by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

The beginning of the season is here and you all know what that means – aggro decks galore. The reason behind it is what I believe is the broken nature of ranked play as it encourages players to try and rank up as fast as possible early on, which encourages fast win decks with a lower win percentage than decks that take longer to play out.

So at that point, you can either join them or try and beat them. We talk about this almost every week on the Well Met Podcast. This month however, I have decided to take on aggro by playing what is very much an anti-aggro deck that also does well against the top deck in the meta right now – Grim Patron Warrior.

The Lightbomb Priest deck got it’s popularity in China and is really considered a tier-4 deck list – but don’t let that fool you as a lot of players aren’t playing the top tier decks to rank up from 20 to 5. Because of that, this makes Lightbomb Priest a very good deck to rank up with right now.

Let’s take a look at the deck list.

Deck List

Lightbomb Priest
Class: Priest

Priest (16)

• Power Word: Shield x2
• Northshire Cleric x2
• Shadow Word: Death x2
• Thoughtsteal
• Velen’s Chosen x2
• Dark Cultist
• Shadow Madness
• Holy Nova x2
• Lightbomb
• Cabal Shadow Priest
• Mind Control

Neutral (14)

• Zombie Chow x2
• Gilblin Stalker
• Wild Pyromancer
• Deathlord x2
• Piloted Shredder x2
• Sludge Belcher x2
• Sylvanas Windrunner
• The Black Knight
• Toshley
• Ysera

Mulligan

Keep Zombie Chow, Northshire Cleric, Wild Pyromancer, Gilblin Stalker, and Deathlord. Any of those cards help you out early game. If you have a Northshire cleric or Wild Pyromancer then Power Word: Shield is a great keep as well. I also keep Dark Cultist if I have a good curve or the coin (for example Zombie Chow turn 1, turn 2 coin+Dark Cultist is pretty good). If I know I’m playing face hunter then I try and hard mulligan for Deathlord.

Strategy

Try to keep things stable early game with those 1 and 2 drops and transfer to the mid game with your taunts and end game allows you to completely control the game as you steal your opponents minions and spells.

When playing against Aggro, Deathlord and Sludge Belcher will be your best friends. I have had Face Hunters straight up concede turn 4 after I put down a second Deathlord or Turn 5 when they just took out my Deathlord that took everything they had and I drop a Sludge Belcher.

When playing other decks it’s all about keeping tempo early and then controlling the board late. Save cards like Shadow Word Death for their Dr. Boom or other super large cards that are hard to deal with. Keeping Mind Control late game and using it on their big top deck causes an almost instant concede. Cabal Shadowpriest will ruin a Flamewaker mage’s day. Lightbomb will almost cause a Grim Patron deck to instantly quit. There are a lot of tools with this deck so its important you use them at the right time.

Try out the deck and let me know how you did on the ladder this week in the comments below!