Legends of Norrath Preview: Eluviel the Priest Starter Deck

Legends of Norrath Preview: Eluviel the Priest Starter Deck
by Chuck Kallenbach, Game Designer

Our Priest archetype includes several kinds of healer classes. Priests are most concerned with healing and readying units. Their revitalizing effects allow you to use and reuse abilities and keep your units healthy for another raid next turn. The key characteristic of Priests is health. (While health isn't really an attribute since you don't have to exert to use it, it's obviously an important stat for all avatars and units.)

Eluviel's deck includes many light cards, illustrating a deck build that is more Templar than Inquisitor (to use examples from EverQuest II). As with the other archetypes, Oathbound includes both light and shadow Priest cards for you to explore both factions when building your own deck.

Priests have great abilities, and often their decks are good for questing. You'll find three copies of the excellent Forge Ahead in this deck, which has three levels and is great for completing quests.

One of the best defensive abilities in the game is the Priest's Holy Armor. For a cost of only 1 power, you can exert this ability for its defense of 1 and then, in the same combat, use its game text to destroy it for 2 more defense. That's 3 defense in one combat for only 1 power, a great bargain.

When you play this ability, you may take a unit card from your discard pile, play it to a quest for no cost, and exert that unit.

One of the signature Priest abilities, especially for light deck builds, is the card Resurrection. Playing a unit from your discard pile at no cost is a terrific way to hold on for a quest win or reinforce for another raid. Combo this with the many ways to ready a unit in this deck, such as Restoration or Rod of Faith, and you've got a unit to use right away for free!

When you play the fifteen single-player scenarios, you'll find a couple of burly Barbarians as key figures in our unique Oathbound storyline. Barbarian units are well-represented in your Priest starter deck, with no less than 5 different kinds.

The Barbarian Warrior and Wild Barbarian have the Frenzy keyword. Whenever you play another card, your unit that has Frenzy gets +1 attack until the end of the turn. It's important to take an extra second to plan your turn to make best use of Frenzy. If you're going to play an item, an ability, and a Frenzy unit, make sure you play the unit first; that way, he'll get +2 attack from the other two cards you played afterward.

The 'fattie' unit in your Priest starter deck is the Howling Frost Giant. This guy reduces the defense of all opposing units, avatars, and abilities on the turn you play him. He's also got Frenzy, so include him in your plans along with the frenzied Barbarians in your deck.

We haven't even mentioned the items and tactics in this starter, but let's just say they help reinforce the themes of readying cards and provide some cool surprises for your opponents. The Eluviel Priest Starter Deck is a solid quester backed up by quality units you can use for defense or frenzy 'em up for an awesome attack.

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