Hello, so in search for the Unicorn Priest I thought LONG and HARD for what we could be missing. And the one thing that i kept coming back to was this theme with Priest that, they like to steal things, or more so COPY things, almost more than Rogue does! Cards like Mind Vision and Thoughtsteal are the obvious examples.
Now, at this moment, these cards arent run because, well, why not just run a good card instead of the RNG of copying one from your opponent. The theme was again repeated in TGT with the Release of Convert and one more time in Whispers of the Old Gods with Shifting Shade. So it got me thinking, what on earth is Ben Brode getting at here? And the best i could come up with is the idea of fatigue. A deck that required no card draw, and thus took you 26 turns to reach Fatigue. And even in Fatigue, your hero power is useful here. Insert Kara here:
What does priest get. Ignoring Purify The other cards, fit in this idea. We've already mentioned 4 spells that when run 2 of gives you already 8 spells, Add in some shadow words and wow we got a priest spell heavy deck going. What was a card that had spell synergy? Priest of the Feast of course. The last Priest card released? Onyx Bishop. Wow its like playing a Resurrect and a 3 mana 3/4 in one card, value! Medivh, + Mind control? yes please.
Imagine playing 6 spells by turn 6. Turn 6 6 mana 8/8. Turn 7 you play Onyx Bishop and Resurrect now you have 2 8/8's Turn 8 you play 2nd Resurrect and 2nd Arcane Giant. Etc so on and so forth.
That is the dream of this deck. What are your thoughts? Lololol priest? or Hmmm, mabye unicorn discovered? I have written more on this deck on the actual deck page if you want to read more about my thoughts on how such a deck would work.
Imagine stabilising, filling your board and then resurrecting a Doomsayer. GG.
Also, Mind Vision = lose tempo, draw a card you probably don't need. It costs (1) more.
Yogg-Saron is working against any potential gameplan as well... unless the gameplan is to coin yogg saron on turn 9 into concede (Kappa). Yogg only works in the decks it currently works in because they are able to generate significant amounts of pressure throughout the game - Druid via cheating out big minions and Violet Teacher swings; Mage via spell combos with Flamewaker.
Not only does your Priest generate no pressure on board, it also generates negative pressure due to the constant need to refill your hand, as Mind Vision and Convert only draw you 1 card each, The plethora of big removals on the other hand prevent you from squeezing in some board presence as most of your minions cost 4+ mana and almost none trade effectively. As sweet as it may seem, foregoing early game in order to squeeze out that sweet sweet value out of Onyx Bishop, generally will only warrant you resurrecting a big minion only to die the turn afterwards. Not to mention that the Bishop shares a mana slot with your only AoE, thus rendering him virtually unplayable on curve against aggro (where, in fact he will in 50% of the cases resurrect Doomsayer which you had hard mulliganed for, because you saw Shaman of Warlock or Hunter).
Overall this deck is garbage against Shaman, Warlock, Mage and Hunter, because you're dead before you start pulling off all your AoE, resurrect and chain healing stunts (plus it defeats itselft exponentially increasing the chance to resurrect Doomsayer).
It's bad against Rogue, because, let's face it, Priest was always terribly bad against combo decks that pull 20 - 30 damage out of their ass plus you don't even have a taunt - Rogue is literally going to burn through their cards because thtre's gonna going to be nothing to remove or Sap for the first 6 turns.
It's bad against Warrior because, if you mulligan against Dragon Warrior - you have a useless hand against control, and if you mulligan against control - you're dead to aggro, and control will probably outlive you anyway. Come to think of it - yes, control warrior's gameplan is - mulligan for Justicar Trueheart, start tanking up, play no card draw, get 80 hp at the beginning of fatigue and then on fatigue turn 8 slam down C'Thun or Grommash Hellscream. And then you either die right away or you die the next turn from 9 points of fatigue damage. Oh, did I mention you'll also be 1 or 2 cards deeper into fatiguethan Warrior, because he probably Branned into doube Map to the Golden Monkey, one of which will probably just straight out burn because he's constantly going to have 9-10 cards in hand.
It's probably OK-ish vs Control Shaman and N'zoth Paladin though. So that's a thing.
It must be nice imagining that you would face control decks after the adventure, but no. Ladder will be infested with agro as always, and this deck will fail even if you have doomsayer on turn 2.
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Anyone would have already quit this game with my unluck.
Its possible. I dont expect this deck to have a greater than 40% win rate against zoo. or Aggro Shaman. But almost no decks have 70% winrates against ALL deck archetypes. Excavated Evil and priest of feasts gives this deck a real shot of handling boards of small minions. Mind Vision on turn one will often fetch you an early game card. And you have the turn 2 doomsayer to hold off the rush as well. Not to mention shadow word pain as well. Priest of Feasts trades well with zoo type agro minions as it will amlost allways 2-4-1 with just its body not to mention the heals that can come from casting the spells.
Decks that cost insane amount of dust like this one are a no-no for f2p players like me. If a class can not have a viable semi-cheap deck, the class itself is not viable
Imagine stabilizing, filling your board and then resurrecting a Doomsayer. GG.
This is avoided by simple ordering. Resurrect first, and you dont have an issue. The idea is to take it into fatigue, so passing a turn doesnt hurt us.
Decks that cost insane amount of dust like this one are a no-no for f2p players like me. If a class can not have a viable semi-cheap deck, the class itself is not viable
This deck has 3 legendaries that aren't from adventures. and the rest are commons and rares, so its really not that expensive.
Ressurect/ Onyx Bishop Dont work together, because youll may end up Summoning your Onyx Bishop which has a bad body thus this card is terrible.
Only way Resurrect kinda works is with injured blademaster but thats just not enough.
Also mind control is verry bad card atm. because it doesnt work against many midrange minions and this is what you find in meta, you dont find many decks that just slam 1 threat a turn youll find call of the wild etc rendering you with a useless 10 mana card.
I agree that spell Priest has some potential but even there Auchenai/Blademaster/Circle is core no way you can cut them for slow lategame and random cards.
I would cut: Mindcontrol,Convert,Mind Vision,Thoughtsteal,Onyx Bishop,Doomsayer, shifting shade, Justicar, Mediv, cutting 14 cards out of this.
Add 2x Injured,2xCircle 2x Auchenai2x Holy nova,1Shadow word horror, 2xHoly smite,2xshadowform,1x flashheal someting like that.
Looking foreward for storm giant and priest of the feast, i think both will lead such a deck maybe to tier 3 maybe tier 2 but that is realy all Priest can hope for after ONIK.
Imagine stabilizing, filling your board and then resurrecting a Doomsayer. GG.
This is avoided by simple ordering. Resurrect first, and you dont have an issue. The idea is to take it into fatigue, so passing a turn doesnt hurt us.
Have you read the rest of my comment? I heavily accentuated the fact that you will be forced to play Doomsayer on turn 2 or 3 and will mulligan for it by default against aggro. You simply can't afford not to play Doomsayer in the early game because you will get Rekt. Not just Rekt, not Uber Rekt you will get Tyrannosaurus Rekt if you "pass a turn" in an aggro match up, hoping to take it into fatigue.
This way you will always face the imminent threat of not being able to resurrect or fill your board because there may be a slight chance you'll be bringing back Doomsayer.
Imagine stabilising, filling your board and then resurrecting a Doomsayer. GG.
Also, Mind Vision = lose tempo, draw a card you probably don't need. It costs (1) more.
Yogg-Saron is working against any potential gameplan as well... unless the gameplan is to coin yogg saron on turn 9 into concede (Kappa). Yogg only works in the decks it currently works in because they are able to generate significant amounts of pressure throughout the game - Druid via cheating out big minions and Violet Teacher swings; Mage via spell combos with Flamewaker.
Not only does your Priest generate no pressure on board, it also generates negative pressure due to the constant need to refill your hand, as Mind Vision and Convert only draw you 1 card each, The plethora of big removals on the other hand prevent you from squeezing in some board presence as most of your minions cost 4+ mana and almost none trade effectively. As sweet as it may seem, foregoing early game in order to squeeze out that sweet sweet value out of Onyx Bishop, generally will only warrant you resurrecting a big minion only to die the turn afterwards. Not to mention that the Bishop shares a mana slot with your only AoE, thus rendering him virtually unplayable on curve against aggro (where, in fact he will in 50% of the cases resurrect Doomsayer which you had hard mulliganed for, because you saw Shaman of Warlock or Hunter).
Overall this deck is garbage against Shaman, Warlock, Mage and Hunter, because you're dead before you start pulling off all your AoE, resurrect and chain healing stunts (plus it defeats itselft exponentially increasing the chance to resurrect Doomsayer).
It's bad against Rogue, because, let's face it, Priest was always terribly bad against combo decks that pull 20 - 30 damage out of their ass plus you don't even have a taunt - Rogue is literally going to burn through their cards because thtre's gonna going to be nothing to remove or Sap for the first 6 turns.
It's bad against Warrior because, if you mulligan against Dragon Warrior - you have a useless hand against control, and if you mulligan against control - you're dead to aggro, and control will probably outlive you anyway. Come to think of it - yes, control warrior's gameplan is - mulligan for Justicar Trueheart, start tanking up, play no card draw, get 80 hp at the beginning of fatigue and then on fatigue turn 8 slam down C'Thun or Grommash Hellscream. And then you either die right away or you die the next turn from 9 points of fatigue damage. Oh, did I mention you'll also be 1 or 2 cards deeper into fatiguethan Warrior, because he probably Branned into doube Map to the Golden Monkey, one of which will probably just straight out burn because he's constantly going to have 9-10 cards in hand.
It's probably OK-ish vs Control Shaman and N'zoth Paladin though. So that's a thing.
I really have to disagree with a lot of what you're saying here. I literally just came from playing a whispers version of this deck (sub in Darkshire Alchemist for Pirest of feast, add a cabal, 2 oozes and another shade for the rest of the Kara cards) against mid range hunter. And had no trouble what so ever. I used mind vision twice and thought steal once, got eagle horn, explosive trap, houndmaster. had two shifting shades die, one giving me animal companion the other codo. thoughtsteal stole an elek i never played. Game ended when he had 5 cards left in his deck and realized there was no killing me.
Shaman isnt as bad a matchup as it would seem as they have alot of 3 and under HP minions, and the 4 mana 7/7 dies to death or gets converted and mirrored. Spell heavy aggro shaman will be very difficult no doubt. But as for this being bad against warrior, i think this is where you are most wrong. The beautiful thing about this deck is i can always mulligan for dragon warrior, as the cards i would want for control, arent being played before turn 6 anyway. And this deck runs 0 card draw. So unless there is a dark fisherman drawing me cards, i will always enter fatigue later than the warrior. The idea that my deck puts on no pressure is also crazy. Arcane Giants will provide plenty of pressure, minions copied or stolen from mind vision/ thoughtsteal/ entomb are pressure.
But im not a professional player. So hey, maybe the deck sucks. Im gonna have fun playing it regardless.
Mind if I ask you what ranks were you playing it at and what's your winrate?
I'm not saying it can't be fun to play, but it's by no means a ladder viable deck. And you did say this deck was developed in search of Brode's 'Unicorn Priest'. For anyone to say they managed to find one, it would have to at least be a Tier 2 (by Tempostorm's Standards) and consistent enough to start winning games without the "Wow, what deck is this? What am I playing against? How do I mulligan?" factor.
Don't get me wrong I wish you all the best with this deck, but I was analysing the deck from the perspective of say Rank 5 to dumpster legend viability, because for me that's the determinant of ladder viability. And as much as I like playing gimmicky decks, when someone comes with a bold claim of "Priest Soon to be Resurrected" he'd better mean it.
Im playing at rank 12. And honestly Ive played the Wotg version for 4 matches. I beat a Dragon Warrior, a N'zoth Pally, a Midrange Hunter, and a N'zoth priest. I lost to a Zoo Lock and a N'zoth Priest. So the sample size is too small to say a general win rate. But again im not a professional player. And i think the problem with assuming that a deck like this isn't ladder viable, is exactly why Brode described it as a Unicorn priest. If it were obvious, we wouldn't still be looking for it. But thats my decision to believe that it actually does exist.
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Hello, so in search for the Unicorn Priest I thought LONG and HARD for what we could be missing. And the one thing that i kept coming back to was this theme with Priest that, they like to steal things, or more so COPY things, almost more than Rogue does! Cards like Mind Vision and Thoughtsteal are the obvious examples.
Now, at this moment, these cards arent run because, well, why not just run a good card instead of the RNG of copying one from your opponent. The theme was again repeated in TGT with the Release of Convert and one more time in Whispers of the Old Gods with Shifting Shade. So it got me thinking, what on earth is Ben Brode getting at here? And the best i could come up with is the idea of fatigue. A deck that required no card draw, and thus took you 26 turns to reach Fatigue. And even in Fatigue, your hero power is useful here. Insert Kara here:
What does priest get. Ignoring Purify The other cards, fit in this idea. We've already mentioned 4 spells that when run 2 of gives you already 8 spells, Add in some shadow words and wow we got a priest spell heavy deck going. What was a card that had spell synergy? Priest of the Feast of course. The last Priest card released? Onyx Bishop. Wow its like playing a Resurrect and a 3 mana 3/4 in one card, value! Medivh, + Mind control? yes please.
Imagine playing 6 spells by turn 6. Turn 6 6 mana 8/8. Turn 7 you play Onyx Bishop and Resurrect now you have 2 8/8's Turn 8 you play 2nd Resurrect and 2nd Arcane Giant. Etc so on and so forth.
That is the dream of this deck. What are your thoughts? Lololol priest? or Hmmm, mabye unicorn discovered? I have written more on this deck on the actual deck page if you want to read more about my thoughts on how such a deck would work.
Lack of earlygame = death to aggro
Imagine stabilising, filling your board and then resurrecting a Doomsayer. GG.
Also, Mind Vision = lose tempo, draw a card you probably don't need. It costs (1) more.
Yogg-Saron is working against any potential gameplan as well... unless the gameplan is to coin yogg saron on turn 9 into concede (Kappa). Yogg only works in the decks it currently works in because they are able to generate significant amounts of pressure throughout the game - Druid via cheating out big minions and Violet Teacher swings; Mage via spell combos with Flamewaker.
Not only does your Priest generate no pressure on board, it also generates negative pressure due to the constant need to refill your hand, as Mind Vision and Convert only draw you 1 card each, The plethora of big removals on the other hand prevent you from squeezing in some board presence as most of your minions cost 4+ mana and almost none trade effectively. As sweet as it may seem, foregoing early game in order to squeeze out that sweet sweet value out of Onyx Bishop, generally will only warrant you resurrecting a big minion only to die the turn afterwards. Not to mention that the Bishop shares a mana slot with your only AoE, thus rendering him virtually unplayable on curve against aggro (where, in fact he will in 50% of the cases resurrect Doomsayer which you had hard mulliganed for, because you saw Shaman of Warlock or Hunter).
Overall this deck is garbage against Shaman, Warlock, Mage and Hunter, because you're dead before you start pulling off all your AoE, resurrect and chain healing stunts (plus it defeats itselft exponentially increasing the chance to resurrect Doomsayer).
It's bad against Rogue, because, let's face it, Priest was always terribly bad against combo decks that pull 20 - 30 damage out of their ass plus you don't even have a taunt - Rogue is literally going to burn through their cards because thtre's gonna going to be nothing to remove or Sap for the first 6 turns.
It's bad against Warrior because, if you mulligan against Dragon Warrior - you have a useless hand against control, and if you mulligan against control - you're dead to aggro, and control will probably outlive you anyway. Come to think of it - yes, control warrior's gameplan is - mulligan for Justicar Trueheart, start tanking up, play no card draw, get 80 hp at the beginning of fatigue and then on fatigue turn 8 slam down C'Thun or Grommash Hellscream. And then you either die right away or you die the next turn from 9 points of fatigue damage. Oh, did I mention you'll also be 1 or 2 cards deeper into fatiguethan Warrior, because he probably Branned into doube Map to the Golden Monkey, one of which will probably just straight out burn because he's constantly going to have 9-10 cards in hand.
It's probably OK-ish vs Control Shaman and N'zoth Paladin though. So that's a thing.
*The tier guide will return*
It must be nice imagining that you would face control decks after the adventure, but no. Ladder will be infested with agro as always, and this deck will fail even if you have doomsayer on turn 2.
Anyone would have already quit this game with my unluck.
Its possible. I dont expect this deck to have a greater than 40% win rate against zoo. or Aggro Shaman. But almost no decks have 70% winrates against ALL deck archetypes. Excavated Evil and priest of feasts gives this deck a real shot of handling boards of small minions. Mind Vision on turn one will often fetch you an early game card. And you have the turn 2 doomsayer to hold off the rush as well. Not to mention shadow word pain as well. Priest of Feasts trades well with zoo type agro minions as it will amlost allways 2-4-1 with just its body not to mention the heals that can come from casting the spells.
I think your comment is a rather simplification.
Release the Kraken!
Decks that cost insane amount of dust like this one are a no-no for f2p players like me. If a class can not have a viable semi-cheap deck, the class itself is not viable
Ressurect/ Onyx Bishop Dont work together, because youll may end up Summoning your Onyx Bishop which has a bad body thus this card is terrible.
Only way Resurrect kinda works is with injured blademaster but thats just not enough.
Also mind control is verry bad card atm. because it doesnt work against many midrange minions and this is what you find in meta, you dont find many decks that just slam 1 threat a turn youll find call of the wild etc rendering you with a useless 10 mana card.
I agree that spell Priest has some potential but even there Auchenai/Blademaster/Circle is core no way you can cut them for slow lategame and random cards.
I would cut: Mindcontrol,Convert,Mind Vision,Thoughtsteal,Onyx Bishop,Doomsayer, shifting shade, Justicar, Mediv, cutting 14 cards out of this.
Add 2x Injured,2xCircle 2x Auchenai2x Holy nova,1Shadow word horror, 2xHoly smite,2xshadowform,1x flashheal someting like that.
Looking foreward for storm giant and priest of the feast, i think both will lead such a deck maybe to tier 3 maybe tier 2 but that is realy all Priest can hope for after ONIK.
*The tier guide will return*
Shaman isnt as bad a matchup as it would seem as they have alot of 3 and under HP minions, and the 4 mana 7/7 dies to death or gets converted and mirrored. Spell heavy aggro shaman will be very difficult no doubt. But as for this being bad against warrior, i think this is where you are most wrong. The beautiful thing about this deck is i can always mulligan for dragon warrior, as the cards i would want for control, arent being played before turn 6 anyway. And this deck runs 0 card draw. So unless there is a dark fisherman drawing me cards, i will always enter fatigue later than the warrior. The idea that my deck puts on no pressure is also crazy. Arcane Giants will provide plenty of pressure, minions copied or stolen from mind vision/ thoughtsteal/ entomb are pressure.
But im not a professional player. So hey, maybe the deck sucks. Im gonna have fun playing it regardless.
Mind if I ask you what ranks were you playing it at and what's your winrate?
I'm not saying it can't be fun to play, but it's by no means a ladder viable deck. And you did say this deck was developed in search of Brode's 'Unicorn Priest'. For anyone to say they managed to find one, it would have to at least be a Tier 2 (by Tempostorm's Standards) and consistent enough to start winning games without the "Wow, what deck is this? What am I playing against? How do I mulligan?" factor.
Don't get me wrong I wish you all the best with this deck, but I was analysing the deck from the perspective of say Rank 5 to dumpster legend viability, because for me that's the determinant of ladder viability. And as much as I like playing gimmicky decks, when someone comes with a bold claim of "Priest Soon to be Resurrected" he'd better mean it.
*The tier guide will return*
Im playing at rank 12. And honestly Ive played the Wotg version for 4 matches. I beat a Dragon Warrior, a N'zoth Pally, a Midrange Hunter, and a N'zoth priest. I lost to a Zoo Lock and a N'zoth Priest. So the sample size is too small to say a general win rate. But again im not a professional player. And i think the problem with assuming that a deck like this isn't ladder viable, is exactly why Brode described it as a Unicorn priest. If it were obvious, we wouldn't still be looking for it. But thats my decision to believe that it actually does exist.