Plague of Death
Plague of Death is a 9 Mana Cost Epic Priest Spell card from the Saviors of Uldum set!
Card Text
Silence and destroy all minions.
Flavor Text
Don't worry, there's a happy little funhouse right under that sand pit.- Mana Cost: 9
- Crafting Cost: 400 / 1600 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 100 / 400 (Golden)
- Rarity: Epic
- Class: Priest
- Card Type: Spell
- School: Shadow
- Set: Saviors of Uldum
- Mechanics: Destroy Minion, Silence
Grotesquely overpowered. There is a place reserved in hell for whoever suggested making this card, especially considering it is a non-legendary that you can stack ×2. A lot of people complain it’s no good against aggro, which is a fair complaint, but god forbid if you are an opposing this card running a control deck with deathrattles.
Completely broken, with no skill attached and complete Priest fan-fiction card. So, it’s 1 star from me. It makes Twisting Nether look like a McDonald’s board wipe.
It’s basically a worse psychic scream that costs 2 more. I think that’s still insanely powerful. 4/5
Love the artwork on this card, hope we get an armadillo hyena and other desert animals as filler cards
Well, is strong, but 9 mana is way too late, even twisting nether comes late when you want to destroy boards, and i am not talking about small minions, freaking turn 6 giants
This is not the board clear that Priest needs. They need something for turns 4-5. The 9-mana cost also makes it awkward since you can’t combine it with Doomsayer like you can, for example, with Twisting Nether. In Wild this is 95% of the time strictly worse than Psychic Scream, so if it’s gonna see play, it has to be in Standard.
Priest already has a nice anti-aggro clear for turns 4-5 (Mass Hysteria). To me this seems like a great card, giving Priest the full-blown board clear it needs to complete its survivability package of taunts, excellent individual removal and now board clears.
Combo Priest is back folks. Whether that’s Divine Spirit + Inner Fire or Velen/Auchenai
Divine Spirit + Inner Fire is always there. The current Mech version is not too bad. It’s not as good as before because no Shadow Visions.
This board clear will only be really good if Priest can have a late game wincon that can rival Dr Boom. Otherwise… Nope. Maybe as a 1-of in Nomi Priest. But 9 mana is just so much…
ummmmm they already do? Pyromancer is especially good in priest, Noami priest kinda proved that one…
I don’t think you can consider Pyromancer or Auchenai + Healing Circle good board clears. Not when other classes have Hellfire, Brawl, Flamestrike, etc, etc in the classic set, and then stuff like Hagatha’s Scheme, Earthquake, Warpath, etc in expansions.
They do the same thing… AOE is AOE regardless of it’s source. Kinda funny you named a 4 cost, 5 cost, and 7 cost spell, when only one of them can be used before say mass hysteria. I mean you brought up early game AOE then went on to name mid to late game AOE. The fact is that I’ve played a lot of Noami Priest, and can say with the upmost certainty that pyromancer alone wins games against token druid, zoo, and murloc shaman.
Powerful removal but useless vs aggro since it is a 9-cost card. It will be played (at least as a 1 of) in control priest. I am not sure if that archetype will be viable though so I will be conservative.
3/5
Why is the art quicksand? That’s not a plague…
Probably closest would get with ability and Egyptian theme silence (mouth filled with sand) and death (suffocation). If go by the 10 plagues only pestilence would be able to count. I’m ignoring the last one because it’s not a kill everything plague in comparison.
See this and ouch considering the possibilities of new reborn mechanic it makes sense in a way. This is basically twisting nether that got upgraded for one more mana. Now the key that trolls out with this is the silencing portion can interfere with a couple of the decks seen lately. Mostly referring to the death rattle from Hunter and mech pally. With the new reborn mechanic this could be vital. However I do believe that there would probably be only 1 copy at the most in the deck but there’s no telling what support may show up.
Another Priest board clear, and it’s absolutely fine, 4/5.
Effect is very powerful, but the mana cost is painful. Warlock’s Twisting Nether costs 8, so you get up to 2 mana left over afterwards- this is very significant if, say, you’ve already played Lord Jaraxxus. 2 leftover mana = 6/6 Infernal follow-up.
This effectively clears the board, but hands initiative right back to your opponent. Could be good in the right deck and right meta, but it’s not for every Priest deck. 3/5
Let’s be honest here… even before rotation of psycic scream, all priests do after screaming are just heal face afterward. Priest is not the class that depends much on mana like rouge. A strong board clear WILL be included into most priest decks because of its control value.
The cost mostly just means you can’t play it turn 7.
But will control priest be good? I really hope it will be this expansion.
Priests healed their own face after psychic scream because they weren’t trying to fight for the board, to play for tempo. Those Priest decks were trying to kill you with something like Zerek’s Cloning Gallery OTK combo or Mecha’thun combo.
This is very different from, say, Dragon Priest, for whom it was actually pretty important to clear the board with Duskbreaker and have a 3/3 left over, as well as being able to develop the board further if they had mana left over. That’s because Dragon Priest cared a lot about board development and tempo.
When you say that Priest is not a class that depends much on mana, you’re assuming that Priest runs a combo win condition whose approach to tempo is “try to stall and not die”. I don’t think that will be true for Priest with Saviors of Uldum, or at least not for all Priest archetypes; I think Priest will have decks that care about tempo, either in the form of aggressive decks that try to win with early board control, or Midrange or Control decks that try to win with board control later on.
Thank you for the insight. I overlooked the other priest archetypes that do depend on tempo (which were not prevalent last year) and only focused on control/combo priest.
What I do think is lacking for priest right now, though, is the ultimate board control, which Mass Hysteria apparently isn’t sufficient. The catch on scilence is interesting, considering that it breaks not only deathrattles but also magnetic upgrades, making mech paladin especially vulnerable.
I don’t know if this card would have a great impact, and I’m not saying that; I do see, however, the lacking of a strong board clear for priest which this card provides. It will be included in selective priest decks not because it’s OP, but because it’s solid.
Massively overrated me thinks. Way too expensive to be useful… unless there is a way to reduce its cost or something that wants you to have expensive spells in your deck (spiteful summoner #2)
Just a Better Twisting Nether, but for Slow Priest Decks.
depends on the upcoming cards with the expansion, new keyword has a deathrattle effect, so maybe this will be a great counter, we’ll see
This counters Mech Pallies that get a bunch of magnetics down and don’t have Kangor’s Endless Army before turn 9. Otherwise its pretty bad but it’s another clear for wild I guess
*Cough cough*
Was on custom hs 8 months ago
*cough*
Well, it’s not a deep design, I bet it appeared there more than once.
this is not what priest acutally needs right now.
A bit overrated,pretty slow (there are few dr minion in std currently so 1.5/5)
Plenty of Magnetic last I checked. Kind of hard to call a card overrated when you don’t consider it’s full usage.
Priest needs earlygame removal right now, not lategame. It’s obviously super powerful but will need a specific meta to be viable.
Bet priest get a cheap version of deal 1dmg to all minions and some spell power synergies. Must be a reason mind blast has rotated.
Told you!
In Standard, this really should end up being too slow in all but the grindiest of match-ups
In Wild, you’re never going to play this over Psychic Scream and Mass Hysteria.
It might be too slow but what other option do they have? I can see this as a one-off in any slow priest deck.
They have Mass Hysteria and some of the most efficient spot removal in the game.
Priest would rather play Wild Pyromancer than a nine mana psychic scream that comes down two turns too late to save you.
The issue of pyromancer approach is it requires several cards to make use of it this on the other hand has possibilities of being an answer you can top deck into. Also could possibly drop ressurection on turn after to get a board back depending on rest of the cards it should at least be 1 copy added to most priest decks. The problem of hysteria comes in against certain decks that play off of certain death rattles.
A decent Pyromacer play can happen as early as turn three in you’re on the coin, shutting down early game aggression.
Mass Hysteria comes down a full four turns before Plague of Death, shutting down midgame aggression.
This is a nine mana Twisting Nether. While, yes, Twisting Nether has seen play in Control Warlock, Warlock’s Spells are all generally worse relative to other classes and it didn’t usually in Cube Warlock or Even Warlock from the last year.
Negating deathrattles really doesn’t matter all that much at this moment, and if Priest does play this regularly it would only be one copy at most. It’s simply too expensive to rely on.
Your saying negating death rattles isn’t important but there’s already a new mechanic revealed REBORN which resummons the minion with 1 health left. We don’t know what other cards will have that effect and what classes they may be in. Classes that can use spells to give that minion a death rattle with a bonus effect could be key. You cant judge a card too negatively until at least half of the cards are revealed.
Pyromancer is only at his highpoint when you can chain several cards to keep proccing him however, this can reduce you hand more than necessary. Compare the two top decking this in late game will probably be better than top decking pyromancer. The bit with hysteria is tricky 0 attack cards can reduce the clearing value and sometimes hysteria won’t kill off all the cards on the board. At least half the time I’ve seen hysteria played at least one minion lived and it really isn’t that great if opponent has cards with death rattles (mechs are annoying for this). Until we see more cards this looks like a very nice card to top deck in the late game.
The effect of Plague of Death disregarding the mana cost is better than either Pyromancer or Mass Hysteria, yes. However, when you consider the mana costs of all three options, Plague of Death is clearly the loser.
You are not going to be able to rely on drawing into Plague of Death to save you from aggro. That is what is the important thing here.
If my choice is losing the game or leaving one opposing minion up, leaving one opposing minion up is very much preferable.
Most of those deathrattle decks you’ve mentioned too are more than capable of winning prior to turn nine.
Mass Hysteria is a much better card than Plague of Death is. The latter may do more and always leave the board empty after playing it, but that bonus isn’t worth four mana on top of what the former charges.
Plague of Death will be seen as a one of at most unless the format is somehow filled with nothing else but Deathrattle or Reborn focused Control oriented decks that are incapable of winning prior to turn ten. That one of copy is also likely to be dropped if Saviors format ends up being aggressively focused with most games wrapping up by turn eight.
The thing is atm only a small handfull of decks I’ve run into have been able to push a match before turn 9 and of those the most common ones are murloc shaman and token druid. When you do comparisons pyromancer and hysteria are at their best when facing aggro. But pyromancer falls short against control in comparison. Hysteria is more balanced in that case but you can only run 2 copies at most. The trademark of control is removals and sticky minions. The issue for priest is your best counter for control is mainly your single removals and trades. Atm though the only real priest played at least that I’ve seen recently is silence. Of course there is one big feature that this spell brings a thought to. With this heavy emphasis on silence could it be that quest for priest involves silencing as a requirement. If the reward causes something to happen based on silencing it could be interesting.
Why in priest of all classes, think of the wild players, i thought pshycic scream was bad enough.
Because it is Priest’s identity. Imagine this in Druid. It would be mind-blowing. Priest is just right.