Crusher Silent Priest (Updated Using HSReplay)
- Last updated Jun 7, 2020 (Second DH Nerfs)
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Wild
- 18 Minions
- 12 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Silence Priest
- Crafting Cost: 5600
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 5/14/2020 (Second DH Nerfs)
- HSCrusher
- Deck Architect
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- 12
- 23
- 46
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
1574
Crusher Silent Priest
62.0% Win Rate from Bronze 10 to Legend 2167
Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/crusherhs
Deck in action
Example Gameplay: https://youtu.be/oR6HpGi-VZQ
Video Deck Walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws1O78f14Tg&list=PLt6uOfHoQn3T_xJHk-vDpMt1hh9l8c1BE&index=1
Objective
This is an aggressive (seriously be aggressive) priest that drops big statted minions early, buffs them, and duplicates them. In particular you have the Watchers (Ancient Watcher, Arcane Watcher) that need to be silenced, and the Imprisoned Demons (Imprisoned Homunculus, Imprisoned Vilefiend) that you need to wait on. The result is lots of stats for the mana that can quickly snowball with buffs and duplication effects (Apotheosis, Faceless Rager, Unsleeping Soul, Psyche Split). This should hopefully lead to a kill by turn 8, before your opponent has a chance to clear your board and rebound. If you stall out, you have Sethekk Veilweaver and Octosari to try to randomly save you, but try to not let the game last past turn 10.
Why to Play
I took (a slightly different version of) this deck from Rank 5 Diamond to Legend and I think you can too. It combines my favorite things: paring cards for tempo gains (Like Silent Druid), building big minions (Like Bubble Paladin), and duplicating them (like Crusher Shaman). It's a fast deck that can help you ladder quickly, while having a unique playstyle. It destroys Demon Hunter and Hunter, the first and third most popular classes on ladder. It is cheap: four epics, and one legendary (that I didn't even use in my climb). The remaining cards are entirely Basic/Classic + Rise of Shadows + Ashes of Outland, so it's very approachable if you missed a couple sets and are a returning player, like me. Plus it's always really enjoyable to see a bunch of buffed copies of your minion on the board.
Mulligan Guide
Against Druid, Paladin, Shaman, or Demon Hunter, keep Holy Nova.
Against Mage, keep Dalaran Librarian.
Against Hunter, keep Holy Smite.
Other than that, mulligan hard to get one of the following: Arcane Watcher, Ancient Watcher, Imprisoned Homunculus, Imprisoned Vilefiend, or on coin, Henchclan Shadequill. Assuming there's one other card you'd keep for the matchup and otherwise a hard mulligan, you have a ~95.7% of finding a watcher or imprisoned demon by turn 3 without The Coin or turn 2 with it. The remaining 4.3% of games will be pretty rough, but should be rare.
If you have one of the watchers or imprisoned demons, mulligan hard for a combo piece, i.e. Faceless Rager, silences for the watchers.
Beyond that, mulligan to fill out a nice curve through turn 5 or keep a Holy Smite against a suspected aggressive opponent.
Matchups
Links to example gameplay for each matchup provided.
Favored
Demon Hunter (19/26 - 73.1%): I'm mostly seeing the aggro variant (79% win rate) on ladder now, which I have been farming on my climb. Holy Smite, Holy Nova and your cheap minions let you go toe to toe in the early game. Demon Hunters lack hard removal so feel free to buff up a huge minion that can punish him in the mid-game.
Hunter (11/14 78.6%): This deck destroys Face Hunter and Dragon Hunter, and does decently well against Highlander. Hard removal like Primordial Explorer and Rotnest Drake are your main concern. Keep a Holy Smite for the former, and try to go wide when possible to protect against the latter.
Toss-up
Warrior (6/10 - 60%): Mostly seeing the enrage archetype, which is a pretty evenly matched game. Silence is pretty effective on their minions. One of the few matches you can win in the turn 10+ range without Octosari.
Mage (5/11 - 45.5%): Your silences are doubly effective, since they can release frozen minions. Dalaran Librarian is a star. They do have lots of strong AoE, so this is one of the few matchups where you might want to hold back a minion. Their abundance of removal and RNG fiesta keep this matchup close.
Rogue (7/15 - 46.7%): They have high tempo cards, but you can go toe to toe in the early game. Favor imprisoned demons over watchers slightly, so that all your minions come online at once. Often comes down to whether they can find their Blackjack Stunners and Flik Skyshiv (he's a real buzzkill). Rogue has big swing turns in the late game that mean you can't afford to let the match go long.
Disfavored
Warlock (1/6 - 16.7%): Only really seeing the Magic Carpet archetype right now. I feel like this shouldn't really be that disfavored, but they always seem to generate too much tempo early with all the buffs, and everything is just a bit out of Holy Nova range.
Played 5 games total against Priest, Druid, Paladin, and Shaman combined. Priest is probably unfavorable, since they have so much removal, but I feel like the rest should all be favored because they either start slow or can be shut down early by keeping tempo, but I'd need more experience to really know.
Galakrond Variant
You will certainly run out of cards in hand some games, but if you want to run a slightly slower variant that still gives you a chance (all praise RNGsus) in the late game, then swap Galakrond, the Unspeakable and Kronx Dragonhoof in for two cards (I recommend Mortuary Machine and a Imprisoned Vilefiend). I tried the Galakrond version out a lot earlier in the season, and it was working pretty well, but I think I prefer the more consistent early game this version gives you. Galakrond, without the support cards often isn't quite enough to save you, even if he can generate infinite random cards.
Other 31st Cards:
Boompistol Bully: Good way to solidify a board against battlecry minions like Flik Skyshiv
Apotheosis: Had this card in for a long time, but it didn't perform well statistically. Dominant in matchups like Hunter and Demon Hunter, but these are already favorable, and you can find the heal you need off of Renew
Shadow Word: Death: Good tempo and pairs well with Sethhek Veilweaver, but is too situational for a proactive deck like this.
Soldier of Fortune: Fits the theme well, but that's too many 4-mana cards for such an aggressive deck. It's nice the downside comes on the next turn, so you can wait to silence, but the downside is a bit too high compared to Hench-Clan Shadequill. I'd also rather have the extra health than the extra attack.
Conjured Mirage: An interesting silence target with solid stats. Occasionally useful to set up a wall before a kill turn or some AoE, but ultimately not threatening enough, and too often not useful without the silence.
Shout Outs
Thanks to Lyrinian for some great brainstorming in the early stages of brewing this deck, in particular Imprisoned Vilefiend, and the Galakrond variant.
Thanks to Mrdiddles, whomever you are, for showing me the power of watcher + silence in priest on ladder, inspiring me to brew this deck. Regret not friending you.
did they change Jepetto Joybuzz or something?
you can't silence the stateliness back right? seems like there are a lot of bad targets for him
You can silence the statlines back. That makes most of the targets either good for their stats or a cheaper version of their effect.
thanks for the info!
Why Octosari?
Card draw. This deck (and Priest in general lacks it). If the game starts to go long, him and Sethekk Veilweaver are pretty much the only cards that can turn it around for you. There are some examples here: https://youtu.be/XrJyUfGkfdg
what about generous mummy and supreme abyssal ?
I feel like Generous Mummy is a very dangerous card to play without silence. Then if you do silence it, you lose a large part of its value. Supreme Abyssal seems a bit too expensive for me, but could be worth a shot. For instance Mortuary Machine coming down 3 turns earlier is a much bigger deal than +4/+4, but I never tried it, so I'm not sure.
budget and watchers +1. Long time no see a watcher deck :P~~~
My feel is that mulligan selection and tempo seems extremely important, because of lack of card draw.
I have not yet played it, but the deck looks good and I hardly can think of a better design. It has enough tempo+ minions, then we do copying on 4-5-6 turn would each turn contribute 1 tempo+ minion, i guess this is where the snowball coming from...
There is exactly 6 copy cards so we have good chance to see one by turn 5. In this sense, how about including faceless manipulators? :P~~~
I tried Faceless Manipulator a little, since I saw that the duplicators were some of the strongest cards in the deck, and thought maybe a couple more could help, but it's pretty inferior to the other ones. I think it's more important to have the extra couple solid targets for duplication, but if you want to try out Mortuary Machine -> Faceless Manipulator, it makes sense.
I lost against this deck at Diamond 4 while playing Galakrond Priest. I think most slower decks will struggle against it. Of course, my opponent's first 10 cards were all perfect. It's probably draw-dependent.
Heavy removal control decks can give this deck trouble, but other slower decks (like Big Druid for example) get rolled. The hope is that the redundancy in synergistic cards (multiple silences, watchers, imprisoned demons, duplicators) increases the consistency out of the gate.
I played 20 games at Platinum 4 (NA server). My win rate was 50%. I do not have Octosauri, and I decided not to craft it for this experiment. At first I substituted Archmage Thalnos, but then I changed to Argent Commander. I noticed in some of my earlier games that my opponent would sit at 1-4 health, and I couldn't kill him because Priest doesn't have any face damaging spells any more. Maybe having Octosauri would have increased my win rate, but I can't imagine by much. I also conceded early if my opponent had board control and overwhelming card advantage. I have Siamat - maybe that would be a better substitution.
The deck is clunky. It requires the right cards in the right order, and your opponent can't have answers. If you're playing against Rogue, she WILL have Flik in her first 12 cards. You either get two to three of your chunky minions out fast and untouched, or you get a really good chain going with Veilweaver. If neither of these things happen, you probably can't win. Dalaran Librarian is a dead card half the time. I either felt starved for minions, or desperate to wring out tempo from awkwardly costed cards.
Unfortunately the deck is not viable for laddering to Legend, IMO
I would add the image from Deck Tracker, but I can't figure out how to add a picture to this reply. My results for 18 matches I tracked:
Paladin (0-2), Druid (2-0), Warrior (0-1), Mage (0-1), Hunter (3-1), Warlock (0-1), Demon Hunter (1-1), Rogue (1-3), Priest (1-0)
The thing with priest nowadays is that it is very hard to make different archetypes work, other than Galakrond where you generate random cards to fill your hand, but if wanna try other strategies, like silence, aggro, or combo, priest doesn't offer ways to cycle through your deck to make new estrategies work. It really shuts down creativity with the class. I think it was a really stupid idea to move Northshire Cleric do Wild.
I really miss Northshire Cleric. I used to play a lot of Combo Priest.
The only thing this deck does is give stars to your opponent so they can advance to their next rank.
Its a fun deck but no good for ladder. On casual play I was 8W-1L on ladder it was reversed. If you dont get the perfect start you are left with too many spells or the opponent has caught up and has too much removal. Once they start putting big minions down you struggle to play to the decks strengths. You also lack card draw as mentioned, not sure how you would fix it.
Update - now at 17w - 32L, most of these on ladder. The deck has potential but it needs a big rework on card draw.
Unfortunately, Priest has been redesigned to not have card draw. It seems like the community is starting to figure this deck out though, getting a 52.38% win rate yesterday on HSReplay: https://hsreplay.net/decks/mwci0XKZAOd9iZI9b11MMg/#vodId=iSGAxRqzz8nQZRUNo2GH32
An amazing fun deck to play, i haven't seen this archetype for about half an year, so it feels very fresh. I tried it. And yeah, as you usually end up with one to three cards in hand, i'm thinking about putting octosari in this deck as a good top deck when resources are low.. Don't know is it gonna change anything but is sure better choice than passing.
Ps. Also nice budget deck, thanks!
I thought about Octosari in, but I don't own it, and it seemed a bit speculative to pay 1600 dust for. Let me know how it goes. hopefully it doesn't just get silenced, morphed, or stolen.
I ended up giving Octosari a shot and really like it. I've added him to the list.