‘Shut up’ Priest – Your Guide to Beating Hunters

Introduction

Are you tired of getting facerolled by huntards? Are you annoyed of mad scientist shenanigans? Do you seek revenge? If the answers to these questions is yes then fear not because I have a solution for you. I present to you the “Shut Up” Priest deck. It has been designed specifically so that you can shred the souls of hunters into pieces (do they even have a soul?) and reap the sweetest revenge. So what are you waiting for? Scroll down and find the secrets to beating the huntards.

Priest as a counter deck

 Requirements of a counter deck: 

1. Hero Power Advantage: As a priest you have a hero power advantage over the hunters, They deal two damage while you heal for 2 health thus effectively neutralizing their hero power. But not only can you heal your self but also heal your minions. This allows you to gain card advantage over the hunter which is a crucial strategy to beating hunters.
2. Counter Cards: Cards like silence and dark-cultist let you gain tempo over the hunter. They have no way of dealing four damage in the deck which forces them to use their hard removal on an early dark-cultist. Also shadow-madness on a Houndmastered haunted-creeper can be game changing, Also having a total of 4 AOE in your deck is like icing on the cake. And yeah also cabal-shadow-priest ruins them.

This makes priest an amazing counter class to hunters. The plethora of anti-hunter cards in your arsenal is enough to ruin any hunters’ day.

The Anti-Hunter Cards

silence – A somewhat controversial card due to its non immediate effect on the board but due to the inclusion of undertaker in a lot of decks, This card has become a staple in a lot of priest decks. It lets you get rid of a threat without losing any tempo because it costs no mana. It can let you completely kill a savannah-highmane without having to deal with the hyenas.

northshire-cleric – Northshire clerics are your primary source of card draw. You can kill opponent leper gnomes for free while drawing a card. The clerics can be devastating for hunters because they can get behind on cards really fast because of her.

dark-cultist – It is a 3 mana 3/4 with a positive deathrattle, there is nothing better than a dark-cultist that you can play on turn 3. The hunter has absolutely no way of dealing with this guy and he can kill all of hunters early game. They have to waste a Kill Command on him in order to get rid of him. It is an extremely efficient minion and is a staple in most priest decks.

shadow-madness – This card ruins hunters, If the hunter ever uses houndmaster on a haunted-creeper and you get to shadow-madness it. The hunter loses all tempo and you get to kill any 1 health minions that he plays.

auchenai-soulpriest – Provides you with the best AOE in the game with circle-of-healing and the best damage dealing hero power and has decent stats for the mana cost. Auchenai is the best card that is available for priests. She is amazing against aggro decks because she will let you kill all those little minions with just your hero power. She combos with zombie-chow as well making him a 5 damage nuke rather that him restoring 5 health to your opponent.

zombie-chow – This card is absolutely required to pressure the hunter in the early game. It has 2/3 stats for 1 mana and can kill almost all the minions that a hunter will play in the early game. Also him having three health means you can heal him after killing a minion thus gaining card advantage.

acidic-swamp-ooze – Required to get rid of the eaglehorn-bow. The hunter can get a lot of damage from that weapon and it can be really harmful for your health if you let it stay up for long as the hunter can recharge it. It also lets you kill huffers.

haunted-creeper – This card is theoretically a 3/4 for two mana. It can let you deal 1 damage four times. As a priest you have a very difficult time dealing one damage to stuff so this card is a great include. The hunters run a ton of low health minions meaning that this card will help you out a lot in the early game.

wild-pyromancer – Your bread and butter for board clearing. This guy is amazing to counter any aggro decks. He has amazing synergy with power-word-shield which lets you deal more than just two damage that his health initially lets you to. You want him in your starting hand and you wanna use him as greedily as you can. He can be triggered by twelve of the cards in your deck. If you have a Power Word Shield and a Wild Pyromancer in your hand, then try to save these cards so that you can combo them together.

spellbreaker – Why not ironbeak-owl? Well because you already have a cheap silence. I decided to run spellbreaker because he does not die to Haunted Creepers like the Ironbeak Owl does. He is the second silence in the deck mainly because it increases the odds of you having a silence and silence is great against hunters.

sludge-belcher – Last but not the least he have ourselves a good ol’ taunt that will come and rescue the day. Sludge Belcher is the best taunt in the game due to its incredible stickiness. You play this guy and the hunter is gonna have to most of his board to just get rid of him. You can hide anything behind a Belcher and it will most likely survive to the next turn. Getting a dark-cultist buff on this guy can be a really bad news for the hunter if he does not have hunters-mark.

Cards that were not included

cairne-bloodhoof – He is too slow and can lose you the game if he gets freezing-trapped, you might ask then why include sylvanas-windrunner she costs the same mana. Well the reason for that is that you can kill your own Sylvanas to steal an enemy minion.

holy-fire – You might ask that a card that restores 5 health and kills Highmanes would be really good against hunters, but the problem is that if you are gonna spend 6 mana and do nothing else on turn 6, the five health that you gain will be worthless because you will lost that much health the next turn. If the card costed less mana I might have included it but at 6 mana it is too expensive.

Knowing your enemy

“To defeat your Enemy, You must become your Enemy.” – Sun Tzu

To defeat the Huntard you need to think like one. Go ahead and net deck a hunter deck, play with it for a while. Learn the cards used in these decks. And analyze the way you make your plays, this is the first step of countering a deck. Doing this will let you know what a hunter can do at each mana. You need to always predict your opponents moves, and the more you know your opponent the better you will get at out-smarting them.

Hunters rely on pressuring the opponent throughout the early game and snowballing the game to victory. They have no lategame potential except for kill-command and savannah-highmane. They try to zerg you down with the cheap and high damage minions early on and try to keep the pressure going with undertaker that is buffed by almost every card in the deck.

The Threats

Undertaker: The primary threat that a hunter posses which can lead to an instant loss if the hunter has a great follow-up. The reason that makes Undertaker so strong in the hunter deck is the existence of a lot of cheap deathrattle minions like webspinner and leper-gnome which act as 1 mana shattered-sun-clerics. With the coin the snowball effect can be devastating if no answers exist in your posession. A silence though can easily get rid of all your undertaker problems. The reason why you are running two in this deck. It is important that you make killing the undertaker the first priority.

Mad-Scientist -> Freezing-Trap: This combo can be devastating to any tempo based deck, however only when a high mana-cost minion is the one that is returned to your hand. The ideal targets to proc the freezing trap would be the ones that cost 1-2 mana. Getting a minion of the board lets the hunter protect his minions and his own face while constantly dealing damage to you. The only way of playing around this is by having a lot of minions or by thoughtstealing a flare.

Kill-Command: The card that makes hunter so powerful, It is the hunters fireball that can kill you out of nowhere. You need to try to keep your health above the combo range of hunters (12 damage) with 2xkill-command + steady-shot. You need to force out this card so that your opponent has to use it to deal with a minion that you have on the board. Pressure the hunter.

savannah-highmane: The only midgame card that the hunter possesses and it is the nest one in the game. Carrying a total of 10/9 stats it is even better than the legendary cairne-bloodhoof. But as a priest you do have a lot of answers to a savannah-highmane. They include shadow-word-death, sylvanas-windrunner, holy-nova and the two silences. Try not to take 6 damage from the savannah-highmane because it is one of the ways that a hunter wins.

The Weaknesses

Lack of efficient card draw: With the Starving Buzzard nerfed the hunter no longer has an insane card draw engine that would let him draw a number of cards for a very small amount of mana. If you can starve them of cards by 2 for 1-ing them. It will be difficult for them to make a comeback.

Somewhat weak mid game: Other than the savannah-highmane the hunter has no mid-game. If you can deal with the highmane easily. You can overpower the hunters mid game easily with your own. Cards like sludge-belcher[card] and [card]sylvanas-windrunner are incredibly powerful against the aggro hunters.

No late game: The hunter has no late-game, if you can make it to the late-game (which usually doesn’t happen) your cards will overpower the hunters’. However our deck as well does not have a late-game but it is solved by the powerful mid-game that the deck has.

No catchup mechanisms: Just like zoo, if the hunter loses the board he loses the game. hunter decks don’t have any form of strong AOE to clear whole boards. So if you can develop a board the hunter will be in a tough spot. Also you can heal your minions thus the hunter will have an even harder time trying to clear your board while you can generate efficient trades.

Mulligans

Generally Mulligan for:

• wild-pyromancer
• silence
• northshire-cleric
• zombie-chow
• Keep power-word-shield if you have a wild-pyromancer or an early drop otherwise mulligan it.

If opponent keeps all of his cards:

• silence
• acidic-swamp-ooze
• wild-pyromancer
• haunted-creeper

Combos

wild-pyromancer + Spells – Great for mass clearing boards.

auchenai-soulpriest + circle-of-healing – The 4 mana flamestrike.

Zombie-chow + auchenai-soulpriest – You might think that the combo is unrealistic but I myself am surprised by the amount of times I have pulled it off. It is an amazing nuke for 1 measly mana.

Sylvanas-windrunner + shadow-word-death – I like this combo but i usually don’t do it unless I am stealing a minion that costs 6 or more than 6 mana.

shadow-madness on a deathrattle creature – You get the benefit of the deathrattle.

Conclusion

This priest deck is amazing against all the hunters out there and can let you steal a bunch of wins, but it is only suited for a hunter filled meta as it does badly against control decks. Cards like thoughtsteal can help improve the matchup and sometimes even let you win the control matchup but that’s all. I hope you enjoyed reading this guide on my ‘Shut Up’ Priest deck.

If you have any suggestions or feedback feel free to post it in the comments below. Also if you need help with my deck guides you can add me in-game and I will help you learn the deck by playing against you. DarkFrost#1991 NA. Good Luck Laddering!

Example Hunter: