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Legendary Alt F4 Control Shaman Guide

Hihi,

apDrop here for round two of weird decks to shake things up and keep things interesting while getting legend! My last post on here was about OTK Arcane Giant Warrior which you guys absolutely showed a ton of love towards, so figured I'd return the favor and do another write up so hopefully you guys enjoy it and for those of you who play it I hope you have fun \o/

For those who don't know me, I'm an avid hearthstone player / streamer who's been playing since beta and gotten legend every season(but one I didn't play) and generally do it in unconventional ways to keep me on my toes and am always trying to get more players to do the same.

This deck is Alt-F4 Shaman or more commonly known as Concede Shaman. I played this deck exclusively this season from 16 to legend tweaking a few things here and there and this is the end result. I've altered the deck name a tad mostly for fun and as a nod to the fact that the most fun thing you can do with this deck is getting people to get so annoyed that they literally alt f4 / exit out of HS. I want to give a shoutout to about 4 months ago to Tides of Time who played a very dif list to this but had the same game plan and introduced me to it within Shaman. I've always loved mono blue or u/w in magic, and this feels very permission deck-esque. I'm going to start off by stating that this guide is going to be laid out a tad differently as there are a few concepts / points I'd like to talk about as they're key to the success of this deck. So without further ado . . .

Hidden Knowledge:

This deck absolutely abuses this idea. Simply put your opponents generally have no clue what you're doing, meaning they have no idea what cards you have and how they should navigate the game. This is a big deal as in 95% of the games played they are no longer on equal footing. If I queue into X deck I generally know what their general win strategy is, their removal package consists of, and what bombs to plan for etc. However your opponent does not have that same information meaning right from the beginning of the game during the mulligan they're likely going to begin making mistakes where as you're hopefully not. Which brings me to my second point.

Your Knowledge:

This deck is not to be messed with by players who don't care to think about what they're doing, or pay 100% attention to the game. This deck like most control decks, but especially this one needs to be played at the highest level you can. You need to know the current meta decks, and how to navigate winning those matchups, I'll break it down a bit but I still can't stress this enough as it's absolutely paramount to you winning. A single mistake on your part can absolutely cost you games.

The decklist:

Twitter upload | Imgur Upload

Various videos from the climb for those who are interested:

Versus	Link	Versus	Link
Legendary - Vs Dragon Warrior & Zoo	Link	Hidden Info - vs Token Druid	Link
Three Yseras - Vs Control Dragon Warrior	Link	The Calls - Vs Midrange Hunter	Link
Vs Medivh Control Druid	Link	Vs Dragon Control Priest	Link
Vs Tempo Dragon Warrior #2	Link	Vs Aggro & Burgle Rogue	Link
Vs Tempo Dragon Warrior	Link	Vs Midrange Hunter	Link

The game plan:

This deck is a pure control deck, and its win condition is there is none \o/. Yes, you read that right. In card games there are two ways to win the game, the standard way is to drop their HP down to 0, however, you can also deny their win con and make it to where they have no option but to give up and move onto the next game. Ideally, we do this early with perfect clears inducing rage into our opponents forcing them to concede, or ideally alt f4'ing HS for the night \o/.

This deck basically consists of a few dif types of cards, there are your board sweepers, and we have a lot of them, pinpoint removal, healing, and a few cards that help close out the games where our opponents don't outright concede.

With this deck as stated above, you need to know how to use all of these spells and that's a very tricky thing that simply takes experience. Sweepers especially are how control decks build a ton of card value by trying to use one card to kill a handful creating scenarios where I use 1 card to deal with 4 of them creating a ton of value for us. On top of knowing that you need to know which minions take pinpoint removal and which or when to lump them into sweepers(azure drake falls into both sometimes you sweep them others you just Stormcrack them, and you need to know when you have to do this). Lastly you got your heals which you need to know how to use them(especially Hallazeal Elemental Destruction), this may seem simple but again there's a lot of give and take to baiting your opponent into certain decisions or simply you playing other cards over the heal at a risk to create a better situation down the line.

Matchups:

This is where things get a bit tricky. I could go over every matchup but that's a bit too intense and it's something you'll need to get a feel for but I'll talk about some of the more common ones.

• Aggro matchups(zoo, shaman) - These are pretty free as you run an insane amount of removal and big life gain, there's not much to talk about here. Mull for the first half of the deck, keep hex against shaman to deal with 7/7s or even just 3/4's if need be and bait your sweepers, I also tend to keep Harrison Jones to deal with Spirit Claws or more importantly Doomhammer(hit the first weapon you can, don't be greedy). Baiting sweepers is pretty easy to do as people don't expect you to have so many so after the first they tend to overextend. Clear boards then heal up after you've dealt with their threats.

• Midrange matchups(shaman - Hunter) - These are also pretty good for you though hunter can have draws that are a bit too sticky but that requires them to draw well and you to draw lackluster. A lot of the aggro stuff is true here so start there. From there make sure you save Hex for Savannah Highmane / Thunderbluff Valiant, and here you need to be a bit more careful with your AOE especially with Call of the Wild(which you're often begging them to play so you can Elemental Destruction \o/)

• Tempo Dragon Warrior - Again another solid matchup for us, they have a few threats that you need to answer and everything else early dies to Lightning Storms and midgame everything dies to Elemental Destructions. Do not keep Doomsayer here as it's bad against control Warrior and dragon Warrior has a ton of answers to it with minions with charge / executes. Stormcrack is your MVP followed up by Elemental Destruction.

• Druid(token / Malygos) - This is a lot closer than the others, but I've found them both to be fairly positive in your favor. However both players Yogg-Saron's like to twist the game into huge messes :s You generally don't care how hard they ramp as you can easily clear normally oppressive boards with Elemental Destruction and you have Hex's / Tinkmaster for their Arcane Golem, Ancient of Wars, Yogg-Saron, and Malygos. Against Malygos you need to respect their burst and know their range but again you have a ton of heals so not normally a problem.

As you can see that's a lot of the ladder and all of those matchups are fairly good for you which is why this deck is fairly good to play at the moment.

• Anyfin - This matchup is quite a mess, to say the least. This depends a lot on the paladin player. This is the reason we originally added Tinkmaster to the list. If the Paladin is good he'll never let you Hex his Murloc Warleaders instead he'll kill them off when he does an equality combo, which while it seems like a waste makes it to where they can revive them to do the max burst. Bad Paladins will let you Hex their Murloc Warleaders which you windmill slam do. Mull for Hex and pray they're not the smartest Anyfin player \o/.

• Control Warrior - Oh god ResidentSleeper - Twitch Chat - Prepare for 20 mins of pure bliss. Patience is a virtue my friends. This is absolutely where my hidden knowledge section comes into play. This is what separates the boys from the men(or women equal opportunist here). This is not a great matchup but it's more than winnable if you play your ass off and your opponent makes a single mistake. The name of the game here is to draw as few cards as possible, save your heavy removal for key cards depending on which version of CW they're playing and by roleplaying as a Paladin with Justicar \o/. I've won matchups where my Warrior opponents neared 90hp, this just takes a lot of care in what you're doing and hoping your opponent makes tiny mistakes based off of again hidden knowledge.

• Tempo Mage - This is a coin flip, as is the way of the tempo Mage. Objectively this is a good matchup, but once you add in Cabalist's Tome, Babbling Book, and Yogg-Saron things get a lot trickier. Just keep their minions off the board as they need that repetitive damage, plan for the Antonidas plays and try and get max Hallazeal / Healing Wave heals by respecting their burst but skating the line between getting max heals and death perfectly.

• Worgen OTK Warrior - This matchup objectively is terrible, but I've found that most of the warriors playing this deck also are. I've seen some allow me to portal / weapon acolytes for 3 full draws to fatigue them and get a lucky burn, I've also them execute early minions to ensure late game you can build the great Trump wall with Justicar / Thing from Below and make sure they can never hit me, lastly you can pray to Yogg-Saron to give you an Ice Block / Vaporize / Counterspell / Ice Barrier / Misdirection / Noble Sacrifice etc to try and save you. If none of that happens though you're dead.

Interesting cards:

This whole deck basically XD. I get so many questions about various dif tech cards.

• Spirit Claws - Basically a restricted War Axe, but mostly it's just used to remove divine shields or finish off cards that AOE's don't quite hit hard enough on.

• Mana Tide vs Azure Drake - Azure drake is generally a bit clunky in terms of the mana cost and you don't need the body, whereas Mana Tide gets you the draw and an immediate heal vs aggro which is all you need is that little bit of time.

• Tinkmaster Overspark - A 3rd Hex. This card is controlled RNG and you need to know how to do that. Sometimes he's an 8/8 on turn 3 after you hero power and just transform it, others your opponent plays an Ancient of War / Tirion / Sylvannas / Cairne and you at worst silence them or at best win the game, and lastly again for Anyfin / N'zoth style decks to get rid of annoying death rattles or minions that will come back.

• Elise Starseeker - This is your end game when opponents don't concede. She allows you to transition from being passive after you've survived and locked down most of the problems into being the aggressor. Her body being a 3/5 for 4 mana isn't exactly bad either against aggro.

• Harrison Jones - This meta is dominated by weapons with Shaman, Hunter, and Warriors running rampant. If that isn't quite the case consider him cuttable but as of right now that holds true.

• Justicar Trueheart - LUL JUSTICAR IN SHAMAN - Twitch Chat 2016 - So this card is the butt of all jokes til I spin the hero power(which is fun to spam click) and people realize what it actually does(not saying go run it in midrange / aggro). So Shaman can normally only play 4 totems, one of each. What most people don't seem to know is that Justicar overwrites both of those things. I can have 7 totems, and they can all be taunt against aggro, spell power against midrange / or my favorite roleplaying as a Paladin against Warrior to force early Brawls on bad boards. This deck is 1/3 removal which means you need spell power a lot to not have to use multiple cards and she ensures that happens on demand.

• Yogg-Saron, Hope's End - He has "Hope's End" in the name. He absolutely is used for this purpose. When you're not sure if the current state of the game is going to go well for you rather than sit and wait you can praise Yogg to break symmetry, or when you're losing the game you have this panic button that can take a 100% loss to a win. It's 1 card and you rarely play it but sometimes you need it and it's the only card that can come in that clutch. Sadly HS games are won off this card when they shouldn't be, and as long as that's the case he'll be in here.

A Few Final Tips:

• Doomsayers should be used liberally as both a 1:1 removal and to trade your opponents turn time walking them(magic card basically skips your opponents turn). Do not be greedy with this card otherwise it goes from being insane to just a heal which is still fine but not as good as board wiping / time walking.
• You don't need to save lava shock for unlocking crystals, generally you should try to but don't get too caught up on it if you need to remove something. This deck makes due fine with 5 or even 7 locked crystals on your following turn.
• Hallazeal & Elemental Destruction are best friends, pair them together for reno jackson sized heals and board clears.
• Against control decks early game you can toss out a Mana Tide if you feel you need the cards, they'll assume you're midrange and kill it on sight, sometimes over extending or spending to do so.
• Maelstorm Portal should generally be cast first in sequences when used as it can summon Tunnel Trogg, or Mana Wyrm.
• Justicar Trueheart resets your hero power once a turn activation as with all classes so on 10 mana you can hero power > cast Justicar > hero power again.

The tldr:

No TLDR read the whole article, top to bottom it's all important if you're interested in the deck ;p

In Closing:

Cheers and thanks for checking out my second post on the Competitive HS subreddit! I look forward to hearing back from you guys on anything and everything.

Lastly a bit of shameless self-promotion. I do stream at twitch.tv/apdrop nearly every night at 9pm PDT, 2PM AEST, & 6AM CEST so feel free to drop by and say hi!

gl & hf

P.S. Sorry for any spelling and grammar mistakes I just play a children's card game. I tried to make this as clean and organized as possible D:

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