Hearthpwn

I was thinking about adding reliquary of souls here. It has lifesteal helping to get giants earlier, and in this deck it will be quiet easy to draw prime. I know its quiet slow and more controlish, but would love to use it here. What you think ?

Best on Turn 1 where you are at full life and therefore cannot discount giants with lifesteal. There are a good number of minions in this deck too so I don't think it's too reliable to draw the Prime off of Insight. The card would be best if we had ways to generate multiple copies or buff it, but I don't see this deck being able to do that.

Quote from Danoz96 >>

What if you added C'thun?
Then what would trigger first? Would it be alphabetical order or would it be a 50/50 depending on how it was shuffled into the deck at the start of the game?

 They would both be active. Both perform their checks BEFORE they enact their actions. Så bishop and cthun will both say "okay, i am active" and then do their actions, as in changing hero power and inserting new cards into your deck.

1. Game loads
2. Start of game triggers checks performed
3. Start of game effects take place
4. Turn 1

What if you added C'thun?
Then what would trigger first? Would it be alphabetical order or would it be a 50/50 depending on how it was shuffled into the deck at the start of the game?

I'm not sure how that interaction would work. You'll just have to test it out!

Personally I'm not a fan of Shadowed Spirit, Thrive in the Shadows feels more like a 1-of, and I would replace them with 2 copies of Hysteria and 1 Soul Mirror

My thinking is that we're not really a tempo deck, we're working towards swing turns with chip damage in the meantime, and then possibly a final burst of damage towards the end, while the HP can certainly slow down early boards currently this list doesn't have any way to answer mid-late game boards besides the weapon which is really only going to stop tokens. 

Hysteria is simply too powerful not to include, and 100% needs a spot, soul mirror is more flexible as on option, but personally I like it better than 2 copies of "2 mana draw 1."

Hysteria and Soul Mirror are both very powerful. They're both serious considerations. I'd probably put in one over a Shadow Word: Death to be honest. You and I both know that Thrive in the Shadows is better than a "2 mana draw 1" and I think it complements the deck's want for cheap Shadow spells along with providing draw consistency. Shadowed Spirit is not the strongest minion, but is aggressive and places a lot of pressure on the opponent if you're able to get more copies with Raise Dead. They'll probably stay in the first list I play, but Hysteria should probably be in over Death. I'd really like to put Soul Mirror in eventually. I'm guessing that a more aggressive leaning strategy will favor the deck in the initial phase of the expansion though. I can't wait to test it out regardless though! :)

Thrive is only better than "draw 1" if you're running a few spells you want to reliably get, if you're running more than 4 or 5 spells then you only get what you want about half the time, making it effectively "2 mana draw a spell." yes it's slightly better than that, but I ended up cutting it from even my dedicated spell priest decks because 2 mana just felt too steep most of the time and I'd rather use the mana more effeciently.

As for the spirit, I get what you're going for, but I don't think the deck is capable of being aggressive enough to compete with refined lists, it'll probably be fine for the first few days when everyone is playing jank (my personal favorite time to play the game :D) but once decks get refined I think this will be on the slower end of burn decks, since it lacks too many cheap spells and spell generation effects to really burst the opponent with psyfiend (i'm talking 0 and 1 cost spells to REALLY bust them), and I think you're going to be overall better off either shifting the deck towards a tempo strat that relies on HP for board control, or going for an attrition style deck that chips at the opponent and plans for a late game burst of maybe 8-12 damage, ala OG burn mage. Since we lack freeze effects, board clears become more important.

If we ever get a way to generate Rally reliably I think that the spirit immediately has a home. Another idea is to cut Benedictus entirely, forget the HP, go with psyfiend, sethekk and voidtouched ascendant, run more healing effects and use rally to pop off with the burst later on. Though that's much less thematic.

EDIT: I also wouldn't cut the death because I see handlock being very popular and turn 4 8/8s are likely going to happen pretty reliably.

Good point on Rally. That does make it less consistent to revive him. For sure one of the cards that I'll look at closely for the performance.

I still stand with Thrive as a 2-of though. Discover is way better than draw. We do have an incentive to draw certain spells, powerful spells in this deck. There's Shadow synergy with it. Will regularly be discounted with Palm Reading to make it an even cheaper cycle.

I'm glad there's so much discussion going towards this archetype though. I'm hoping there are multiple effective ways to play with Shadow Priest.

The only point I'm making is that if you're trying to run a lot of spells then discover is BARELY better than draw, the only time it really becomes worth it is with psyfiend specifically, and while that in particular is quite strong, the consistency with which that will go off makes me iffy on the card. The bigger problem is that we lack good alternatives, but if I had to choose between 2 copies of thrive and 2 copies of hysteria, it's 2 copies of hysteria every single time without question.

Thrive gets exponentially better the lower your spell density is, and worse the higher your density is.

So you would want to hold on to call of the grave until you need it right?

I'm not sure how it will feel yet, but it seems like a powerful and flexible (not to mention cheap) option for a Shadow package. Obviously, you can get a lot more value from it the later it's played, making it not even a bad top-deck in the mid to late game, but I could see it being a justifiable Turn 1 play if you don't have the Voidtouched Attendant. It may always be better to wait until like Turn 4 or 5 though for the chance to get immediate value.

Quote from Pherosizm >>

This looks very cool. If I happen to unpack the bishop, I will definitely try this.

Does flesh giant and devouring plague work the way I think it does? (four separate changes to health, so 4 mana discount?)

 Yes that's how it is

This looks very cool. If I happen to unpack the bishop, I will definitely try this.

Does flesh giant and devouring plague work the way I think it does? (four separate changes to health, so 4 mana discount?)

Yep! There was a control priest list like mid-Barrens that used this interaction. 4 mana discount if you hit with every point of damage on devouring plague.

It looks nice. I would prefer Tour Guide instead of Psyfiend.

I'm not sure it will be worth the deck slot. It's possible, but it's not as if you are adding a whole lot of burst unless you set up Voidtouched Attendant(s). The synergies lie more with Shadow spells in this deck than the hero power.

Its not about burst damage, its more like an early game tempo tool. In wild pretty much every odd deck runs Tour Guide, because its really good with upgraded hero powers. And Shadowform is kinda like an upgraded hp. The only downside I see is that its suboptimal from Insight, but I would still include it.

It certainly good be useful as an early game board control tool. It's basically like running a Kobold Lackey. While there are decks that might run that if it was a card, I don't know if this deck is it. Does Odd Mage run Tour Guide? It's the same hero power.

Okay, that last question wasn't a great one because Odd Mage focuses a lot on Hero Power synergies. This deck does not, however. I will certainly consider Tour Guide as an inclusion once the set releases.