I’m going to start off by saying that this post is a cumulative work of multiple refinements through experimentation. Over the past few days I’ve been experimenting with Activate the Obelisk. Originally I threw together a zoo list and while it’s an extremely powerful effect that can be downright game winning in some situations, the zoo archetype falters hard if your stuff gets removed, or quest isn’t completed fast. Then I experimented with a King Phoris deck with a big spell package and a bit of a zoo-ish list, and I had a significantly better time. But the bodies I chose weren’t working well enough. Using a zooish opening resulted in too many terrible ressurects, so I cut most of the early bodies save for a select few and added early spell support. This is my deck list
------------Control Priest------------------
Forbidden Words x2
Activate the Obelisk
Holy Ripple x2
Penance x2
Shadow Word: Death x2
Archmage Vargoth
High Priest Amet
Psychopomp x2
Convincing Infiltrator x2
Sandhoof Waterbearer x2
Zilliax
Mass Hysteria x2
Kartut Defender x2
Catrina Muerte
Mass Resurrection x2
Plague of Death x2
Mind Control x2
King Phaoris
The concept is simple. You open turn 1 with activate the obelisk, and follow up the proceeding turns with stall. The early game consists of nothing BUT stall spells that heal and kill early stuff. Forbidden words is removal that scales to later game, Penance and Holy Ripple are great for the quest and there are TONS of 1/1 tokens in ethe mneta right now so that board ping is priceless, and shadow word death is just amazing right now. Then we move into the stall minions. Archmage Vargoth, High Priest Amet, Convincing Infiltrator, and Sandhoof Waterbearer are all big bodies that stall from turns 4-5 onward. Furthermore, Phychopomp can resurrect any of them and give reborn. A ressurrected Convincing Infiltrator with reborn is hellishly tough to get past, and a ressurrected zilliax or Kartut Defender with reborn is actually even worse because it comes back to life with their divine shield restored.
Then we transision into late game, the big spell package, coupled with a completed Activate the Obelisk. King Phaoris is capable of blowing the game wide open on the spot all by himself just by summoning 50-70 mana worth of big minions in one turn. You can get 9 mana and 10 mana minions thanks to Mass rez, Plague, and mind control so your highest rolls are King krush, Keeper of the Moon, Living Monument, Mulchmuncher, and Oondasta. Furthermore, Mind control, Plague of Death, mass ressurection, and Catrina Muerte are in and of themselves game winning cards to boot. Add in Activate the Obelisk as yet ANOTHER pressure point. You’re going to have miions to buff, and it’s practically a free blessing of kings every single turn.
I’ve taken it for a test run today and I’m BEYOND pleased. It’s so threat dense it demolishes control warrior, plague of death can instantly nullify any deathrattle effects, so paladin’s kangors army is dusted, and it has more than enough healing to deal with mage’s burn. It’s weakest point is aggro… but even then it has very strong mid game tools to survive. This feels like THE Priest deck of saviors. And holy damn does it feel good to play.
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I doubt Priest will be viable at all, the class is at the bottom of the barrel. Your deck has the potential to be top tier-3 of course.
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Great, so now thats Siamat, King Phaoris, and Zephyr on my craft list. And I’m not even grabbing zephyr until the meta shake up is done and I can judge which class highlander looks best to me (… I want Reno just cause Big Spell Mage is near and dear to my heart). I really like the concept of this deck, thanks for sharing. LOVED control priest back in beta and post beta days.
Yup, I’m in love with this deck. I just made a slight alteration. Originally I had divine hymn x2 in the 2 mana slot, but I swapped it for Holy Ripple just now. I’m still refining the finer bits of the list. I figure tere’s more than enough healing between the zilliax, kartut defenders, shildhoof waterbears, and ressurects on those minions that divine hymn isn’t really necessary. There are a TON of 1/1 tokens in the meta right now. Literally… every freakin where you look. lackeys, mech tokens, hunter’s 1/1 swarms, BEES, Murlocs. That board ping is priceless, and it can still add additional healing. It’s OK if you complete the quest slowly in this deck. We don’t have a list where rushing it out really benefits us that much anyway.
This is a deck list with some serious punch though. It has literally all the tools to deal with any situation presented, provided it’s drawn it in time. And it has a mega-explosive late game.
Control Quest Priest is by far my favorite way to play that Quest so far.
Phoaris is so crazy too. In addition to the high rolls I listed, you never feel bad when he “only” pulls out Onyxia, Alextraza, Sea Giant, Mechathun, Malygos or Ysera.
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Any room for Vivid Nightmare or Shadowy Figure? I’ve found good use of those as controlling tactics in my janky zerek priest deck; you’re basically aiming for zillax or infilitrator, or zerek in that decks case if you don’t need to protect your face from swarms. Plus they do positive work on your rez pool. And would Amet be better subbed out for lady in white? A more permanent, and similar, effect? I also feel like Vargoth is hit or miss unless you’re really leaning into the Rez mechanic.
I think “S-Rank” is a rather hyperbolic view of the deck’s performance. 
It’s an OK deck, and it certainly has its charm … but it’s definitely vulnerable. It’s no meta breaker by any stretch.
Lol, I edited that out and just noted that it’s extremely powerful. It’s too early to tell what kind of ranking this list would have. But i’ll say this, from my limited testing and refinement, it holds some fantastic potential. According to the stats, all current priest decks are sitting at a 48% or lower win rate. I’m confident that with proper piloting this list could easily reach 55% + for people. It may not be game breaking, but it is really good. It feels like the best design Priest has atm. And it has something important that all of the zoo ish decks lack. A plan with a REAL bona-fide game finisher. Priest hasn’t really had one of those since when, The Witchwood?
I am enjoying the Quest as both Tempo and Control =)
By far getting my fun with Priest early in this expansion. Hopefully it continues as well =)
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thats a prety cool deck. Vargoth with ressurect is to good. I can see skipping early minions because dont want to spoil the ressurect pool but then psychopump is beeing run (saw it on streams as well) which i dont fully understand as it dilutes the pool again. I guess the minion is just to good to not run.
Then also divine shield,it combines realy good with amet and i can see why you want to run it. Its a lot of win conditions in the end,the hero power itself (though i guess thats not a true wincondition as it will need valuable bodys to buff to actually start winning) the ressurect pool,king pharaos and also divine shield.
They dont bite eachoter,compliment eachoter at some points even. If agro becomes big problem maybe you could scale down some of the win conditions to deal with it and still haveenough against slow value control.
Psychopomp is just too good to not run. The only things that can resurrect Psychopomp are Psychopomp itself, Catrina, and Mass Rez. If you’re able to make any of those happen you’re probably in a pretty good spot already. The first Psychopomp will ALWAYS hit a good target because every other minion in the deck is worth bringing back, and it’s worth it to accept the occasional low roll when more often than not he’s going to high roll for you. Remember, it’s not JUST a resurrect. it’s ressurect and reborn. Hitting Convincing Infiltrator means you’re double dipping on the kill an enemy minion deathrattle, and hitting zilliax means short of silencing him your opponent has to hit him FOUR times to completely remove him, just like kartut defender. That’s absolutely worth adding the psychopomp.
This is the closest to my deck that I’ve seen posted.
That pyschopomp hitting zilliax is a death sentence to nearly every aggro deck.
I think what makes Catrina so powerful is that when a Khartut defender dies, it counts twice in your res pool. This means when she hits him again, he adds two more to that pool. The chances of her pulling another one then becomes better and better to the point she’s only rezzing him.
Throw in spirits and bwonsamdi (and hakkar) and it’s a snowball from hell and you essentially have my deck.
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That sounds similar to my deck Schyla but I don’t have pyscopomp right now and I’m using cloning gallery, rotten applebaum and deranged doctor.
Haha just tried the deck against a quest druid. My turn 9 mass resurrection brought back vargoth, kathrina and the 2,6 taunt that kills another minion when it dies. Then vargoth casted mass res again and kathrina resurrected another 2,6:) then the druid gave up:p
Whoa! Wall of text OTK’d me for 30 points of unpreventable damage.
Eh. I beat pretty much this exact deck with a Divine shield spamming priest with shadow form. It can’t possibly be that good. The problem I found was that it was laughably easy to control the win condition thanks to those plague cards rendering it’s win strategy completely useless.
I’m loving this deck! 4-0 so far, beating two quest hunters, quest priest, and mech warrior.
Hi,
So I’ve been using quite a similar deck :
2 x forbidden word
1 x topsy turvy
1 x activate the obelisk
2 x divine Hymn
2 x Penance
2 x Seance
2 x Shadow word Death
Archmage Vargoth
2 x Psychopomp
2 x convincing inflitrator
2 x Mass hysteria
2 x Sandhoof Waterbearer
Zilliax
Chef Nomi
catrina Muerte
2 x Mosh’ogg Enforcer
2 x Mass Resurrection
2 x Plague of death
I’m now rank 3 on the EU ladder and the deck was doing pretty fine but it’s not good enough. The deck doesn’t contain Amet because I don’t own him… I think he is really decent in the deck. I’ll explain some choices i made in it after the critique.
I wanted to make a little critique about your deck :
So, i wanted to say i think the two mind controls in your deck are really too much, the spell in itself isn’t bringing a lot to the table.
- It doesn’t synergise with the res package (you oftenly don’t want a minion from your opponent).
- the ten mana cost makes it difficult to play if you’re being fload.
- It’s a dead card for long with the rest until king Phaoris comes into play and you need more early control.
I’ve tried King Phaoris myself for a while and … He is difficult to play. I do agree he brings many minions to the board BUT you don’t really want the small coasted spells like forbidden word, holy ripple or shadow word death to ruin your rez pool, so once again King Phaoris is gonna stay in your hand for quite a while…
Secondly if you take out mind control, you only have 9 drops big spells in your deck. Unfortunately, there is no taunt among the 9 mana pool so you can’t play king Phaoris defensively… The ten coast of the minions makes a defensive play along him impossible.
On the other hand, i think khartut defender is a great idea in the deck. I was a bit reluctant because of the 3/4 body but the healing is interesting. At the same time, it allows to play holy ripple instead of divine Hymn which is a great idea against tokens. I really like the idea and i might try it out.
I’ve been playing mosh’ogg Enforcer instead of Khartut for the stat, better to rez more difficult to take out for control (to resume it’s a better body) but it might be too heavy coasted. It’s great alongside topsy turvy to surprise your opponent.
I’ve been trying out Chef Nomi to close even games in control matchups and it’s not really really good. It’s better then King phaoris in those case.
You can seance the opponent Elysianna in those matches to close it. It’s working pretty well so it might be not needed.
Interesting list, I’m still not convinced by Psychopomp, I think it’s more of a tempo card and this deck just doesn’t care too much about that, and it’s a horrible rez result.
I’m also running damaged Stegadon over Mosh’ogg, mech synergy with Zilliax and avoiding Dynomatic, plus better hero power effect and it’s just a better minion overall iml.
I’ve also been experimenting with Blatant Decoy, which has been rather successful, apart from Phaoris (which has never been my lowest cost minion yet) you are happy for it to pull any of your big boys while often pulling a Lackey or other good battlecry minion from your opponent that isn’t really a big threat ( Omega Devastators is rather nice).
I do like the idea of running Seance, but it doesn’t synergise very well with Phaoris with the possibility of giving you a Doomsayer, I can usually unload my cheaper spells pre-Phaoris , but you generally want to save Seance until later (i.e. you might want to create an extra copy of big P himself), think I will give it a try, just because it has so much potential.
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