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Not everyone is a Hearthstone 1%er and can afford to drop inordinate amounts of money to obtain all the cards. With the release of TGT traditionally affordable “budget” decks like Face Hunter have fallen to the wayside due to the creation of more powerful – power creep – TGT cards. Additionally, most of the affordable decks out there are inscrutably inutile in their design and performance, usually suffering from the loss of key cards. Kayu’s Tempo Priest is not one of those decks, as it is an ingenious recreation of a preexisting deck that has taken advantage of affordable TGT cards to create a powerfully aggressive archetype.
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How to Play:
One of the largest faults in this deck is its difficulty to play. Essentially, the entire deck is constructed of low costed cards that take advantage of synergizing off of each other. Healing yourself and your minions is crucial to success and cards like the
Injured Blademaster must stay alive to win the game. Overall, this archetype is best suited for a meta-game inundated with aggro decks like Secret Paladin and Face Hunter. It has decent a win percentage against midrange decks and struggles against certain heavy-control archetypes like the control Warrior.
Early-Midgame: Controlling the board early should not be a problem, cards like
Zombie Chow,
Shadowboxer, and
Wild Pyromancer do an excellent job trading and sustaining a tempo lead. Buffing up these cards is simple and with a plethora of healing cards it should be easy to keep them alive. This deck shines agains Aggro and with the abundance of AoE this deck provides cards like Wild Pyromancer and
Auchenai Soulpriest make clearing the board easier than me coming up with another generic idiom. Having solid board control should help when scaling into midrange cards like the Injured Blademaster and
Eydis Darkbane, just be aware of the opponent’s removal and make sure optimal value is extracted from these cards before they are destroyed.
Late-game/Win Conditions: Ultimately, the way to win with this deck is to burst down the opponent with cheap spells and buffed up minions. The Auchenai Soulpriest is a vitally important minion to keep alive, synergizing with most of the cards within the deck. Combined with the Soulpriest, cards like
Flash Heal, Zombie Chow, and
Earthen Ring Farseer become stronger than ever, giving you that additional burst to finish off the opponent!
Mulligan Phase:
Early board control is essential for this deck to succeed so you should be looking for all 1-2 cost mana minions to coalesce with a
Power Word: Shield. Shadowboxer, Wild Pyromancer, and
Holy Smite are especially great cards against aggro but if you’re not up against a traditionally aggressive class, drop the smite and mulligan hard for more minions.
Possible Replacements:
Since this is a “budget” deck I’ve given some possible replacements for the Legendary cards. Eydis Darkbane and
Loatheb are both great cards but won’t necessarily encumber this deck’s performance too much with their removal.
Dark Cultist> Eydis Darkbane:![]()
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Eydis is a great card, and in this deck with two Power Word: Shield’s and two Velens Chosen’s, it puts up a lot of work and essentially acts like a
Goblin Blastmage. But since this deck already excels against aggro I think replacing it with a Dark Cultist could be viable. The Dark Cultist is already a ridiculous card in its own right, and in a deck like this it can keep valuable minions like Auchenai and Blademaster alive longer.
Holy Champion> Loatheb:![]()
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Loatheb is a great tempo card and I think everyone should own it but if you don’t, the Holy Champion is admirable replacement. Honestly, I was pretty surprised not to see the Holy Champion in this deck with the plethora of healing spells it has at its disposal. Even if you don’t replace Loatheb I think this card deserves to be in the deck, trading up with larger in minions against control and making efficient trades against aggro. This is definitely one of the few cards that have flown under the radar since TGT’s release and if you haven’t crafted one of these yet, then you should!
Additional Notes:
Overall, I think this is a great meta-relevant deck that catches many people off guard when played against. It’s definitely not to be played in a meta-game with lots of control but since we are seeing a lot of Secret Paladin’s you should give this deck a try. If you want to find out more about Kayu check out his Reddit article at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/3j4iya/tempovalue_priest_top_400_legend/ and as always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, make sure to leave them below!
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Kim 'DuDu' Dooyoung
