Is the Priestess Overpowered?

[Volcanos]

Hi gamers,
I've had this game for over 3 weeks now and have played quite a few games against my kids (aged between 10 and 20). In every game where someone has played the Priestess they have absolutely thrashed their opposition, especially the Warlock and Beastmaster. Her healing just overwhelms her opponents. The typical strategy is to build temples, pray, summon her monster and then combat her opponent, healing whenever in any sort of danger ( a rarity).
I have been both aggressive and patient but neither strategy has worked. are we just playing poorly or is this character overpowered. I'm reading more and more that players prefer to play with her and to me it seems to be understandable.
I realise that balancing a game like this would be difficult, maybe we haven' yet unlocked the key to destroying her holiness. Help?
Cheers Ray

[Gewar]

Some ideas/advices:
- Priestess is trong with "Stand your ground" strategy. Try to move her away from the place she choose to fight on (use Teleport, Force Push, Teleport Trap).
- Elusive is very good trait to ignore guards.
- If opponent Priestess tends to cast healing spells on herself late (when she is close to death), supriice her with Nullify on her.
- Kill Clerics early - or kill Temple of Asyra.
- To deal with Angels, use Knockdown.
This is very general and incomplete list of things you should try - maybe it will even your odds.

[Koz]

You could always try Deathlock.  You don't have to be a Dark mage to include it in your build.  Dropping that on your side of the board forces her to send something over there to deal with it or never heal/gain life.  Same goes for Poisoned Blood.  

I think aggressiveness is the key though.  Letting the Priestess set up is a bad idea, once she gets rolling she's a tough nut to crack.

[piousflea]

Warlock with rain of fire does a pretty good job of killing the Temple of Asyra and all of the worshipping Clerics.

Nullify, jinx, poisoned blood, or Deathlock counter healing.

Priestess has relatively poor AoE damage ability, so a large swarm of weak creatures can overwhelm her few strong creatures.

[Nihilistiskism]

The Priestess is, for now, my go-to for competitive play. I don't run the Temple of Asyra in my spellbook. I have Clerics, but I drop them as afterthoughts maybe 1 in 5 games, so they are probably coming out, altogether. In my opinion, the Priestess is bogged down by these cards, and is much more brutally effective in the short game than people, in general, perceive. I was one of the people originally stating she's slow, but now she's fast. It takes time and practice to see what works, think outside the box, a bit, and bring out her true potential, but as she stands, now, I'm playing games with no Asyra in less than 45 minutes and netting close to zero damage on the priestess, herself. I do see her as a real tournament contender. She's stronger than the Warlock, by far, from my perspective, and while everyone else crows about him I just have to snigger.

Is she overpowered? No. There's nothing in this game that is overpowered. The balance in this game is exceptional. Is she very, very strong? Yes. In my opinion she is the strongest Mage, but, as with all games, people only need to tweak their builds a bit in the right direction to counter her, and then she must tweak her build to counter the counter, and thus the story begins.

-nihil

[Koz]

The Priestess is, for now, my go-to for competitive play. I don't run the Temple of Asyra in my spellbook. I have Clerics, but I drop them as afterthoughts maybe 1 in 5 games, so they are probably coming out, altogether. In my opinion, the Priestess is bogged down by these cards, and is much more brutally effective in the short game than people, in general, perceive. I was one of the people originally stating she's slow, but now she's fast. It takes time and practice to see what works, think outside the box, a bit, and bring out her true potential, but as she stands, now, I'm playing games with no Asyra in less than 45 minutes and netting close to zero damage on the priestess, herself. I do see her as a real tournament contender. She's stronger than the Warlock, by far, from my perspective, and while everyone else crows about him I just have to snigger.

Is she overpowered? No. There's nothing in this game that is overpowered. The balance in this game is exceptional. Is she very, very strong? Yes. In my opinion she is the strongest Mage, but, as with all games, people only need to tweak their builds a bit in the right direction to counter her, and then she must tweak her build to counter the counter, and thus the story begins.

-nihil

Interesting.  I've been doing a lot of theorycrafting regarding the Priestess and playing around with build ideas.  Originally I had the Temple of Asyra in and was going that route, but in my first revision I took it out, thinking that it would be too slow.  Seems like maybe I was on point there.  I've got a build that I think will be very good, but I'm not sure yet since I haven't played it.  I looks good "on paper", but that doesn't always go so well in practice.  

Looking at what I've come up with, I think it will utterly own the "in your face beat-down" style mage builds and I think it will handle the Wizard heavy offense builds pretty well too, although that will be a bit tougher.  I'm a bit worried about the swarm builds though, although the strategy of focusing on the enemy mage and just trying to survive/delay the swarm seems to work in general.  Of course, that's all on paper as I've said.  I hope to test it soon.

[kamishev]

Interesting.  I've been doing a lot of theorycrafting regarding the Priestess and playing around with build ideas.  Originally I had the Temple of Asyra in and was going that route, but in my first revision I took it out, thinking that it would be too slow.  Seems like maybe I was on point there.  I've got a build that I think will be very good, but I'm not sure yet since I haven't played it.  I looks good "on paper", but that doesn't always go so well in practice.  

Looking at what I've come up with, I think it will utterly own the "in your face beat-down" style mage builds and I think it will handle the Wizard heavy offense builds pretty well too, although that will be a bit tougher.  I'm a bit worried about the swarm builds though, although the strategy of focusing on the enemy mage and just trying to survive/delay the swarm seems to work in general.  Of course, that's all on paper as I've said.  I hope to test it soon.

I`ve been thinking of the same build. After my first revision i also took out the Tample of Asyra for the same reason. In the same direction i removed the Clerics. And now i have to try the deck in practice. So interesting to see that other people are also going in this direction with  her. I`ll report when i have chance to try it in the arena.

[Volcanos]

Thanks everyone for replying to my post. you've given me some great ideas to counter my 12 year old daughter who loves this mage. Poisoned Blood, Deathlock and aggressive style seem to be the way to go and not allowing her to build up makes sense.
Cheers Ray Shipp