Our essential guide for Blizzard's Strike from the Shadows Deck Recipe.
Strike With The Shadows, as the name suggests, represents the darker side of the Priest class in Hearthstone. Here you’re swapping your innate healing strengths for their damage-dealing equivalents. These are then boosted up considerably by the likes of Prophet Velen and Justicar Trueheart.
In the next our of guides to all of Blizzard‘s new Deck Recipes for Hearthstone, we’ll walk you through the basic strategy of playing this take on Priest, give you some tips for Mulliganing appropriately, and the finish up with a quick overview of all the most important card combos and synergies you’ll find within the deck.
Strike With The Shadows Priest strategy
There are lots of different ways to play this deck depending on how each stage of the match unfolds. You might, for example, want to wait a while with your Auchenai Soulpriest until you have lots of direct healing/damage spells in hand, and/or one of your two Legendaries out on the board. It’s a call you’ll need to make based on each match’s circumstances.
With that said, there are some obvious approaches that can be taken at each stage of the game.
Early-game:
This is where you’ll likely play your low-cost minions like Leper Gnome, Northshire Cleric and Injured Blademaster. Just be wary of classic counters like Fiery War Axe and Frostbolt when opening with your cleric. You can also boost these cards up with Circle of Healing or Power Word: Shield – an Injured Blademaster boosted immediately with either of these cards can be a nightmare for your opponent to deal with.
Mid-game:
Auchenai Soulpriest, Holy Champion and Azure Drake all get their moments to shine here, but be aware that most opponents will remove the Soulpriest from the board as quickly as they can. You might, as a result, want to wait until later on in the match to play this card along with your cheap burst spells. Certainly you want to hold one back for after Justicar has been played out, and your Hero Power has been permanently boosted.
Late-game:
Again, how you play the late-game with Strike from the Shadows is largely a question of how the earlier stages of the game went. Resist playing Prophet Velen onto the board until you can guarantee getting a boosted spell or two off of him as this is another target that the opponent will want to rip from the board very quickly indeed.
Strike With The Shadows Priest Mulligan guide
What exactly you keep will depend on the individual elements you receive in your initial selection. In general though, cards like Northshire Cleric, Leper Gnome, Power Word: Shield and Injured Blademaster are all great keeps. You might want to keep one of your healing spells if you get the Blademaster straight away.
Strike With The Shadows Priest card combos and synergies
The Priest is not a natural damage-focused Hero, and so it’s really important that you get to grips with all the core combos involved with making this shadow deck shine. Take time to make the following plays an instinctive part of your playstyle and you’ll find your win-rate shoot up accordingly.
–Auchenai Soulpriest will convert any healing spell (Circle of Healing, Flash Heal etc) into a damage-dealing equivalent.
– If you’ve got a number of minions out on the board, and you can inflict a little damage upon them by involving them in partial trades, the card draw effect of Circle of Healing and Northshire Cleric can be incredible! Take your time working out who to trade into what before making this play.
– Prophet Velen will double the strength of all of your spells, whether they’re currently desginated as a healing or a damage-dealing effect (see Auchenai Soulpriest).
– Holy Champion will gain +2 Attack each time any Hero or minion – on either side of the board – is healed up. That can be a healing effect from your spells (AOE or direct) or your Hero Power.
– Circle of Healing with Injured Blademaster can be a very popular early-game play, particularly if you can drop a Northshire Cleric onto the board before the healing goes off.
– Azure Drake is another minion that will increase the strength of all of your spells if it’s out on the board at the same time as they’re played.
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