Hearthpwn

You want to launch the Velen OTK combo, for which you'll typically Alex your opponent first, or cast Velen+double mind blast(thanks to Thaurissan who made this possible). As a priest, with a bunch of draws and removals, (and, most importantly, the adorable Chillwind Yeti out of our way) you'll find it no more trouble than freeze mage to stall the game.

1) Card Draw Section

 

Power Word: Shield: pretty much 2* in every priest deck. Neat cycle, better board, insane with Wild Pyromancer, not much new I can add except that it also works with Acolyte of Pain to draw more, or Loot Hoarder against 1-dmg mechanics.

 

Loot Hoarder and Acolyte of Pain: to make the deck smaller as well as to spend early game and keep opponent busy. Acolyte of Pain has some synergy with pyromancer combos, but feel free to drop an acolyte even if it just dies to a weapon charge or certain removal, especially when your hand is not great. When there are creatures that just kill the acolyte ezpz, you may want to consider prioritizing to remove them.

 

 

Azure Drake: I found the drakes better than Gnomish Inventor for two reasons: first, the spell damage is relevant in this deck; second, the drakes have better body for Resurrect. When you don't resurrect Doomsayer, Loot Hoarder or Acolyte of Pain, you may want a reasonable body to compensate for the lack of draw/stall effect. Plus, an Azure Drake or Wild Pyromancer resurrection often enables some surprise Smite/Nova/Holy Fire combo wombo, which are candidates for Trolden clips, by the way.

 

Bloodmage Thalnos: you can cycle him in the early game as Loot Hoarder, combo with spells in the later stage, or put him in the Thaurissan lethal package. Pretty much the same reason why freeze mage runs this card.

 

Resurrect: I put this card under "draw" because it often summons Loot Hoarder or Acolyte of Pain, since you most likely play these guys early on. Certainly if you don't get to play them early, you can go turn 5 coin Emperor Thaurissan + turn 6 resurrect, and that won me a few not-so-difficult games against control warrior. Drake, doomsayer or pyromancer can also come in useful, if you res first to see what you get, and then try to combo with your hand.

 

2) Stall Section

 

Doomsayer: quite differently from freeze mage, doomsayers are dropped more proactively in this deck. This is because Anduin has no freeze mechanic. The purpose of doomsayer is more like buying a turn, or rendering opponent's turn much weaker.

 

Shadow Word: Pain,  Shadow Word: Death,  and Lightbomb: these are the removals that are highly dependent on your meta and style. In general I recommend 3 to 4 slots for these spells, usually 2:1:1 or 2:1:0, with at least 1*Shadow Word: Pain and 1*Shadow Word: Death. Lightbomb is more often a tech card.

 

Holy Fire: I usually use it for removal, but it can also be used to set up for lethal. Specifically, you want to save Holy Fire for Thaurissan, Shield Maiden, Sylvanas, Azure Drake, or Hungry Dragon(when you have spell damage) if you anticipate these cards, especially if you plan to use Shadow Word: Death on bigger creatures. Always 2 of in this deck.

 

Wild Pyromancer: best priest card NA. Not much I can add if you play priest regularly.

 

Holy Smite: a flexible card which can be combo'ed with Wild Pyromancer as nearly Swipe, with Bloodmage Thalnos or Azure Drake for efficient removal, or with Prophet Velen to find lethal. Different from in control priest, smite is good in all stages of the game. Always 2* in this deck.

 

Holy Nova: more area of effect, minor healing, also enjoying the spell damage or pyromancer bonus. The standard is 2*, but you can replace one with Lightbomb if that helps better.

 

Antique Healbot: extra heal that is currently in the deck in order to guarantee 100% beatdown of aggro decks. Also a strong stall tool if you want to bait more minions onto the board before you sweep it, but look out for Loatheb. OK drop from Resurrect.

 

3) Combo Section

 

Emperor Thaurissan: not just too much value to be skipped, but also maximizes the potential of the Velen combo. You need Thaurissan to reduce the cost of one card from your (Velen, Mind Blast, Mind Blast) set, then you have the 10 mana combo following Alexstrasza. Thaurissan could be far crazier than that, though.

 

Prophet Velen and Alexstrasza: win conditions of the deck. Typically you can draw into both, since we have at least 9 card draws in the deck. However, you don't always need both. Also note that Alex may be used defensively.

 

Resurrect: I mentioned this in the "card draw section" above, but I'd like to address on this card some more. Resurrect is a RNG card that turns out ironically consistent in the deck. Everything you can resurrect is worth the card, and due to its low cost, you can interact with what you get from it. Doomsayer gives another tool to stall, Thalnos/Loot Hoarder/Acolyte draws more cards, Healbot/Drake has a reasonable body for 2 mana, Pyro AoEs the board once more, whereas Thaurissan/Velen/Alex give some spicy bonuses(note that we probably never get Velen from it, because Velen should close the game). Any of the effects, during the course of the game, is usually helpful(unless you run into Doomsayer when you dominate the board, which never happens for this deck).   It is noteworthy that Hungry Dragon can sometimes screw us up, however. 

 

4) Flexible Slots

 

Most slots in this deck are fixed, except that the removal spells should adapt to your meta. However, there are 2-3 slots available if you really want to tech something.

 

Resurrect: currently 2*, IMO at least 1* for consistency. I know it sounds weird, but yeah. 0* only when Hungry Dragon or Leeroy Jenkins is all over the place. That said, if your tech card does not work well with Resurrect, you might want to just run 0*.

 

Antique Healbot: helpful stall card, but ok to swap out if you find no need of it.

 

Likely techs include Harrison Jones, which is popular in control priest but barely ever in freeze mage; or Velen's Chosen, particularly if you find Doomsayer or Acolyte of Pain regularly silenced. 

 

5) Why not .... ?

 

Northshire Cleric: basically replaced by Acolyte of Pain. Although the acolyte costs 2 more, it has synergy with Wild Pyromancer, Resurrect and Lesser Heal, plus we cannot afford Northshire to not draw a card. Since this deck is not strong in board presence, Northshire Cleric seems to underperform.

 

Zombie Chow: less playable than in control priest. Chow is still good in the early game, but Doomsayer, Wild Pyromancer, Loot Hoarder, Acolyte of Pain, Power Word: Shield and removal spells already deal with early game well enough. We need to rather draw as consistently as possible, plus Chow is an unfavorable outcome of Resurrect.

Face Hunter, or Zoo: I found the 2*pyro version to be much better than 1*pyro. Harrison is unnecessary for this matchup; just look for pyro/holy fire/healbot, it should be easy. Doomsayer turned out pretty good against zoo, but nerubian eggs can be a nightmare.

 

Handlock: because of the burst, OTK priest decks are in general better than control when it comes to handlock. Still twilight drakes are a pain, but Lightbomb should help with the double moltens.

 

Mech mage/mech shaman: turn 2 doomsayer is so good in this matchup, so mulligan for it(mulligan the Loot Hoarders because they are a bit slow, unless you also get PW:S)  SW:P is great for Warper or Spider Tank. Pyro is also nice with the coin.

 

Control Warrior: just like for freeze mage and other OTK, this is a tough matchup, but we can do a bit better than freeze mage here(as a price, though, there is a even more difficult matchup). Assuming that Thaurissan gets removed immediately, the best we can do from an empty board is 36 damage in a turn(6-cost Velen, 1-cost Thalnos, 2*1-cost Mind Blast for 24, 2*0-cost Smite for 12).

 

Ramp Druid: removing the shades/bears can be a problem, otherwise just don't get FoN/Roar'ed down. We have higher burst than the druid does, actually.

 

Oil Rogue: not the greatest matchup, but not as bad as control priests might feel. Harrison will shine, if you added him to the deck because of the meta.

 

Mill Rogue/Mill Druid: our deck draws a lot, which makes the matchup unfavorable; however, we are better than control priest at disposing our hand. Keep key cards around and let everything else cycle. If we don't get combo cards burnt, the game will end before fatigue.

 

Control Priest: most difficult match-up. The problem is not opponent priest healing up, but our minion removal and card sustenance. Cabal Shadow Priests can challenge our card draw, and Blademaster may never get removed(unless it's not healed enough, or we manage to drop Doomsayer at a good spot). but the most fear comes from Thoughtsteal. Card draw, Thaurissan, burns or heals are all decent steals for opponent and trouble for ourselves. Combining all these factors, although there's potential Thoughsteal into Ice Block, standard freeze mage will still have better odds than this deck does against control priest.   

 

Freeze Mage: as this deck struggles against control priest, it has a slight upper hand versus freeze mage because 1)the freeze is useless against your not-quite-developed board, and 2)Ice Barrier and Doomsayer(on both sides) barely do anything in this match.

The game usually comes down to how each player deals with critical turns, whereEmperor Thaurissan or Alexstrasza is dropped. Freeze mage is more vulnerable to Alex because of lack of direct healing, and inefficiency in removing Alex. However, Thaurissan must be removed promptly, or Archmage Antonidas will be too insane to stop when opponent has Ice Block up. In that case, you want to remove Antonidas and heal up(preferably with Shadow Word: Death+Antique Healbot+Lesser Heal at this spot, and maybe even follow up with Holy Fire the next turn) to dodge lethal first.

The match-up odds of this deck are skewed, as we talked about them above. So you do want to keep beating up aggro decks with it, as well as reconsider it when you run into 3 control warriors/priests in a row. If you're outclassing your rank, then minion-based value decks can fetch you win streaks more steadily and quickly. But if you're stuck at a bottleneck, this deck may turn out to be an excellent anti-meta choice, because the bad match-ups(control warrior, control priest, handlock, which is another rock-paper-scissors cycle) tend to rise and fall together in terms of popularity.

 

Compared with freeze mage: if you want to run freeze mage, but you find yourself in a zoo-ish aggro/mech mage/face hunter/demon lock meta, then this deck will shine, as long as you're reasonably adept with control priest(that is, you pretty much only need to know pyromancer value). If you see a lot of standard/dragon priest or handlock, I think mage is better because of the removal issue that our priest has with high-health, 4-attack minions. Patron warrior is not terrible to be up against, but you want to be careful about dropping loot hoarders/acolytes later on. Control warrior is always a pain, although freeze mage suffers more.   For typical druid, rogue, shaman and paladin match-ups, I don't find the odds to favor either priest or mage significantly. There are minor pros and cons with each, which roughly cancel out.

 

In summary, this deck and freeze mage consist of a pair of burn decks that are highly analogous in style and neutral card choice, but a lot more different in match-up preferences. That allows us to switch back and forth according to the meta, and that change is much more effective than minor tweaks/techs going on in other archetypes. 

Just think about it: the other archetypes just sub in/out a couple cards, whereas you could switch between classes. Hmm.