Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started!
- Budget Standard Standard C’Thun Druid
- Budget Standard Midrange Hunter
- Budget Standard C’Thun Mage
- Budget Standard  Aggro Paladin
- Budget Standard C’Thun Priest
- Budget Standard C’Thun Rogue
- Budget Standard Midrange Shaman
- Budget Standard Zoo WarlockÂ
- Budget Standard Combo Warrior
Introduction
Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I run HearthstoneCoaching.com where our coaches have helped many students achieve the same.
Whether you’re a newer player, or an experienced one who just wants to find the most efficient way to spend your cash or in-game gold, you can never go wrong by investing in Hearthstone’s single player expansions. Both The Curse of Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain have provide unique and useful cards that cannot be unlocked anywhere else. This is the Priest Hearthstone Deck.
My Blackrock Mountain decks are a new series of guides where I try to construct the most  effective Hearthstone decks I can for each class, with only one contraint — that I only use cards from the Basic, Naxxramas, and Blackrock Mountain card sets.
These 0 dust decks are meant to help newer players kickstart their Hearthstone journey, by providing unique and viable decks that can be used against friends and foe on casual or ladder (though you may want to check out the upgrade section at the end of each guide to get further on the ladder).
Deck Playstyle
Blackrock Mountain Priest is a great midrange deck that focuses on utilizing cheap removal and efficient minions to beat opponents on the board. Later in the game, a card draw engine powered by northshire-cleric can give you card advantage and help you put games out of reach.
Priest’s primary weakness has always been a slow early game, as his hero often does very little to help you early on. Thus, we’ve included many early game minions in this deck to help you meet or exceed your opponent’s tempo early, so you can win with your hero power’s value in the late game.
Minions – 22
2x northshire-cleric
- The card that this deck is built around! She’ll be our primary way of drawing cards late in the game. Synergizes well with our Hero Power and holy-nova.
2x zombie-chow
- The Zombie Chow is strictly an early game minion used to pressure your opponent’s board early. The goal of casting a Zombie Chow onto the board early is to trade with your opponent’s more expensive minions before its deathrattle becomes a liability. There’s very little downside to killing off your own Zombie Chow when your opponent is close to full health, but playing him later in the game might just put your opponent out of reach if he has a way to deal with it.
2x acidic-swamp-ooze
- The Ooze is a great little card that has an incredible battlecry against more than half the classes in the game (Hunter, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior). His 3/2 body for 2 mana passes the Vanilla Test, and there’s no downside to playing him even if the battlecry doesn’t destroy a weapon.
2x haunted-creeper
- This spider is our counter to aggressive decks that like to drop multitudes of 1 health minions. He’s a mini harvest-golem that spawns two 1/1 tokens instead of a single 2/1 token. The spawned tokens become nice targets for buffs.
2x dark-cultist
- 3 mana gets you a 3/4, which is already Yeti-like value, but when he dies, he gives something else on your board +3 health. Insane. You’ll make opponents cry when you the-coin out a dark-cultist on turn 2, just to follow it up with another one on turn 3.
2x shattered-sun-cleric
- 3 mana for 3/2 isn’t mana efficient, but the battlecry more than makes up for it. The downside is that if you don’t have a minion on the board, this card suffers.
- The ideal scenario is to play this on the same turn a minion you control can trade with something equal in value and survive, or can trade up to kill something more expensive.
2x chillwind-yeti
- The Yeti is the benchmark on which all other 4 mana minions are compared. Not only does he pass the Vanilla Test with flying colors, he trades favorably with most other 2, 3, and 4 mana minions. The Yeti has no downsides and is a welcome sight whether you’re behind or ahead in the game.
2x senjin-shieldmasta
- Taz’dingo! The Sen’jin Shieldmasta trades one point of attack in exchange for taunt, but it’s generally a fair trade. While a Sen’jin won’t 1 hit kill a 4/4 or 3/4 minion, he’ll be able to protect your lower health minions from dying to favorable trades from your opponent, and can be the key to slowing down the game against aggressive rush-down decks.
1x loatheb
- Loatheb is an amazing card… when played correctly. 5 mana for a 5/5 is fair, but it’s Loatheb’s ability to shutdown opponent’s spells that makes him so valuable. Play Loatheb on turn 6 before a mage can cast flamestrike on turn 7 and he’ll win you the game.
2x sludge-belcher
- If you thought the senjin-shieldmasta was good, well just wait until you see his bigger brother, the Sludge Belcher. Sludge Belcher is an extremely annoying card to deal with, because when he dies, he leaves behind a smaller taunt. This effectively shuts down very aggressive decks, that are generally forced to use silence to get around him. Another benefit to the Sludge Belcher’s deathrattle is his synergy with kelthuzad. Good luck getting past that wall of taunts when both are on the board at the same time!
1x boulderfist-ogre
- The true definition of a big dumb minion. Except actually, now that I think about it, the Boulderfist Ogre may actually be the smartest Ogre in the Hearthstone universe given that he’ll always hit the target you ask him to. For 6 mana, you get a 6/7 minion that isn’t affected by silence, the-black-knight, and big-game-hunter. He’s a workhorse in this deck and does much of the heavy lifting to help you secure games.
1x emperor-thaurissan
- While at first glance the Emperor seems overpowered, he’s only truly valuable in decks that have relatively large hand sizes to allow him to reduce the cost of multiple cards on the same turn. When you can tuck him behind a taunt or two, he’s almost impossible to get to and can seriously snowball games for you. The weakness to the Emperor is in situations where you don’t have many cards in your hand and don’t have a board to protect him with, so play him wisely.
1x kelthuzad
- Kel’Thuzad is probably the most win condition in our deck. If you have any semblance of a board going into turn 8, he has a good chance of winning the game for you. His value only goes up when you have deathrattle minions on the board that spawn more minions.
Spells – 8
2x power-word-shield
- Gives 2 health to any minion for 1 mana, and draws you a card. Ideally, you’ll want to play this on a minion that would have died in a trade without the extra health. Make sure to play this first before your other cards, as the card you draw from it might be useful.
1x shadow-word-pain
- A pretty efficient card. The dream is to use this against hard to remove minions like water-elemental and fen-creepers. Just keep in mind that this doesn’t work around battlecries and deathrattles.
- Neither this nor shadow-word-death affect 4 attack minions, making Priest weak against 4 attack cards.
2x shadow-word-death
- A great card to draw into late game to eliminate your opponent’s late game threats. Just keep in mind that this doesn’t work around battlecries and deathrattles, so using this on your opponent’s sylvanas-windrunner will still have her steal one of your minions.
- Neither this nor shadow-word-pain affect 4 attack minions, making Priest weak against 4 attack cards.
2x holy-nova
- Priest’s primary board clear card. Works well in conjunction with our northshire-cleric to draw cards and heal our minions after clearing your opponent’s board.
1x mind-control
- Mind Control is back! It’s an incredibly useful tool late game against your opponent’s Legendary win conditions, turning them into win conditions for us instead. We only include one copy in our deck because of the high casting cost. You don’t want to hold onto two of these in your hand early.
Blackrock Mountain Improvements
emperor-thaurissan- Priest has plenty of cheap spells and a great card draw engine with northshire-cleric, so it’s very likely Emperor Thaurissan will be able to lower the cost of many cards in your hand. I think it’s well worth subsituting the Emperor for one of the boulderfist-ogres that used to be in this slot.
Mulligan Guide
In general, you want to mulligan so that you can put out minions on your first three turns. If you’re going second, feel free to keep a single 4 mana minion so that you can coin it out on turn 3. Coining out a minion on turn 3 is actually a significant tempo boost, as a card like chillwind-yeti can be used to trade against at least two lower cost minions.
Cards to Keep
- 1 Mana: power-word-shield, zombie-chow
- 2 Mana: shadow-word-pain, acidic-swamp-ooze, haunted-creeper
- 3 Mana: dark-cultist, shattered-sun-cleric
- 4 Mana: chillwind-yeti, senjin-shieldmasta
Remember, you want to plan out your first three turns with your opening hand, so if you already have a 1 mana and 2 mana minion, you should mulligan away your remaining card or two to dig for a play on turn 3.
Upgrades
Here are a few cards that will improve your deck.
- Minions: wild-pyromancer, injured-blademaster, auchenai-soulpriest, cabal-shadow-priest
- Spells: circle-of-healing
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the guide to our Blackrock Mountain Midrange Priest deck. As always I’d be happy to answer questions from you in the comments section. 🙂
Coaching Lessons
If you’re interested in reaching Legend rank, or earning unlimited gold from arena, my team at HearthstoneCoaching.com would love to help! We’ve provided over a thousand hours of excellent coaching to students around the world. 
Want to Become Better at Other Games?
I also run RankOneCoaching.com, where our top coaches will develop a personal plan for you to achieve your dreams in other games. Personal lessons are an in-depth experience and most students improve significantly after just one full session!
