by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Today’s play session started off at Rank 15. I had run into an unlucky stretch of games before closing out the previous night, so I came into today with a zealous vengeance. I have been playing this deck since the original nerf to Unleash the Hounds, so I know it inside and out. It also helps that I made this deck completely of my own thoughts and dreams and have been fine tuning it ever since. Why did I go to the Priest after starting with the aggressive Hunter deck? *shrug* Something about the Priest cards felt satisfying to me despite the class being regarded as one of the weaker ones in the meta currently. The goal of this deck is to have answers for most of your opponent’s moves while continuing to build your own board and buff what you put down so that the number of “important” targets becomes too overwhelming for your opponent. I’d call it a midrange deck.

Deck List:

GAME ONE: Priest v. Priest – Win

RANK: 15 & Four Stars

I love mirror matches. With the Priest having no real “standard” deck, it’s always fun to see what another Priest will bring to the table. It’s even more fun when I get to Thoughtsteal some of their own tools and add them to my strategy. This game started off oddly as I didn’t mulligan into any true early game, but my opponent also didn’t have much either. They threw out a Lightwell early and then used an Inner Fire to turn it into a 5/5 on turn three. That would have been scary if I didn’t have The Coin and a Spellbreaker in my hand to absolutely shut it down and then, on turn 4, my opponent passed their turn. Entirely. From there, the momentum swung well into my favor and after I Thoughtstole another Northshire Cleric, I pretty much had all the card draw I could manufacture. One of my favorite things to do when I have the lead is to Mind Control stuff I don’t really need, but that still helps me maintain my lead.

So, I took the Lightwell and cleared the opposing Northshire Cleric, which pretty much led to the swift conclusion of that game.

GAME TWO: Priest v. Warrior – Win

RANK: 14 & One Star

This was a tougher game. Warriors have always given me trouble just because of the value they receive out of their weapons. My goal is try to make all of the targets for their weapons either hurt as much as possible to hit or be just above the threshold of not resulting in one hit kills so that they’ll also have to damage or sacrifice a minion to get the kill. This one started out fairly trick due to some early Raging Worgens that the Warrior was trying to combo into early damage with Cruel Taskmasters. I recently substituted out a Faerie Dragon for an Acidic Swamp Ooze, and despite having the board buffed up nicely against the Arcanite Reaper, I still got good value out of the Ooze.

However, the most pivotal moment in this game came when the Warrior went for broke and played a Frothing Berserker and Molten Giant and left me with the choice of how to deal with it. I had just drawn a Sunwalker a turn or two ago, so I knew I had some protection from it and with a Mind Control in hand, the choice came down to what to take control of.

I decided to take the Berserker because I believed I could handle the Golem and eventually have the Berserker buffed up for massive damage. After laying down the Sunwalker, the Warrior gave up the ghost and I had my next win!

GAME THREE: Priest v. Paladin – Loss

RANK: 14 & Three Stars (Woot @ win streak bonus!)

This was a pretty silly game. This Paladin had a Tirion Fordring that I dealt with perfectly between Shadow Word: Death and an Acidic Swamp Ooze and also a Sylvanas Windrunner that I killed off with a Holy Smite against an empty board that had just been Equality/Consecrated. As you can see from the deck list, there are no Legendary cards in here, so I take great pride in beating decks that use a plethora of them, but this Paladin drew the right cards at the right time to heal himself and, even after Thoughtstealing his Avenging Wrath, the RNG didn’t quite work in my favor to end the game with it. ‘Twas a fun game nevertheless, as it’s nice to see this deck go head to head with answers to really tough situations. I needed to draw a Smite or a Holy Nova at some point for a few turns and I probably would have won. Here are some images from the game:

Pretty well set up Holy Nova to bring the board back under my control.

Go away, Tirion. Nobody likes you here.

What I Learned: The one time that I went to burn my opponent down, it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to. Given the cards that came out after Sylvanas in the last game, it’s very possible that I still would have lost regardless, but if I had dealt with her in another way, I may have been able to go back to playing control and possibly win later on. As such, I’ve learned that my style has progressively changed from being very into aggressive plays and trying to win quickly to now enjoying the long game. I love getting to the very end of decks and seeing all of the plays and counter-plays. I don’t regret trying to adopt a new style to fit the situation and possibly create a new win condition, as I think it’s very important to be able to change on the fly, but I think it’s also important to remember what the main strengths of a deck are and hope that your cards will bail you out in that fashion when you get into tough spots.

Today’s Battle Music: Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance (2003)

Here’s the opening track!