Shrinkmaster - Do you play it or not?

[Deleted]

Hi there! So, before GVG pretty much anyone regarded Shrinkmaster as an insane weapon in the priest's arsenal since it wold allow priests to steal pretty much anything and never again would a minion be safe from Shadow Word:Pain with 4 health. After a few weeks of testing the card since the GVG launch, the card started to fall in terms of consideration and some priests completely removed it from their decks, even Amaz, once a huge defender of the card said that Shrinkmaster is most of the times a dead card in your hand and you never want any of those so he eventually cut them.

I too tested Shrinkmaster and felt that the card was a bit clunky, you can't really play it as a 3/2 most of the times because then you would lose value and other times he simply lies dead in your hand, waiting for a combo that never seems to come. That was until I dueled a priest today and since I haven't seen that many Shrinkmasters around I felt safe playing a Cairne in a duel where I had been ahead the entire time. The combo appears (Shrinkmaster+Cabal Shadowpriest), my Cairne gets stolen and I couldn't recover from there.

Basically with 8 mana the priest silenced my Cairne, destroyed it, played a 4/5, a 3/2 AND played his own Cairne. It's insane. But is it really worth having Shrinkmaster in your deck to wait for games like this where the stars lign up and the opponent plays the best minions possible to combo or is Shrinkmaster really a bit clunky and won't see play in the future? What's your opinion?

[Fluorescent0]

I play one copy of the card, that way it doesn't feel too much of a dead card in the deck.

[Simulacrum]

I think it's a great card, but it's really hard to fit in with so many other important low-mana drops, like chow, pyro, novice, PW:S, smite, pain...

It can be crazy good with cabal on turn 7/8+(like the turn the OP describes), but you need to actually make it there first, and shrinkmaster isn't that great at getting you there against a lot of decks. Usually, in the early game, it's just a vanilla 3/2 for 2, and that's just not good enough.

[Deleted]

The problem with Shrinkmeister combos is that they are too slow and too situational compared to other combos more reliable combos that priest has.

[Solmyr13]

I think he's still good enough to play in decks and still think he's really good. While his combo is turn 7/8, those are the cards you want to take realistically. I don't know of many priest decks that are winning by turn 5 (OR WINNING AT ALL AMIRITE GUISE) so waiting 2 or 3 more turns isn't a bad thing.

I guess a better question would be what else would you play besides Shrinkmeisters?

[Primalthirst]

I was running 1 for quite a while, but I had 2x Cabal, 2x Shadow Madness and 2x Shadow Word: Pain to use it with.
I've temporarily dropped it for Sylvanas because I found it was only really coming into play against control decks and I had plenty of late game removal, whereas I lacked bodies to deal with Yetis and other 4 Atk minions.

[Deleted]

i run 2 atm but i feel like i sacrificed too much early game to include them, ive gotta tweak my deck somehow but the problem is, theres just so much good cards (albeit sometimes situational) for priest idk what to remove ;x

[Raphtheone]

You don't have to combo it with Cabal, you can use it on things like Sunwalker for a quick SW:P, or if you don't have a SW on hand, you can use it on 5-attack minions like Ancient of War so you can SW:P it.

You don't even have to combo it with something, many situations where both have minions on the board it can help you trade favorably, making sure a minion of yours survive a trade and gets healed right after for an even bigger impact. I've found the Priest class to be about bugbites.

[Holdodlig]

It's a really good card IMO. It has great combos and can be like a +2 health for a trade but peoples are too greedy and only want to use it as a combo with cabal / madness.

[McNeil]

I currently use them, I wish I had a second Cabal Shadow Priest for the extra synergy though. Its still incredibly handy to trade with another minion without dying, using it to draw minions into Shadow Word Pain range, and ofc to Cabal MC them. At worst its just a 3/2 for 2.

[Nikkaszal]

I still use two. Very good for midgame trades as well as Cabal/Shadow Madness/SWP.

[Deleted]

I usually just run one now in the deck however, I'm gonna to try experimenting more with Mechs and Spare Parts to try and make it a bit more useful. Getting things like Armor Plates + Reversing Switch could have some interesting knock-on effects for the Shrinkmaster and I haven't really seen much of Mech Priest lately, despite the amazing 5 drop they got in GvG (Upgraded Repair bot I think?)

The entire combo - Shrink - Shadow / Cabal - Recombobulator feels very very clunky to pull off but definitely worth it in any control scenario.