Miracle Priest Deck List Guide – Rise of Shadows – May 2019

Check out alternative versions of this deck on our Miracle Priest archetype page!

There are some variations of Miracle Priest lists, especially regarding the use of Mass Hysteria: some decks run it to answer major threats, whereas others cut it to draw cards slightly faster. Both approaches can lead to success, depending on the meta.

Miracle Priest Mulligan Strategy & Guide

Miracle Priest mulligan is simple. Your deck is full of cheap spells, and as long as you find your card draw tools, you’ll go through it all in no time. Therefore, you mulligan for card draw, not for anything else.

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Northshire Cleric – Card draw tool that can also contest an early board.
• Wild Pyromancer – Area-of-effect damage that synergizes with both Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain.
• Acolyte of Pain – Card draw.
• Gadgetzan Auctioneer – Card draw. Yes, there is a pattern here.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Northshire Cleric – Card draw tool that can also contest an early board.
• Wild Pyromancer – Area-of-effect damage that synergizes with both Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain.
• Acolyte of Pain – Card draw.
• Gadgetzan Auctioneer – Card draw. Yes, there is a pattern here.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Lazul's Scheme  – Keep against Conjurer Mage to deal with an eventual Mountain Giant.

Miracle Priest Play Strategy

The deck has two win conditions, and you want to identify which one you’re going for as soon as possible.

The main win condition is to create one or more boards of 6/6 Elementals with Chef Nomi and Seance. If one board will do – if there is no answer to it in the opponent’s deck – you can try to draw through your deck by turn seven and just play Chef Nomi. If you think that you will need multiple boards, you need to wait until turn nine so that you can Seance a copy of Chef Nomi back to your hand. Depending on your draw, that may actually involve waiting – I have sometimes drawn through my deck too quickly and taken unnecessary fatigue damage while waiting for turn nine to finally arrive. This is the way you win against control decks.

The secondary win condition is to make your Grave Horrors cheap and play them alongside some Seances. Many aggressive decks will simply crumble when facing three or four 7/8 Taunt minions – and against Priest of all things, where they will be healed if they are not immediately killed.

Regardless of the way you attempt to win the game, you need to draw cards and play spells, and the deck is full of combos to do so.

Gadgetzan Auctioneer is good by itself. There are tons of zero-cost spells in the deck, so even an Auctioneer on turn six can usually draw a bunch of cards. Note that if you cast Silence on your Gadgetzan Auctioneer, it draws a card first and gets silenced after that. This can be used for drawing one more card, and is important to keep in mind if you want to stop drawing with an Auctioneer on board.

Wild Pyromancer is the key card for area-of-effect damage, and it can also be combined with Acolyte of Pain or Northshire Cleric for card draw. Be careful not to let your Wild Pyromancer die too soon. Power Word: Shield is a key card that gives the Pyromancer two additional health, but Regenerate and Divine Hymn can also help, as can Circle of Healing, but note that Circle heals before the Pyromancer damage, so it cannot be used as part of a long combo to kill big minions, except potentially as the first card, in which case the healing does not affect the Pyromancer, unless it was already damaged before. You can also give Wild Pyromancer more health without healing it by turning its stats around with Topsy Turvy.

Northshire Cleric is the scariest card draw tool available to Priest – both from your and from your opponent’s perspective. It can rapidly draw a lot of cards, but there is a risk that you end up overdrawing heavily, especially if you go full Northshire and play two Clerics on the board at the same time. You can combo Northshire Cleric with Wild Pyromancer to deal damage to a number of minions and then heal some of them for card draw with Regenerate, Circle of Healing, or Divine Hymn. Note that you will draw a card whenever a minion is healed, no matter whose minion it is or who does the healing. Circle of Healing will draw cards from your opponent’s minions as well, whereas Divine Hymn only heals your own. The opponent may also use healing effects on their turn when you have a Northshire Cleric on the board to force you to draw cards, potentially burning them if your hand is full.

Overdrawing is a real risk with this deck. Your opponent can force you to draw cards if you have an Acolyte of Pain or a Northshire Cleric on the board. The real question is, do you mind? If you already have your combo pieces in hand, you may not care about overdrawing. Cards only have value through their potential use, do not worry about burning them if you there is nothing left in the deck that you need – only worry about being taken to fatigue and too much fatigue damage in such a case. Remember that you can Silence or Forbidden Words your own card draw minions if you want to stop drawing.

One of the most complicated cards in the deck is Seance. On the surface, it looks like a simple card to use. You use it on Chef Nomi or Grave Horror, depending on which win condition you are going for. However, realizing the situations where you need to deviate from that plan is crucial. You may need an additional Wild Pyromancer against a token deck. You may need a second Zilliax to stabilize. You may even want to make a copy of one of your opponent’s minions! The large majority of time Seance is used on one of its two main targets. Finding the situations where you win by using it on something else is part of true mastery of the deck.

Topsy Turvy is another card with many uses. It can be used to give your Wild Pyromancer more health. It can prepare a Northshire Cleric or Acolyte of Pain for a good trade. It can reduce the health of an opponent’s minion so that it can be cleared more easily. It can be used with Lazul's Scheme to destroy a minion by reducing their attack to zero and then turning that attack into zero health. It can even be cast on your own Gadgetzan Auctioneer for no other visible effect except drawing another card.

Lazul's Scheme also has another synergy card in the deck: Forbidden Words. This is your main combo to remove big minions early in the game before Forbidden Words can remove them on its own. Note that Forbidden Words always spends all of your mana, even when it destroys a zero-attack minion. Use it late in the spell chain if you’re drawing cards with your spells.

VS Aggro Decks

Against aggressive decks, your main goal is to stabilize. Wild Pyromancer is the absolute key card in doing so, as it enables you to wipe out wide boards. Carefully consider when you need to go for your Pyromancer turn: how many spells do you have, how can the opponent buff their board if you wait, and can you use some single-target removal to buy more time before committing to the big clear.

You often need to sacrifice value in aggressive matchups. Acolyte of Pain on turn three is often needed in order to delay the game a little and get at least one additional card, you cannot always hold on to it to be used together with Wild Pyromancer.

Ultimately, your goal is to get some Grave Horrors on the board and Seance them – although you may also need to Seance a Wild Pyromancer or Zilliax to survive until your Grave Horrors. Once you get there, you should be good.

VS Control Decks

Against control decks, your main goal is to draw through your entire deck by turn nine and then play Chef Nomi three times thanks to Seance. Almost all control decks will fall to three boardfuls of 6/6 minions.

While you’re working your way there, you can also build a threatening board with Grave Horrors, but you typically do not want to Seance them. They’re there just to soak some removal and threaten damage if ignored.

Should your initial Chef Nomi survive a turn (and not win the game yet), you can Seance it again on the next turn to have two Chef Nomis ready and waiting in hand. This will leave some mana open if you need to play Chef Nomi again.

You can often draw your final cards on the same turn when you play your first Chef Nomi. Ideally, you can set it up in advance so that you naturally draw the last card at the beginning of the turn, but because you have so many zero-cost spells in the deck, there are ways to draw multiple cards and still have nine mana left for Chef Nomi + Seance. This is different from OTK Mecha'thun decks, which typically set everything up and then go for the combo on a separate turn.

Most of the time, the fatigue damage you take when you’re going for your Chef Nomi boards does not matter. However, sometimes you may be low when you get there, so pay attention to how much fatigue damage you’re taking. Divine Hymn can help you heal up a little when you’re in fatigue.

Miracle Priest Card Substitutions

Miracle Priest is not a very expensive deck, but it does have a couple of mandatory expensive cards in it.

• Chef Nomi is the main win condition of the deck and cannot be replaced.
• Lazul's Scheme is an important card both for removal and as a zero-cost spell. It is hard to cut, but you can cut at least one for a Mass Hysteria.
• Zilliax can be replaced with a Mass Hysteria.