Dragon Paladin Deck – Descent of Dragons

Our Heartstone Dragon Paladin Deck List Guide is an early look at this archetype for the Descent of Dragons! We're running this back with even more Dragon synergy for the class in this expansion, so we'll see if Blizzard has given Paladin enough resources to make it happen this time.

If you aren't an old school Hearthstone player, then you might not remember the first attempt at Dragon Paladin. The class got Dragon Consort in the Blackrock Mountain adventure, which was seen as a strong piece of the puzzle. We also got the very strong neutral Blackwing Corruptor to work with. While these weren't enough, One Night in Karazhan came around and added some more support in Nightbane Templar , Book Wyrm , and Netherspite Historian . Unfortunately, even with all of that Dragon support in those early expansions it was never enough to bring the deck high into the meta.

Dragon Paladin Deck List

Here's a first look at a possible Dragon Paladin deck in Descent of Dragons:

We're likely to see some changes to the archetype in the future, we'll be updating this list and guide with more popular versions once they are revealed!

Dragon Paladin Mulligan Guide

Always Keep

• Cathedral Gargoyle - This card is the key to the early game. Getting both Taunt and Divine Shield on turn two will be your savior against aggressive decks.
• Faerie Dragon - Solid early game minion that has the Dragon tag and can be somewhat problematic to remove for our opponent if they don't have a board.
• Bronze Explorer - Stats are on the low side, but with Lifesteal and a Battlecry that gets us a Dragon this is a really high quality card.
• Dragonrider Talritha - Strong card that can get us a powerful follow-up play if we have a Dragon in hand we can play soon after this dies. Not only does the card get a stat buff, it also gets the same Deathrattle as Talritha. That means we'll get another buff on another Dragon. If our opponent doesn't decide to trade into this, we can potentially have some control over what it buffs.
• Frizz Kindleroost - It's a slow keep but this card is so powerful that we'll want to keep it to give us powerful future turns.

Possible Keeps

• Dragon Breeder - We need value out of this so it generally only works with a 2-drop Dragon that we can coin out and follow it up with this. It can also work as a late game value generator for some of our higher quality Dragon cards.
• Firetree Witchdoctor - We'll need to have a Dragon to make sure we get value out of it.
• Tasty Flyfish - Another card that needs to get value to be useful, so only keep it if we have a Dragon that can receive the buff.
• Nightmare Amalgam - Can be kept if we have a 2-drop already or we need a Dragon.

Play Strategy & Card Combinations

This is more of a midrange deck, and with a lack of 1-drops we're not going to be super fast out of the gate. However, if we can get something like Catehdral Gargoyle on the board early we can fight off aggro fairly effectively. From there, we'll be hoping to hit an early game card with a hand buff or two which should make things difficult for our opponent.

We're mostly looking to fight on board for control against aggro, and stick a minion each turn against slower decks to beat them down. This deck has high potential to get out of control with big cheap minions if you can combine hand buffs from Dragonrider Talritha and Dragon Speaker . We can reduce the cost of a large amount of the cards in our deck if we can land Frizz Kindleroost onto the board early in the game.

The Dragon options in this decks are pretty versatile and strong. Amber Watcher is a pretty powerful card, and should save us against aggressive decks. We get a targeted 8-health to give, and while we'll normally be restoring our life, it can also be used on minions. Big Ol' Whelp is the new Arcane Drake and provides us with a strong body and a card. We've also got Evasive Wyrm that can remove a minion for free and be hard to remove due to it not being targetable by spells.

Card Substitutions

If you don't have the cards listed, don't worry about it! There's a lot of different stuff you can toss into the deck to make it workable. In the early meta, most people are trying different things out so you are encouraged to experiment.

• Sand Breath - Not a bad buff card, but it might not be a big enough of a buff to make the deck.
• Scalerider - This could be a great card for getting a 2-for-1, but you have to watch your Dragon synergy and actual Dragon ratios. This could replace Tasty Flyfish pretty easily because that's a card that isn't for sure going to make the final list.
• Consecration - If the deck starts to lean slower, we could use the board clearing power of this spell.
• Twilight Drake - This deck is a bit too fast to support Twilight Drake, but it could go in a more late game focused version.
• Zandalari Templar - With the Amber Watcher in the deck, it's not too hard to find a way to get us to that 10 Health mark. Flash of Light could be another option for a slower version of this deck that would fit the bill.
• Dragonmaw Scorcher - Decent AOE but this would largely be reliant on running Equality which is not so great after the nerf.