Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started!
- Budget Standard Standard C’Thun Druid
- Budget Standard Midrange Hunter
- Budget Standard C’Thun Mage
- Budget Standard  Aggro Paladin
- Budget Standard C’Thun Priest
- Budget Standard C’Thun Rogue
- Budget Standard Midrange Shaman
- Budget Standard Zoo WarlockÂ
- Budget Standard Combo Warrior
Introduction
Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I run HearthstoneCoaching.com where our coaches have helped many students achieve the same.
Whether you’re a newer player, or an experienced one who just wants to find the most efficient way to spend your cash or in-game gold, you can never go wrong by investing in Hearthstone’s single player expansions. Both The Curse of Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain have provide unique and useful cards that cannot be unlocked anywhere else. This is the Paladin Hearthstone Deck.
My Blackrock Mountain decks are a new series of guides where I try to construct the most  effective Hearthstone decks I can for each class, with only one contraint — that I only use cards from the Basic, Naxxramas, and Blackrock Mountain card sets.
These 0 dust decks are meant to help newer players kickstart their Hearthstone journey, by providing unique and viable decks that can be used against friends and foe on casual or ladder (though you may want to check out the upgrade section at the end of each guide to get further on the ladder).
Deck Playstyle
Dragons! With the release of Blackrock Mountain, Dragons have become a class, and thanks to the release of dragon-consort, it’s absolutely viable to build a deck around these flying fire-breathers.
This decks plays very much like a midrange Paladin deck. The advantage from Dragon synergy comes from the the ability to play blackwing-technician early as a 3/5, and to gain tempo over your opponent in late game, by playing two mid-game Dragons on the same turn thanks to dragon-consort‘s battlecry.
Naturally, to make space for all these new Dragon cards, we’ve had to remove a few of my favorite cards from our old version of the deck, and senjin-shieldmasta and sludge-belcher are no longer in the deck. Because of this, you’ll want to be extra-vigilent when it comes to playing against aggro decks, and may even want to consider holding onto consecration early.
Minions – 24
2x zombie-chow
- The Zombie Chow is strictly an early game minion used to pressure your opponent’s board early. The goal of casting a Zombie Chow onto the board early is to trade with your opponent’s more expensive minions before its deathrattle becomes a liability. There’s very little downside to killing off your own Zombie Chow when your opponent is close to full health, but playing him later in the game might just put your opponent out of reach if he has a way to deal with it.
2x acidic-swamp-ooze
- The Ooze is a great little card that has an incredible battlecry against more than half the classes in the game (Hunter, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior). His 3/2 body for 2 mana passes the Vanilla Test, and there’s no downside to playing him even if the battlecry doesn’t destroy a weapon.
2x haunted-creeper
- This spider is our counter to aggressive decks that like to drop multitudes of 1 health minions. He’s a mini harvest-golem that spawns two 1/1 tokens instead of a single 2/1 token. The spawned tokens become nice targets for buffs.
2x blackwing-technician
- The Blackwing Technician is generally amazing in our deck because with the chances you’ll have a Dragon at any point in the game is very high. 3 mana for a 3/5 is just insane value.
2x shattered-sun-cleric
- 3 mana for 3/2 isn’t mana efficient, but the battlecry more than makes up for it. The downside is that if you don’t have a minion on the board, this card suffers.
- The ideal scenario is to play this on the same turn a minion you control can trade with something equal in value and survive, or can trade up to kill something more expensive.
2x dragonkin-sorcerer
- There’s nothing particularly special about the Dragonkin Sorcerer, as it’s not always likely that you’ll be able to target him with a spell, but 4 mana for a 3/5 is fair and the fact that he’s a Dragon synergizes with the other cards in our deck.
2x hungry-dragon
- 4 mana for a 5/6 on paper is totally insane, but the battlecry can be a significant drawback if you don’t have ways to deal with the minion that spawns. Just be sure to do the trades on the board that you want to do before you play the Hungry Dragon, as it’s possible for him to spawn a taunt like shieldbearer or goldshire-footman for your opponent. Overall, though the Hungry Dragon is a good card.
2x dragon-consort
- The Dragon Consort is an amazing card for our deck, and synergizes perfectly for our Dragons. This card can be an insane tempo swing later in the game, and his stat distribution is very nice. The Consort is what makes like chromaggus and nefarian much more playable in our deck.
2x blackwing-corruptor
- You guys convinced me to include this one! After looking at feedback from readers, I’ve dropped blessing-of-kings to include the Blackwing Corruptor. He’s a Dragon is almost fire-elemental. A really nice inclusion to this deck.
1x loatheb
- Loatheb is an amazing card… when played correctly. 5 mana for a 5/5 is fair, but it’s Loatheb’s ability to shutdown opponent’s spells that makes him so valuable. Play Loatheb on turn 6 before a mage can cast flamestrike on turn 7 and he’ll win you the game.
2x drakonid-crusher
- In a deck without Dragons, I’d prefer the boulderfist-ogre in our deck as when the battlecry doesn’t hit, the Drakonid Crusher dies to a single shot from fireball, and can’t trade with a boulderfist-ogre. However, in our deck the Dragon synergy means that you might just be able to play him for much cheaper than his casting cost thanks to dragon-consort.
- Also, be sure to plan your turn’s attacks in advance before playing him, as you might miss the potential to bring your opponent below 15 health before casting him on the board.
1x emperor-thaurissan
- While at first glance the Emperor seems overpowered, he’s only truly valuable in decks that have relatively large hand sizes to allow him to reduce the cost of multiple cards on the same turn. When you can tuck him behind a taunt or two, he’s almost impossible to get to and can seriously snowball games for you. The weakness to the Emperor is in situations where you don’t have many cards in your hand and don’t have a board to protect him with, so play him wisely.
1x chromaggus
- For 8 mana, Chromaggus is kind of a win-more card because he requires you to be able to protect him in order to benefit from his ability to duplicate drawn cards. It’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to benefit from this on the same turn you play him. With that said, dragon-consort is what makes chromaggus viable, because he’s an amazing card if you only have to pay 6 mana for him.
1x nefarian
- Nefarian is a ridiculously expensive Legendary Dragon with a ridiculous battlecry as well. With dragon-consort it’s entirely possible bring Nefarian out on turn 7, giving you more opportunities to play the spells you gain from his battlecry in following turns. Sometimes the spells you can get from Nefarian are awesome, other times not so much, he’s always fun to play.
Spells – 3
1x blessing-of-might
- The Blessing of Might provides us with a bit of reach and also something to trigger dragonkin-sorcerer‘s passive ability on.
2x consecration
- Basic Paladin’s only board clearing card. Especially useful against aggressive decks. With board control, your cheaper minions can clean up whatever consecration wasn’t able to eliminate outright.
Weapons – 3
1x lights-justice
- While Light’s Justice may look puny, this weapon is pretty insane for tempo if you can bring it out early in the game. 1 mana for 4 damage distributed over multiple targets is great. This deck doesn’t include two Light’s Justices because it can be awkward holding onto two of them in the same hand, you’ll just never be able to play one of them in that situation.
2x truesilver-champion
- blessing-of-kings, consecration, and truesilver-champion are all incredibly valuable Paladin cards that cost 4 mana to play. truesilver-champion may be the best of the bunch though. Often-times it’s 8 damage for 4 mana which incredibly valuable. It’ll eliminate up to two mid-game threats.
Blackrock Mountain Improvements
blackwing-technician- Replaces shade-of-naxxramas. In general this card is pretty amazing, as most of the time it’ll be 3 mana for a 3/5.
- This is a bit of a flex spot to be honest. This deck’s primary weakness is that it doesn’t have any taunts, making it a bit hard to slow the game down against faster decks. It might be worth experimenting to see if senjin-shieldmasta does better here, but we’re including the Sorcerer for his synergy with dragon-consort and blackwing-technician.
- Hungry Dragon gets the most value out of our Paladin deck than any of our other decks due to the class synergy. Again the drawbacks of this card remain, as the 1 mana minion spawned for your opponent can be difficult to deal with, especially against more aggressive decks that seek to deal as much damage to you as early as possible.
- Dragon Consort is probably the MVP of this deck. It’s what makes it actually worth playing Dragons, and really the only reason why Paladin is the only Dragon class we have. The lower mana cost of your next Dragon extends to Dragons you draw, so it’s a really unique and powerful ability that can give you a tremendous amount of tempo in mid to late game. The downside is that we lose out on sludge-belcher which is one of the best cards we had against aggro decks.
- You guys convinced me to include this one! After looking at feedback from readers, I’ve dropped blessing-of-kings to include the Blackwing Corruptor. He’s a Dragon is almost fire-elemental. A really nice inclusion to this deck.
- With the plethora of utility spells and weapons at a Paladin’s disposal, emperor-thaurissan makes sense as you’ll generally have a larger hand size towards the end of games.
- Not as good as nefarian in our deck, but has pretty decent synergy with dragon-consort. The stat distribution is quite nice as it dodges the-black-knight and big-game-hunter. If you can keep him alive for more than one turn, you’ve probably won the game.
- An amazing card, especially if you can play him earlier than turn 9. Provides a great deal of versatility from the spells you’ll gain and has the finishing power in the 8/8 stats to win you games.
Mulligan Guide
In general, you want to mulligan so that you can put out minions on your first three turns. If you’re going second, feel free to keep a single 4 mana minion so that you can coin it out on turn 3. Coining out a minion on turn 3 is actually a significant tempo boost, as a card like chillwind-yeti can be used to trade against at least two lower cost minions.
Cards to Keep
- 1 Mana: lights-justice, zombie-chow
- 2 Mana: acidic-swamp-ooze, haunted-creeper
- 3 Mana: shattered-sun-cleric, blackwing-technician
- 4 Mana: consecration (if you suspect your opponent is playing an aggro deck)
Remember, you want to plan out your first three turns with your opening hand, so if you already have a 1 mana and 2 mana minion, you should mulligan away your remaining card or two to dig for a play on turn 3.
Upgrades
Here are a few cards that will improve your deck.
- Minions: shielded-minibot, aldor-peacekeeper, azure-drake, tirion-fordring, dr-boom, ysera
- Spells: equality, muster-for-battle
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the guide to our Blackrock Mountain Dragon Paladin deck. As always I’d be happy to answer questions from you in the comments section. 🙂
Coaching Lessons
If you’re interested in reaching Legend rank, or earning unlimited gold from arena, my team at HearthstoneCoaching.com would love to help! We’ve provided over a thousand hours of excellent coaching to students around the world. 
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