with Tunnel Trogg, making this a reasonable play on turn 2 if you have a Tunnel Trogg out on turn 1.
2x crackle
- A direct damage spell that synergizes with Tunnel Trogg. If you have extra mana, remember to roll a totem first to see if you can get the wrath-of-air-totem for the Spellpower bonus.
2x lava-shock
- Lava Shock will often pay for itself when you’re heavily overloaded. You can use it to chip in extra damage for lethal, or to remove a 2 health minion that can’t easily be ignored like knife-juggler.
2x feral-spirit
- Protects our tunnel-trogg and whirling-zap-o-matic. This instantly provides you with a board to get value out of flametongue-totem.
2x lava-burst
- A direct damage spell that synergizes with Tunnel Trogg. You should consider saving this as a finisher, instead of using it as removal. It’s important with this deck to always be counting up how much damage you can do on this turn and the next.
- If you have extra mana, remember to roll a totem first to see if you can get the wrath-of-air-totem for the Spellpower bonus.
Weapons – 1
1x stormforged-axe
- Stormforged Axe overloads quite heavily, but it’s a good way of protecting an early tunnel-trogg or to chip in damage over the course of several turns. Once you have doomhammer you can replace this.
Mulligan Guide
In general, you want to mulligan to setup your first three or four turns. Please note that there is a distinction between going first and going second in Hearthstone, and this should factor into your mulligan choices.
When going first, your advantage is the ability to play first. In addition, you gain mana crystals before your opponent. To take advantage of this, you want to be aggressive in your mulligan to put minions on the board.
When going second, your advantage is mainly the-coin, which gives you tempo over your opponent for a single turn, and also an extra card. Depending on the nature of your deck, whether it’s Aggro, Midrange, or Control, you’ll be looking for different things.
- When playing an aggro deck, you’ll be looking for the same cards going second as you would going first. The objective is to quickly populate the board and bring down your opponent’s life total.
- When playing a midrange deck, you’ll also be looking to get onto the board early, with the caveat that you can keep a single copy of a situational minion or spell that you think may be useful to counter an opponent. This spell might be something like a kezan-mystic to counter classes with Secrets or removal like frostbolt.
- When playing a control deck, you’re looking to save the coin until much later in the game, generally when you can bring out a large late-game threat earlier than usual.
While I won’t make an exhaustive list, these are some of the cards you should consider keeping in your opening hand when playing this deck. In general, your goal with this deck is to get onto the board as soon as possible. It’s important to dig for an early 1 or 2 mana minion to play so you can begin to pressure your opponent’s life total.
Minions
- 1 Mana: leper-gnome, tunnel-trogg, sir-finley-mrrgglton
- 2 Mana: totem-golem, whirling-zap-o-matic
- 3 Mana: argent-horserider
Spells
- 3 Mana: feral-spirit
Gameplay Video
Upgrades
Here are some substitutions that will improve this budget deck. If you’re looking to craft cards to play this class, it’s best to start with the “Key Substitutions” first before working your way to the “Nice-to-Have” Substitutions. Unless stated otherwise, you can substitute a single copy of an upgrade card instead of two if you don’t have both.
Key Substitutions
2x whirling-zap-o-matic ? 2x doomhammer
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this guide! If you have questions, feel free to use the comment sections below. Our team at HearthstonePlayers would be happy to answer them.
Coaching Lessons
If you’re interested in reaching Legend rank, or earning unlimited gold from arena, my team at HearthstoneCoaching.com would love to help! We’ve provided over a thousand hours of excellent coaching to students around the world. 
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