Beginner Priest Deck List Guide & Tips 2017

Welcome to our Beginner Priest Deck List Guide! If you are just starting out in Hearthstone this guide will help you learn how-to build and play this completely free Priest deck list. The guide includes card explanations, mulligans, play strategy, and future card replacements/substitutions.

Find More Beginner Decks: Beginner’s Hearthstone Decks for Every Class

Beginner Priest Deck Overview

Priest has always generally been looked at as a more controlling class due to its extremely defensive hero power. Priest excels at having minions on the board, making trades, and then restoring the minions health. As you progress with the class you will find that it actually has quite a few cards that can either temporarily or permanently take your opponent’s minions!

Don’t understand some of the terms in this guide? Check out our Hearthstone Terms & Glossary!

Card Choices

These card choices are broken down into two sections: Class and Neutrals.

Priest Cards

Holy Smite – A cheap but effective damage spell that can remove minions or potentially finish off your opponent.

Northshire Cleric – One of Priest’s best basic cards and a card that sees play in meta decks. This can be a pretty skill intensive card, if you are against an aggressive deck it’s usually best to throw it on the board and hopefully make a trade. In a slower matchup, it will be best to hold onto it and guarantee that you can get yourself value out of it. If you aren’t under pressure, it can sometimes be wise to save it on turn 1 and pair it with the following card!

Power Word: Shield – Another of Priest’s heavy hitting basic cards. Cheap spell cycle with an additional minion buff (cantrip) is extremely powerful. This card plays right into what you are looking to do as Priest, keep your minions alive so you can heal them out of danger with your hero power or spells.

Divine Spirit – Can be a very powerful card, but we limit it to one in this deck because it is absolutely dead if you don’t have a minion to use it on. Try to hit some of the higher health minions in the deck with it for maximum value!

Shadow Word: Pain – Good early game removal!

Shadow Word: Death – Good mid-to-late game removal! However, did you notice something was missing between Pain and Death? These cards pose a bit of a problem for Priest, because they leave a gap at 4-attack which can leave the class vulnerable to midgame minions. Seasoned Hearthstone player’s know this and will try to take advantage.

Holy Nova – A bit high cost, but comes with the benefit of healing your minions and yourself. Pairs well with Northshire Cleric.

Mind Control – Very powerful against large late game minions, however, is very weak in the early game against aggressive decks. We only run one in this deck because if you draw 2 against aggro you might as well concede.

Neutral Cards

Acidic Swamp Ooze – Decent stats and an ability that is very relevant against certain classes. It’s generally best not to be too greedy with the effect unless you know for sure they are going to play a weapon. It’s almost always better to play something rather than wait and hope to destroy a weapon. Be more conservative with this card against Warrior.

Bloodfen Raptor – Mostly just a body for stats and a cheap cost.

Ironfur Grizzly – One of the only beginner decks I’m running this in, and that’s because it’s far more defensive and can be decent if you pair with Power Word: Shield.

Shattered Sun Cleric – Solid minion that has a strong buff attached to it. While it’s nice to get the buff, it’s usually best to just play the minion on the board rather than hope for a best case scenario.

Chillwind Yeti – One of the best basic minions. 5-health is very important and can trade and survive against most minions of the same cost or below. The card saw some really early play in meta decks in the beginning of ranked play, but is just purely outclassed by better minions now.

Gnomish Inventor – Card draw on a body is solid, but the extra health makes it a good target for Power Word: Shield or Divine Spirit.

Sen'jin Shieldmasta – A good way to stop early aggression with a pretty decent stat line for the cost.

Darkscale Healer – We’re trying to keep our minions alive and this card can help that. This also can draw us some cards if we pair it with Northshire Cleric.

Boulderfist Ogre – This is essentially the 6-drop version of Chillwind Yeti. 7-health is very hard to remove with a single card unless it’s premium removal like Hex or Polymorph is used.

Beginner Priest Deck Mulligan Advice and Strategy

We want to keep Northshire Cleric. While it’s not always going to get a trade, it’s a card that has to be traded into and/or could get us an extra draw, or force your opponent to play sub-optimally. If you have Northshire Cleric or a 2-drop you can keep Power Word: Shield. It’s a really strong card that helps your minion survive a trade plus gives us a card to replace it. Holy Smite is okay when you have another minion to potentially back it up, but it’s not always going to find a great target.

Keep your 2-drops, and if you get one in the opening mulligan you can look to keep a 3-drop. If you are going second then you can consider keeping a 4-drop if you already have a 2-drop.

• Always Keep: Northshire Cleric, Acidic Swamp Ooze, and Bloodfen Raptor
• Keep w/1 or 2-drop: Power Word: Shield, Holy Smite, Shattered Sun Cleric, and Ironfur Grizzly
• Keep w/2-3 drop Curve or 2-Drop & The Coin: Chillwind Yeti and Sen'jin Shieldmasta

Play Strategy

Northshire Cleric is a key piece of this deck and in-general you want to save it so you can at least get a draw out of it. Unfortunately, if you are playing against an aggressive deck you might not be able hold out so I would play it immediately in this case. If you can afford to, however, holding it for a turn so you can play Power Word: Shield on it can be worth it.

A more advanced note on Northshire Cleric is that you will draw a card even when one of your opponent’s minions are healed. This means in some rare circumstances it might be worth it to heal your opponent’s minion with your hero power. This also means if your opponent heals a minion on their turn you will get to draw a card.

In most cases your minion’s health is far more important than your own health. If your opponent attacks your minions then you’ve essentially healed yourself (the minion would have gone after your face). Keeping your minions alive is one of the most important aspects of this deck.

Divine Spirit is a powerful card, but don’t be greedy with it and take a beneficial trade when possible. As long as you get one trade out of it you are at least breaking even, and everything after that is a gain. Ideally, however, you’ll want to land it on one of your higher health minions.

Due to the attack gap between Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death means you’ll want to try and focus your trades on minions that have 4-attack. This is a more advanced tactic, but if your next draw is a Shadow Word: Death and you opted to trade into the 5-attack minion rather than the 4-attack minion you won’t be able to remove it with your spell.

When using Holy Nova make sure you do your attacking with minions that will survive an attack beforehand so they get the full benefit of the heal.

Darkscale Healer and Northshire Cleric do work together, so make sure you play those in the correct order.

Pro Tip: If it’s turn 2 and you have no play and both players are at 30 health then it is required that you use your hero power on your opponent and use the Threaten emote (THE LIGHT SHALL BURN YOU!).

Card Replacements and Substitutions

I’m going to list cards that you should start to look to replace to stick with the theme of this deck which is a Control/Midrange Priest. You should start to look towards budget decks and build towards them once you start to acquire cards. Once you’ve built a budget deck, you can then start to build towards a meta deck.

Find Budget Decks: Hearthstone Budget Decks for Every Class

Potion of Madness is a good card against aggressive decks and can lead to 2-for-1 trades. I’d swap out Holy Smite for these.

You can swap out your Bloodfen Raptor’s for Radiant Elemental due to its ability to reduce the cost of your spells. Turn 2 Elemental into a Power Word: Shield is a sweet combo.

Kabal Talonpriest is a very strong 3-drop and can immediately replace Ironfur Grizzly once you get it.

Got Tar Creeper? Good, then get rid of Shattered Sun Cleric because it’s way better. Tar Creeper not only helps protect your face, but the high health makes it a great target for Shield and Divine Spirit.

Tortollan Shellraiser is a good upgrade for Sen’jin Shieldmasta. The extra health and +1/+1 buff are a nice upgrade.

If you end up with Auchenai Soulpriest and Circle of Healing they combine together for a classic AOE combo that can clear most boards.

Darkshire Alchemist is a better version of Darkscale Healer. While getting an AOE heal is nice, you aren’t going to find a lot of good opportunities to land it on more than one minion. The +3 health restored is significant and can in some cases keep you alive.

Once you’ve gotten a few of these upgrades it’s time to start looking into those budget decks listed above! Good luck out there on the ladder.