The Voyage to the Sunken City expansion has just launched, and to celebrate this milestone we're doing an event called Wild Week. Over the next 10 days, there will be one guide a day, one for each class, using as many new cards as possible. Today, we're going to be looking at Reno Combo Priest in Voyage to the Sunken City.
Reno Combo Priest has been a classic archetype in Wild for years, and with the new expansion, it has gotten more support to enable to it have even stronger combo turns. If you're not familiar with Reno Combo Priest, Raza the Chained sets your hero power to cost 0 while Shadowreaper Anduin gives you a 2 damage hero power that refreshes whenever you lay a card. Combined, you get a 0 mana hero power that deals 2 damage that can keep being refreshed. In addition to being strong by itself, this can be combined with Spawn of Shadows to activate his effect multiple times in one turn and deal over 30 damage to win. Priestess Valishj helps this by allowing you to refresh mana and play even more cards during your combo turn, increasing your damage output. In addition, the deck received Handmaiden which is great for draw. Overall, if you want to play a classic Wild deck with new cards, one that is very strong if played well and is worth taking the time to master, give Reno Combo Priest a try.
Past decks in Wild Week can be found here.
Now, let's get into the guide for 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.
Deck Ratings
Replayability
Interesting Synergy
Fun and Unique Moments
Difficulty to Master
Competitiveness
Strategies
The strategy is to survive until you can use your combo to win.
Survival - This deck is packed with high quality clears and heals that you should use to survive. You should be drawing cards while doing so to get to your combo pieces. You can also use Dirty Rat to disrupt combos that can win faster than the Reno Priest combo can.
Combo - Any time during the game when you are not in danger of losing by doing so, play Raza the Chained and Shadowreaper Anduin. The order doesn't matter as Raza's cost reduction persists across hero powers. Then, when you have Spawn of Shadows in hand and enough cheap cards to fuel your Voidform hero power to refresh, you can activate its effect many times in one turn to win. Be mindful that your own health total is high enough such that you don't destroy yourself in the process.
If your combo is somehow disrupted, you can just use your 0 mana repeatable hero power to keep dealing damage and win over time. So, don't concede if your Spawn of Shadows is ratted or Mutanused. You can also be patient and win with Kazakus value as well.
Mulligans
- Keep Zephrys the Great, Insight, Kazakus, and Raza the Chained.
- Keep Raise Dead if you have Zephrys the Great.
- Keep Reno Jackson against Midrange and Aggro.
- Keep Dirty Rat against Combo.
- Keep Handmaiden and 1 mana spells if you have it.
- Keep Lorekeeper Polkelt if against Control.
- Keep Xyrella and Gift of the Naaru or Renew if you have Xyrella and one of those and are against Midrange or Aggro.
- Keep Potion of Madness against Aggro.
- Keep Spirit Lash and Bloodmage Thalnos if you have both and are against Aggro.
- Keep Mass Hysteria against Midrange.
There are a few always keeps and a lot of situational keeps which you should do based on predicting the matchup from the class and your pocket meta.
Gameplay
The key to playing this deck well is to balance using cheap cards for survival while keeping enough for your combo turn.
Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.
Survival Synergies
Make sure to keep some cheap spells in hand for the combo. With that said, here are some survival synergies to keep in mind.
Xyrella + Reno Jackson, hero power, Gift of the Naaru, Renew, Penance, or Spirit Lash is a nice one sided board clear. She can also be combined with Brann Bronzebeard for even more damage. All those heals can also be combined with Cleric of An'she to discover a spell.
Bloodmage Thalnos + Spirit Lash is more heal and damage.
Psychic Scream reshuffles a deck and is a counter to Dredging or Lorekeeper Polkelt.
You can use Dirty Rat with Brann and Seance to counter an enemy combo. Since this deck's combo only comes down turn 8 at the earliest, this is very key to winning against faster combo decks.
You can use Raise Dead to get more copies of key minions.
When using Kazakus, you often want to get a 5 cost potion if against Aggro, but if against a Control deck don't get a 10 cost potion - it's actually preferable to get a 1 cost one as fuel for your Combo turn. The exception is if you want to try and get card draw.
In general, you have so many survival tools that you shouldn't be afraid to play them without getting full value out of them if you need hand space for draw.
It's sometimes better to use a higher cost removal than lower cost even if the lower cost one would be enough to clear. This is because you want to leave enough cheap cards to be able to combo.
Combo Synergy
Lorekeeper Polkelt is powerful as he puts your Shadowreaper Anduin and Raza the Chained at and near the top of the deck. He also puts Psychic Scream, a powerful removal, and Reno Jackson near there as well so you can clear the board and heal, and be prepared to do the combo when you draw your 4 cost Spawn of Shadows.
On your combo turn, you should have played Shadowreaper Anduin and Raza the Chained earlier and have a Spawn of Shadows in hand. Then, use Voidform on the opponent's face and play Spawn of Shadows. Keep using your hero power on the enemy hero and playing different cheap cards to refresh this. This can deal over 30 damage easily. You should calculate if you can win with a combo turn while keeping in mind that Spawn of Shadows damages you as well, meaning the game may end in a loss or tie. To counteract this, you may have cheap spells that can heal your or damage the opponent further (1 mana spells including Kazakus potions can do this) and you can try to rely on Zephrys the Great to give a cheap spell as well - maybe even Holy Light if you're at low health.
In general, you deal 6 damage to the opponent each time you hero power in this combo, and 4 damage to yourself. So if you need 5 uses of this hero power to deal 30 damage you can multiply 4 by 5 and see that you will deal 20 damage to yourself. So you have to see if any cards in your hand allow you to heal yourself or deal extra damage to require fewer hero powers if you have less than 20 health, otherwise the game may end in a tie or loss if you combo. Sometimes a tie is alright, and you should go for it if you would lose otherwise.
Keep in mind that Priestess Valishj can refresh some mana crystals and allow you to do more damage - if you have enough low cost spells you may even be able to play Reno Jackson after getting to low health and thus heal yourself and win with the combo if you would have otherwise lost or tied during it.
Against decks with a lot of armor, you may spend a few turns chipping away armor with your hero power before doing the combo. Alternatively, you can use Seance on Spawn of Shadows if you have multiple 0 cost cards in hand (possible with Palm Reading discounts) to get 2 Spawn of Shadows in one turn and deal more damage. Priestess Valishj can also increase the damage of your combo turn by refreshing mana crystals and allow you to fit in 2 Spawn of Shadows and multiple cards in a turn. If this is not possible, you may want to do one combo turn and then do a second combo turn later.
So the final point, which should be repeated, is you can often lose games with this deck from not leaving enough cheap spells for your combo turn. This may be something as simple as using Raise Dead early when it wasn't needed and then lacking one 0 cost spell or minion to win during your combo. For this deck, it's really really important to balance using your cheap cards early and keeping them for the combo. There's no easy rule on this, but you have to try and see how the game is going and think about what cards the opponent may be able to play depending on their deck to make this decision. Especially if you see that you are going to be able to combo soon, consider not using cheap spells or minions and instead using mid cost cards or alternatively not clearing a board if you think you can win next turn with the combo instead of clearing it with cheap spells and then losing long-term because of not having enough combo fuel.
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.
Combo Package
Spawn of Shadows, Raza the Chained, and Shadowreaper Anduin are the main combo enablers, while Priestess Valishj and Seance are there to increase the damage output of your combo turns.
Survival
Priest has a lot of survival tools and high quality clears and heals, add that to the Reno cards and you get a very powerful anti-Aggro core.
Card Draw
Card draw helps you get to your Combo Package faster. Lorekeeper Polkelt is not draw but he sets your key combo pieces on top.
Value
These cards provide value.
Combo Disruption
Dirty Rat is both good against certain types of Aggro and can disrupt combos that are faster than yours.
Reno Combo Priest is one of the most famous decks in Wild. With the new support, it is stronger than ever and better able to win games against decks with Armor gain. If you have a question, comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.
What are your favorite wild decks? Which off-meta decks have you been playing? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!
Comments
What is the best way to play dirty rat? Just put him out there and let the chips fall where they may, hoping to ruin your opponent's battlecry? or ONLY play him when you have some board control card in hand?
Next to what Swizard is saying you also want to try and use rat the moment your opponent is likely to have a combo piece/necessary battlecry in hand. The moment when that's the case is difficult to estimate and greatly depends on the deck, but in general combo decks need to have drawn/played a lot of cards before they have there combo pieces in hand. But waiting too long is not good so you got to find the balance/"read" your opponents hand...
It depends on the deck, Shudderwock Shaman has bounce effects but Combo Druids don’t. So you’d wait for removal against Shamans but play it without necessarily having removal against Druids.
This is my go-to deck since it came out in the frozen throne expansion. As f2p you don't have so much options so you kinda look what class and playstyle you have fun with and this was the one for me. Have been mostly playing it since (well had a 2 year gap somewhere). I do have a different variant on it though which is a bit more flexible when it comes to the combo because I found rat/the big murloc always found spawn of shadows somehow and I didn't always draw anduin in time so I made a shadow raza hybrid I guess. In my opinion adding Voidtouched Attendant is really helping dish out massive amounts of damage (3 ticks with voidtouched up is already 6 more damage than without).
My current iteration is:
It could possibly use more optimizations here and there. It's at the moment strongly geared toward agro as that's the most I'm currently facing (what else is new).
Shadow Priest is more competitive, but just recently people were getting into high legend with Reno Priest so it can still be good in the right meta.
This is the last post in Wild Week for this expansion. Any feedback on if this is something that you would like for future expansions?
First of all thank you for adding these decks. I imagine there are many players out there like myself that quietly copy/paste these into their collection and play them without ever commenting, upvoting, or anything. It's obvious you put alot of time and energy into making a detailed guide.
Second, yes I personally would like to see more in the future. These are helpful for showcasing decks that use new cards in wild.