Piloting Badlands Highlander Reno Priest in Hearthstone's Standard Format: Deck Spotlight

According to our community compendium, Reno, Lone Ranger was one of the most highly rated cards during the reveal season. The hype is totally understandable: Highlander (or Reno) decks have a long history of popularity and success, he's the very first neutral hero card, and of course, his ability is a hard counter to any large, threatening board, even getting rid of locations, dormant minions, and that nasty The Twisting Nether.

Whether Reno has lived up to the hype is something we all might have our own opinions about, but for anyone hoping to make your Highlander dreams come true, read on for the first installment of my 6-part series on Highlander decks you can play in Standard today!

Save the Badlands With a New Version of Big Priest

Elise, Badlands Savior was a bit of a sleeper for me. I didn't expect much from her, but I've been pleasantly surprised! To begin with, I built the deck below for the sole purpose of nabbing the "Elise's Elites" achievement (this requires summoning 24 mana worth of minions with a single Elise). However, the deck turned out to be so fun, and actually won some games, I've kept it around and played it on and off over the last couple weeks.

Playing Elise can be sort of counter-intuitive. I think the best way to get value from her effect is to have a ton of high cost, impactful minions that she can copy as 4/4s, but in order for her effect to activate, you can't run duplicates. That means that if you want strong deathrattles like Stoneborn General or powerful rush minions like ... Stoneborn General, you can only put in one copy. On the other hand, there are lots of great legendaries that you might use, and you can only run one of each anyway. Some of them, like Ragnaros the Firelord, are even included in the core set, while others, like Yogg-Saron, Unleashed, are more easily obtainable as part of a mini-set.

As you can see, the deck is very spell heavy, with a top end of beefy, high-value summons for Elise. You'll want to mulligan any minion that isn't Elise. Use the spells to remove enemy minions, protect and restore your health, and prepare for your big Elise turn. Of course, just playing Elise on curve won't always win you the game. I've been lucky enough to have Love Everlasting in play with Power Chord: Synchronize in hand: this enables you to play Elise on turn 8 and immediately get another copy of her for a following turn. And best of all, Elise, Badlands Savior only summons copies, so your originals are still in the deck, waiting to be pulled again. You can also use Creation Protocol for more copies of Elise.

I want to spotlight Identity Theft as one of Priest's best tools right now. Not only does it generate 2 potentially useful cards for you, but it tips you off to what your opponent is currently holding, as well as showing you a total of 6 cards they have, which is enough information to make a reasonable guess as to their deck's strategy and win condition.

Thunderbringer is absolutely amazing in this deck. If Elise summons a copy of it and your opponent clears the board, you'll just have another board right away, and it'll be a spicy one! It's worth remembering that a copy of Thunderbringer can pull itself out of the deck.

Kologarn, Mish-Mash Mosher and Stoneborn General can immediately impact the board, as can Blackwater Behemoth (well, at the end of the turn).

Yogg-Saron, Unleashed and Aman'Thul (if you have him, I don't) are also great for immediate impact. Even though they don't attack right away, you can use their abilities as soon as they hit the board.

And of course, you have Reno, Lone Ranger. As long as no one has shuffled any nastiness into your deck for you, he immediately clears the opponent's board (without triggering deathrattles, by the way) and gives you a spiffy new hero power that does a variety of cool stuff. Certainly a powerful and fun card.

So that's a wrap on my version of Standard Highlander Priest. Have you tried using Elise, Badlands Savior and Reno, Lone Ranger together? What other cards have you run alongside these stalwart champions? Share your decks and comments below!