Wilting and Thriving

Wilting and Thriving

Here is a theory-crafted OTK Priest deck using the fascinating new card Wilted Shadow. The combo works like this: get Bandage from Careless Crafter; play Wilted Shadow and have it die; then OTK with 2 x Rest in Peace and 3 x Bandage. The overall game plan involves mitigating the opponent’s board threat early, tutoring for your combo pieces, setting up the combo, the finally executing the combo. 

How to Play

Play Catch of the Day, Annoy-o-Tron, and Nightshade Tea in the first few turns to control the board. Play Careless Crafter as soon as possible to setup Mystified To'cha and Resuscitate for when they are needed. Continue to curve out, or use removal when necessary to tone down the opponent’s board. Any chip damage you can safely get on your opponent’s face will help play Mystified To'cha at a safer health. Play Acupuncture, Nightshade Tea, or any extra bandages and setup a Mystified To'cha turn to heal to 42 and buy time. After drawing some of your combo pieces, play Birdwatching, Thrive in the Shadows, and Nightmare Lord Xavius to search for the final pieces and then execute the combo for victory!

Deck Structure

The only immutable cards are Wilted Shadow, Careless Crafter, and Rest in Peace, since these comprise the OTK combo. The rest of the deck was finding cards that setup the combo consistently, and then finding cards that compliment that setup. The next most important cards were the tutors: Nightmare Lord Xavius, Thrive in the Shadows and Birdwatching (and therefore Chillin' Vol'jin), which vastly increase the chance of hitting your combo pieces quickly. These cards create a strong core of the deck, and the rest is finding out how to dress it.

For the support cards, I first looked at the individually strongest cards: Nightshade Tea, Ancient of Yore, and Repackage. Nightshade Tea is an insane flexible removal tool. Ancient of Yore digs deep into your deck and keeps you healthy. Repackage cleanly removes the board and stalls to setup your combo. At this point, eighteen cards have been added, leaving six pairs of cards remaining.

This point is when it started to get tricky: what are the best six cards to complete this deck? I experimented with alot of different options. Overzealous Healer as a strong 1-drop, the new Blob of Tar to halt the opponent’s board development, Death Roll as a powerful hard removal + board trimming tool, Bob the Bartender to freeze the enemy board and stall for combo pieces, Wish of the New Moon as a strong midrange removal card that keeps you healthy. One card in particular that caught my eye was Resuscitate. It seemed insanely powerful as a tempo card, but in this deck it can re-summon Careless Crafter and give more copies of Bandage. This would allow for flexibility in Bandage usage to keep you healthy, or increase your combo damage to punch through armor. To support Resuscitate I added Catch of the Day which when re-summoned with Resuscitate would become a pocket Darkfallen Shadow; I added Annoy-o-Tron which would be a nasty card to punch through with reborn, taking at minimum four hits. I then had the alien idea of adding Mystified To'cha. This card has been niche ever since it’s inception, but has always held a place in my mind as a card that can singlehandedly win a game given the right setup. I added Acupuncture for one more health-controlling option, for a total of 11 (Acupuncture, Nightshade Tea, Careless Crafter, Resuscitate, Wilted Shadow, and not-to-forget Lesser Heal). This should be enough to setup the Mystified To'cha consistently. Past that, it felt pretty natural to add Hot Coals as a mid-sized board clear with synergy to round out the deck. (I considered Holy Nova since it also alters health, and is certainly a substitution option, but I think the increased damage with Hot Coals will be stronger). In total, the six card-pair slots went to Acupuncture, Catch of the Day, Annoy-o-Tron, Hot Coals, Mystified To'cha, and Resuscitate.

I think this will be a well-rounded, powerful deck that will consistently stall the board and get to its combo to win. Furthermore, on day-one I think it will counter alot of the easy-to-make decks such as murloc paladin and other quest decks, which tend to lean on the aggressive side.