Priestess - Counter Warlock Beatdown Deck

[sIKE]

Here is the current iteration (v7) of my Priestess deck. It is designed to counter my friends Warlock beatdown deck which gets into your face very quickly.  The idea is to buy enough time to get the small army of powerful creatures who will then quickly turn the tide in my favor. I lost three games in row then with v6 version of my deck I was able to take the Warlords head quite easily. Some tweaking after that and here is what I have today. I am looking forward to running this deck again hopefully next week.

Mage: Priestess
Total Cards: 49

Attack: 4
2 - Jet Stream   
2 - Geyser   

Conjuration: 2
1 - Mana Flower   
1 - Mana Crystal   

Creature: 4
2 - Knight of Westlock   
1 - Royal Archer   
1 - Highland Unicorn   

Enchantment: 15
1 - Reverse Magic   
2 - Block   
1 - Agony   
1 - Divine Intervention   
2 - Teleport Trap   
1 - Bull Endurance   
1 - Hawkeye   
3 - Nullify   
1 - Force Hold   
2 - Bear Strength   

Equipment: 8
1 - Ring of Asyra   
1 - Moonglow Amulet   
1 - Elemental Cloak   
2 - Elemental Wand   
1 - Mage Wand   
1 - Dawnbreaker Ring   
1 - Deflection Bracers   

Incantation: 15
1 - Dissolve   
2 - Rouse the Beast   
3 - Piercing Strike   
1 - Purge Magic   
1 - Charge   
1 - Steal Enchantment   
1 - Heal   
1 - Knockdown   
1 - Minor Heal   
1 - Explode   
1 - Seeking Dispel   
1 - Teleport   

Wall: 1
1 - Wall of Thorns

 B)

[Koz]

I think you are going about this the wrong way with the Priestess IMO.  If you want to be well rounded and counter beat-down builds you should focus on stacking miss chances.  By that I mean get Defense dice on your Priestess and use a lot of Daze/Stun effects.  Your opponent will do a lot of swinging at air.  Daze/Stun lock is very powerful and very hard to deal with.

Had I gone to Bashcon I would have run a Priestess like this and done well because it is very strong against solo-beat down and mage + big creature beat down because they will be missing with their swings... a lot.  Swarms are actually a bit tougher for the Priestess because she doesn't have easy access to powerful AOE spells.  Blinding Flash doesn't do quite enough damage, although the Daze/Stun is very strong on it.  Against swarms you basically have to rely on your more powerful creatures to cut through them.

It seems like you are basically trying to do Priestess-beat down.  While you can do that, it's just run better out of another mage really.  You aren't really taking advantage of what makes the Priestess so powerful, which is her Daze/Stun effects and powerful Temples.

Those are my thoughts anyway, take them as you will  

[Koy]

Very surprising build!  That may be the first priestess book I've seen with no temples.  Not just "light" on temples, but none!  Wow  I agree with Koz that it seems to me a build that is fighting against the mage's best strength.

Did this book come about in specific counter to a friend's warlock book?

[sIKE]

I think that is what I am doing with the Geyser on the Elemental Wand for the Daze w/ Deflection Bracers + Block, Reverse magic, Elemental Cloak for the miss swings is what you are suggesting. My game is to take those that solely focus on the mage to come at me dodge/minimize as many hits as possible and then let my critters womp on them  and heal them up as we go with the other wand with Minor Heal/Heal attached (which means she is growing stronger the longer the game goes) which carries into the later part of the game, way after a typical beat down would happen.  The deck is designed to counter a Warlock that put out Deathlock and Idol of Pestilence rounds one and two, then on round three starts beating on you with a buffed LOH and Doublestrike. The Burns start stacking up real high and death comes quite quickly, much to my trash talking chagrin the first couple of matches with this particular Warlord.

If I am missing something for a strategy for the Priestess visa vie the Warlock I am not sure of what it is. She cannot get biggies out very fast due to the high mana cost, she is poor at defending herself, she is weak HP wise at the start of the game. My experience as shown me that the Priestess has to survive into later round before she becomes a force to be reckoned with and then eventually swamps her opponent with a devastating amount of power.

[sIKE]

@KOY

I had a Bimshalla in the v6 build but took it out for the v7 build as I was looking at a WoT/Push (or Jet Steam) combo, I also lost the Angel in v7 which was replaced with another Knight, which are wicked bad when you Steal Enchantment "Bear Strength" from the Warlock.  :ohmy:

That 120 points really makes for some difficult choices....

[Tacullu64]

A couple of post referenced the priestess temple build. The temple build is more dependent on extra card sets than most other spellbooks. What is your card pool?

[sIKE]

Currently, Core + Tome 1 with Tome 2 and WvF to be added very shortly! It not that I unable not build out a Temple type of deck for my tome, it has more to do with time, value and mana costs.

My analysis:

Temple of Asyra: Costs 10 Mana + 2 Clerics costs 10 more Mana to get 2 extra mana a turn and  can only be used to summon Holy Creatures. For 10 mana, I can get two Mana Crystals/Flowers out and have 2 Mana for whatever I am in need of. The Spell book cost is 5 spell points vs. 4 spell points for the Mana Crystal/Flower combo.  Overall value: Negligible

Temple of Light: Costs 9 mana and gets one attack dice. Each additional Temple nets 1 more attack die.  For 4 more Mana you can summon a Knight of Westlock and get 5 attack dice from the start. Overall value: Minimum

Temple of the Dawnbreaker: Costs 8 Mana, the re-rolls are nice, but only are used once per round. Might consider adding this one back into my deck eventually. Overall value: Fair

Hand of Bim-Shalla: Costs 5 Mana, +1 Armor or +1 Melee or heal 1, running a deck with several creatures this card is very handy and would be most likely added back into my deck as it Spell Book cost is only 1. As I write this I am seriously thinking about adding it back into my deck. Overall Value: High

So as you see a lot of thought has gone into the deck and how useful Temples are with the build purposes of the deck. If I had more time, the temples would provide value but when you are dying around round 5 with no heals available you  quickly learn that no they are not that useful.

[piousflea]

Daze (Pillar of Light) and Defenses (Knights of Westlock) are extremely powerful against a big creature beatdown deck, such as my Lock deck.

This is a rather specific "metagame" deck and would almost certainly kill "Lord of Fire" type builds very easily. I think it would be weak against swarms though, especially a Lair type build that gets an extremely large swarm before attacking. Knights underperform against swarms to begin with, and you don't have any area attacks at all.

Also, other than a single Royal Archer (easily killed by attack spells) you don't have anything that can kill flying units. A swarm of Bats or Falcons is likely to completely embarass this build.

[sIKE]

I did say I would like to run my Deck against yours  :cheer: . True it is a meta deck designed to counter your type of deck. Against a swarm type play I would have to swap back in my Angel. However with a Minor heal on a wand I would think that the swarm might take me out but I would go down swinging. Once again, if it got out into Round 10 or so, I think I could take almost any deck. I'm not real sure of that, but sure get the feeling the Priestess will just get stronger as things move in to the late game. Add in a couple of new cards from the FvW expanison like say Force Hammer and Hawkeye and I think that she would be a tank.

As for flying Geyser would work in that area and once again when the bats melee it 2 die and rot (I can knock those off eaisly) it would loose the Flying Trait and be wiped out in one or two attacks.Same with the Falcons, they would have to come down to fight me and loose quickly I would think. A large swarm would be 6 of them and that would be a major handful to even think about early in the game.

[halvor]

I would swap out the geysers with pillars of light. I would consider swapping 3 piercing strikes with 2 battle furies and a perfect strike. Unless you find your self with just 3 mana extra on turns. Also the more holy spells you have, the more you gain from the priestess ability. I love the unicorn but I don't think I would take him with only two knights. I keep trying to put him in my beast master deck and it find it is really tough to get him in the same zone as my damaged critters (without putting my self in a situation where my units will all get fire stormed.

As others have said, you need at least one anti swarm spells. Perhaps a circle of lightening would work well? Since you have Knights, I would go with circle of fire, just in case your spell gets stolen.

To be honest, I have found my mage with equipment  is the best counter to a one big guy rush. No matter how buff the knights are, they will have a tough time with one big. So try and keep them alive and put your self in the fray. Send them after the mage while you battle the big unit. Or force hold the big and attack the mage.

You deck looks strong defensively but I am not really seeing a way you can ramp up damage quickly.  If you are going to play the long game, you might need more  heals?

[sIKE]

Almost everything you have said here makes much since.

Once Deathlock comes out you are at least 6-10 rounds out from getting your heals / health buffs back. During that time the stacks of Burns become much more of a threat and Geyser plays a strong role in countering that along with being Water for the Walls of Fire (+ Push = Nasty). The deck is focused on minimizing Fire damage.

Take a Knight (13 Mana) + Bear Strength (5 Mana) you have a 7 die tank with a Defense, 3 Armor, and 10 HP. Now spin 2 of those up.Let your Unicorn or Mage take the first swing at your opponet (if there is a defense) then throw a piercing strike on 7 dice * 2 and you have a go chance to blow a hole in the side of someone/thing

The Unicorn is real nice for the Regen (Burns) and Charge when you enemy decides its time to flee.

With Deathlock and Idol of Pestilence you can't tank with her as she is weak on hit point and will get Curses thrown on her which make matters even worse.

So it is run around the arena buying time and building up a strong army, send them forth and kick some booty while behind them you heal. More of a Warlord like approach now that I think of it.

[sIKE]

Also, other than a single Royal Archer (easily killed by attack spells) you don't have anything that can kill flying units. A swarm of Bats or Falcons is likely to completely embarass this build.

Gravikor?

[halvor]

Why do you have the Dawnbreaker ring? You don't even have any light attacks?

Here is what I propose, play these cards, not necessarily in this order:

Staff of Asyra +1 (take mage staff if you are dealing with flying)
Dawnbreaker ring +1
Gaunlets of strength +1
Bear Strength +2
Dragonscale
elemental cloak
nullify
Battle fury

This is 8 dice.  battle fury make it 16 dice (16 damage average). In two rounds that is 24 dice (no battle fury the second round). You might also get in a attack or two from one of your knights. That will deal with most big guys. If the creature is dodgy, you will need those perfect strikes. Or force hold them.

If you don't get rushed, you can buff up your knights and play less offensive equipment cards. Always play the offensive cards just before attacking so you don't telegraph your plan.

[Koz]

Daze (Pillar of Light) and Defenses (Knights of Westlock) are extremely powerful against a big creature beatdown deck, such as my Lock deck.

This is a rather specific "metagame" deck and would almost certainly kill "Lord of Fire" type builds very easily. I think it would be weak against swarms though, especially a Lair type build that gets an extremely large swarm before attacking. Knights underperform against swarms to begin with, and you don't have any area attacks at all.

Also, other than a single Royal Archer (easily killed by attack spells) you don't have anything that can kill flying units. A swarm of Bats or Falcons is likely to completely embarass this build.

Agreed with Piousflea.  Stacking miss chances is a great way to counter solo-mage and mage + big creature beat down, but you HAVE to have a way to deal with swarms if you want your build to be well rounded and have any chance in an OP or tournament setting.  

Right now the Priestess has access to Blinding Flash as an AOE which isn't that strong damage wise (but great for the Daze/Stun).  What you can try (and what I run) is Circle of Lightning (more Daze/Stun + crowd control) and 2 Blinding Flashes.  However, now that the expansion is out, you might want to try out Whirling Strike.  I'm thinking that a Knight of Westlock or Grey Angel (or a Priestess with Staff of Asyra) can cut through a lot of weenies with that spell (especially if buffed by 1 or more Hands of Bim Shalla's).  It's a bit expensive though so I'm not sure it's the answer.  An Electrify might be better (which is something I've been trying to figure out how to fit in my build).

[Koz]

Almost everything you have said here makes much since.

Once Deathlock comes out you are at least 6-10 rounds out from getting your heals / health buffs back. During that time the stacks of Burns become much more of a threat and Geyser plays a strong role in countering that along with being Water for the Walls of Fire (+ Push = Nasty). The deck is focused on minimizing Fire damage.

Take a Knight (13 Mana) + Bear Strength (5 Mana) you have a 7 die tank with a Defense, 3 Armor, and 10 HP. Now spin 2 of those up.Let your Unicorn or Mage take the first swing at your opponet (if there is a defense) then throw a piercing strike on 7 dice * 2 and you have a go chance to blow a hole in the side of someone/thing

The Unicorn is real nice for the Regen (Burns) and Charge when you enemy decides its time to flee.

With Deathlock and Idol of Pestilence you can't tank with her as she is weak on hit point and will get Curses thrown on her which make matters even worse.

So it is run around the arena buying time and building up a strong army, send them forth and kick some booty while behind them you heal. More of a Warlord like approach now that I think of it.

Well, I guess it comes down to what you are trying to do.  If you are tyring to counter one specific build then I guess you should go with whatever works.  A lot of the advice in this thread is from people who look at builds from a "how would this hold up in an OP or Tournament environment?"  But if that's not what you are going for then a lot of this advice isn't going to be all that helpful.