Hearthstone
Countarrred! - Wild dragon priest teched against pirates and burn
- Dragon Priest
- Wild
- Ranked
Hello, everyone. Lencrennis here!
The niche priest inhabits in Hearthstone is a unique one. Its cards are narrow, but powerful, capable of utterly dominating entire strategies and archetypes at the cost of rolling over to anything other than its prey. This extreme, yet narrow, power makes priest the breaker of narrow metas, assuming it hasn't been given two years of bad cards (looking at you, standard!).
The current wild meta is utterly dominated by two decks: pirate warrior and secret mage. Both of these are aggro lists that like holding the board early, only to transition to burn, be it spells or weapons, in the later rounds. Given their similar design, this means wild is sitting in a narrow meta. Priests, it is our time!
Pirate Warrior Matchup
When facing off against our prey, we are looking for ways to shut down their early aggression. For pirate warrior, we need to shut down two possible patterns of play: a turn 1 Patches-and-friends flood, and a turn 3 cannonade.
Always keep
Duskbreaker
Spirit Lash
Holy Ripple
Mindflayer Kaahrj
Keep if you have at least one of the above
Penance
Scalerider
Your goal here is to make as much of an ass of yourself as possible. Pirates run out of gas quickly and putting them into topdeck mode is a great way to end the game with a single efficient taunt. Keep clearing, keep trading, and never pass up on an opportunity to knock out two or more minions, even if it stops you from knocking out three or more minions out with a single card the following turn. Your health is a resource, and spending it to get more value out of your cards will get you killed. You'll outvalue the pirate naturally. Just keep blowing his stuff up.
A side note for Mindflayer Kaahrj. This card is unique to priests in that it is the single most proactive reactive card we possess. If your opponent has a board, any board, Kaahrj becomes good. A 3 mana 3/3 that summons a 1/1 when it dies passes the vanilla test, and then some. That said, if your opponent just slammed down a 3/3, you're jumping for joy, because you just played a 3 mana Pit Fighter split over two bodies and that's pure tempo in a class with extreme tempo problems. Kaahrj can blunt your enemy's aggression simply because it's very easy for him to be 5, 6, or even 7 mana of meat at the very beginning of the game, which takes a fragile board like a pirate and snaps it like a twig.
Secret Mage Matchup
Secret mage is a little harder. You have the same general gameplan, but your 1-damage AoEs are significantly less valuable because secret mage likes 2 and 3 health minions.
Always keep
Penance
Scalerider
Duskbreaker
Keep if your early game is set
Twilight Guardian
In this matchup, you want to buffer yourself against damage as much as possible, repeatedly clear the enemy board, and keep topping off your face to stay out of range of being smacked down out of nowhere. Spirit Lash becomes more of a heal than a board clear. Never use it to test for counterspell: Holy Ripple is your weakest card here, so feed that to the Counterspell gods instead.
Spot removal is more valuable than boardclears here. Scalerider and Penance keep the heat off of your face, whose safety you assert with Twilight Guardian early and Primordial Drake late. If they get frustrated and pop Aluneth when you stabilize, top off aggressively and keep out of killshot range. You just won. If you can steal an ice block with, "SECRET AGENT, COMING THROUGH!" all the better.
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6- 00
- 01
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05
- 06
- 07+
- 1 Northshire Cleric x 2
- 1 Twilight Whelp x 2
- 2 Holy Ripple x 2
- 2 Penance x 2
- 2 Spirit Lash x 2
- 3 Kabal Talonpriest x 2
- 3 Mindflayer Kaahrj x 1
- 4 Drakonid Operative x 2
- 4 Duskbreaker x 2
- 2 Firetree Witchdoctor x 2
- 3 Scalerider x 2
- 4 Frizz Kindleroost x 1
- 4 Twilight Guardian x 2
- 5 Big Ol' Whelp x 2
- 5 Dragonmaw Scorcher x 2
- 8 Primordial Drake x 2
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Comments
So how is it going ? Working well? :)
Oh, sure, I got this thing to rank 2, but, by not playing 30 games a day, the meta shifted on me before I could hit legend. To make it explicit, this deck is no longer countering the march to legend. Given aggro lists are very popular in lower ranks, I'd still swear by this deck on the march to rank 5, but I'm back to the drawing board.
Oh ok thanks for your dedication! I'm actually trying to find a good and fun priest deck to play in wild, my big priest is boring me... I'll be very glad if you have some more suggestions :) (I was thinking something with shadowreaper anduin but reno priest isn't having a good time in this meta)
Hey there! Seems very cool, but how does it go against slower decks as ...idk big priest/ jade druid? :)
Against big priest, find Kharrj and try to play the most aggressive game of Curvestone you can. Against jade, steal an idol with SECRET AGENT.
You are unfavored, as you will be with anything that is not your prey, but you have outs.
Alright, this was unexpected. I've gone up against jades, and you feel slightly favored. Weird.
How big is your hand size? Would Thaurissan stand in if you don’t have Frizz
Hello there! Your hand is never very big. You'll find you burn down just a little slower than the decks you're beating up, and then rely on your eight sources of draw or generation to pull you back out. Against aggro, Thaurissan would be useless because you have two or three cards, and against control, your hand isn't the sort of stuff that can scare them, anyway, so why bother making it cheaper to begin with? It's not your prey, so you're probably a dead man. Get used to that.
Frizz is mainly there to give you more gas against the non-control decks that you don't prey on. For example, I just got out of a game where I coined Frizz out turn 3, then hit Kaahrj on a Big Rogue's Kel'Thuzad turn 4. This tempo burst was slowly eaten by the rogue, who was forced on the defensive because my 3/3 was suddenly reviving himself, but Frizz's discounts allowed me to eviscerate twice after a Secret Agent to claim the win.
Rambling aside, Frizz just increases the number of outs you have by making it possible to weave more plays together with your cheaper topdecks. This helps to flatten out your poor matchups by letting you run away with nonsense wins from nonsense plays. If you cut her and go for another targeted hate card, you'll simply have higher highs and lower lows than I do, and if that's okay with you, go for it.