Hearthpwn

This is a carefully calculated deck, designed to give you the upper hand in trading blows. Our goal is simple, out trade the enemy and exhaust their hand of cards by forcing them to use removals on threats that are cheap for you to play but slightly too strong for them to ignore. Our 2nd goal is to set up an Inner Fire combo as soon as possible to seal the win.

The perfect start is a turn 1 Twilight Whelp because the enemy can't waste removal on it, but also can't easily ignore it because it will probably trade into 2 of their 1drops or 1 of their 2drops, either way it's a tempo lose for them. Now if you mull Northshire Cleric instead of Whelp, note that you will have just enough cards to keep the pressure on without needing to draw off the 1st Cleric you play. This means, if you have a choice to either draw a card or play a card early, use your mana to play a card. The tempo is more important than the card draw. The exception is, if you can kill something, save the Cleric against any foreseeable threat on the board with a heal and draw at the same time. But most of the time, dropping a new minion early is the more correct line of play. The worst thing that can happen with Dragon Chapter is, you hold too many cards and don't have the hp to sustain face damage because you didn't establish enough board early.

Turn 2 is the turn for Wyrmrest Agent, Power Word: Sheild or playing another Twilight Whelp. Try to play the curve as best you can, this means playing Agent is better than buffing a 1drop with Power Word (assuming you can get the Agent's battlecry effect). Please note that we do not play an Agent naked, it's practically worthless to us without being a 2/4 taunt.

At turn 3 you might have a lot of choices because we are running many 3mana cards. As a rule of thumb, the best play is Velen's Chosen if it saves a minion from dying in a trade. If instead, you have the choice to play either a Deathlord or a Dark Cultist from your hand, try to play the Cultist first. This is because Cultist can potentially deathrattle buff the next card you play, Deathlord for instance.

At turn 4 and up, if you have the choice to play the Twilight Drake or the Twilight Guardian, go with the Guardian because the Twilight Drake can only become stronger as you gain more cards and there's less chance that the enemy could devastate our tempo with a silence. Silence on Drake isn't so bad if we have something else on the board, but it can be a game breaker if the Drake was our only board and got silenced.

Against Aggro Spam decks, do not despair if they over take the board. Since your cards are more powerful and curve into the later game, there's a good chance you can retake the board a few turns later. The important thing is to get value out of the battlecrys. You are going to have a bad time if you play too many naked Twilight Whelps or Agents. It's better to cycle cards even with something like a Cleric + Power Word or Cultist + Power Word. Once you have a Dragon in hand, you can start dumping things all at once. Within reason, don't worry about playing into board clears because this deck always has new threats to play.

Against Aggro Face decks, heal face heal face heal face as much as possible. I can't stress this enough, the number 1 mistake Priest players make vs Face decks is ignoring their hp throughout the first half of the game, and then trying to heal up when it's too late. It's a misplay to keep building a big board against face decks, in hopes of trading with the aggro threats. In fact, you don't even need more than 1 or 2 minions on the board. To make a fat board it not really a great use of mana. In theory it works, but in practice not really because if they are a true face deck, the minions will have charge and you can't stop it with a trade. This means that in the first few turns you spend all your mana playing minions but after that you MUST heal face every turn if at all possible. Sometimes that will mean passing on the chance to play a really good minion, it feels wrong but it's right. I'm telling you, you can't beat a face deck just by developing a stronger board unless you have taunts in hand (in which case you almost can not lose).

Against Control decks, don't over control the board. Make some trades, but if you have the opportunity to smack your enemy in the face for 4 or more dmg, do that instead of trying to clean up some small minion. Remember that every time you attack a small minion threat, you just healed your enemies face for that much damage. Only trade into the threats that can really mess up your board. This means attacking the creeper, harvest golem, web spinner, etc is usually wrong. A lot of players make the mistake of becoming obsessed with always trying to clear the board, clear the board, clear the board. It's not a sin to leave something on the board and sometimes it's better to just draw and pass.

Basically we mulligan for these cards regardless of the enemy: Twilight Whelp, Northshire Cleric, Wyrmrest Agent and Dark Cultist (in that order). We are going to toss back anything that cost more than 3mana. Keeping 2x of any of the above cards is great.

Now, if you have a Twilight Whelp or Northshire Cleric [/card]then you can also keep the [card]Power Word: Shield because you're going to use that on the 1 drop. If you don't have a 1drop then always toss the Power Word.

If you have a Wyrmrest Agent then you can also keep a 4 or 5mana dragon in hand, because it's worth the investment, but don't keep anything higher cost than a Azure Drake. By the way, we don't play a naked Agent, it's better to pass turn and wait for a dragon, unless the situation is very dire.

Note: We try to not use Inner Fire or Divine Spirit until lethal is within sight because once you tip the enemy off, they will put up every defensive counter measure possible to stop us from ever hitting them with a buffed threat. Having said that, there comes a time when using a piece of the combo to stay ahead on tempo is the correct play. For instance let's say you have to use Inner Fire to get the better trade of a minion early and you're running low on cards in hand, it might be the correct play. Don't end up a in helpless situation where you have combo pieces but now the enemy has board and you can't even get a foothold. The combo is simply a secondary win condition, the primary goal is just having better trades throughout the game, so prioritize that first even at the cost to your Inner Fire or Divine Spirit.

The Dragon Chapter deck is very strong vs Aggro Shaman, Tempo Mage, Aggro Mech Mage, Secret Paladin, Mid-Range Paladin, Combo Ramp Druid, Mid-Range Druid, Mill Druid, Tempo Rogue, Mech Rogue, Gang Mill Rogue, and Control Priest. These matchups will yield the highest win ratios once you get the hang of mastering the deck. I recorded an overall 70%+ win ratio against this category of decks.

Dragon Chapter is decent vs Zoolock, Demonlock, Oil Rogue, Mid-Range Hunter and Control Paladin. These matchups recorded a 60%+ win ratio.

Unfortunately all decks have matchups that they are not super great against. Dragon Chapter struggles vs Freeze Mage, Control Warrior, Egg Druid and Murloc Paladin. These decks can be hard to deal with because basically they don't care if we out power their board. They have specific win conditions that can be achieved with doing very little board interaction. In the case of Freeze mage, they will win or lose based solely on rather or not they draw the ice blocks/Alexstrasza early enough. In the case of Control Warrior, they will use weapons and spells to clear our threats until they draw into Justicar and from there just armor up til both players run out of cards, at which point they will win on fatigue. Against Super Late Control Pally, they will have double hard board clear and insane amounts of healing, so don't even think about trying to rush the game. Instead play it slowly, 2-3 minions at a time and make healing those minions your priority. It's a battle of who still has something left to play as the game reaches late. Against Egg Druid, sometimes the board is just too sticky to ever clear and then once they use the soul deathrattle spell, it becomes not a smart idea to even clear their board. All you can really do against Egg Druid is race them to the finish and hope you draw your combo before they do. Against Murloc Paladin, you will usually have complete control of the game but unfortunately sometimes just OTK you with 30+ dmg from an empty board using Anyfin Can Happen at turn 10+. The key there is to keep a taunt up if possible. These are all difficult matchups, so take your loses in stride and don't frit because every deck has it's pros and cons, here I recorded only a 40%+ win ratio.

Obviously, you need to consider the current meta and this information when deciding rather or not you can keep playing this deck. If you are playing against mostly Control Warriors and Freeze Magesm then it's time to change decks for the day. When you are seeing some other deck types then you may play Dragon Chapter. In my experience of playing this deck, I only had to switch a couple of times briefly because I kept running into Freeze Mages for some reason.

May 10, 2015 - Some of the decklist has changed because BRM is now fully released, whereas BRM was only partially released when this deck was designed. Velen's chosen and Shadow Madness were removed because there was way too many cards competing for the 4mana slot which constantly caused a tempo bottleneck at turn 4. New cards were selected to more evenly distribute mana expenditure. Ironbeak Owl was added because we badly needed a silence and a 2mana card, owl was the natural choice.

January 9, 2016 - Major revisions to the decklist and guide have been made to be ladder viable post-LoE. This is currently the v1.3 rendition. The entire deck and strategy has really changed so get familiar with it.