Weekly Top Legend Decks #5

radek

Published: Jan 2, 2016 09:32 am

This article is over 8 years old and may contain outdated information

Introduction

FailFellow’s Reno/Elise Warrior

Check out the author’s original post about the deck!

Overview

This is probably the strongest list this week. It is really competitive and I honestly didn’t expect a Warrior deck doing so good. While testing it, I went on a 10 win streak in Legend (later I’ve lost some games, but it was still amazing). FailFellow was also in top 10 on NA server. I’ve seen Reno Warriors and I’ve seen Elise Warriors, but I haven’t seen a successful deck that combines both.

Since it’s a Reno deck, there is a lot to talk about. I won’t really pay much attention to the standard Control Warrior stuff, because well, we’ve seen it time and time again. When it comes to the more interesting picks driven by the need to fill the gaps (because of Reno), the first one is Ironbeak Owl. One thing Warrior has always been lacking is Silence. We can argue that he didn’t really need it, that he had enough removals already, but the truth is that Silence is often useful. Sylvanas Windrunner, Tirion Fordring, even Twilight Drakes etc. They all might be hard to remove for the Warrior, especially since the list is lower on removals. I’ve found Owl extremely useful in nearly every matchup.

Jeweled Scarab is another interesting pick. Honestly, I don’t like it THAT much in the Warrior, but it’s not bad either. Armor Up is often a turn 2 for Warrior and that’s bad, you don’t want to pass the initiative completely. 1/1 is bad, but it MIGHT actually trade into a 1-drop in some matchups, might tank 2-3 damage (when enemy trades into it, so it’s as good as Hero Powering) and you are guaranteed to get a turn 3 play, which is crucial to not lose tempo. When it comes to notable 3 mana Warrior cards (since class cards get 4x offering rate), the I’ve found Bash, Fierce Monkey, Shield Block and Bouncing Blade best (depending on the matchup), with Charge and Ogre Warmaul also decent if you want to push for lethal or you really need to remove something (with Warmaul having a chance to backfire, but sometimes you need to take it anyway). There are also some good neutral 3-drops, but there are too much things to cover. Jeweled Scarab can be turn 2 play, turn 5 play or just late game play to pick something meaningful. Cool card in Reno deck.

Earthen Ring Farseer and Fierce Monkey are the deck’s 3-drops. Both are pretty defensive. Normal Warrior lists rarely run 3-drops, I’ve seen some Fierce Monkeys here and there, but that was a rare sight. The thing is, with a deck like that you need more minion pressure, because you’re less likely to draw Fiery War Axe, Bash, Death’s Bite and other early/mid game removals. This means that you need to help yourself with minion drops. Fierce Monkey is really good, 3/4 stats AND Taunt might make it one of the best 3-drops in the game. And Earthen Ring Farseer might be also used to heal your minions and make better trades. E.g. turn 2 Coin + Monkey into trade into Farseer is a very strong early game.

Another not-so-common choices are Revenge and Nexus-Champion Saraad. They’ve both seen SOME play in different Warrior lists, so I’m not really surprised here – they both are nice cards, so it’s only natural that they got into the Reno lists.

The last card I really want to discuss is Elise Starseeker. What’s the point of this card? Being a 3/5 for 4 mana is the first point, it’s not actually that bad. You could run Sen’jin Shieldmasta in this place and you’d have a Taunt on it instead. While the Taunt might be more useful in fast matchups, the Elise’s effect is often crucial to win the slow, slow matchups. If you play against Control Priest or against other Control Warrior, even the slow Warlock deck sometimes, the game is going to be long. A lot of the cards in the deck are, let’s face it, very weak in the late game. You really don’t want to draw your 1-4 mana cards and there are a lot of them. Golden Monkey might help with that. You’re most likely going to draw the Monkey near the end of the game. Statistically it’s going to be in the last few cards of your deck. But that’s the point, to help matchups that go to fatigue. You just keep the more useless cards in your hand – there won’t be a lot of them most likely, maybe 3, maybe 4, but that’s enough. Turning them all (+ the rest of the cards in your deck) into Legends can really matter. While it depends on what Legendaries you get, a lot of the time they are going to be big and meaningful. At this point enemy is probably very low on removals, so dropping a big Legend per turn is awesome. It’s something like Lord Jaraxxus in Warlock. Gives you a big drop every turn that enemy won’t be able to answer after a few turns. While Lord Jaraxxus is obviously stronger (because the big drops are your Hero Power), Elise can serve a similar purpose. Honestly, I haven’t used it much. After I’ve played ~30 games, I’ve got Monkey in like… 2 of them. But the Monkey won both of the games, because I’ve got enough steam to overwhelm the enemy when he was already running out of threats and answers. Overall a cool card – it’s not really necessary for the deck to work and honestly, I might even drop it if you face too many fast decks, because it’s only good in those fatigue matchups.

The deck plays like a more Midrange version of the standard Control Warrior. It’s a little less consistent in terms of removals, but runs more minions in that place. I like the deck and had pretty good run with it (until I’ve started meeting Secret Paladins with perfect curve 10 games in a row).

Strategy

You want to preserve your removals. Remember that you have only one Shield Slam and Execute and only one of each weapons, so use them wisely. In the standard Control Warrior it’s often Correct to Execute some small minion to gain the tempo even in slower matchups, but here you absolutely need to keep it for big guys. So no Execute on 2/3 Imp Gang Boss against RenoLock for example. Another card you really have to keep is Brawl. Most of the standard Warrior lists run two copies and you don’t, so don’t Brawl couple of small minions.
The deck plays much more proactive game than the standard Control Warrior. Here, you’ll actually be the one dropping minions every turn and pushing some decks. You might open with t2 Armorsmith into turn 3 Fierce Monkey into turn 4 Piloted Shredder into turn 5 Sludge Belcher and that’s a pretty strong curve where you actually might be the one dictating pace of the game. Don’t be afraid to play like that, you don’t want to be too reactive with this deck.
Use your health as the resource more freely, especially if you already drew into the Reno Jackson. Face tanking high attack minions or playing slowly to bait a bigger Brawl at the cost of the health is often a valid strategy if you already have Reno Jackson in your hand. Even if opponents see some weird card choices, they pretty much never play around that possibility and often get you down to 5 health or something, often even ignoring your minions. This sets up for something like Revenge (for 3 damage) + Reno Jackson that can completely swing the game – you clear their board (with your minions + Revenge), play your own minion on the empty board and get back to full health.
On the other hand, Reno is useless if opponents have absolute board control. Reno is awesome against Face Hunter or Aggro Shaman, where they use all the resources to deal face damage and pretty much have no minions on the board. But it might be almost useless against Midrange Druid or Secret Paladin, which focus on developing a strong board and can easily burst you down from ~20 health. In those matchups don’t rely on the Reno – it’s nice, but it will just give you one more turn if enemy has incredibly strong board (Secret Paladin after Mysterious Challenger) or threatens the combo (Midrange Druid).
Cruel Taskmaster shouldn’t be used as a 2-drop unless you can kill something with it in fast matchups (like Leper Gnome). The point is that the card is incredibly strong in the mid/late game. Besides making your trades better it has three main purposes. First one is drawing cards – combined with Acolyte of Pain you guarantee a card draw (so two in total) and turn it into something actually more threatening, a 3/2 instead of 1/3. Second one is combo with Big Game Hunter, especially in the matchups that don’t run any 7+ attack minions, they might sometimes run the 5 attack minions (like Tomb Pillager in Miracle, Blackwing Corruptor in Dragon Priest, Loatheb in some Aggro decks) that you can turn into 7 attack minion and kill. Even if enemy runs Dr. Boom or something, if you have no other turn 5 play that’s actually a really good turn that swings the tempo in your favor a lot (you kill a minion and develop 2 minions). The third is the Grommash Hellscream activator. While opponents play around 10 damage Hellscream a lot, they don’t play that much around 12 damage one. You can use that to surprise the enemy with some burst. That’s your main win condition against some decks, like RenoLock, where you need to burst them down from 15+ health. I’ve killed some RenoLocks from 20 health with just 5 damage on the board, Fiery War Axe equipped and Grom + Taskmaster combo. That’s the easiest way to win this matchup.

Alternate/Tech Cards

Bouncing Blade/Crush – I was honestly surprised that the deck didn’t feature any of those. Since it runs much less removals, and those are pretty viable substitutes, I really think that they might find a way into the deck. Author decided to go more Midrange’y path with more minions, but the more removals approach can also works.
Sylvanas Windrunner – This one is actually ran in most of the standard Control Warrior lists, yet it didn’t make to that one. I don’t know the exact reason, but if something works in a normal Control Warrior, it should work in this deck too. Maybe it’s because author didn’t want to run any minions that are really weak to Silence? I mean, Silencing the Shredder is okay, but it’s not a great value. Silencing Sylvanas can ruin your day. Anyway, a strong late game threat that you can test in the deck.
The Black Knight – The more Druids are in the meta, the more I like this card. And not only Druids, to be honest. Secret Paladins have started running Sludge Belchers. RenoLocks run Sludge Belchers and Sunfury Protector/Defender of Argus. Priests with Deathlords and Belchers. And obviously the Druids with their Druid of the Claws and sometimes even Ancient of Wars. The weak point of this card is that Aggro decks rarely run Taunts, so you have a pretty much unplayable card in some matchups. You prefer to drop ANYTHING over a 6 mana Yeti. Maybe, just maybe it’s sometimes going to snipe a 2/3 Wolf (Feral Spirit) against Aggro Shaman, but that’s it.

Reinan’s Oil Mech Rogue

Check out the author’s original post about the deck!

Overview

Since GvG we’ve seen a lot of Mech Rogue versions. And honestly, none of them were really competitive. While some of them were pretty viable ladder decks, we didn’t have anything.. with a blast. Maybe now is the time to change that?

Honestly, I don’t think that Mech Rogue is still a good deck and I certainly don’t think that it’s better than Oil Rogue. But if you like the Rogue and you like the Mech tribe, why not give it a try?

The main reason to run Mech ROGUE over any different class (like Mech Mage or Mech Shaman) is a small 3-drop – Iron Sensei. The card is beyond broken in the Mech Decks if enemy has no on-spot removal to get rid of it. While the 2/2 body is very small, giving a random mech +2/+2 EACH TURN is an incredibly strong effect. It has insane synergy with Annoy-o-Tron because of the Taunt and Divine Shield. If you get out Annoy-o-Tron and Iron Sensei at the same time, you end up having a 3/4 Taunt with Divine Shield, so yeah, enemy needs a spell removal or he’s busted. The play often just wins the game on turn 3. It’s very similar with Arcane Nullifier X-21 – the card itself is mediocre because of low attack number. 2/5 for 4 isn’t good enough, even though the effect is incredible. That’s where Iron Sensei comes handy – turning it into 4/7. Having a 4/7 Taunt that can’t be targeted with Spells… Yeah. At this point it’s often Silence or bust. So the deck basically revolves around that card. There is also another Rogue Mech that’s fine, but it’s not as broken – Goblin Auto-Barber is one-of in this list, because you need to have a weapon equipped to really get the full value from the card and the truth is – you don’t want to equip the weapon in the early/mid game, you prefer to curve out with the strong drops.

The card that Mech Rogue got in LoE is Gorillabot A-3. I didn’t think it’s going to be that good, but it turned out surprisingly awesome, just like the whole Discover mechanic. The main point is to not run out of steam. Like we all know, Mech decks are incredibly explosive, but they often dump their whole hand on the board very early. Already topdecking on turn 5-6 is common. It also makes them incredibly vulnerable to AoE removals. Priest clearing the whole board on turn 4 with Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing might just be game over. But this deck abandons the all-in Aggro approach and takes more Midrange one. With 2x Gorillabot and 2x Azure Drake it might play the longer, more value-oriented game too and even if the board gets removed it still has chances to come back. One thing that’s very cool about Gorillabot is that it has pretty high chance to discover Iron Sensei. I haven’t exactly calculated the odds, but with the 4x boost I have seen it quite often. And since like I’ve said before, Iron Sensei is the base of the deck, having 3rd or even 4th one is awesome.

The deck is very similar to other Mech decks. All Mech decks want to overrun the board with minions and punch enemy as much as they can and then, possibly, finish the game with burst. In case of Mech Mage the burst comes from Frostbolts and Fireballs, Mech Shaman runs Lava Bursts, Crackles and Doomhammer, so what does the Rogue have? The burst part of the deck is actually pretty nice too. 2x Eviscerate, 2x Deadly Poison and Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil. Blade Flurry also helps with unleashing the burst turn. Deadly Poison + Tinker’s + Blade Flurry + Eviscerate might burst enemy down from half the health (even with no minions on the board). So just like the Oil version of the deck, it can pull out a nice amount of burst with the right hand.

So if you like the Rogue class, you can actually try this variation. Maybe one or two more good Mechs and it will actually be truly viable.

Strategy

The deck really plays like the other Mech decks. You want to Mulligan for the early Mechs and possibly the SI:7 Agent when you start with the Coin or Backstab. Against Paladin you might keep the Fan of Knives too because of how strong it is as a Muster for Battle counter.
The deck’s main snowball mechanic is – yeah, you’ve guessed it – Iron Sensei. But you need to pick a right moment to drop it. You don’t want to play it if it’s going to be easily cleared on the board. For example, you have a 2/3 and enemy has 2/3. Dropping Sensei means that It gets cleared on the board unless you remove the opponent’s 2/3. And you don’t really want that. While one buff is already cool, you aim to get at least 2-3. Something like turn 2 Mechwarper into turn 3 Iron Sensei + Annoy-o-Tron is much better, because the Taunt protects the Sensei and enemy can’t kill it on the board.
Use Backstabs as the early game tempo tool. For example, if enemy goes second and drops a Leper Gnome on turn 1, Hero Powering up and clearing it is too slow. It’s better to Backstab and drop the Mechwarper or Annoy-o-Tron, especially if you have a Sensei follow-up. The deck is very high tempo one, so you can’t afford to play the game too slowly. Aggressively fighting for the board control is important.
Drop Loatheb when you want to seal the game, possibly before the Oil turn. Oil is much better with minions on the board and if you Loatheb it’s very likely that at least one of your minions will stick, because enemy can’t really AoE them down. Even if you don’t set up the Oil, drop Loatheb on already decent board, especially if enemy was trying to set up for a big AoE clear (Brawl, Lightbomb).

Alternate/Tech Cards

Sap – Another way to gain the tempo. Since the deck is built around the tempo, it should work here too. Sometimes the deck just struggles when enemy drops a Sludge Belcher or Druid of the Claw. Sometimes the deck just has no way to clear a minion or deal with I don’t know, Sylvanas Windrunner without running the whole board in. Those are the times when Sap comes handy – if you can’t beat something, throw it back to the opponent’s hand. There is a chance that next turn you’ll be able to deal with it. And even not – you’re not likely to play a card advantage game with the deck, so Sap can be often considered a 2 mana removal.
Edwin VanCleef – I like the card in a lot of Rogue decks that are built around the tempo. The reason is that you often play a few cards on the same turn. Even playing a SINGLE card and following with Edwin is already good enough. I mean, 4/4 for 3 mana is good. And that’s really easy to do – just Backstab on turn 3 + Edwin. Or Coin + Edwin on turn 2. And just one more card and you’ll get it out as a 6/6. Turn 2 Coin + Backstab + Edwin can just win you the game if enemy has no Silence. Deadly Poison + Blade Flurry + Edwin is also a good turn 6 play, you can clear the board and play a 6/6 yourself. The bad thing about Edwin is that you don’t run Preparations in this deck, unlike in Oil, so it might be harder to get out a big Edwin.
Spider Tank – You can run one instead of Harvest Golem. Both of them have strong and weak sides. Spider Tank has better trades than Harvest Golem, especially against 2/3 minions (which Harvest Golem can’t kill in one turn). On the other hand, Golem is more sticky and that’s a good thing against Aggro and better with Iron Sensei, because there is a bigger chance that some Mech is going to stick to the board so you can drop Sensei.
Piloted Sky Golem – Bad against Aggro, good in slower matchups. It’s almost always 2 for 1, because enemy usually has to use a removal on the first part (he can’t really let the 6/4 minion stick to the board) and you get a random 4-drop back. 4-drops vary from crazy good like Piloted Shredder, Yetis, Violet Teacher or even Hungry Dragon to very bad stuff like Gnomish Inventor, Dragonling Mechanic, Twilight Drake (which is 4/1) or Defender of Argus (there are obviously more cards in both categories, but those are just a few examples). Average outcome is good enough to run it, just like in the case of Piloted Shredder. It’s just too slow in some matchups, but if you play against many Control decks – the card is nuts.

FRIDGaming’s Aggro Warrior

Check out the author’s original post about the deck!

Overview

One thing I want to mention at the start is that author himself mentions that it’s not really his original idea, but he took the list from others and tweaked it a bit (the “others” were XRBlackWolf and Eloise). But since he’s the one who produced the final list, I name him the author.

Aggro Warrior. When the Cursed Blade was released, I’ve argued with a lot of people that if Aggro Warrior ever became a viable deck, Cursed Blade would most certainly find a way into the list. No one believed. Well, guess what. The card is actually decent, because it’s 6 damage for 1 mana. And since you’re Aggro, you don’t care about health total as much. It has really low chance to backfire if you play it on turn 1, because by turn 3 you won’t have it equipped any more. Not to mention that sometimes you want to get lower to activate the 6 damage Mortal Strike. Even against some Aggro it can be used to Control the board in the early game, killing Mad Scientists or Knife Jugglers. Yes, you take double damage, but if you don’t remove the minion you’re very likely to take even more or you’ll need to sacrifice one of your minions, which are your main source of damage.

Another new LoE addition was Sir Finley Mrrgglton. It was a perfect card for the Aggro Warrior. Because let’s face it, pretty much ANY Hero Power is better in an Aggro deck than Warrior’s. Warrior’s one is only decent against other Aggro decks, but even then I’d often prefer something else. Aggro Warrior’s only real disadvantage over “real” Aggro decks was Hero Power. Yeah, it’s still not that consistent, because you don’t get the Finley in every match, but even if you get it every second game it’s still better to have different Hero Power in half of the games. The 1/3 body itself is not that great, but okay.

And then we have a pretty standard Aggro Warrior list. Small drops for the aggression, Bloodsail Raiders for the synergy with weapons (t1 Cursed Blade into t2 Bloodsail is very strong opening for example), Loot Hoarders for the draw, Ironbeak Owl for the Silence, A LOT of charge minions for face damage. The deck is pretty straightforward just like any other Aggro deck – you try to rush enemy down before he stabilizes with big minions, Taunts, heals and before you run out of steam. You have quite a lot of reach thanks to all the weapons (for example, Arcanite Reaper is 10 damage for 5 mana over two turns – that’s quite a lot) and chargers + Mortal Strikes and Heroic Strikes.

The only thing that seems weird to me is Mad Bomber. It has negative synergy with the small drops, you can’t really play it on turn 2 after turn 1 Leper Gnome or Southsea Deckhand etc. I guess the reason is to counter the Paladins, because Muster for Battle is an incredibly strong card. I still wouldn’t play the card, but I guess they really like Bombers in China (the deck was based on Eloise’s one) – I’ve seen Mad Bomber in a lot of Chinese decks.

Strategy

The deck is really straightforward to play. There are no really deeper strategies into it. All you need to do is to balance between face damage and board clearing. The main idea is to damage face with minions and clear the board with weapons. While you take extra damage, you protect your board this way and minions can deal damage every turn. Playing against Control is easy – you want to hit them as hard as you can with everything you can and hope that you’ll kill them before they stabilize. Playing against Aggro is harder, because you need to know where you’re ahead in the race. If you’re ahead, you can force them into the spot where they need to play defensive and to the trades or else they die. This way you most likely lose the value, but play for the tempo. On the other hand, if you know that you won’t win the race, you need to play the defensive game and do the trading yourself. If you take the good trades all the time, enemy is going to run out of steam before you. Here the Warrior’s Hero Power is actually decent – once enemy runs out of steam and you still have stuff to play, you can stabilize the game with +2 health per turn so the enemy won’t be able to deal the last points of damage.
You mulligan hard for the small drops. The deck runs a lot of 1-drops and you really want to open with one of them. Then you curve out as well as you can. You don’t want to skip a turn – skipping a turn with other Aggro decks isn’t that TERRIBLE, because you still do something. You deal 2 damage as the Hunter, summon a totem/dude as Shaman/Paladin, but with Warrior you really do nothing. Gaining 2 health won’t get you anywhere, because health doesn’t matter in slower matchups and in faster losing so much tempo is really bad. The curve doesn’t necessarily have to be 1-2-3-4, it can be 1-3-3-4 or 1-2-4-4 etc. if you have the Coin. Also playing a 2-drop on turn 3 isn’t that bad, you just don’t want to have blank turns that you completely skip.
Mortal Strikes are really tricky cards. On the one hand, you’re the Aggro deck so you won’t likely get that low in some matchups. On the other hand, sometimes you need that extra 2 damage to kill the enemy. They might be played as an unexpected burst when the game is nearly over. Even the slowest decks will have to kill you eventually. While sometimes they might set it up and let’s say get you down to 15 (not 12) and then kill you from there in one turn, it’s not always possible. If you can’t kill the enemy but you’re really close, you might want to try to wait until he gets you down low and then Mortal Strike him. Another thing that might sometimes be useful is getting yourself into Mortal Strike range with weapons. Enemy is at 5-6 (or let’s say 9-12 if you have two) health and you’re just outside the range of 6 damage Mortal Strike? And he hides behind the Taunt? You can equip the Cursed Blade or Fiery War Axe, hit the Taunt minion, getting yourself to 12 or less health and then kill him.
Leeroy Jenkins and Arcane Golem are usually used as finishers. They both have negative effects (or positive for the opponent), so you want to play them on turn you kill the enemy. Most of the time. Let’s say you have the Mortal Strike and Leeroy Jenkins, while enemy is at 10 health. You might want to play the Leeroy first and get him down into Mortal Strike range in case he Taunts up. Or if Arcane Golem is your only turn 3 play, go for it. It’s better to give enemy a mana crystal (and hope he won’t be able to abuse that fact) than to pass a turn.

Alternate/Tech Cards

Dread Corsair – Another Pirate for the deck. It has really great synergy with the weapons. While it doesn’t do anything immediately, it allows you to drop a cheap/free 3/3 minion with Taunt. The minion can protect your 1 health ones against let’s say Paladin’s Silver Hand Recruits or Rogue’s/Druid’s Hero Power. If you manage to get it out for free, it’s insane tempo play. The only problem is that you need to have the weapon equipped. And I’d even say that it doesn’t work too well with Cursed Blade – it “only” costs 2 mana then, which is obviously still fine, but not good enough (since it has no immediate impact). So you need to have Fiery War Axe (to make it cost 1) or Death’s Bite/Arcanite Reaper (to make it cost 0). I’d say that this Pirate is good deal anyway.
Captain Greenskin – Aaaand another Pirate. And another weapon synergy. It’s something like Upgrade packed into a minion. So if you equip a Death’s Bite on turn 4 and follow it with Greenskin on turn 5, you basically end up with a 5/2 weapon, so you gain extra 6 damage. A 5 mana 5/4 that deals 6 damage is decent, I’d say. It works with other weapons too, but I’d say that you don’t really want to buff up the Cursed Blade if you, by any chance, end up having it equipped when playing Greenskin.
Loatheb – I really like Loatheb in Aggro decks. Played on turn 5 it stops pretty much any removal from happening. And if enemy has no minions on the board, it means that your board is going to survive, dealing another round of damage. That’s a really strong effect. And on top of that, you get a 5/5 body that is also really scary. It might not have the Charge, but if it can postpone an AoE by one turn it might deal more damage than you imagine.

VelGod’s Mech Priest

Check out the author’s original post about the deck!

Overview

Another Mech deck? Yeah. But honestly, Mech Priest doesn’t remind of the other Mech decks that much. The deck is much more value-oriented and NOT aggressive. It plays the board control game from start to finish. It doesn’t have any big burst combo and relies on minions – buffs them, heals them and does everything so they can survive. So, we have a standard Mech Shell – Clockwork Gnome, Mechwarper, Spider Tank, Piloted Shredder – those are in pretty much all Mech decks. But then, there are also some interesting choices.

Maybe let’s first identify, just like we did with Rogue – why Priest for the Mech class? Rogue had Iron Sensei, Priest has two class Mechs – Shadowboxer and Upgraded Repair Bot. The first one isn’t really special. It’s 2/3 for 2 that deals some extra damage, similarly to Knife Juggler. Instead of throwing one whenever you play minion, it throws one whenever something is healed. While you won’t be healing things every turn in the early game, later in the game you pretty much Hero Power each turn, so the extra 1 damage is kinda useful since Priest has no way to ping enemy minions. What’s worth noting is that it also procs from enemy healing – so if enemy plays an Antique Healbot, 1 damage happens, enemy swings with Truesilver Champion – 1 damage happens. Not a big deal most of the time, but can matter in the long run. The second Priest Mech is, however, more interesting. It fits the deck’s theme perfectly, which is keeping your board alive all the time. You have 5/5 for 5 minion, so nearly vanilla stats. That’s the best statline you can get with the strong effect. And the effect is indeed strong. Just like Mech Mages started running Clockwork Knight after TGT (not all the lists, but a lot of them) – this one is much better version of the card. For example, Clockwork Knight turns a Piloted Shredder into 5/4. Well, it’s cute, but doesn’t help that much. On the other hand, Repair Bot turns it into 4/7. Now that’s a hard to kill Shredder. No matter which Mech you target, it will get huge.

But that’s not the only way to buff the minions. Power Word: Shield, Dark Cultist and Velen’s Chosen will make sure your minions are very, very healthy. And that’s the deal – Mech decks win the games with minion presence on the board. While this deck has no real high burst finisher or maybe some OP combos (like Antonidas + Spare Parts in Mech Mage or attack buffs on Windfury in Mech Shaman), it’s very consistent in what it does – keeping the board control. So while it is a Mech deck, it’s not as aggressive as the other Mech Decks. Games against Mech Priest can last really long, the deck can even sometimes with the VALUE war against slow decks with the right draws.

This version of Mech Priest got two new LoE additions. First one is Museum Curator. I’m not sure about how this card fits the deck, but I guess it’s also for the value wars. You prefer to open with a higher tempo card like Mechwarper or Shadowboxer, but if you don’t have anything or it’s later in the game, dropping Curator is fine. It might also make enemy think you’re the Control Priest, which can in fact give you some extra surprise factor. I like the Curator, because it almost always discovers something fitting the situation. Definitely a good card against Control. And the second choice – Entomb – also seems like a weird choice. It’s a high cost removal and a really low tempo card. It allows you to deal with those pesky Deathrattle minions without proccing it, it allows you to get through the Taunt when you need it, but well, it’s also a slow card. I guess the author wanted to make the deck more Control-ish, so it can also play a different kind of game in certain matchups.

The only real source of damage from the hand in this decks are two Holy Novas (which aren’t.. well.. great for face damage) and Spawn of Shadows. The second one is more fitting, because not only it deals 4 instant damage (to both players, but if you have the tempo lead you don’t care about your health that much), but it gives a 5/4 body that enemy has to remove if he doesn’t want to take 4 extra damage next turn. Spawn of Shadows threatens 9 damage per turn and that’s a lot for a 4-drop. The 4 health makes it relatively easy to kill, but with so many buffs.. Yeah, it might actually stick to the board. The bad thing about the card is that sometimes you really don’t want to take the extra damage. If you play against let’s say Aggro Shaman and you drop it (because you have nothing else to play), enemy will most likely be thankful that you’re dealing damage to yourself instead of healing.

A cool deck, Mech Priest was one of the decks I’ve always liked to play. It’s harder than most of the Mech decks, because you RARELY can take a face rush strategy and expect it to work – you really need to carefully trade, Control the board, balance between the tempo and value etc. If you learn that – Mech Priest should work quite well on the ladder.

Strategy

Your first priority is to keep your minions alive. When you have minions alive, you can buff them, you can get the draws from Northshire Cleric, you can do a lot of stuff. You have no minions on the board – you’re in terrible spot. Unlike the Control Priest, this deck has no comeback mechanics. It has no Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo, it has no Lightbomb, so you can’t afford to lose the board. A lot of your cards are also dead if you have no minions. So what you want to do is to buff them, to heal them, to do whatever to keep them alive.
On the other hand, you can’t play too slowly. Especially against Aggro decks, you can’t really afford to use your Hero Power on the minions that much, or to be greedy with drawing from Northshire. Playing your minions to have stuff to stop their board flood is important here. If you keep the board tempo you can win against Aggro, because your minions have higher value (even without healing them) and you can heal your face to get out of their burn range.
Holy Nova has nice synergy with 3 of your cards. First one is Northshire Cleric – if you have couple of injured minions, play Northshire + Holy Nova, you can draw a lot of cards. The second one is Shadowboxer – for every minion healed you deal additional 1 ping damage, so it is possible to clear the boards that only Holy Nova wouldn’t with the right RNG. And third one is Vol’jin – that’s a 10 mana combo, but a pretty strong one. You can target any opponent minion with Vol’jin’s effect and then instantly clear with with Holy Nova. So if enemy plays let’s say an 8/8, you get a 6/8 minion and clear the opponent’s board at the same time.
You run Upgraded Repair Bots for the effect, but even without it, it’s still a 5/5 Mech. If you have no Mechs on the board or even no board at all – playing it is not wrong. Obviously you prefer to gain full advantage of the effect, but you can’t afford to lose the board tempo and pass the turn (or play something small instead) most of the time.

Alternate/Tech Cards

Holy Smite – Small removal, combo with Vol’jin (it’s a 6 mana combo, not 10 mana, so much more flexible), some face burn in case of pushing for lethal. A cool card, but it’s hard to fit it, because it.. well.. doesn’t do that much by itself, the 3 damage removals are way superior. It can’t clear 2/3’s, can’t clear Shredder, but it’s still a think to consider.
Shadow Word: Death – Alternative to Entomb in spot of big removal. I honestly like it more, because it’s a higher tempo card as opposed to Entomb’s value. It costing 3 mana means that you can easily develop something else on the same turn or, I don’t know, even heal one of your minions.
Auchenai Soulpriest – Even without running the Circle of Healing, the card might be good. Turning your Hero Power to 2 damage is often AWESOME thing to do. It let’s you take more aggressive stance against passive opponents and let’s you kill some stuff for free. Enemy plays a 3/2 later in the game? You can just clear it with the Hero Power. You need 2 more damage to make a good trade? Sure, 2 damage Hero Power. The card is pretty flexible and can even be played on turn 4 to deny some possible plays from the enemy. Like, opponent doesn’t really want to play Sludge Belcher into your Auchenai, because if enemy has no way to ping, Auchenai clears Belcher and survives.
Mind Blast – If you want to take a more aggressive approach, you can for example put Mind Blast into the deck. It’s a way for Priest to burst the enemy down. While it has NO impact on the board, the surprise 5 (or 10) damage from your hand is something that can come handy in a lot of situations.
Mechanical Yeti – While I think that Piloted Shredder is a superior 4-drop in general, I like Yeti in Priest more. Shredder hasn’t really got a nice synergy with Priest’s Hero Power (unless it’s buffed). The 3 health most often means that it dies to whatever it trades into. The thing that drops out is usually between 1 and 3 health, so once again – it’s pretty hard to heal it, because it just dies to the 5-drops etc. Mechanical yeti, on the other hand, has 5 health, meaning that trading it into something and then healing is a viable option. Like, you can kill a 3/2 and then heal it back to 4/4. You can’t do the same thing with Shredder. It’s also less vulnerable to Silence, which might be good in the deck with so many buffs. If you buff a Yeti and someone Silences it, you pretty much only lose the buff (the Deathrattle is meaningless a lot of time, because it’s mirrored) and it becomes a vanilla 4/5. If someone Silences the buffed Shredder – you lose both the buff and the 2-drop, so the Shredder becomes vanilla 4/3.

Closing

That’s it folks. We’ll be back with an episode on the next week, but I honestly think about making it a bi-weekly series instead of a weekly one. The reason is that it’s hard to find enough material to write about 4 interesting decks that got into Legend each week. While it’s very easy after the expansion, where people get tons of new ideas and test different stuff, after sometime the meta gets stale. So there are two solutions – first one is to write about the standard meta decks more, like a new version of Secret Paladin or Zoo Warlock with 2 new cards. And the second one is to make an episode every two weeks instead of one. I’m not sure which way I’m going to go yet, but I’ll let you guys know!

If you want to submit your own decklist – send it to me at stonekeephs@gmail.com with a proof of Legend, matchups statistics (it’s best to use some sort of tracker for that), your own thoughts and stuff like that. Or if you’ve already described the deck somewhere, you can just send me the link to your Reddit/Hearthpwn/etc. post! I’ll definitely try to put at least one deck submitted by you guys every week.

If you have any other suggestions or comments, leave them in the section below!

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Author

radek