Shadowburst Priest - Wild Hearthstone Full Deck & Guide on the Wildest of Thursdays

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. 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. To see past decks in this series with updated cards guides, check out the Wild Deck Guide Compendium.

Shadowburst Priest is a deck centered around Shadows and Darkbishop Benedictus for an offensive hero power and burst. It's a hyper aggro deck that has recently gained Crooked Cook as support - it can easily draw a card each turn. Shadowburst Priest uses Darkbishop Benedictus to have the Shadowform hero power, which deals 2 damage to any target including the enemy hero. This - in addition to almost every card being able to deal direct face damage - creates a critical mass of burst which leads to a hyper aggressive gameplan where the deck can cause the opponent damage every single turn, and where almost any topdeck you get is a great one since they all help this face damage gameplan. The result is you can have lethal as early as turn 3, and often by the end of turn 5.

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

Against Aggro: You are going to want to try to get an early Undertaker going to hold off board control loss for a while, and then make it a face race where you generally go face and just burst them down right before they can beat you. It is important to calculate your in hand face damage a couple turns in advance to balance when to try to keep board control for another turn and use your hero power on a minion and when to start ignoring the board and pointing everything face.

Against Combo: You should be able to point everything face, generally ignore their minions, and win early before they get their combo off. An exception is Combo Druids who can highroll really quickly sometimes and gain a ton of armor.

Against Control: Just ignore their board and go face with everything you have, sometimes it's better to use your hero power every turn and save a card like Mind Blast for later to maximize your damage value over the next few turns. However, if you think you are against a Reno deck do not overdo this, you want to use your cards more if you have a lot of burst to be able to lethal them on turn 5 at the latest.

Overall, this deck has so much burst that your best strategy to win, even against aggressive decks, is to start and win a face race. Your minions won't be able to hold onto the board against aggro for long, although if you get a good Undertaker going or get an early Frenzied Felwing you will be able to get a ton of face damage in from your minions before they finally get board control and almost guarantee you will be able to burst them down before they can lethal you.

Mulligans

• Voidtouched Attendant is always good.
• Shadowbomber is great if you have Voidtouched Attendant and good without it.
• Raise Dead is a good keep if you have Voidtouched Attendant and/or a Shadowbomber for more burst.
• Frenzied Felwing is great if you have 1 mana minions in hand.
• If you have Undertaker and a 1 or 2 cost mana deathrattle minion, keep Undertaker and all 1 and 2 cost deathrattle minions as well as Shadowed Spirit.
• Twilight Deceptor can be a good keep if you have a 1 mana minion in hand already.
• If against a Druid, Crooked Cook is good.

Gameplay

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

The main key to playing this deck well is being able to know when to go all in into a face race and when to keep trying to have board control. Try to calculate how many turns it will take you to lethal the opponent if you have all minions and hero power go face on any given turn instead of trading and using your hero power on a minion, and estimate how many turns it would take the opponent to lethal you from there -- often they would need to trade on their turn to prevent you from winning very early. This can be done by knowing the matchup and deck, and seeing how much progress an opponent has made towards a quest as an example. If you think you will win a face race, then you need to just forget about board control and try to maximize your face damage output over the next few turns to lethal as fast as you can.

From any game state when making decisions, it is important to keep in mind that most of your cards can do direct face damage, and whatever topdecks you get over the next few turns will usually be able to provide you with more burst.

Shadowbomber can set up using Crooked Cook on turn 3.

Mind Blast or other direct face damage into Frenzied Felwings is great for keeping board tempo while doing face damage. This can be done turn 1 with the coin to get one or two Frenzied Felwings for free.

Another great combo if you have the coin is using a Shadowbomber and then coining out a Frenzied Felwing or using Voidtouched Attendant into Shadowbomber and then playing Frenzied Felwings for free. You can also do these combos turn 2 without the coin.

Sometimes it's better to drop Leeroy Jenkins turn 5 even if he will be killed easily next turn and use more direct face damage next turn. This prevents losses where your opponent plays a taunt next turn and you have already used the other burst damage in your hand.

Playing Voidtouched Attendant at a key time to maximize the damage you can do with it is important, and you can even use Tour Guide to set up a free hero power for a Voidtouched Attendant turn. In general you can play it on turn 1 on an empty board against most decks safely, but if you have other turn 1 plays it's better to do those and then play Voidtouched Attendant later so that each of your minions going face that turn will deal more damage. It's also great to combo with Shadowbomber and Mind Blast on something like turn 5 for lethal. Don't save it early game if you don't have any other cards to play though, it's better to just play it and get a few points of damage out of it than skipping an early turn.

The best targets for Raise Dead are usually Shadowbomber and Voidtouched Attendant. If you are winning on board then an extra Frenzied Felwing can be great too. If you have Raise Dead in hand, you can play your Voidtouched Attendant early even if you think it's going to be destroyed to maximize the chance of getting another one from Raise Dead.

You almost never want to play Darkbishop Benedictus on turn 5 even if you're against control and they have nothing on board, since control will generally just remove it. Instead keep pushing face damage even if just with your hero power and rely on your high consistency of direct damage in your topdecks to provide the critical mass of burst over the next few turns.

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.

Deathrattle Package

Undertaker is used as a snowballing 1 drop that can help prevent board control loss against aggro decks for a few crucial turns as well as deal face damage against control decks. The other cards all are bodies that snowball Undertaker and deal direct face damage even if removed.

Burst Package

All these cards create burst to the opponent's face from hand without needing to have any minion presence beforehand.

Support Package

Darkbishop Benedictus gives you an aggressive hero power which is key for always having burst potential face. Frenzied Felwing goes great with burst to be a 0 mana 3/3 to help tempo on board. The other cards help create more burst potential by getting more minions and spells for you. Shadow Visions is especially notable since it can get extra copies of Mind Blast, your best burst damage card. Finally, Crooked Cook draws more cards.

Overall, all cards chosen for this deck are to maximize the ability to deal a lot of damage early. There is a lot of consistency in being able to do this which makes your topdecks later game better and help you win face races more easily, with a lot of burst from hand that works even if you have lost the board by midgame.

This deck uses a critical mass of burst and direct face damage to win games quickly. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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Looking for more decks? Look no further than the Wild Deck Guide Compendium to see more decks and guides.