[LoE] Shadowgrinder v3.2
- Last updated Dec 7, 2015 (Explorers)
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Wild
- 13 Minions
- 17 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 4520
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 6/26/2015 (Blackrock Launch)
- n00neimp0rtant
- Registered User
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- 2
- 31
- 47
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Battle Tag:
n00neimprtnt#1130
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
33
Update December 7: Fully updated and tested for LoE! I've overhauled the deck big time for consistency and to account for meta shift. There is certainly more aggro now than control, so I've slimmed the deck down by removing 1 Shadow Word: Death and Big Game Hunter. Both of those cards are dead draws against most aggressive decks. I've added an additional Sludge Belcher and Resurrect to help keep the taunt pressure on.
I managed to squeeze in an Excavated Evil as well. The "drawback" may sound counter-intuitive to the deck; after all, if you're trying to fatigue your opponent, why would you want to give them more cards? The answer is simple: most of the time, your opponent is not going to be able to get much value from it since this deck is played very conservatively. If your opponent ends up playing it, you're almost guaranteed to win. Feeding you another AoE effect is the biggest mistake they can make.
I've added two Entombs as well. This card is insane. Some people are focusing on the fact that you may never draw it. Allow me to rephrase the card: 6-Mana, "Silence an enemy minion, then destroy it. Also, you might draw one eventually." When you look at it like that, this is one of the most efficient, effective, unconditional removal spells in the game. Make sure you save it for minions that are either hard-to-remove or that have extremely valuable Battlecries: Twilight Drake, Ysera, Dr. Boom, Reno Jackson. As always, it's very important to ID your opponent's archetype and spend your removal spells efficiently.
You may remember I had Reno Jackson in the last update. I have removed him for one simple reason: making the deck more consistent meant more duplicates, which directly counters Reno's effect. Feel free to try to find a way to squeeze him in, and let me know if you have success.
Guide below is still super old; I promise I'll get to updating it eventually!
Strategy
- Soak up damage with bottom-heavy taunt minions
- Use removal spells and AoE to clear enemy minions after they've chewed through the taunts you have available
- Use burst heals and Hero Power to stay afloat
- Once you have board control and sufficiently exhausted your opponent of decent plays, activate Shadowform
- Blast away each and every minion your opponent plays through trades, removal, and pings. Spare damage obviously goes to your opponent's face
- Continue until your opponent fatigues (or dies before then)
Card Roles
- Lightbomb: This is the most important card in the deck. The fact that it also deals damage to your own minions might scare you, but this deck plays extremely conservatively, so you often only have 1 or 2 minions on the board, and most of the time you won't end up killing any of your own with it.
- Antique Healbot: Shadowform is pretty slow to set up, so you need these big, beefy burst heals to stay alive while your opponent pours minion after minion onto the board. It's a decent body, too, so you don't lose much tempo by playing it.
- Holy Fire: This card is a Swiss army knife. It acts as a burst heal, removal spell, or finisher for lethal damage. Try not to play it until you can get the full 5 points of health back, unless the situation is dire (e.g. handlock plays Emperor Thaurissan with 9 cards in hand, and you haven't drawn a Shadow Word: Death yet.
- Shadow Word: Pain: Removal for anything you can't easily ping or trade away. Devastating tempo swing if used to remove a Flamewaker or Imp Gang Boss.
- Shadow Word: Death: Removal for anything that makes you say "yikes." Essential for victory over any handlock.
- Big Game Hunter: Even more big guy removal.
- Mind Control: Removal for...anything. This should be used as a last resort! It's one of your only lines of defense against Ysera and Malygos. Don't just use it to steal any old Legendary that might happen to have a cool effect, unless you are out of other removal options.
- Vol'jin: Removal for anything, as long as it's set up right. Strategic 10-Mana combos can quickly pull a huge threat off the board (combo into Holy Nova; combo into Shadowform + ping)
- Deathlord: Sufficiently stalls out most decks from getting any damage to face for a turn or two. The deathrattle drawback is negligible, and sometimes can even help you out by negating powerful battlecry techs and giving your Lightbomb more minions to soak up.
- Sen'jin Shieldmasta: Bottom-heavy taunt, stalls opponent. Simple as that.
- Sludge Belcher / Abomination: Even more taunts. These are interchangeable; you can play with 2 Belchers, 2 Abominations, or 1 of each. Tweak to counter the current meta as needed.
- Resurrect: Huge early-game tempo boost. Allows you to effortlessly and reliably spin up another taunt for only 2 Mana.
- Doomsayer: Buys you a turn, or, if you're lucky, clears the board. (More often than not, your opponent will find some way to remove/silence it before it procs, which grants you a whole turn to draw what you need or rack up another Mana crystal to play what you need to play.)
- Cabal Shadow Priest: Provides removal of small minions/tokens, and 2 bodies. Crazy-huge tempo swing.
- Shadow Madness: Use to either remove 2 small enemy minions, or steal and kill a deathrattle token minion (Haunted Creeper, Sludge Belcher), since the tokens will not return to the opponent's board.
- Shrinkmeister: Activates Cabal Shadow Priest, Shadow Madness, and, in a pinch, Shadow Word: Pain.
- Holy Nova: AoE, plain and simple.
- Bloodmage Thalnos: Extra oomph for your Holy Nova. Necessary to beat Patron Warrior.
- Shadowform: After pushing back against waves upon waves of minions, topping up with a burst heal or two, and obtaining tangible board control, Mind Spike (deal 2 damage) lets you curve over top of your slow start and begin grinding down your opponent by mowing through every minion they throw down. If you manage to activate Mind Shatter (deal 3 damage), that's essentially a free Darkbomb every turn. It's also GG for your opponent.
Tips
- When mulliganing your opening hand, NEVER EVER EVER toss Lightbomb. If you don't draw at least one Lightbomb, it will be extremely difficult to win, no matter what class or deck archetype you are playing against.
- Identify your opponent's deck archetype ASAP. Knowing which cards your opponent has (and which ones are left) allows you to plan your responses many turns in advance.
- Occasionally, you might go 4 or 5 turns without playing a single card. That's fine (but it probably means you got a terrible opening hand). Don't play non-taunt minions "just to get something on the board." Your battlecries are far too valuable to throw away just for some minor board presence.
- Try not to play more than one taunt at a time (excluding Slime). More minions on your board means more potential value for enemy AoE. Remember, this deck thrives on card advantage, despite having almost no card draw. Maintaining perfect answers to your opponent's threats each and every turn is the easiest way to come out on top.
- Don't hold onto your Doomsayer too long. Most people are used to seeing it wipe huge boards in Freeze Mage, but that is far more difficult to pull off without access to Frost Nova. For example, playing turn 2 Doomsayer to remove a single enemy minion is actually a pretty solid play; keep in mind, it also stalls your opponent for a turn.
- Despite the deck name, Shadowform doesn't often make-or-break this deck. It mostly helps to speed up games, but if it ends up buried at the bottom of your deck, that doesn't mean you're going to lose. That being said, don't play it too early, especially against aggro decks. It's more important to make sure that you can stay alive until the late game than to pick off a few small minions during the early-game.
- Use your removal techs very carefully! You don't want to waste a versatile removal spell when the option is available to use one that is less so. It might be tempting to Mind Control a control warrior's Ragnaros the Firelord instead of just using Big Game Hunter, but you'll be sorry when Ysera comes out next turn. See the Removal Priority section below for more details.
Single Minion Removal Priority (1 = highest priority)
Big Minions (4 or more attack)
- Favorable trade and/or ping
- Big Game Hunter (if 7 or more attack)
- Holy Fire (if you need a burst heal)
- Shadow Word: Death
- Vol'jin combo (if minion has no deathrattle)
- Mind Control
- Vol'jin combo (if minion has deathrattle)
- Holy Fire (if you don't need a burst heal)
Small Minions (3 or less attack)
- Favorable trade and/or ping
- Cabal Shadow Priest (if 2 or less attack)
- Shadow Madness trade (if both minions die)
- Shadow Word: Pain
- Shadow Madness trade (if only one minion dies)
Thanks for this deck, it makes HS so fun to play!
Funny thought came to mind. Maybe adding Deathwing as a potential added removal in the deck. Not sure what I would cut as yet but just an idea for closing out the super late game matches.
The deck thrives on card advantage, so dumping your entire hand probably isn't a good idea..
True but I was more referring to those instances where u have maybe 2 or 3 cards max in hand and ur opponent maybe has a better board but u dnt have ur AoE's to clear at the moment or already exhausted ur options. Just a back up plan of sorts for those really late matches where ur both in fatigue or such and down to your last options.
How about adding Confessor Paletress to that deck?
It doesn't exactly fit the theme of the deck, but feel free to try to make it work. I would sub out -1 Cabal Shadow Priest to make room, since Cabal is a pretty conditional removal anyway, and it doesn't shake up the mana curve too badly.
Ya i already did it few days ago and sub out Cabal like you said too.
Few games i think that Confessor Paletress gave me won, opponent already used almost all his/her removals and didn't had quick answer for that, so i got few good legends and game was over.
you will be happy to know more and more people are trying your deck... ran into it while doing my Druid daily
That's a really interesting hybrid sort of deck. Definitely looks like it deals with aggro more efficiently.
Can I get a decklist for that Druid deck though? Looks like it uses Aviana pretty efficiently.
sure bruh no problem (http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/390118-s21-rank-and-ramp-hard-druid). also saw Kripparian running a variant of your deck minus the shadow forms though. His focused more on removal and board clear so he had Justicar and Auchenai and such.
Do you stream Zalgo? Would love to watch a fellow Priest player!
yeah i stream every tuesday, thursday and saturday at http://www.twitch.tv/the_ghost_who_walks
Wasnt a fan of the previous Reno build but im definitely liking the look of this build a whole lot better. Will definitely be taking this for a spin.
Let me know how you are feeling 2x Resurrect. It's my most experimental change in this revision. It's meant to help keep the taunt pressure on, but much like Shadow Madness, it seems like it has diminishing returns; i.e. you never seem to get as value with the second one as you do with the first. Instead, you might opt to tech in a Northshire Cleric or a Zombie Chow to help your early game.
so far ive opted to drop the shieldmasters. in light of running double shadow word death for the control matches as well as double abomination for resurrect and taunt value along with potential additional board clear damage. Trying to figure out the value of maybe teching in a Kezan Mystic somehow to deal with freeze mage matchups as well as Prophet Velen. I love the overall premise of the deck though and its definitely something new that have not seen in a long time. I mean shadowform is like a dead card in priest class so im glad to see somthing tht makes use of it effectively. i agree with ur thoughts on early game being an issue tho as earliest play you have to establish board is deathlord on turn 3 cause u always wanna save shrink meister for late game shenanigans since there is only 1 in the deck.
Hey, just wanted to say I'm having a blast with an altered version of this deck, and I owe it all to you for the inspiration! I started out 10-3 with the deck at the rank 16 level, and now I'm at 14. It's now evened out a bit, but I'm still at around a 60% win rate. I think the best thing this deck has going for it is the fact that most people who face this deck have no idea what they're up against and aren't expecting a fatigue/mill deck when they face a Priest. So, what winds up happening is they defeat themselves by drawing too much. There have been some games I've played where my opponent was 10 cards ahead on draw, and when they drew their last card and realized I still had 10 cards to draw....they knew it was over! Loving it! I hope this deck remains viable for a while longer, because I need 25 more wins to hit my golden portrait for Priest...
Side note--I've also found that Reno gets used very rarely in my version of the deck. I've used him maybe 2 or 3 times out of 27 games...
Reno works well in the previous version that I had up here, but I intentionally streamlined the deck by replacing as many x1s as I could with dupes in order to make my draws more consistent, and naturally that's counterintuitive to proccing Reno. Once Entomb drops next week, I will update the decklist again with a final LoE optimization.
Makes sense... I'll be looking forward to it. Thanks again for the post!
I think there should be a room given for Emperor Thaurissan
I have definitely considered this as well, but I really have no idea what I would take out. If you can figure out what to change and have success with it, let me know!