Our beginner's guide to playing Tempo Priest in Season 43.
Our Tempo Priest deck guide features the best deck list for Season 43, with Mulligan advice, strategy tips, card combos and synergies.
Tempo Priest is a pretty experimental Hearthstone archetype in the current metagame, but it’ll certainly prove to be a breath of fresh air if you’ve had all of the long and drawn-out Highlander Priest games you can stomach for one lifetime.
As with all tempo decks the key is to ensure you have a meaningful play to make on the first three to four turns. If you don’t control the board early on then you’re going to run into problems, as you need to be holding back the opponent’s progress while snowballing a threat of your own.
In the first edition of our Tempo Priest guide, we’ve got an outline of the best deck list for the format right now, as well as some tips for completing the Mulligan stage successfully. After that we’ve broken down all of the card combos in the deck list, which should give you a good grounding in the strategy involved.
If the deck proves more popular over time, we’ll expand on all areas of this article, with greater insight added to each section. In the meantime, share your best tips in the comments!
Tempo Priest deck list and strategy
This version of Tempo priest was created by Windello, and was taken to top 25 Legend in the month of September.
| Priest | Neutral |
|---|---|
| 2 x Circle of Healing | 2 x Argent Squire |
| 1 x Inner Fire | 2 x Wild Pyromancer |
| 2 x Northshire Cleric | 2 x Corspetaker |
| 1 x Potion of Madness | 2 x Bittertide Hydra |
| 2 x Power Word: Shield | 2 x Bonemare |
| 2 x Radiant Elemental | 1 x Stormwatcher |
| 2 x Shadow Ascendant | |
| 2 x Shadow Visions | |
| 2 x Shadow Word: Pain | |
| 2 x Kabal Talonpriest | |
| 1 x Lyra the Sunshard |
Select and copy the long ID string below, then create a deck in Hearthstone to export this deck into your game.
Deck Import ID: AAECAa0GBPgCtbsC78ICvsgCDeUE9QX2B9IK1wryDPC7AtHBAtjBAq/CAs7MAqbOApboAgA=
If this deck proves popular we will update this section of our guide with hero-specific match-up advice. Until then, take a look through the combos section at the bottom of this page for a grounding in the strategy involved in playing Tempo Priest.
- 1. Best Budget Decks – Hearthstone: Best Budget Decks
- 2. Tier List – Hearthstone deck tier list (Ashes of Outland)
- 3. Resurrect Priest – Resurrect Priest deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 4. Albatross Priest – Albatross Priest deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 5. Highlander Priest – Highlander Priest deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 6. Quest Resurrect Priest – Quest Resurrect Priest deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 7. Quest Priest – Quest Priest deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
Tempo Priest Mulligan guide
You need to be able to make a meaningful play on each of your first few key opening turns. Cards like Argent Squire, Wild Pyromancer (particularly against aggro), and Northshire Cleric are your best bets here.
If you can get a spell cast off Radiant Elemental on the turn he’s played, you can field him in the early game as well – just be prepared to lose this minion pretty quickly!
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Tempo Priest tips, combos and synergies
You’ve probably not played a deck quite like this before, so try to make the following combos second-nature before you try and play Tempo Priest on the ladder.
– Each time a minion is healed, Northshire Cleric will provide you with an extra card. This stacks with the number of minions that have had some of their health restored.
– Potion of Madness allows you to steal a low-Attack minion from your opponent for the current turn. In aggro matches, you can often use this to take out two of your enemy’s minions.
– As long as Radiant Elemental is out on the board, your spells will cost one Mana less. Do your maths carefully here, as this minion can radically alter the nature of your turn!
– Each time you cast a spell while Lyra the Sunshard is on the board you’ll have a randomly selected Priest card added to your hand. Combined with Radiant Elemental you can amass a significant number of cards in this fashion!
– Stormwatcher plays very nicely with Inner Fire and Power Word: Shield to create an amazing source of burst damage! Kabal Talonpriest and Bonemare can also be used to fatten up this minion first as well.
– Bonemare not only gives another minion +4 / +4 of stats but also turns it into a defensive Taunt wall that your other minions get to benefit from.
