Welcome to Budget Deck Breakdown, the series that finds the cheapest ways to have fun playing Hearthstone. Today's deck is taking advantage of a powerful budget build around Rally! along with everyone's favorite Watch Posts for a maximally annoying deck for any opponent to play against. Just because they recently caught the nerf hammer doesn't mean they still can't be used to annoy our opponents. Let's take a quick look at Spell Post Priest.
Spells are Fun! Aren't You Having Fun?!
Because the point of Hearthstone is to aggravate your opponent as much as possible, we've put together a deck that does just that and then some. Everyone loves playing against Watch Posts because they make playing your cards that much more difficult, so the idea of our deck is to summon as many Watch Posts as many times as we can with Rally! and Raise Dead to make our opponents regret many of the decisions they have made in life. You may see it as a problem that our Watch Posts each have one less Health thanks to the nerfs, but I see this as an absolute win: Watch Posts that are easier to kill are Watch Posts that can be underestimated by our opponents until it's too late.
To support this theme, our deck is light on minions that might accidentally come back from Rally! and packed with spells to enable spell-loving minions Void Flayer and Fortune Teller. These minions work well against aggressive decks, with one providing a huge body with Taunt to act as a roadblock and the other giving us a much-needed board clear in the early game. Our late game plan is to jam Rally! like nobody's business to bring back multiple Watch Posts and make life difficult for our opponent regardless of the deck they're playing.
Watchposting
This deck is designed to abuse the inherent synergy of Rally!, Far Watch Post, and Mor'shan Watch Post by bringing back our Watch Posts multiple times over the course of a game when our opponent had assumed they'd already been dealt with. It's super fun, especially for them. There is a small amount of anti-synergy between Mor'shan Watch Post and Rally! thanks to the 2/2 grunt that it summons, but that's the cost of having fun in Hearthstone. Crimson Clergy is a powerful 1-Drop to bring back from Rally!, and rounds out that package nicely.
The rest of the deck is a heavy spells package to enable Void Flayer and Fortune Teller, built to discover more spells with Palm Reading and Renew, or more minions with Draconic Studies (which is in a really good place right now). Thrive in the Shadows can find us one of the many useful spells in our deck, like Rally!.
We also have what I am calling the "Please Don't Kill Me, I Haven't Annoyed You Enough" package of Shadow Word: Death and Hysteria.
Watch Is The Plan
Versus Aggro
Against aggro, we want to keep cheap removal like Hysteria and Void Flayer to push back against their early aggression. Renew and Palm Reading also are good keeps to find us extra spells to help us stay alive and get to the good part where we play a lot of Watch Posts. Draconic Studies and Crimson Clergy can be good to keep to find us an early board presence. Apotheosis is great if we can get a body to stick.
We play a very defensive game early on, hoping to use a huge tempo swing from Void Flayer or Fortune Teller to pivot away from their aggression and into their aggravation with our Watch Posts. Far Watch Post is less useful in this matchup, so we're not too sad to see Grunts come back from Rally! especially since this means we've been getting good value out of Mor'shan Watch Post. Void Flayer is particularly good against Secret Paladin as a board clear that gets around Oh My Yogg!.
Versus Midrange
In this matchup, we like to keep Insight to draw and potentially discount a scary threat like [Hearthstone Card (Fortune Teller[/card[. We also like to keep either Watch Post in this matchup so we can begin messing with our opponent's game plan as early as possible. Discover effects like Renew, Palm Reading, and Draconic Studies can also be useful in our opening hand.
We want to keep our hand full of spells to feed Fortune Teller and Void Flayer, enabling some nice tempo swings. We also want to play either Watch Posts as early as we can to make sure our opponent has a hard time doing things. Our one copy of Psyche Split is very good here because it gives us an extra copy of a threatening minion. We want to control their board, then swing back with [card[Fortune Teller) Not Found] and Rally!.
Versus Control
Against slow decks, we specifically want to find Far Watch Post to interfere with their ability to interfere with us. Draconic Studies is a good keep to find a threatening body; it really shines in this matchup because of its ability to find a new aspect like Ysera the Dreamer, Alexstrasza the Life-Binder, or Malygos the Spellweaver. We're also looking for the old staples of Palm Reading and Insight to make sure we find plenty of things to do.
We want to play Far Watch Post early, then use resurrection effects to keep playing it and annoy our opponent as much as possible. In-between annoying our opponent we'd like to land big threatening minions like Fortune Teller or whatever we got from Draconic Studies to eventually kill them.
Card Replacements for the Rich and Famous
If you're playing with Watch Posts, it can always be a benefit to include Kargal Battlescar if you have him to create more late-game threats thanks to the Watch Posts we've played. Sethekk Veilweaver can be a good card engine even if it makes Rally! a bit less predictable. Condemn and Xyrella are decent board clears to add in against an aggressive meta, while Soul Mirror is, of course, very powerful and can fit nicely into the deck. Reliquary of Souls plays well with Rally! and gives us more power in the late game than Crimson Clergy can.
On the budget things, we can add in Nazmani Bloodweaver to create discounts on our more expensive cards, even if it disrupts the synergy between Mor'shan Watch Post and Rally! Power Word: Fortitude is a potent buff especially when we have a lot of spells in hand, making something small into a bigger threat. If we're more into copying our Watch Posts, we can run Gift of Luminance to really make things fun for our opponent.
Spell Post Priest is a deck built to make sure that everyone is having as much as possible, as measured by how many Watch Posts are summoned throughout the game. It's a decently versatile list with game against a variety of strategies, able to make opponents of all shapes and sizes wish they were doing something else. It's a fun, cheap way to take your Watch Posts for a spin, and afterwards, you can dust them for their full cost if you are so inclined.
Are you willing to take this list out on the ladder? What other budget decks have you been trying out? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Comments
I know it's epic, but hear me out -- Crossroads Watch Post is a LOT of fun to play against Mages. Every time I play one, there's this awkward hesitation, maybe one feeble attempt to remove it, then concede.
The sad part is, a deck that's slow enough to use watch posts is too slow to beat Mage if you don't draw Crossroads.
Also has its moments against Demon Hunter.
Oh that really cracked me up :)
Does this deck have a win condiotion or are we counting on our oponents to ragequit after they are up against 10th watchpost
Big Fortune Tellers and dragons from Draconic Studies can go a long way. I've been surprised by how many win conditions appear through card generation effects in Spell Priest as I've been playing it (not this deck, but something similar).
I'd say if you're worried about long Control matches, drop in C'Thun for an obvious win condition and extra spell synergy.
which control matches?
probably only Warlock
which you always lose to regardless of C'thun, so really there's no point.
C'Thun is the worst possible win condition against Warlock.