Brews to Play…. IN THE FUTURE – All Hail the Dragons!

Introduction

I bet you didn’t see this coming, did you? Of course you did!

With a new Standard format just around the corner it is just too obvious that we need to start discussing post-rotation decks.

Sure, there will be another expansion coming with the rotation, but regardless of the expansion we have to start looking at possible decks, and not even that: Decks that will be strong regardless of a new expansion.

There is an obvious place to start all the brewing, and that place is Blackrock Mountain’s Enabled Dragon Strategy. The Dragon Strategy was first introduced with Blackrock Mountain adventure mode but wasn’t very strong at the time, it was only after The Grand Tournament came out that Dragon Priest became a thing.

After the announcement of the rotation and Standard format, I went to check which cards were going to be the best in every slot, and to my surprise Dragons have the best cards in almost every slot in the game (1-2-3-4-5-7-9 Best in Slot cards) – Because of this, creating Dragon-Oriented decks for a post-rotation metagame seems to be the go-to start point for deck builders.

Shaman

Let’s start with the less obvious builds and then move on to the more obvious ones. Dragon Shaman was a deck that was made possible after LoE but soon dropped because of an aggro metagame and more powerful decks.

However, with the possible slowdown of the meta, and the fact Shaman is indeed a good anti-control class overall, now would be a good time to give that Dragon Shaman another spin.

Something cool to note is how the doomsayer was a good card to enable volcanic-dragon, and how we can apply this strategy to other classes if need be.

Top 100 was already achieved with a very similar list (but using a couple of cards that are rotating out), so I think that this is a very nice starting place for Dragon Shaman to make its wake. This list consists of a huge arsenal of board sweepers, removal and some powerful Dragons to take over the game. The thing I might miss a lot is neptulon which was one of those Legends capable of winning the game on its own, however we still have a whole expansion to fill a couple slots on and the lists posted here are just preparation paintings for a much bigger picture.

Paladin

The million dollar question here is if Dragon Paladin will, or will not, be better than Murloc Paladin. I will let you know right now that this is very unlikely, but since we’re losing both sludge-belcher as well as antique-healbot there is a possibility that this happens, and in case it does, we’ll have the edge because we already crossed that bridge.

So, this list is very, veeery similar to what Control Paladin was pre-Naxx, this is also very similar to Anyfin Paladin nowadays. I have to confess I took the base from the Murloc Paladin, but after looking at it I saw how similar it was to old Control Paladin. This time, we have the comeback of the long missed guardian-of-kings, we just still don’t know if we should play one or two guardians, keep in mind tuskarr-jouster is also a possibility if you’re in to RNG (which I personally am not).

This is a deck that aims at wiping the opposing board more than once and taking advantage of stuff dying, either dropping 6/4s (that now are a lot more powerful than they were when they were first released, since there is no piloted-shredder anymore) or drawing cards, or BOTH!

A possible card you could aim at getting is justicar-trueheart if the field goes nuts-control, since it has been proven multiple times that it literally win games alone versus Control.

Warrior

And now to the decks I believe have the biggest chance of dominating the metagame post-rotation, we start with the almighty Warrior Dragon Control Midrange.

 

When I first started trying to make a Dragon Control deck I ended up noticing how much the deck wanted to curve, and that hurts a lot of the armor gain, so in the end I noticed how it was just better to simply let go of all the Control aspects of the deck.

It is still uncertain if Midrange is going to be better than Control, because there are a lot of things we simply can’t predict, including metagame and how are the meta decks going to match against each other, but this is another fine point for you to start your playtests I am sure of it.

Priest

And now to the almighty Dragon Priest. If you want a build that will, for sure, work after the rotation, this is the one for you.

Dragon Priest is going to be huge post-rotation, it not only has the strongest minions of each and every curve in the game post-rotation, it also is already playable even now!

This is a very powerful deck but I don’t have to tell you all this anymore, do I?

Dragon Priest is going to be the powerful deck start the new Standard, but the other classes listed here all have some serious Dragon potential and should be kept an eye on.

I do even need to tell you how this deck works? Control the board by always playing better minions than your opponent, making trades and healing your dudes back up for full value, then win because your plays were better than your opponents. I also took the liberty of adding an OTK combo to it in case it becomes a thing, but the OTK portion might be weak now that velens-chosen is gone

Conclusion

And this is it for my announcement-week Dragon-spam lists. I hope this was cool enough that you guys enjoyed reading, and I also hope that we might be able to play Standard very very soon as I am very tired of this skill-less metagame *sadface*

I love you guys, I will be posting some more non-Dragon lists very soon, but first i’ll make our weekly Decks to Play article (the normal one!) for the present!

Byes, Daddy loves you,

Nuba

---