Hello everyone.
This is the match analysis from my ‘Powerhouse Shaman‘ featuring the shaman deck and guide, IÂ hope you find this helpful and find some helpful and new information.
Please accept that these are my experience of the matchups, some people have different approaches and I respect that, this is what works for me and IÂ hope others can respect my opinion, if you feel anything is exceptionally wrong then please write it in the comments and we can discuss it.
There is very few decks this shaman deck cannot handle and it has the burst damage to surprise most players, overall IÂ find it exceptionally fun to play and very easy to rank with, IÂ hope you have the same luck with it.
Druid – Midrange
Mulligan – argent-squire / hex / unbound-elemental
Strategy – In this match you will fight over the board the whole game, the worst thing about this matchup is that druids are now running double wombo combo (force-of-nature and savage-roar) and double wild-growth so this can force you into a lot of 2 for 1’s if the wild-growth is used early, aslong as this doesnt happen you can win the board control game with relative ease, try and force wrath without card draw and look for opportunities to try and setup burst damage for when ancient-of-lore is played due to druid drawing cards from it almost 100% of the time. 14 is the key number for your own health in this match due to the Force-of-nature and savage-roar combo, but sometimes the best option is to just hope they dont have it.
Keycard(s) – hex / doomhammer
Difficulty – 5/10
Druid – Ramp
Mulligan – argent-squire, earth-shock, hex, unbound-elemental
Strategy – In this match you want to aim to take advantage of the fact this deck plays big minions so you are the aggressor here, you should focus on keeping earth-shock for the ancient-of-war, try and get as much pressure as possible and punish the slow nature of the ramp druid, you have opportunity in this match for blood-knight value from sunwalker, this match is not that hard as a Shaman, just try and not fall to far behind early or it will be an uphill struggle
Keycard(s)Â – doomhammer / hex / earth-shock
Difficulty – 4/10
Druid – Token
Mulligan – Argent-squire /Stormforged-axe / Blood-knight / Unbound-elemental
Strategy – In this match you need to keep the board clear at all times until you can push lethal damage, power-of-the-wild and savage-roar are deadly in this match and it is the hardest druid matchup because there is no lightning-storm in this deck, violet-teacher is a viable target for hex in this match and you can get blood-knight value from argent-squire. Whoever gets an unanswered board first in this match is usually the one who is victorious.
Keycard(s) – Flametongue-totem / Blood-knight / Violet-teacher
Difficulty – 6/10
Hunter – Aggro
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Earth-shock / Feral-spirit
Strategy – In this match this is a race, you are on the clock from turn 1, because of all the charge minions and direct damage, you can match this though especially if you have Doomhammer + Rockbiter-weapon combo’s and keep in mind this variant of hunter runs zero healing so any damage you get sticks, try not to over extend with totems for starving-buzzard and unleash-the-hounds as this will cost you the game, sometimes it is better to just not use your hero power in this match and try to avoid spawning tokens with the Violet-Teacher. Using coin for feral-spirit on turn 2 is acceptable in this matchup.
Keycard(s) – Doomhammer / Rockbiter-weapon
Difficulty – 4/10
Hunter – Control
Mulligan – Lightning-bolt / Earth-shock / Unbound-elemental
Strategy – In this match you want to try and keep beasts off of the board as much as possible to limit the value of Houndmaster, use hex on savannah-highmane and take the same approach as the Aggro Hunter, you do have the damage to kill them before they kill you. Be wary of starving-buzzard and unleash-the-hounds and try to dictate the pace of the game with strong minions, you do not want kill-command hitting your face.
Keycard(s) – Doomhammer / Hex / Rockbiter-weapon
Difficulty – 3/10
Mage – AggroÂ
Mulligan – Argent-Squire / Earth-shock / Stormforged-axe / Lightning-bolt
Strategy – In this match you want to play the removal game early, try and exhaust the opponents hand and play feral-spirit and flametongue-totem when it will net you 2 for 1’s, you wont win this match if you play it like a race very often so you need to keep the board clear at all times and try to force spells onto your minions rather than your face. Overall this match is not that difficult unless the draws from the mage are superb but it is possible to lose.
Keycard(s) – Feral-spirit / Flametongue-totem
Difficulty – 5/10
Mage – FreezeÂ
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Earth-shock / Unbound-elemental / Feral-spirit
Strategy – In this match you need a lot of minions and a good curve early, get as much damage on the mage as possible, do not trade the board unless absolutely necessary, i have seen myself use hex in this match on an acolyte-of-pain just to stop the card draw, if they do not get ice-block up for when they use alexstrasza on you it will be an extremely difficult match for the mage. Try and keep earth-shock for doomsayer as you will be the one with board presence in this matchup.
Keycard(s) – Doomhammer / Lava-burst
Difficulty – 5/10
Paladin – Aggro
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Earth-shock / Stormforged-axe / Blood-knight / Feral-spirit
Strategy – In this match you want to keep your hand as empty as possible at all times, you do not under any circumstances want to give the paladin a good divine-favor, this match is difficult purely because of equality / consecration / avenging-wrath and truesilver-champion, it is so much direct damage to deal with so you need to be able to make sure the paladin gets no extra draws, if you manage this then this match is not so bad once you get feral spirit up also keep in mind they run divine shield minions so you can get blood-knight value, but sometimes they also run their own.
Keycard(s) – Blood-knight / Feral-spirit
Difficulty – 6/10
Paladin – Control
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Unbound-elemental / Feral-spirit / Violet-teacher
Strategy – In this match you are the aggressor, you want to try and get as threatening a board as possible while not over extending your hard, the violet-teacher excels at this, remember that you can use earth-shock to silence your off the aldor-peacekeeper debuff, but in general that is only done when you are pushing for lethal, a minion debuffed with equality and aldor-peacekeeper will not die when using earth-shock on it due to the order the actions take place (silence then damage). Count the aoe clears and go in for the kill when you feel the paladin is running out of options.
Keycard(s) – Flametongue-totem / Violet-teacher / Fire-elemental
Difficulty – 5/10
Priest – Midrange
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Flametongue-totem / Hex
Strategy – In this match you are the aggressor, you want to try and make the priests life akward, beware if they go second as wild-pyromancer + the-coin + power-word-shield can do extreme damage to your board, count holy nova / circle-of-healing and wild-pyromancer once these are mostly gone you should be fine, azure-drake is exceptional in this match as most of the time the priest has no option but to use holy-fire on  it, your blood-knight can also eat an early shadow-word-death and hex is exceptional for dealing with that pesky turn 2 injured-blademaster and circle-of-healing combo.
Keycard(s) – Blood-knight / Azure-drake / Doomhammer
Difficulty – 3/10
Rogue – Aggro
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Earth-shock / Feral-spirit
Strategy – In this match you are at the mercy of card draws, this variant of rogue runs so much direct damage that it can be exceptionally hard to deal with, you must keep the fight on the board at all times and hope that you have feral-spirit when the rogue wants to go in for the kill, the problem here is that most of the time you will need to use feral-spirit early just to surive, but this is a difficult matchup, to win you need a very good curve of minions for the first 4 turns of the game.
Keycard(s) – Argent-squire / Earth-shock / Feral-spirit
Difficulty – 7/10
Rogue – Miracle
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Lightning-bolt / Flametongue-totem / Unbound-Elemental
Strategy – In this match you must be the aggressor, you cannot afford to take a single point of unnecessary damage due to how strong the leeroy-jenkins finisher is, but just play aggressive try not to overload on turn 6 because the fire-elemental kills both earthern-ring-farseer andsi7-agent and also be aware of edwin-van-cleef, using silence on him seems great but they can shadowstep it and play again, bloodmage-thalnos and earth-shock is awesome vs that particular minion.
Keycard(s) – Lava-burst / Doomhammer / Rockbiter-weapon
Difficulty – 5/10
Shaman – Midrange
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Lightning-bolt / Stormforged-axe / Unbound-elemental
Strategy – In this match whoever gets board control wins the game, you need to clear out every single minion / totem that comes down, the weapons are fantastic for this. Also be aware that both decks can play blood-knight so you will have a very strong chance for an early 6/6, dont overextend into lightning-storm (dont play feral-spirit if you already have a board). Also be careful of defender-of-argus, i cannot stress enough how important board control is in this matchup, i would even use a 6/6 blood knight to kill a wrath-of-air-totem rather than go for face damage.
Keycard(s) – Stormforged-axe / Doomhammer
Difficulty – 4/10
Warlock – Aggro
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Lightning-bolt / Earth-shock / Rockbiter-weapon / Stormforged-axe / Blood-knight
Strategy – In this matchup you want to aim to play defensively at the start getting as many minions or totems as you can, at the very beginning you want to use your removal and accept that taking damage from hitting minions with stormforged-axe is worth it becasue it gains you tempo, you dont want to focus so much on your own game, you should be prioritising making the warlocks life as hard possible. With this strategy he will run out of minions to play and end up playing battlecry minions without targets at this point you should try to get your bigger creatures out, the fire-elemental and Alakir-the-windlord are also amazing in this match because they have immediate board impact.
Keycard(s) – Stormforged-axe / Fire-elemental / Alakir-the-windlord
Difficulty – 6/10
Warlock – Handlock
Mulligan – Earth-shock / Hex / Flametongue-totem
Strategy – In this match you will get time to play out your minions, but you need to be careful of hellfire, it destroys feral-spirit and can completely stop your tempo, you can hit extremely hard with lava-burst and doomhammer so if you have some bursty spells do not be afraid to go face. You have earth-shock for the twilight-drake and hex for themountain-giant, but sometimes you dont draw the correct cards for those targets in situations like this you can also kill a mountain-giant with flametongue-totem between feral-spirit and using hex on a twilight-drake is sometimes necessary aswell.
Keycard(s) – Earth-shock / Lava-burst / Hex
Difficulty – 3/10
Warrior – Aggro
Mulligan – Argent-squire / Flametongue-totem / Stormforged-axe / Feral-spirit / Lightning-bolt
Strategy – In this match you need to just survive, clear everything off of the board and dont drop the warrior below 12 until you have lethal due to mortal-strike, once you see arcanite-reaper it is an awesome time to play feral-spirit and dont be afraid to use hex on 5+ mana minions, if you get board control this game is over so be patient. This is the easiest of the agro matchups imo.
Keycard(s) – Feral-spirit / Alakir-the-windlord
Difficulty – 4/10
Warrior – Control
Mulligan – argent-squire / unbound-elemental / feral-spirit / flametongue-totem
Strategy – In this match you need to be the aggressor, his finisher is alexstrasza into grommash-hellscream + random 3 damage so as you dont run any heals you need to play extremely offensive and hope to not get wiped out by brawl, watch out playing unbound-elemental as korkron-elite is a straight 2 for 1, same with feral-spirit, if you manage to get an aggressive start you are mostly laughing, but a lot of warriors run harrison-jones which can ruin the best of your days so do not hesitate to use your doomhammer charges as soon as possible unless you absolutely need rockbiter-weapon on it to end the game.
Keycard(s) – Flametongue-totem / Doomhammer / Hex
Difficulty – 6/10
Published: Jun 21, 2014 04:00 pm