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.
Even Priest is a deck using many new heal and Overheal synergies to great effect along with the 1-Mana heal Hero Power. It is an aggro deck with strong early game that uses healing to snowball a small lead into victory in the midgame. This is a deck I have refined and developed with Fallugaloog over the past few days. If you would like to play with new Overheal and heal cards (as well as E.T.C., Band Manager) in a fun way in Wild, give it a try!
IMPORTANT: The 3 cards in E.T.C., Band Manager are Fan Club, Confuse, and Heartthrob.
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
Even Priest is a snowballing deck. It uses its Hero Power in combination of Overheal and heal cards to snowball minions into board control and a win.
Heal - Cards like Crabrider, Mana Geode, Holy Champion, and Injured Tol'vir, along with Lightsteed and Luminous Geode, can snowball attack while keeping board control along with heals from your Hero Power and Circle of Healing. Bless can be very useful on such minions as well. Power Word: Feast allows you to favorably trade and then heal a minion to full, and trigger Luminous Geode and Lightsteed synergies as well. Therefore, it's possible to win games from this synergy where you take over the board early.
Buff - Buffs are great for surprise trades and help the heal gameplan of board control. You have Power Word: Feast which is both heal and buff, and Bless which is great with your high Health minions like Crabrider and ones buffed with Lightsteed.
Value - Sometimes your early game is broken and your snowballing stalls. In this case, you have Xyrella for board comebacks and Sister Svalna for value (which could be more draw, removal, damage, or minion generation).
Even Priest is an aggro/tempo deck relying on board control to win.
Mulligans
- Keep a Crabrider and Injured Tol'vir, and if you have a 2-Cost minion Power Word: Feast. You can keep Bless if you have Crabrider.
- In general any of your other 2-drops can be good keeps as well, such as Mana Geode and Holy Champion. If you have multiple options keep the one that's best vs the class you're playing (two 2-drops can be kept, not just one).
- If you have a Holy Champion, consider keeping it and Crooked Cook. You can play Champion turn 2, then turn 3 heal it for it to have 3 attack and have Cook draw a card.
Gameplay
The key to playing this deck well is to balance using the healing at the optimal times.
Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.
Crabrider's health can be increased by Lightsteed, and it can then be an extra good target for Bless.
Another good combo with Crabrider is to play it after Luminous Geode, attack an enemy minion, heal the Crabrider, then have a 3-Attack Crabrider you can trade with again. Next turn you can have a 5/4 minion with Windfury. This combo is really good in the early game, and if you can use Power Word: Feast on it, as well as the Hero Power, that's even better.
Injured Tol'vir has synergy with all of your heal cards.
Lightsteed works even if the minion is not damaged, but Luminous Geode only works on damaged minions.
Be careful with Circle of Healing; e.g. Luminous Geode gains Attack from only your own minions but Lightsteed will buff all minions. It's better to trade and destroy as many enemy minions as you can before using Circle of Healing to heal and perhaps buff your own minions.
Cannibalize is usually used to remove an enemy minion and heal or Overheal your minions. However, keep in mind that you can target your own minions with it, which can be useful if you need heal or Overheal.
Najak Hexxen is great for keeping board control. He is especially useful on Taunt, Rush, or Charge minions and can be protected by buffing him or Injured Tol'vir.
E.T.C., Band Manager has 3 options:
1. Fan Club is for if you need more heals, useful if you have a large board that's either damaged or could use Overheal triggers.
2. Confuse is great if you have a board with a lot of Health and not a lot of Attack for surprise lethals. This is especially common if Lightsteed has been played.
3. Heartthrob is great to generate a large board from all your healing effects.
Something to note is that Power Word: Feast actually triggers Overheal at the end of the turn. This is because it heals the minion's Health equal to its maximum Health. So if you play it on Heartthrob, it will summon a 7-Cost minion.
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.
Heal Synergy
These minions synergize with healing.
Buffs
These buffs are great on any minion, but especially Crabrider.
Heal Effects
These cards and your Hero Power heal.
Clears
These cards let you clear enemy boards.
Card Draw and Value
Card draw is great to getting to cards from your other packages. Crooked Cook, if protected, can draw a lot of cards.
Even Priest takes advantage of a 1-Mana Hero Power to have consistent access to healing, and is a great deck to highlight the new heal and Overheal cards. 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? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!
Looking for more decks? Look no further than the Wild Deck Guide Compendium to see more decks and guides.
Comments
Often I've find the lack of turn 1 plays to be annoying, so i've put Whispers of EVIL in it. It's been performing better than expected. I recommend more people to try it to improve the data.
That is one smug-lookin' horse.