Disclaimer
Hey guys, this is me, Nuba, continuing the Matchup Analysis of my latest Priest Control deck, the one I achieved legendary rank with, hope you all enjoy what you read!
The previous articles can be found here:
Neutral Matchups
Paladin Control
Another Control matchup. The reason why this matchup is harder than warrior is that they have more ways of wiping your board as well as they tend to run tougher mid-game minions that can, sometimes, overrun you before you can respond. The way you should mulligan here is pretty standard, but also look for thoughtsteal, and in case you are running the coin feel free to keep either harrison-jones or sludge-belcher if you have at least 2 other good cards.
Like the Warrior matchup this is still a resource game, but unlike it you have to add board control to the equation, the tips I can give you here are:
- Go for board, but never overcommit to it. Remember they have two equalitys, and until they casted both of those or have a nearly empty hand (plus already casted one equality), your board is not safe.
- Save your northshire-cleric on your hand until the moment you can heal something.
- Paladins tend to be overconservative with their tirion-fordring, meaning they’ll save it until late game to cast it, which means you have enough time to get both sylvanas-windrunner and shadow-word-death to steal the Tirion from them, or shadow-word-death plus harrison-jones to kill Tirion and draw 3 cards for destroying The Ashbringer.
- You dont have to be conservative with your harrison-jones here, getting 1 charge off of his truesilver-champion is fine enough, remember you don’t want to draw that many cards anyway.
- Play defensively, play safe and try to always have good responses in your hand.
- Be over-conservative with your ragnaros-the-firelord, save it for the very late unless they are short on cards and the board is nearly empty.
Druid
This will always be either neutral or hard, because druids will always have the potential of snowballing from the early game with a strong innervated minion. Nonetheless, druid has some weakness and its there that you should aim for when playing against them. The mulligan here is the standard one, two exceptions: if you already have 2 of the standard mulligan cards, you can keep thoughtsteal and/or auchenai-soulpriest (this one should be kept in case you already have circle of healing in your hand), otherwise, mulligan those out.
Some things to remember when playing against druids:
- They don’t have board wipe spells, go for board almost Recklessly(I said ALMOST, keep your minions/big minions in your hand if you already have good board control).
- Trade minions! As I said before: go for board control!
- Try to save shadow-word-death for a bigger minion than ancient-of-lore unless you have total control of the board.
- Unless you can do a turn one or turn two northshire-cleric+power-word-shield, do not drop your Northshire Cleric until the moment you can abuse his ability to draw at least one card.
- Keep the tempo in your favor, but try to not run out of cards before him.
- In the end game, always try to keep your total health higher than 14, remember you should play around the force-of-nature+savage-roar combo, otherwise you could lose an already won game.
Miracle Rogue
This is a rush fight, he will not be rushing you, but rather trying to establish board control over you, the strategy is to dominate the early game in order to maintain control of the board over the course of the game. auchenai-soulpriest+circle-of-healing is huge here because it kills stealthed gadgetzan-auctioneer, but should not be kept in the mulligan phase.
loatheb is also huge here, whenever you have a slight board lead, dropping this guy can be a massive disaster for the miracle player, this guy is also good to be dropped whenever your oponent drops his Auctioneer. In this matchup you will want the standard mulligan only: no exceptions(no, not even loatheb)!
As I said before, go for the board control:
- northshire-cleric is only fine on the board whenever you can buff it with power-word-shield or if you can heal some minion up to draw a card.
- Other than the Cleric and the zombie-chow(which should be always played anyway, unless you are going for lethal) all your minions have more than 4 health, which means you dont need to help them in your hand, the only exception is auchenai-soulpriest.
- Try to keep auchenai-soulpriest and circle-of-healing in your hand for whenever they drop a stealthed Auctioneer, you want to have a response for that right away.
- shadow-word-death is the card you will use to kill edwin-vancleef, only use it in other situations where its the only available option to remove a buffed minion with cold-blood.
- The only target they have for cabal-shadow-priest is bloodmage-thalnos, feel free to use the priest in this matchup as an overcosted chillwind-yeti.
- loatheb is there to be used after you got a slight board control or after he casted an Auctioneer.
- Kill their minions!!! Dont let them stay on the board.
Tempo/rush decks
These guys will always exist, and while the matchup should be extremely easy, you can, somehow, fuck up and let them finish you with a big damage burst. The strategy here is to always heal yourself over your board. Try to trade as much as you can, because their minions are small and inefficient and eventually they will run out of gas. The reason I put this on the neutral matchups rather than the easy ones is that RNG can easily make it so you get rolled over by them, but as I said before: its not very likely. In the mulligan here you should go for the standard mulligan only, again: no exceptions!
You should play this matchup extremelly defensively:
- northshire-cleric is a decent turn 1 play.
- Yes, of course you should heal up your Northshire early in the game if you are above 20 health.
- Go for board, never go face unless the oponent has no board.
- Heal yourself! Try to always focus on healing yourself over your board if you are below 20 health.
- wild-pyromancer is an extremelly useful card here, try to not drop it on the board if you can not abuse his ability.
- Against Warrior Rush, Tempo Rogue and Hunter Rush, harrison-jones is an extremelly valuable card, try to save it in order to generate value.
- holy-fire face is fine whenever you have the board and are low on health.
Priest Mirror
Warning! This is a fatigue game, since turn 1 you should know that. There are cases where the game will not end in the fatigue wars, but those are around 10% of the cases or even less. The mulligan here is the standard mulligan, but also including thoughtsteal on the scenario. Thoughtsteal is the best and most important card in this matchup.
Go for the Value here, remember this is a fatigue game:
- Try to not overdraw, this game will end in the fatigue wars, and usually whoever gets into the fatigue first, loses.
- Late game, comboing a wild-pyromancer and making the oponent overdraw is extremelly strong, you should do that whenever you feel like you can burn his cards, or just make it so he gets into fatigue faster.
- northshire-cleric turn 1 or 2 is only fine if you have power-word-shield to buff it.
- cabal-shadow-priest‘s only targets are the Cleric, the Chow, and (in some priest builds) one or two deathlords, but you should not count on those, so remember the Cabal is often times a overcosted Yeti. Not a big deal, but you should save it before there are around 10 cards left in your deck.
- Dont let him get board control!
- Get board control but do not overextend, remember all priests have auchenai-soulpriest+circle-of-healing combo.
- Be conservative with your ragnaros-the-firelord unless they have a small hand size and/or already used their solo shadow-word-death, remember most priests are only using one of those, so your ragnaros can be game closing if casted after they used their shadow-word-death.
Closing
With this IÂ finish the match up analysis of all the neutral difficulty match ups for my Legendary Priest deck, the next, and last article can be found here:
Match Ups and Mulligans – Part 3:Â Secret Mage, Handlock and General Play Tips
View previous articles:
Match Ups and Mulligans – Part 1:Â Zoo, Control Warrior and Midrange Hunters
Cuddles,
Nuba
Wanna find me somewhere else other than this website? Here are some links!
 /TheNubaHSÂ
