Cirothecarius' Quest N'Zoth Priest

Warning: This is a theorycraft and thus is subject to change as the meta develops. Therefore, don’t craft anything expensive. Unless you have a lot of dust – then do what you wanna do. 

So it seems that the new Priest questline Seek Guidance is going to be quite slow, so just going all out to complete it is a recipe for trouble. I’m sure you’ll see a streamer pull off the perfect Turn 10 OTK on the opponent on Day One, but especially compared to the other questlines this one is slowwwww. That is why we are going to take advantage of Priest’s strengths in order to survive until the quest is complete. We’ll also utilize a menagerie package with N'Zoth, God of the Deep for added survivability and powerful swing turns. We are going to aim for a strong curve as we complete the questline and use some of Priest’s reactive tools if we fall behind on the board. 

What does Priest do well? Generate a ton of value. That is why we have Renew, Wandmaker, Venomous Scorpid, Palm Reading and Southsea Scoundrel. Not only do they generate value but they also help us complete the first part of our questline. Scoundrel can even help us with quest completion for the later stages if we can grab something from the opponent that fits our curve. Especially with spell generation be aware of who you are facing and choose accordingly. If going against aggro grab those board clears. Against control focus on keeping your health total high, they most likely can’t beat you once that questline is completed. 

Taunts and healing – It looks like there are going to be some pretty crooked amounts of damage dealt by the other classes, so healing is going to be a must to make it to quest completion. Death's Head Cultist and Lightshower Elemental are there to keep your health high and help complete the quest. We also have other taunts to slow down our foes and buy us time to throw up another wall of taunts with N’Zoth. 

The hard part – Once we get to the last part of the questline we run into some more difficulties. If we’ve survived the onslaught of our opponents, we then have to draw our 6, 7, and 8 drops. We can’t load up too many into the deck because if we wind up with dead drops in our hand in the early game, Rexxar is going to be really intimate with your face. And you know how much he loves face. So we have to rely on surviving until we get our late drops. Our Lightshower Elementals are going to be there for more stall and healing at 6 mana. In the case of 7 drops we have Soul Mirror if there are minions on the board or Mutanus the Devourer to try and nab one of the opponent's important minions. Mutanus might also be a vital tool in stopping the opponent from playing the minion gained from completing their quest. At 8 mana we have the new Mo'arg Forgefiend for stall and armor gain. This will be a tense time but use the spells in your deck and what you’ve generated to stay alive in the late game if your big drops aren’t coming. 

Questline Complete – So you’ve survived until the late game: Yay! Most likely aggro players will have quit by now. But if they are hanging around it's time to slam down Xyrella, the Sanctified and shuffle that sweet, sweet shard of doom into your deck. But now you have to wait to draw it (hope you like long games). However, we still have Lorekeeper Polkelt in Standard and he will move that shard right to the top of your deck. Even better – he costs 5 mana so more than likely you are going to be able to play him at 10 mana with Xyrella, who has taunt and can stall some more. Then on the next turn you purify those nonbelievers, you fanatic spacegoat. 

Tech choices: If you are running into a lot of aggro you might want to consider dropping the two Thrive in the Shadows and adding in two Condemn (Rank 1). There isn’t a lot of draw (or any actually if you get rid of Thrive) in this deck so mulligan hard for your card generators if you smell aggro. You can also drop Alexstrasza the Life-Binder and Mutanus to add in the new Elekk Mount. If facing a lot of control this list should be fine as is. 

Taelan Fordring is in there to help you more consistently draw your N’Zoth or other high drops in case you drew the God of the Deep early. If you need your high drops earlier you can also consider using Polkelt to move them to the top of your deck. If you still run Thrive in the Shadows you can also use that to pull the Purified Shard from your deck. Lion's Guard is in there as another anti-aggro tool and can be replaced with weapon removal if weapons have a place in the meta (it looks like they may). 

Things to look out for: When playing Mage or Paladin look out for Counterspell and Oh My Yogg! Keep some cheap spells around if possible to trigger them ahead of time. 

Since you can’t complete your questline and play Xyrella in the same turn, you are going to be vulnerable to Mutanus in control matchups. Hopefully the number of minions in the deck will help lower the chances of her getting gobbled up. 

Predictions: Is this deck going to be any good? I don’t know. I think it will be fun and ultimately satisfying to pull off the questline. The other classes’ questlines look very fast and you should expect to get burned down pretty quick in many cases. However, I think with the right decision making in the early game centering around what spells you generate you’ll have a fighting chance. I personally love menagerie builds and at its core this is what the game is about – having fun with the cards you love. 

So let me know what you think and if you give it a try on launch day or even later let me know what works for you or if you tried any kind of experimentation with other cards. 

Good luck and have fun!