Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wednesday, the Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off meta deck each week with an in depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

Have you ever had a Legendary card sit in your collection for years, unused? This is what happened to me with Activate the Obelisk, where once in a while I tried to make a deck with it but it turned out to be really, really bad. After the latest expansion, this card finally found a home in a deck that while not being meta level competitive, is good enough to be an off meta deck that will win enough to be enjoyable to play. The two key cards that finally made an Activate the Obelisk deck decent are Gift of the Naaru and Bless. Gift of the Naaru can give card draw and heal to complete the quest faster, while Bless makes your high hp low attack minions into high attack threats. Overall, if you also have Activate the Obelisk sitting in your collection and are looking for a deck to use it in, give this one a try!

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

First you will complete Activate the Obelisk while trying to get board control, and then the quest will help you retake board control if you lost it or keep snowballing your advantage.

Quest Completion - You use self damaging minions to be able to heal them and gain progress towards the quest.

Board Control - Healing and buffs will help you gain and keep board control and achieve favorable trades. The Obelisk's Eye hero power from Activate the Obelisk is really good for snowballing board control, as you can keep trading while healing and buffing your minions.

You have a strong game against board based decks where Xyrella and your heals and buffs can help you take control of the board. Control and combo are very winnable as long as you get on board fast and start applying pressure. Bless for turning your high hp minions and hp buffs into high attack is the key card in these matchups.

Mulligans

Keep Activate the Obelisk, Injured Kvaldir, Northshire Cleric, Injured Tol'vir, and Injured Blademaster if you already have a 1 or 2 drop. Situationally, you can keep spells like Circle of Healing, Gift of the Naaru, Power Word: Feast, and Bless if you have a minion to combo them with.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is knowing when to use Northshire Clerics and Xyrella to balance value and tempo.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Don't always play the quest on turn 1 - play it before you start healing. A turn 1 Northshire Cleric into turn 2 Bless may be a better opener and establish a 5/5 minion.

Remember that healing enemy minions and the enemy hero will count towards your quest.

You can combo Gift of the Naaru with Injured Blademaster.

Hench-Clan Shadequill is a win-win - either it gives you 5 quest progress if removed or you can buff it with Bless and make it a 9/9.

In general, try to use Circle of Healing and Gift of the Naaru to mass heal a lot of minions - sometimes you even want to damage non-threatening enemy minions and heal them to complete your quest faster. You can also use these cards, including setting up heals on enemy minions, to have a lot of total heal for the turn to get Xyrella to deal more damage.

Northshire Cleric is a really powerful source of card draw, you can play it on turn 1 or later in the game and all your healing on minions will also draw cards. If you have 2 of them on the board, be careful to avoid overdrawing yourself especially if using a mass heal effect like Circle of Healing. Keep in mind that Northshire Clerics also trigger on enemy minions, you can use this to your advantage to draw more cards but also be careful to avoid overdrawing and milling yourself.

Don't always use your healing most efficiently. Sometimes you want to use it for extra value for Northshire Cleric. For example, if you have a Northshire Cleric on the board and a damaged minion missing 4 health you can first use Renew or your hero power on it to draw a card, then Circle of Healing to draw another card, instead of just using Circle of Healing by itself.

Your buffs help increase minion health and Bless can combine with Power Word: Shield for extra power. This is best used on minions that already have high health.

You should use Power Word: Feast on a very damaged minion to be able to get a lot of quest progress at the end of your turn.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Self Damage Package

These minions damage themselves so that you can heal them and complete the quest faster. They also gain extra value from the Obelisk's Eye hero power. Raise Dead both gives you value (including more copies of self damage minions) and damages your hero which you can then heal. 

Quest Completion

These cards help you complete the Activate the Obelisk quest by healing minions and heroes. Remember your priest hero power helps a lot with this too.

Board Control

These cards don't help you complete the quest, but are in because of how good they are at getting you board control. Rally! resurrects high value minions including full health copies of your self damage minions, while Xyrella can clear your opponent's board while adding 4/4 in stats to yours.

Buff Package

These buffs help you make your minions more threatening, provide favorable trades, and draw cards. Obelisk's Eye from the quest is very powerful and the whole point of playing an Activate the Obelisk deck.

Card Draw and Value Generation

Card draw is important to keep the pressure going, and these cards are great at doing that. Northshire Cleric in particular is high quality and can draw over 5 cards when combined with heals.

If you want a deck to play with Activate the Obelisk, this is the best one I have come up with that actually makes good use of the quest reward hero power. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

What are your favorite wild decks? Which off meta decks have you been playing? Let us know in the comments below!