Mech 1.0
In case the title of the deck wasn’t a dead giveaway, what with his distinctive version system, the Deck of the Week is Trump’s Mech Shaman. Specifically, it’s the one that helped him win the HTC Recharged tournament.
Mech Shaman has been around since the release of Goblins vs. Gnomes, but had fallen out of favor. Recently, it has been making a resurgence, possibly because of more people running midrange hunter over face hunter. This deck seeks to dominate those midrange type decks by starting strong and finishing the opponent before they can get their big treats out.
The Basics
Being Mech Shaman, you would expect the deck to feature a lot of minions from the “Mech” card type. The deck certainly does, which is why Mechwarper is such an important card for this deck. It’s usually a keeper and worth trying to mulligan for. An unchecked Mechwarper can simply wreck havoc on the board thanks to its mana reduction property.
If you start first, no coin in hand, and play a Mechwarper on turn 2, if it survives, you can then play a 3 mana Piloted Shredder. If you have the coin, you can play Mechwarper on turn 1, then on turn 2, bust out two Whirling Zap-o-matics. Good luck to your opponent having some aoe board clear for 3 mana!
Putting on the Pressure
With that much early pressure, going into turns 4 and 5, it’s important to keep the pressure going. Powermace is a great card in that respect because it not only gives you a weapon to spare your minions some board trading, but gives a random mech on your side of the board a great +2/+2 buff when it breaks. This can turn a minor threat like an Annoy-a-tron into a beefy 3/4 body with Divine Shield, or make your Whirling Zap-o-matic a horrifying 5/4 with Windfury. It also discourages your opponent from breaking the weapon early if there is still a mech on your board.
Even if you don’t get much early pressure, midrange cards like Fire Elemental and Fel Reaver will cause your opponent some worry. Fire Elemental is the quintessential shaman card, with the 3 damage battlecry usually allowing you to not only develop a 6/5 threat, but kill an enemy minion in the process. Fel Reaver is an interesting card because first, it’s an 8/8 for 5 mana, and second, it actually helps cycle your deck. An unanswered turn 5 Fel Reaver can outright win you a game by itself, but even if your opponent kills it and burns a few cards, it helps you get deeper into your deck. This makes it more likely you will draw your other big cards or game ending burst.
Killing them hopefully before turn 10
As mentioned, this deck does well usually against other midrange decks. More control focused decks however pose a bit of a problem. While Fel Reaver can help you churn through cards, you don’t really have any card draw in the deck. This means that you can very easily run out of steam in the late game. Every turn past turn 10 increases the chance that you will run out of cards and lose. That’s not a guarantee of course, but the odds aren’t in your favor.
To keep this from happening, the deck has several burn spells and a very powerful shaman weapon, the Doomhammer. Doomhammer is nice because you can get serious value killing off your opponent’s weaker minions, but it also serves as late game burst. A Doomhammer with Rockbiter Weapon is 10 damage for 6 mana. The deck also runs Dr. Boom and Ragnaros to help finish off those last few points of your opponent’s health.
While Mech Shaman is very dependent on the meta being favorable, it’s still a fun deck that’s worth giving a try. If you’d like to try it out on me, just look for me in game as AGRitterific. I’d also be interesting in hearing an substitutions or improvements you can think of. Leave me a comment below or tweet me @AGRitterific.
