High Priest Thekal


 * ''For the boss of the same name, see High Priest Thekal (boss).

High Priest Thekal is a legendary paladin minion card, from the Rastakhan's Rumble set.

Strategy
This card is a powerful inclusion in any Paladin deck that runs healing. By converting almost your entire Health to Armor it allows you to "overheal" with healing cards that could often go to waste if you have little opportunities to take damage, whether if it's from being ahead on board or lacking a weapon and enemy minions to trade into. With Thekal, you can get a much earlier head start in getting the full value out of heals, which is especially relevant for cards that synergize with healing such as Lesser Pearl Spellstone and Zandalari Templar. In addition, as a vanilla 3-mana 3/4 it has solid base stats that can fit into curve easily.

In Wild, this card lets you play free Molten Giants as early as turn 3 without any downsides incurred. It can also be exceptionally powerful with Reno Jackson, converting all your health into armor, then allowing Reno to restore your health back to maximum.

One should be very cautious of playing High Priest Thekal if they expect the opponent to have a Platebreaker, which can outright lose the game for them if they haven't gotten the chance to heal off most of the converted Health afterwards.

Lore

 * '' was the High Priest of the Shirvallah, the god tiger. In order to quell Hakkar the Soulflayer, the trolls of the land banded together and sent a contingent of High Priests into the ancient city of . Each priest was a powerful champion of the Primal Gods, but despite their best efforts they fell under the sway of Hakkar. Now the champions and their Primal God aspects feed the awesome power of the Soulflayer. Any adventurers brave enough to venture into the foreboding ruins must overcome the High Priests if they are to have any hope of confronting the mighty blood god.

In Hearthstone lore, Thekal serves as the champion of Shirvallah's Tigers, the paladin team in Rastakhan's Rumble. The last time the Rumble was held, Thekal secured victory for Shirvallah's Tigers by clinching the final against Gral's Sharks.
 * This master fighter is a fan favorite! Wielding the as a weapon, he can use his healing energy in ways Paladins haven't seen before. Confident to a fault, Thekal moves almost as quickly as he talks, dancing around his opponents for the crowd.

Trivia

 * Thekal was originally designed as a 3-mana 3/1 minion with the effect "Damage dealt to this minion is dealt to your hero instead". While this version of Thekal was fun to use, it was also found to be really frustrating to play against since it made the card essentially impossible to remove. The effect was eventually moved to the Rumble Run card Gloryseeker; as Peter Whalen explains, the effect fit perfectly as a Mission card since "the AI doesn't feel bad but you still get to feel really smart".

Patch changes

 * Added.