Resurrect Priest Deck List Guide – Rise of Shadows (RoS)

Our Resurrect Priest Deck List Guide will walk you through everything you need to know on this potentially viable archetype in the Rise of Shadows expansion! Priest has had a history of reviving their minions, and Blizzard seems to be giving them incentive to continue down this path. With this guide we're going over mulligans, card choices, substitutions, and detailing how best to play this list to victory!

There's been some forms of Resurrect Priest floating around for a while now, and while Big Priest is pretty problematic in Wild there's room in Standard for a more fair version of that deck. This archetype will be looking to stack big taunt minions and force your opponent to chew through them. You, however, will be able to bring them back to life with the various resurrection cards we will have in our deck. We should be able to finish our opponent with some Inner Fire shenanigans.

Resurrect Priest Deck List for Rise of Shadows

Resurrect Priest is currently the class' best option in the meta right now. The following list is the most popular of what's being played on the ladder at the moment.

Resurrect Priest Mulligan Guide

We don't have a ton of early game cards that we actually want, but there's a couple of standouts. We're mostly looking for mid-game cards in this slower meta.

Always Keep

• Northshire Cleric - Decent early drop against aggro, and a card you can potentially get some draws from.
• Shadow Word: Pain - You will usually have a target for this in your first couple of turns, it takes out a minion for us in the early game.
• Hench-Clan Shadequill - Great minion for protecting the board, and the downside of this card is largely irrelevant to us.

Situational Keeps

• Power Word: Shield - We likely won't have anything to play this one on, but most of the time you will want to keep it. It's especially good on Northshire Cleric if we can get her to stick on the board.
• Archmage Vargoth - Probably worth keeping the majority of the time. It's going to be a bit slow against aggro, but the stat-line is very solid against cheap minions.
• Convincing Infiltrator - Slow card, but great if we get it into our resurrection pool. The meta is slow enough where you can usually keep cards like this and still win.
• Zilliax - Same story as the other slow cards, we're able to keep these in this pretty slow meta. I wouldn't keep multiple high drops, but you can keep one of them.

Resurrect Priest Play Strategy

The name of the game is getting big minions with high health onto the board that generally have a downside, and then resurrecting them so they comeback with full stats. Cards like Hench-Clan Shadequill , Witchwood Grizzly , Damaged Stegotron , and Mosh'Ogg Enforcer generally fit this bill. If we can stick some of these, then we can usually win with a big combo turn featuring Inner Fire and Divine Spirit !

Early game is all about just holding off our opponent as much as possible. This can be done with spells like Forbidden Words , Shadow Word: Pain , and Shadow Madness . After we've gotten to about turn four is when we'll start being able to potentially play some minions of our own. If you're playing against a faster deck, then you can't afford to be super greedy with stuff like Archmage Vargoth . Play it down, and see if it survives. At the very least, you'll be keeping yourself from losing too much health. The fact of the matter is, we're not super sad if we lose a minion like him because we'll likely be able to resurrect it in the later game.

Mass Hysteria is one of our better cards for getting us back into the game at this point. There's a very good chance we can clear off the majority of our opponent's board with it.

We'll be hoping we've at least had a couple of taunts put into our pool by the time we end up playing Catrina Muerte . If one of your high health taunts pop out, then there's a good chance she'll survive to the next turn. If we can get multiple triggers from her, then we'll know we're in good shape. Both Witchwood Grizzly and Damaged Stegotron are going to be the most common minions we'll be bringing back.

If we've survived to the late game, then that's when Mass Resurrection becomes a huge card. Not only will we be bringing back huge minions, but we could get a double cast of it if we've brought back Vargoth from the dead.

Against aggressive decks, we've likely stalled long enough at this point that they are running out of gas and staring down a taunt wall. If that's the case, then the game is usually over at this point. Against control, however, we might need some extra firepower. That's where Inner Fire and Divine Spirit come into play. If we stick one of our big minions, then there's a good chance we can combo it with these cards and push for lethal. This will be one of the common ways we're able to finish off slower decks.

Resurrect Priest Card Choices

We're going to need some more juicy large minions to resurrect and some ways to stabilize the board in the early game that aren't small minions. We don't want to dilute our resurrection pool with weak creatures.

• Forbidden Words - While this card will suck up all your mana in a turn, you can still make some plays and take down a minion if you budget correctly.
• Topsy Turvy - This could help us pull off a lethal, and works with the potential addition of Divine Spirit in our deck. This is a fringe addition, not sure it will work and we might be playing Inner Fire.
• Inner Fire - We'll likely need a boost to get us over the hump towards lethal in the late game. We can combo this with Divine Spirit for some big damage in the late game on some of our resurrected cards.
• Northshire Cleric - Good early game play that we can combine with Power Word: Shield to maybe get us some cards and trades. We would like to get value out of it in a slow game, but versus aggro we likely just need to play it early.
• Power Word: Shield - Can't have a Priest deck without this card, and it works great on our big minions.
• Divine Hymn - You've got a lot of big minions, so it's worth having a big heal to keep them healthy.
• Divine Spirit - If our opponent thought our high health taunts were annoying before, they'll really dislike them once we play this.
• Shadow Word: Pain - We need to keep the board management in the early game, so we're going to need cheap removal for annoying minions.
• Shadow Word: Death - Takes out a higher attack minion with no questions asked.
• Archmage Vargoth - Works with some of our removal spells, and has a good amount of stats that can be hard to remove for certain classes. Just be careful not to play a Divine Spirit or other buff card and then have Vargoth randomly cast it on your enemy's minion.
• Hench-Clan Shadequill - I think this card is insane, and the downside isn't even a downside. If you can play this on curve, then you are super happy about that. How often will you have done 5 damage to your opponent by turn 4? Pretty infrequently as a Priest, and even if you have that isn't going to cost you the game. 5 health to your opponent in the grand scheme of things isn't a big deal. This card does get weaker in the late game when you are actually trying to finish your opponent, but it's just too good in the mid-game to pass up.
• Shadow Madness - The meta is reasonably slow, and this is can be a pretty strong 2-for-1 on the right board.
• Convincing Infiltrator - The stats are a bit wonky on this card, but getting to destroy a random enemy minion is really strong. Plus, throwing this on a board against a bunch of small minions will make your opponent cry. We're also not too unhappy to resurrect this card in the late game because of the Deathrattle.
• Mass Hysteria - If we're dealing with heftier minions that Holy Nova can't handle then Mass Hysteria will have to do the work for us instead.
• Witchwood Grizzly - Big stats and a great target for our resurrect spells. This card also punishes aggressive decks who are dumping their hand.
• Zilliax - You almost can't have a deck without Zilliax in it, and this is a great card to hit a resurrect on.
• Damaged Stegotron - Big stats and while it hurts itself when you initially play it, when it gets resurrected it will come out pristine!
• Catrina Muerte - We're going to need to hope for a juicy resurrect target once we play this on the board because it's unlikely that it's going to last another turn. However, if we get one of the big taunt cards we're playing then it might just protect it long enough to see a second turn.
• Mosh'Ogg Enforcer - A big ol' taunt that has Divine Shield and is great for our Inner Fire and Divine Spirit combination.
• Mass Resurrection - This is one of our big late game swing cards that should seal the game or bring the game back into a manageable state. This is especially the case if we get some strong taunt cards that our opponent is going to struggle through. It costs a lot of mana, but hopefully by the time we're ready to play it we'll have some strong targets.

Resurrect Priest Card Substitutions

We don't want too many minions that don't server our purpose in our deck because they will muddy up our resurrection pool.

• Injured Blademaster - Cheap high health minion that works well when resurrected.
• Auchenai Soulpriest - Another high health minion, that also can give us a hero power that deals some damage. You can also get cute by comboing with Hench-Clan Shadequill and dealing some damage instead of healing.
• Holy Nova - If we're playing against a more token based deck then Holy Nova will hopefully be able to carry the load as our AOE removal.
• Batterhead - Another big health that can be useful for trading down a board. We'll mostly want minions that have taunt so we can protect our face.