[GVG] OG Control Priest

Control Priest, that was my absolute favorite deck to play back in a day. Those were the times where Control Warrior was the top dog and Control Paladin was actually a thing :D Control Priest with Thoughtsteals was a deck that could rival them, since you could get additional resources from the enemy. Back then, there were almost no tools to generate extra card, so squeezing every bit of value out of every card was the name of the game.

I don't remember the exact composition of the deck, but it was something like this decklist.

I loved the matches vs Warrior especially, it was like a chess game. I knew he had 2x Shield Slam, 2x Execute, 2x Brawl. He knew I had 2x Shadow Word: Death, 1-2 Mind Control(s), 1-2 Cabal Shadow Priest(s) and 2x Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo. We also knew we both had Dr. Boom, Ragnaros the Firelord and Sylvanas Windrunner, plus potentially some other big hitters.

So it became a game of chess, a game of chicken, who can better bait our the other one's removals and still keep at least one threat alive to seal the game. You knew exactly what kind of removals your opponent can have, because there were not many options at the time. The game of Sylvanas was probably the most fun, who can actually gain any value off her Deathrattle? It means the other person will have to "waste" one more removal to deal with the outcome. Also, who remembers the not-so-budget-but-oh-so-sweet "Mind Control"? Sylvanas + Shadow Word: Death :)

This is where Thoughtsteals would often come in play and gave me game winning advantage. Stealing removals or big legendaries would give me more resources to play with, eventually outlasting my opponent. I can't remember how many Tirion Fordrings I stole :D But as it is true today, even back then there were duds. As many legendary cards as I'v gotten, I got about as many friggin Deadly Poisons and Tinker's Sharpsword Oils, because come GVG, Oil Rogue became one of the strongest decks at the time and many people played it. That led me to tech in Blingtron 3000. You might laugh now, but I'v won games on the back of this card when buffing the weapons with Poison, Oil, or both :) It also acted as a pseudo weapon removal, which was nice. I have turned my disadvantage into an advantaged. Discovering new ways to counter your opponent with a limited card pool was pretty cool thing to do.

The deck as it was then would not stand a chance today, so much more card generation was introduced in basically every class since then. Discover mechanic was a big step forward in that regard. As more of those tools were introduced, Steal Priest archetype was slowly born and you could really make your opponent cry when you were beating them with their own win condition :) Small shout-out to Tess Greymane, who allowed me to have as much fun with Burgle Rogue, as I had with Steal Priest.