Starval's Guide to Building Your Zhanna Deck

[jonmaciel]

This guide is intended to teach new and experienced players about deck strategy with Zhanna. We'll discuss optimal cards and values of cards based on their combinations. There are many choices to creating a deck but we'll stick with the basics and the standard 40 card deck (Hero + 39).

1. Staples

There are several cards I consider "staples" for a Zhanna deck. And they are as follows:

• 4x Focused Prayer (FP) - powerful item removal
• 4x Tidal Wave (TW) - quick board wipe, opponents look for TW so it lets you dictate the pace of ally play
• 3x The King's Pride (KP) - finisher. I plan for 1 to be sac'd, 1 to be destroyed, and 1 for play.
• 4x Devoted Knight (DK) - gives resource on death. KP is our finisher and expensive to play. So we want resources to get there quickly.

2. Card Draw

We'll discuss card draw. In the current state of the game, Zhanna needs powerful draw to keep up with the landscape. Zhanna card draw is commonly referred to as her "constellation." Here's how it works. First, choose one of the following:

• 4x Glass Chalice of Knowing (GCoK)
• 4x Wizent's Staff (WS)

Second, based on that first choice, we put in:

• 2x GCoK OR 2x WS
• 2x Elizabeth Winterborn (EW)
• 2x Tainted Oracle (TO)

Personally, I like the versatility and strength of GCoK in choosing which card I draw even at the cost of slower draw. Today's game is more about the quality of the draw more than the quantity. So I'll go with that. So our constellation becomes:

4x GCoK
|
2x WS
|
2x EW
|
2x TO

3. Board Control

On the topic of board control, there are two options to consider to be the most effective:

• 4x Retreat - can be used offensively to slow down their ally play or defensively to save an ally from death or remove an enemy attachment
• 4x Zail's Hymn (ZH) - can only be used offensively however your opponent cannot simply replay the ally. the ally can still defend, still has its passive abilities, and can still use active abilities.

4. Mid Game Ally

We already have DK as a 3cc ally but we need a second. The most optimal would be one of the following:

• 4x Jasmine Rosecult (Jas) - can prevent an opp ally from attacking for 2cc
• 4x Sindarok Apprentice (Sind) - does 2 arcane dmg when entering combat with opp ally when he's your only ally

5. Fat Ally

We need a fatty to put good pressure on the board. I've narrowed down this to two choices to be the most optimal:

• 4x Braxnorian Soldier (Brax) - negates opp haste
• 4x Raven Wildheart (Raven) - opp ally that she attacks is reduced to 0 base atk

6. Support Ally

We should add a support ally into the mix. The best choice depends on your above choices which I'll discuss shortly. I found the most optimal to be:

• 2x Champion of Irum (Champ) - can be boosted up to 3/5 if two or more 3cc+ opp allies are in play
• 2x Aeon Stormcaller (Aeon) - protector, boost ally for 3cc

7. Combination Values

So we have a lot of optimal choices that we can make. But the best flow all depends mostly on your preferred board control option. Let's go over that.

If you choose 4x Retreat:

With Retreat, we're counting on bouncing allies off the board frequently between Retreat and TW. This means Champs stats will not be something we can count so he looses his value for us. As such, Aeon becomes a more valuable support ally who's particularly useful against enemy attachments and abilities and is nice for protecting EW. Without Champ, Sind's value goes up because we know we will not have a 2cc ally in play in the early game if we have him in hand. So we like him as our Mid Game Ally. As previously stated about Retreat, the opponent can simply replay that ally so we will eventually need a way to neutralize it. Our amount of TWs is limited so Raven becomes a more valuable fatty than Brax here.

If you choose 4x ZH:

With ZH, our primary board control will be to lock up the opposing allies. Using it appropriately, we should see some strong opp allies locked out. This means we're very likely to see Champ as a 2/4 or 3/5 ally giving him very good value as a 2cc ally. So we'll use him as our support ally. With Champ in our deck, there's a chance that we'll see him in play early. This decreases the value of Sind since he needs to be your only ally on the board early to be most effective. As such, we'll choose Jas here since alone or not, her value does not change and her locking ability can help boost Champ as well. Since ZH and Jas are locking up single allies, this reduces the use of Raven so we use Brax as our fatty who's particularly nice in the current meta of hasted allies.

8. Two Standard Decks

From our Staples and Combination Values, this gives us essentially two standard decks to try out that should play out very consistently. The strength lies upon your preference for style of play.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FIRST DECK

http://deck.shadowera.net/fates/show...4a4e45k4535d25

Allies -18-

• 4x Sind
• 4x DK
• 2x EW
• 2x TO
• 4x Raven
• 2x Aeon

Abilities -12-

• 4x Retreat
• 4x FP
• 4x TW

Items -9-

• 4x GCoK
• 2x WS
• 3x KP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SECOND DECK

http://deck.shadowera.net/fates/show...a4zt45k4535d25

Allies -18-

• 2x Champ
• 4x Jas
• 4x DK
• 2x EW
• 2x TO
• 4x Brax

Abilities -12-

• 4x ZH
• 4x FP
• 4x TW

Items -9-

• 4x GCoK
• 2x WS
• 3x KP

9. Summary

I hope you enjoyed this guide to get you started in the right direction in playing with Zhanna. There are other variations to building around these decks that you may find preferential such as including: Healing Touch, Forgiveness, Book of Curses, etc. When using TW, its important to remember the Rule of 5. Its a standard rule that priest players have been following for some time for effective use of TW to be when the sum of opposing ally attack values is equal to or greater than 5. Never sac more than 1 KP. Remember, we are planning for one to be destroyed so we want the second for play later. I hope you enjoy playing with Zhanna for as long as I have!

[jonmaciel]

Guide to Build Your Zhanna Deck: Oathbreaker's Edition

I figured I'd include this here. Let's use the guide to build our Oathbreakers Zhanna deck.

1. Staples

First step is our staples. This doesn't change.

4x Focused Prayer (FP)
4x Tidal Wave (TW)
3x The King's Pride (KP)
4x Devoted Knight (DK)

2. Card Draw

Here is where we saw some changes. I'm going to take out EW in favor of listing Ghostmaker (GM) is a form of draw. There's only 2 GM because we need some allies in our graveyard for it to become useful. TO becomes our 4 slot because of the nature of GM. Our goal for main draw is to eventually start cycling TO. However, if GM is late to show up, we still have some GCoK and WS to complete our constellation.

4x Tainted Oracle (TO)
||
2x Wizent's Staff (WS)
||
2x Glass Chalice of Knowing (GCoK)
||
2x Ghostmaker (GM)

3. Board Control

For Oathbreakers, I'm going to choose Retreat as my board control. The combination of Retreat with GM can easily cause your opp to panic and overfill his board right into a TW.

4x Retreat

4. Mid Game Ally

With no early allies, the choice of SA was an obvious one for me. And even if he's your only ally on the board brought back via GM, he's ability will still make him effective in that role.

4x Sindarok Apprentice (SA)

5. Fat Ally

With our Oathbreaker, we're changing this up a bit. Instead of 4x some fatty, we're going to split it between EP and Aeon. The implication of cycling them with GM later should be an obvious one.

2x Earthen Protector (EP)
2x Aeon Stormcaller (Aeon)

6. Support Ally

This is going to be a bit different too. Because I'm not using Jas, Raven, or ZH, I wanted another way to make the opp allies less threatening. So we're going to use Book here. It's also commonly used to slow down rush decks. So using Book with Retreat so greatly help in the early game.

2x Book of Curses (Book)

7. Deck

Now that we've sorted everything out in the guide, we now have our deck.

***HERO***
Zhanna Mist

***Allies (16)***
4x Tainted Oracle
2x Earthen Protector
2x Aeon Stormcaller
4x Devoted Knight
4x Sindarok Apprentice

***Abilities (12)***
4x Tidal Wave
4x Focused Prayer
4x Retreat!

***Items (4)***
2x Book of Curses
2x Glass Chalice of Knowing

***Armors (3)***
3x The King's Pride

***Weapons (4)***
2x Wizent's Staff
2x Ghostmaker

TOTAL: 39 cards + Hero

http://deck.shadowera.net/fates/show...4e452j2535d225

8. Summary

You'll notice the lack of Healing Touch in our Oathbreaker deck. The original Oathbreaker did not use any 3cc allies so 4x Book and 4x HT was vital to survive the early game. HT also combo'd with Knight of the Golden Dawn. You'd bring back KoGD with GM and heal it up with HT, healing Zhanna in the process. Once you have TO cycling started, you should be able to easily start freeing up SE to use for healing. That's why including 2x GCoK was important. It helps get you moving in the right direction when your starting draw isn't what you want.

The structure of this deck makes it so you aren't relying on GM to show up right away. KP is still your finisher. You still have plenty of board control. You still have the same basic rules.

- Only sac 1 KP
- Rule of 5 (don't forget to account for Book if it's in play, meaning you can afford to wait a little while longer than you normally would)
- You can sac EP/Aeon (since GM can bring them back later it's ok to sac one of each them early if you need to)
- Armor destro takes priority (GM only has 1 atk meaning any armor can stop you from using it. So if you expect armors to drop, save FP for that. The clear exceptions to this are allies like Amber, Gwen, Serena, etc)

All in all, I hope this style of Oathbreakers works out for you!

[FDL]

I'd say my core Zhanna cards would be:

4x Devoted Knight
3x Tainted Oracle
3x Elizabeth Winterborn

2-3x Focused Prayer
4x Tidal Wave
4x Zail's Hym

4x Glass Chalice of Knowing
3x King's Pride

That's pretty close to your list. I'm not a super big item destruction fan so despite FP's power level, I only carry a couple.

I like the additional TO/Lizzie copies because they are by far my favorite T4 plays. Wizent's Staff has the advantage of comboing with Devoted Knight to deal 4 damage which can certainly be interesting but most wins will come from a KP boosted army so having a few more dudes can be interesting. Plus, DK rarely makes it to T4 and that's not his role anyway.

That leaves 11-12 open slots. My usual choices so far have been:

Sindarok Apprentice is great on the play and after a Tidal Wave when combo'd with Hymn (or by itself with 8+ resouces) and it's a beast with KP.

Aeon is like extra KPs and synergizes well with the win condition.

Mystic of the Vale gives an alternate win condition with Zail's Hymn. It looks like a fragile combo but it's actually pretty easy to set up. Apprentice into Mystic into Hymn loop can win games on turn 5. Knight+TO+Wave+Mystic & Loop on T6 can win games right then and there.

I'll admit I haven't played that build in a while and there weren't as many Mages around (which isn't a great matchup).

I guess Champion of Irum, Spirit Warden and Braxnorian Soldier might be a better lineup for the current metagame.

[jonmaciel]

Great feedback FDL! I do like Champ, Warden, and Brax as well, these can easily be swapped into the deck as you know. I like to keep 4z FPs around so even tho I may only use 2 or 3, I like to have extra for sac purposes when the game starts out without feeling like I'll be short later. And yes DK is not intended to survive long and frankly I don't like it when he survives too long. Means resources are taking longer to build.

Zhanna is such a fun hero to play but because of the wide variety of cards to choose from - priest probably have the largest variety to choose from - it can be a daunting task for people who aren't used to playing her to get started. Then from there they can decide if they like having Warden in the deck, or less WS, and more TO/EW. With Zhanna, there's no way to know what kind of deck you want until you start playing it.

[oggtheman]

We all know the way to win with zhanna is running 4x boomerang then changing the hero to Threbin

[Bayushi]

Good write up starval. Thanks for sharing.

[hunter3000]

Nice write up indeed. How do you normally handle rush mages?

[jonmaciel]

Nice write up indeed. How do you normally handle rush mages?

In a QM, I probably don't have HT so rush mages are certainly annoying. Basically you only use your SE for draw when you have absolutely have to as you'll probably need the SE for healing. I'd probably start with the Second deck outlined if I suspect I may come across them in order to try to get a Champ out early for starters.

[Sleipnir85]

Hey starval, great writeup! Thanks for that and all your hints and explanations behind each cardchoice.

Most of us know that Zhanna currently is not the best choice of hero in the current meta. But if you had to play her, what would your current list looks like? I am actually playing around with an Oathbreaker version. All those Serenas hanging around could cause some serious headaches I think.

[jonmaciel]

Hey starval, great writeup! Thanks for that and all your hints and explanations behind each cardchoice.

Most of us know that Zhanna currently is not the best choice of hero in the current meta. But if you had to play her, what would your current list looks like? I am actually playing around with an Oathbreaker version. All those Serenas hanging around could cause some serious headaches I think.

Against Serena - you need to go control in a big deck with lots of draw since you dont know what you'll lose. I'm talking FFM, GCoK, WS, EW, and TO all in the deck. 4x FP is a must. Put as many TW, Banish, ZH, and Retreat as you can fit. Chances are your deck will be 50+. Even then, Serena is 50/50 at best. The problem with that route of deck is that decks like rush aramia and discard Zal are just too fast for Zhanna to keep up with. Because of Aramia and Zal, you need 4x HT in your deck just to try and survive. But if you sit back trying to heal, they will just focus your hero. All in all, a really rough time for Zhanna in this meta. Fatties are dispatched a lot easier now plus damage is high and fast. Not good combinations to go up against.