Test Subject

Test Subject is a rare priest minion card, from The Boomsday Project set.

Strategy
Test Subject is a useful supplemental card for decks that rely on the Divine Spirit/Inner Fire combo and minion buffs cards in general. While normally you need to save those cards for a huge damage burst, Test Subject lets you use these cards on a weaker minion without wasting valuable resources. In Wild, you can use Radiant Elemental, Embalming Ritual, and Topsy Turvy to perform an infinite loop to cycle through your entire deck, an effective combo for Nomi Priest decks.

OTK Combo
Test Subject enables numerous OTK combos, one variant involving Stonetusk Boars and Divine Spirits. Other variants include using one Regenerate and an Auchenai Phantasm, or using one Flash Heal and an Auchenai Phantasm (Wild-only). This section describes the first variant.

The aforementioned OTK combo generates a bunch of Divine Spirits to be put onto a Stonetusk Boar so that the player can Topsy Turvy it, and using many Vivid Nightmares, generate many high-attack boars with charge. The process might seem complicated, but practice will greatly improve your skills at this combo.

The combo requires the following:
 * At least 7 cards:
 * Test Subject
 * Stonetusk Boar
 * An eligible minion in play on the board also works as a substitute for Stonetusk Boar, though it probably won't have Charge.
 * At least 3 of Radiant Elemental + Vivid Nightmare
 * Can also have at least one each of Radiant Elemental, Vivid Nightmare, and Seance
 * At least 1 of Divine Spirit
 * Topsy Turvy
 * At least enough mana
 * 7 mana if you have 4 Radiant Elemental + Vivid Nightmare
 * 8 mana if you have 4 Radiant Elemental + Vivid Nightmare + Seance
 * 9 mana if you have 3 Radiant Elemental + Vivid Nightmare
 * 10 mana if you have 3 Radiant Elemental + Vivid Nightmare + Seance
 * At least 7 hand space; the more the better
 * At least 6 board space if the enemy has Taunt minions, or at least 5 board space if the enemy has no Taunts.
 * If there are enemy Taunt minions, then total enemy minion health must be greater than the total number of Vivid Nightmares you must throw away to complete your combo, of course taking into account Divine Shields and other effects such as if Sylvanas Windrunner, Blackhowl Gunspire, Obsidian Statue, Spider Bomb, Kaboom Bot, or Axe Flinger is the only enemy minion on the field with a Taunt buff.
 * Enemy minions with Taunt must have at least 1 attack if you must throw away Vivid Nightmares to complete your combo.
 * Other effects such as Explosive Trap, Misdirection, Freezing Trap, and Eye for an Eye should be taken into account.

The only trick is to make sure to have enough hand space to take in the number of Vivid Nightmare + Divine Spirit + Topsy Turvy your Test Subject will generate for each iteration of Topsy Turvy + Test Subject, to prevent Topsy Turvy from being destroyed when generated.

The strategy is to decide the number of Divine Spirits you wish to put on the Stonetusk Boar at each iteration. More Divine Spirits means fewer but more powerful boars, and fewer Divine Spirits means a greater number of less powerful boars. Generally you want to hit a sweet spot of using up all your Divine Spirits to generate 64-damage boars, and the rest of your cards should be Vivid Nightmares to duplicate them.

The basic steps (one variation) are as follows:
 * 1) Play the minions Test Subject and 2 Radiant Elementals.
 * 2) On Test Subject, play 1 Divine Spirit, then Vivid Nightmare, then kill it with Topsy Turvy.
 * 3) Play 1 Divine Spirit on Test Subject #2, cast Vivid Nightmare on Test Subject #2, then kill it with Topsy Turvy.
 * 4) Play Stonetusk Boar. Use one of your Vivid Nightmare on Radiant Elemental, then the second one on Test Subject #3.
 * 5) From this point on, Use all your Divine Spirits on Stonetusk Boar then all but one copy of Vivid Nightmare on the Boar and kill it off by trading it into a minion. Then, copy the Test Subject then kill it to restock. If after killing a Test Subject you have 10 cards (from an empty hand), that is when you must stop.
 * 6) Use Topsy Turvy on Stonetusk Boar to flip its stats. Copy it with Vivid Nightmares to break through any necessary Taunts. Hit face for lethal after clearing everything away.

You can simulate and try out the combo for yourself at this website: Combo Priest online simulator

For reference, each turn in Hearthstone lasts a maximum of 75 seconds (1:15). Note that card animations take time to complete and will decrease the amount of time available to complete the combo; for example, waiting for cards that Topsy Turvy generates, summoning boars using Vivid Nightmares, and activating secrets such as Explosive Trap and Wandering Monster.

Trivia
Test Subject's flavor text is a reference to Leper Gnome.

Patch changes

 * Added.