Hearthpwn

This is a very fast combo deck, nicely done!

Thanks!

I run a similar deck, and I can suggest something:

- snowflipper penguin is a nice way to troll your opponent, but Forbidden Shaping is superior in every case. Circle of healing or silence are probably even better.

- I see few reasons to run both mirage caller and mind blast on top of velen, apart from trying to reduce with Emperor 2 of them to do a huge mind blast. That shouldn't be needed usually, and either could be swapped out for a card more useful in the midgame

Apart from the above, I had prefered a more draw-focused list. You can find it here, if you want to take a look:

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/913993-highlander-priest

..it's a standard list, but in the first comment you can find the substitutions for the wild version. I feel like going with way cheaper spells is great to find your combo as soon  as possible, especially with Auctioneer helping you out.

Actually you missed the only reason Shadowflipper Penguin was being run, he's a beast for the Curator to pull out. It's entirely the reason I was running him. But I ended up cutting the Curator package and tossing in Novice Engineer and Azure Drake. Turns out the Curator was only on average drawing 1-2 cards and the other does that all the time.

As for Mind Blast and Mirage Caller, I have no idea what Standard is like. But in Wild, especially as I got to the higher ranks, going above 30 health is actually more often than not the case. 

I actually did play your wild list for a day, mostly because I wanted to test out some of the ideas. What I found was a similar problem to running too many combos in Commander in Magic, you have a lot of cards that act like little combos. Sure when you draw all the right pieces, and the deck is firing on all cylinders it's amazing. But when you draw half of the mini combos and not the other half, it just kind of falls apart. Pint-Size Potion, Embrace the Shadow, Spirit Lash, Cabal Shadow Priest, Flash Heal, Silence... Just to name a few, these cards are great when you have the other cards to enable them. But basically dead draws if you don't.

As for Auctioneer, In a perfect world... Sure you saved 4 one cost spells, maybe you had the coin... Maybe you really live the dream and draw 5. Unfortunately that is an outlier case in my experience, most of the time he nets 1-3 cards. Sure you could wait to setup the perfect Auctioneer, but then you're not drawing towards the combo, nor answers to keep you alive. Actually he draws just slightly more on average than the Curator, but doesn't provide the 4/6 taunt, and you have to wait till a later turn for the Auctioneer. Might give the Curator a try in your deck. He's great if the meta is smaller minions since Primordial Drake can be slammed the turn after.

I do like what you're trying to do, I mean I did play it for a day at rank 2 and 1... and er... back and forth... it was a very long day. A lot of fun, I feel like some amount of potential is there. Even considered running Radiant Elemental over Emperor if the meta ever changes to 30 health decks. I would probably cut some of the super conditional stuff though.

Hi! Thank you for the in-depth reply. You are right, I missed the beast sinergy with Curator, but I feel like running a card that alone is even worse than mind blast is just a weak choice (the latter is at least able to kill a low health opponent outside of having velen). I try to run cards that do things on their own too, and are not there just for  an OTK finisher.

But you are absolutely right about the need for some OTK finisher in wild, compared to standard.  I'm running one myself in my wild decklist. Still, I feel like having both Mirage Caller and Mind Blast is just overkill, since it needs to trigger on two of the three cards to be able to do a Velen - Caller -Mind Blast in the same turn. Btw, why not running Radiant on top of that? It's another card that unlocks that combo if you pull Emperor on it. Anyway, even if the opponent goes beyond 30 life, you can still lower him a bit with minions or a few hero power activation, and THEN go for a 26-30 damage combo. He will not use Reno when at 26 life! And if he does, even better..

As for Auctioneer, I feel like drawing 1-3 cards is perfectly fine. Sometime you may end up drawing a bunch more, but drawing a couple card and leaving a soft taunt minion on the board is good enough. I think there is a huge difference between drawing 2-3 cards that may be the combo piece or the removal you are waiting for, or drawing with curator up to 3 cards that surely are not. Yes, Azure and Coldlight draw into more, but the first is slow and requires next turn to do it, and second one is awfully simmetrical.

Regarding the bad part of having mini-combo, like Pint-Size Potion, Embrace the Shadow, Spirit Lash, Cabal Shadow Priest, Flash Heal, Silence, you are right that you can't hope to combo them together all the time, however any one of those cards isn't useless on its own (like Penguin or Mind Blast are, for instance). It's against aggro decks that this weakness comes out the most, and if you happen to match many of them, dropping some for more straight forward options like Doomsayer or even Tar Creeper is probably a good idea. Against slower decks, instead, I feel like the powerful draw engine let you get the various pieces in place quite consistently. It's also important to notice that those aren't just 2-cards combo, but offer different ways to put them to good use: get circle of healing for example: it works with Embrace the Shadow, Northshire Cleric, cantrips for free with Auctioneer and Lyra, does a 1 damage on the boarde turn two with Pyromancer against really aggressive decks, and rarely can even be used as a simple mass heal. Sure, some combinations are far more powerful than others, but it's quite rare that you end up not having any of those combinations: against slower decks you can wait for getting the most value, while against fast ones you just need to go with what you have on the moment, that's clear.

I'm not sure you have followed the article for the Wild version I've recently written, so I'm putting this here just in case http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/921806-razakus-wildstorm

Oh, btw, if you still prefer a more minion-centric deck like yours, have you considered Saraad? I feel like Lyra is better, because it's more powerful when you don't have Anduin out yet, but even with Just Raza, he definitely pulls its weight.

And last suggestion: your list seems focused on triggering Emperor on the right cards in order to later have an OTK (you are not even running 0 cc cards anymore). Why not running a single Burgly Bully? The coins are excellent both as zero cost spells and as added mana: you can pull of many more OTK with even just one of them!

While I currently am not running the Curator package (I'm now of the opinion N'Zoth plus 2 draw one minions is just better), the Curator drawing 1-3 cards, and then providing you cards that draw 3 more the next turn is a pretty extreme amount of card draw out of one card. Plus it has next to no setup. That being said I agree the weakness of it is that Snowflipper isn't really good. The package is one beast away from being insane though so I keep an eye on it. 

But just running N'Zoth gets back 1-3 taunt minions, 1-2 draw minions  along with a huge mana advantage. Plus it has little to no setup and on average minions are better than spells as they don't clog up the hand, and allow proactive play. So the extra deathrattle minions I added for him to gain even more value, work out a lot better than the spells I need to get value out of Auctioneer. This helps solve one of the biggest problem Raza OTK decks have, they fill up their hands with situational spells and just kind of sit there. Nothing quite like the whole heal your opponent on turn 2, and maybe turn 3 play to taunt them, and because there is nothing better to do. Or sitting around with an army of removal against an enemy control deck. Turn 7 heal pass? We all know the Priest woes. XD

That's basically the problem with the Auctioneer, when you high roll, it's great. But you're looking at a turn 10 type of play that requires a whole lot of setup, and leaves you with a lot of cards in hand, but very little board. Where as N'Zoth also is a 10 mana play, nets you cards, and provides a board presence. 

As for Radiant Elemental, I simply lack the spells to synergize with him. And running an additional situational combo piece is typically less good than just running a card draw so I can get my main combo. And Emperor by himself can create a near OTK hand since he reduces all cards. So just a hand of low drops after a single Emperor tick can do as much as 10 damage. Sure that isn't insane, but he also acts as a soft taunt like Auctioneer. But unlike Auctioneer, if they don't kill Emperor, 2 ticks of him is basically lethal.

As for the collection of mini combos, sure they combo in lots of ways. But the problem is, most of the combos are only niche useful. Sure Shadow Word Horror is fun... But I mean it combos with what else besides Pint-size Potion? Wild Pyromancer I guess? What about Cabal Shadow Priest? It combos with what? If you don't draw Pint-sized it's just a dead card in all matchups in Wild. And worse yet it's clogging the coveted 6 drop slot, which is already clogged for Priests. How about Embrace the Shadow? Sure it's great if you draw it with Circle, or Flash Heal (actually this one is pretty weak)... But what about if you draw it with something else like Silence, or Wild Pyromancer? That's kind of the problem here, you have a lot of very weak cards, that if you just happen to assemble the right stuff does something that's okay but not exactly fantastic. Silence... Does something that's okay, but almost never fantastic... Paired with Wild Pyro... it does something not even good, and what if you draw Circle with that Silence? Lots of pieces to lots of puzzles, but not the same puzzle. Like I say when it all comes together, it's great. But so many micro combos, many of which you must assemble to even draw means all too often the deck just kind of floundered.  Incidentally that link for your Wild List is what I tried.

In the case of Mind Blast and Mirage Caller, I draw almost my entire deck against Jade Druid every time. These cards are so I can kill them dead. It's not easy to keep their life total low, OTK Priest isn't exactly known for it's ability to pressure mid game. And late game, you have little time to kill them before the Jades get you. A good Jade Druid player will Earthen Scales a couple large Jade tokens, putting themselves at nearly 50 total health. They also use Malfurion the Pestilent to keep armoring up. It's routine to need to deal 40+ damage to them in a turn, and they account for over half of my matches at this point. I have no idea what rank you're playing at, but in the world of Wild Legends... There are only Jades, and people trying to combat the Jade menace. So as long as I need to routinely deal a lot of damage, they have to stay. If the meta shifts to decks with 30 or less health, I will likely cut one, probably Caller.

Finally, my issue with Saraad and Lyra is actually the same. Neither actually do anything to further the combo. They're late game value cards, but I'm not here to assemble late game value. If the game goes late, I blow them up no matter what health total they have. So value cards just make no sense. Those are more for control decks. Or of course Lyra Combo Priest, but that deck relies on duplicate cards for powerful synergies. With only one ofs, those powerful synergies don't come up reliably enough so Lyra just clogs up my hand with situational crappy Priest spells. I already have enough problem playing my cards fast enough to keep from burning cards. Which was actually part of why I cut the Curator... I found I was drawing the cards in a clump which made them hard play out enough of to avoid burning cards.

Ok, I've tried ditching some cheap spells to look into a more combo-oriented version, and I must admit that running both Mirage Caller, Velen, Mind Blast and Thaurissan has its merits. It's especially good for when you are so unlucky to draw your Anduin/Raza in the very last cards, and your opponent also has Reno or a huge amount of armor already.

I've also tried Burgly Bully, as it really opens a lot of more OTK options. Very good, but you must be very careful about not letting your opponent overdraw you by filling your (usually big already) hand with coins.

Still, I'm not really sold on N'Zoth. Yeah, surely the taunts and N'Zoth are great against aggro, and maybe even midrange, but especially against control (and Jade Druid too), I don't feel that approach really works the best. At the moment I'm running a list with all the combo cards (Mirage + Velen + Blast + Holy Smite + Thaurissan, etc), but with more draw power, as I feel like drawing in your combo as soon as possible, especially with so many cards devoted into that, is really what works best.

Problem is that with N'Zoth and those not-so-astonishing deathrattles (Tortollan above everything!) it feels like running the old N'Zoth Priest of previous seasons, which has never been an incredible deck in the end..

Ironically the reason I went back to using N'Zoth was that he provided an extra turn against Jade Druid and usually drew the last 1-2 cards needed to finish them. In a world of lots of Jades I really like him, though I admit I haven't really played much this month, so I haven't really played enough against the new Giant threat to see what if anything I should be changed.

Mostly I treat the deck as having 8 flex slots (N'Zoth,  Azure Drake, Tortollan, Tar Creeper,  Deathlord, Novice,  Dirty Rat, Doomsayer) and happily slot out packages if the meta demands it. Optionally there is the Dragon, Spell, Curator or Elemental packages, I've bounced between all of them at one point or another.

As for Burgly Bully, I'm not sure how sold I am on him. Most of the time he amounts to one coin, (maybe two in a perfect world) if I'm lucky from a kill spell. Or he just gets rolled over by minions and I get none. Then again I'm not running a lot to buff him and keep him around, he would be a lot better if he could survive awhile. Of course then we run into the problem of cards, to setup cards, to setup the combo. That's a lot of work for not a huge payout. For one more mana you get Emperor who nets a mana for each card in your hand, and usually sets up a massive amount of damage or the OTK with not a whole lot of work.

I admit I am on the lookout for ways to reliably speed up the combo, but without sacrificing too much power.  Sure there are cards like Gnomish Inventor, Bright-Eyed Scout, or Polluted Hoarder but all of them are just terrible cards in a vacuum, and not really cheap enough to Emperor for the combo. Been trying to squeeze in Acolyte of Pain for awhile, but that always feels like the 31st card. We'll see, I'll run the deck in the new meta and get back to you.

Why not put a Holy Smite in? With Raza and Shadowreaper Anduin out already you only need a single Emperor tick on 1/3 pieces of the combo. (2 voidform + Velen + 4 voidform + Mirage Caller + 8 voidform + 8 smite + 8 voidform damage) = 30 damage

The biggest reason why has to do with a lot of my opponents going above 30 health such as Quest Priests, Warriors, and even Jade Druids. Unfortunately by going a more card draw oriented route I often can't pressure their life total, so I just opted for the ability to kill them at even excessively high life totals with elementals versus focusing on the 30 damage version.

The idea does have merit though, worse comes to worse it's an anti-aggro card if need be. I'll try slotting it in over Zombie Chow since they serve a similar purpose. Holy Smite is after all a much better top deck than Zombie Chow in the late game. Thanks for the idea!

You really should just use mirage caller instead of the prince, it has the same cost, and the 2 less attack and health don't matter when all you want is velen's effect. Also then you won't have to worry about waiting untill you draw all of your 3 cost cards before you combo.

Now I'm glad that random opponent asked me post this here, I didn't even think of that. Thanks!