Quick Brews: Elemental Shaman

Introduction

In the Quick Brews series, I’ll make a single pre-release deck for each class and talk a bit about it. However, since it’s impossible to tell how the new meta will look like, those might not be the best lists or they might not even work at all. And so, I don’t recommend crafting the cards Day 1 – you should probably wait and see how the meta turns out!

Today’s batch of theorycrafts is the last before expansion hits. I start with a rather straightforward deck which is an Elemental Shaman.

Elemental Shaman

Elemental mechanic reminds me a bit of Dragons. The goal of the deck is to curve out as well as possible. You aim to play a minion bigger and better than you should every turn and win the tempo game that way. With a good curve, which won’t be that hard to get, your turns 4 -> 8 should all be incredibly powerful.

The main problem with Shaman in the new expansion is early game that rotates out. The class loses Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem, both of which were very powerful early game plays. To compensate for that, I’ve figured out that Elemental early game combos very well with Flametongue Totem. Small cards like Fire Fly or Fire Plume Harbringer won’t be able to fight for the early board themselves, however if you toss in a Flametongue that’s another story. You can generate a bunch of small minions quite easily, making the Totem value high. And what if Totem dies? No problem, remember that your goal is to get to the mid game without falling behind, not to win the game with your small guys.

Mid game is where the deck really starts to shine. Starting with turn 4 – Tol’vir Stoneshaper. Psych-o-tron is actually a decent card, just a bit short to being playable. And Tol’vir is a better version for 1 less mana. Taunt and Divine Shield combo really well, especially if you can also throw in a Flametongue Totem somewhere in the mix. The biggest problem with the card is that it’s not an Elemental itself, which ruins the curve. But that’s not necessarily the case. To fix that problem, the deck also runs Fire Plume Harbringer – the card can get insanely strong in certain scenarios. You should be able to hit 3 or 4 Elementals quite consistently (because the deck runs 15 of them + 2 tokens + 2 more to Discover from Servant) which is like a mini-Emperor Thaurissan for Elementals. What is important, though, is that by reducing the cost of all the Elementals you can actually play a 1-drop Elemental (you have 4 in the deck + 2 tokens) alongside the Stoneshaper, because it will cost 0 – and now Stoneshaper won’t “ruin” your curve.

Glacial Shard might seem like a pretty weak minion, but I actually think that it might be one of the strongest Elementals in the expansion. Not only it’s a cheap way to activate the synergy, but freezing a minion is a good effect that scales with the game. The most powerful 1-drops are those who are useful beyond turn 1 and this is one of them. For example, if you Freeze a minion that directly threatens your Mana Tide Totem and thanks to that it goes off for another round, it’s like this card drew you an extra card. Maybe you don’t have a good way to kill a 5 health minion on the board, but next turn you can play Blazecaller? You can Freeze it and just destroy it next turn, no problem. Opponent has a weapon that cleanly kills your minion? You can freeze face and have that minion for one extra turn – maybe you’ll play a Taunt to protect it, maybe you will roll a Taunt/Healing totem etc. It’s just an effect that has multiple applications and doesn’t actually get useless later.

Another interesting card is Devolve. I put only a single one right now, but you might even run 2 of them depending on how the meta shapes. It might counter many decks like Buff Paladin (not only counters buffs, but also a Stealthed Galvadon), it completely destroys Druid’s Living Mana, it can somehow counter that N’Zoth, the Corruptor turn (you still need to deal with a big board, but at least they aren’t getting the Deathrattles value). Depending on how the meta shapes, the card can be a staple in every Shaman list.

But the MVP of the deck is obviously Kalimos, Primal Lord. It might be the best class Legendary in the whole expansion. Given that you will play Elementals nearly every turn, it’s not that hard to activate and it’s amazingly flexible. You can choose between flooding the board (which is another reason Flametongue might shine IF they don’t clear the board right away), dealing AoE damage, healing yourself and dealing face damage. The flexibility is what makes this card busted – it’s powerful in every matchup, unlike most of the high cost cards.

Servant of Kalimos also deserves a honorable mention. Remember that class cards have significantly higher offering rate (I think it was 4x) than neutral and Shaman has some solid Elementals. Especially in the late game, when you need more value, you will have a solid chance of discovering something like Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental, Stone Sentinel, Al’akir the Windlord or even Kalimos, Primal Lord.

Closing

Thanks for reading! Remember that those are still prototypes and they will first need to be tested on the ladder and optimized. I will test most of those decks on the first days of the expansion and I will write full guides for the ones that will turn out to be working properly.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!