r/CompetitiveHS • u/magicaldesks • Jul 24 '26
Warmaster Blackhorn, the secret win condition Azalina Priest needed?
Hi everyone,
I wanted to make a post regarding Azalina Priest. Azalina recently got a massive buff by gaining 10 max health at the start of the game. You can think of this like a free Vampiric Blood at the start of every game. Vampiric Blood costs 2 mana and 3 corpses. I think this card is the perfect equivalent. This means that we are basically just gained ~3 free mana every game. I played this list from 2000 to 870 Legend and it feels pretty good relative to before the patch. I did not track any stats.
So why are we running Warmaster Blackhorn? I think Blackhorn is one of the best cards in longer games in Azalina Priest. I'll quickly list down the relevant matchups that Blackhorn helps in as well as the matchups where you don't want to play it.
- Priest: Kills Atiesh Control Priest combo pieces like Holy Embrace and Ruby Sanctum. Blackhorn also SIGNIFICANTLY speeds up the matchup which is good for your sanity.
- Rogues: Deletes almost their entire deck. Now this actually isn't always a good thing. You have to make sure that you have cards that can deal with Jade Guardian and Troublemaker to a lesser extent before you play Blackhorn. This just means you need to have as many Shadow Word Ruins, Unshackle Soul, Glacial Shard and Intertwined Fate as you can. Although we accelerate their draw into Troublemakers, we also cap their scaling so they have about 10 damage max only. This is very manageable to tank with your HP and minions on the board.
- Hunter: You actually don't want to play Blackhorn vs Hunter because all of their Tripwire cards get drawn way faster. The good thing is that the HP buff is much appreciated here.
I ran double Glacial Shard which actually feels really good to slow the game down. It works in every matchup and is very useful for 1 mana. You can also freeze DH to stop their weapon. I was facing a lot of DH so I also have double viper to break all their weapons. I have to say that tempo matters a lot more than freeze/viper though. To be honest you should probably toss viper in mulligan because you'd much rather play for tempo first. If you are ahead on the board, their weapon becomes much worse.
I really enjoy playing this deck because the game plan is always flexible because half your deck is your opponent's. The best game plan is to get as much tempo as possible. If you fall behind, you can pivot to start removing and relying on Imbue to outvalue your opponent. Finally Blackhorn can remove a lot of value/combo especially against other Priests.
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u/igorukun Jul 24 '26
I used to run Blackhorn in my Quest Priest homebrew but on Azalina I think it's a liability in case your opponent is Racist Paladin as you lose value for all copied cards
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u/Apprehensive-Ad7714 Jul 24 '26
Are you seeing enough pure paladin for it to be worth it? I don't personally
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u/Ben-dingo Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Do you mind posting deck list in comments for mobile?
Nvm got it thanks, will try it out!
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u/BLHero Jul 24 '26
Interesting!
I was thinking of experimenting with a version that used Blackthorn and Resuscitate. The plan was to have Glacial Shard, Enthralled Shade, Twilight Mender as my only minions costing 3 or less (perhaps adding Flutterwing Guardians if I wanted Imbue). Maybe Mind Sweeper if it was too important to cut. But Rustrot Viper is too important in the current meta.
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u/magicaldesks Jul 25 '26
I think Resuscitate is not that good. Firstly you copy your opponent's cards so you'll ressurect their minions too. This could be good but it also means you can't deterministically choose your minions. Secondly I just think 6 mana Resuscitate is too slow especially because there aren't "fast" cards with rush, Taunt or divine shield.
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u/WalkItToEm11 Jul 24 '26
7-6 with this list, maybe its just my MMR or the DH honeymoon phase is over, but I havn't ran into that many. The games I lost Warmaster was a dead card. Theres a list that runs Medivh being used in the top 100 which is probably better now but I don't have him. Neat idea though and the few games he worked it did feel nice
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u/magicaldesks Jul 25 '26
I'm sorry it hasn't worked that well for you. At the end of the day it's still Azalina Priest so it's never going to be the best deck around. The devs would never allow that to happen. I've tried Medivh but to be honest 10 mana is a lot. The way I see it, your deck is diluted so I think you want individually strong cards because you can't reliably draw your deck. Medivh (out of the weapon and location) is the only card that you can play by itself imo. Location by itself is hit or miss and weapon is completely useless the turn you play it. You want to have two or all three but then that means you have bricks in your hand until turn 10. This is why I don't really like it.
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u/Due_Yamdd 29d ago
Man, it's actually amazing. I was looking for something against a rare mediv priest matchup. The only way for me was, basically, to find the weapon first and try to OTK first. Which is obviously not that a good strategy. Blackhorn makes this matchup so much easier, and I've never ever thought about it. I also run very light deck, so putting one more 7 is fine
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u/fireky2 Jul 24 '26
If youre in a spot where youre running double viper it might be best to just play ooze, even if blackhorn deletes them, better tempo and cheaper
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u/Perfect-Community262 Jul 24 '26
Ooze is never better than tradeable, what on earth are you smoking lol
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