Hearthpwn

*Mega-Update* hey guys, obviously last edit was may 6th for a reason. As I've been trying to make progress on this deck after it's great success int he early stages of WoTOG my final exams in school have come up an stunted any progress. 

This deck is fairly outdated and old, and I would not be surprised if it struggled against most match-ups in this meta. I apologize I couldn't get the video out, soundflowerbed gave me some serious trouble, and I had to focus on school for the rest of the year. (School's ending and I will get back to more time dedicated to hearthstone, but this deck might be retired unless there's a serious demand for it, which I couldn't imagine from the recent complaints on lack of success)

I apologize once again for my busy schedule and I hope u guys don't hate me, and I can come up with some cool innovative new decks that will give you guys great success!

*UPDATE: GUYS GUYS GUYS*
- Big ass edits are coming very soon, just spent all day testing the deck and climbing today (from rank 18-11) with a new and more refined deck list (played a total of 30 games at 83% win rate) and IT KICKS BOOTY

- Most of my losses were to myself, but there are some serious changes to the deck that have happened. Prior to this edit tomorrow, if there's any additions that you guys would like to see to my write-up please comment it ASAP so I can get it ready for tomorrow :) Thank Y'all

*CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO THE DECKLIST! THIS DECK IS FREAKIN AMAZING! LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT ME TO CHANGE THE WRITE-UP A BIT OR ANYTHING U WANNA KNOW**

If you guys are wondering the reason why I amped this deck up so much and made it so FREAKING RIDICULOUS, its cause I was watching Reynad stream for whatever reason, and someone donated asking what he thinks about Dragon Priest, and he said IT SUCKS!!!!

LIKE WHAT!!!!?!??!?. I WAS LIKE WHAT THE F*** YOU M**** ****** C*** SUCKIN PIECE OF S*** with a %**** 

i didn't want to have to do this. But I am now releasing the strongest most insane, meta butt f***ing list of Dragon Priest of all time. This deck is so powerful it scares me. Say hi to the new meta boys. Reynad. Don't you ever disrespect the power of the dragons again... I'm legitimately worried to see my exact list on ladder.

Update over ^_^

(ahead of time, I put a lot of work into this write-up for you guys, so if you can leave me with comments, questions, and a thumbs up I'd appreciate it so much! In past deck lists, I would ask for a thumbs up/like/comment so that I would do a write-up but instead I decided to start it now in hopes you guys show me support and ask for the info you need)

Introduction: (skip this if you want, this was just my thought process in construction)

Alright, as the old Hearthstone saying goes: "If it ain't broke... you probably won't be playing it on ranked mode in constructed."

Alright I'm joking, (even though there's only 5 days left in the season so I decided to skip the extensive experimenting part of a new expansion and save that for the beginning of May). But in all seriousness I had a feeling that the number one contender for every popular deck everywhere in Standard Mode would be the one and only beloved DRAGON PRIEST! *whoop whoop*

Where do I begin with my mindset for this. First of all, after several theorycrafts prior to the release of Whispers of the Old Gods, I noticed one thing. WHERE THE HELL ARE THE 2-Drops!! Seriously where the f*** did they go? 

I was looking around trying to build these decks like:

"hmm I can put Haunted Creeper and Knife Juggler... oh wait their gone"

"at least I can utilize Mad Scientist in this new mage deck, oh wait jk"

"Nerubian Egg seems like a great fit with all the buff cards... oh wait no nevermind"

"can't wait to build Hobgoblin decks with all these new one drops... wait what do you mean it's not in TGT?! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP! GOD DAMMIT MY FAVORITE CARD! BEN BRODE CURSE YOU AND YOUR FREAKING-"

- obviously I'm getting off topic and carried away... (r.i.p. Hobgoblin in Standard).

But seriously! I was thinking about what decks can compete, now that the quality 2 drops are gone, with a deck that utilizes getting board control early and maintaining it with a great hero power and amazing overly buffed stats.

We lost a couple things: Dark Cultist, Velen's Chosen, Lightbomb, but regardless:

DRAGON PRIEST WILL RULE THEM ALL! 

But I genuinely thought that no 2 drops can compete with the beloved [card]Wyrmrest Agent[/card,] and that card alone can make dragon priest compete with the best of them combined with priest's awesome hero power! LITERALLY ITS SO GOOD F*** AGGRO SHAMAN!

Record and Matchups (so far):

 Most of my wins were very one sided and super easy. The times that I have lost were on some of the basic downfalls of Dragon Priest I will be discussing Later. In the end the win percentage ended in 87% and It performed so well I will continue to use it in my climb to legend and had to share it with you guys! ^_^

Card Choices: (ones that are important at least):
New Ones First!:

Shifting Shade: Wow I love this card so much. First of all its a great 4 drop that essentially provides a card draw without actually drawing a card which is great in the slow Warrior C'thun match ups where you want to cut the draws you're making. Though the 4 mana slot has a fair amount of competition (not really), I figured it's a great card because it supports hand advantage while also giving field advantage as well. (sometimes I pull some sick sh** from these things)

Deathwing, Dragonlord: I pulled this in one of my packs and OH MY SWEET BABY JESUS this card took me by surprise. It is so insanely good and has to be dealt with, it threatens insane amounts of damage, but once killed if you have the right stuff in your hand it can easily win you the game. This is also one of the reasons the big dragons I include in this deck are Ysera and Chromaggus, non-battlecry dragon minions that if in-hand on a Deathwing turn will guarantee advantage immediately if your opponent is forced to deal with Deathwing.
           Also, with the nerf and heightened value to silence and removal, the way you want to play this card is obviously when you have the slight advantage and when you know your opponent has run out of polymorph type of cards, like: Polymorph, Hex, Sap, Entomb and so on. You want to make sure your opponent has to commit resources and genuinely deal with this card, and once they do you surprise them with hopefully a Chromaggus or Ysera type card to lead into their complete destruction and demise. I expected this card to be terrible but now that I have actually gotten to playtest with it, it is far more powerful than I could've even imagined.

Weird Inclusions that adapt to the meta and what I see:

These card inclusions have stemmed from me playing a certain deck that had threatened stuff I wasn't prepared for. These will change with the meta, but in the end I think they do the deck just fine regardless of what deck you're playing:

Justicar Trueheart: This card is so good. Turning your great field advantage hero power into an even better one already justifies Justicar's inclusion. But the reason it found its way into my decklist was the lack of good healing in most decks, especially vs [deck]Freeze Mage[/deck]. I realized that against freeze mage, I will be provided the immediate advantage if my hero power lets me heal by 4 every single turn. In general this card is just a very flexible card and is a perfect fit in my opinion!

Elise Starseeker: Prior to the WOTG expansion, my history with dragon priest is that if I can't use all of my reactionary spells or the game state becomes so late that those types of cards are useless (example: Azure Drake, Power Word: Shield, Shadow Word: Death, and Holy Smite, in addition to several early game minions that were in the end of my deck like: Twilight Whelp, andNorthshire Cleric) would be better served turning into late game POWERHOUSES with the help of the original old god Golden Monkey: *All Hail GOLDEN MONKEY*

nah but it really gives a good ass late-game to dragon priest that were originally lacking it, all with the help of RNGeezus

Potential Replacements or Inclusion:

Entomb for Sylvanas Windrunner: I mean this is logical and makes sense. Sylvanas comes with a body and is a huge threat to the board. Without silence being as popular it really can do some damage!

Elise Starseeker for Brann Bronzebeard: Brann has a lot of synnergy with most dragon-related cards, and if you find that the meta is not at all slow enough to even utilize Golden Monkey, it may be a reasonable replacement!

Holy Smite for Shadow Word: Pain: Darkshire Councilman IS SO GOD DAMN ANNOYING TO DEAL WITH, and sometimes Holy Smite just won't cut it! Sometimes Holy smite isn't good enough in places where Shadow Word: Pain would crush your opponents soul and will to live once they get their 5 drop completely destroyed for 2 mana. (these are all subject to change)

Chillmaw or Deathwing for Chromaggus: This all really depends on the player and the format. Right now I'm personally having tons of fun with Chromaggus, but I can totally understand how Chillmaw would be a reasonable replacement, especially as an AOE. 

And Deathwing places itself as a not completely illogical choice cause it is a heavy body with great stats, and places a huge threat after your opponent is forced to use great amounts of resources on your original Deathwing, Dragonlord. Plus in the late game it handles C'Thun and serious problems.

Mulligans:

In most cases you want to keep a dragon in your hand if you can. Mulligans in dragon priest seem complicated but only in the beginning.

*TO ALWAYS KEEP*
- Museum Curator
- Northshire Cleric
- 1 Power Word: Shield

*TO KEEP CONDITIONALLY*
- If you have any of the Dragon-Reliant drops such as: Twilight Whelp, Wyrmrest Agent, Blackwing Technician, or *Twilight Guardian* (NOTE: this card counts for both because it can be utilized as your dragon activator in hand and also activates off of other dragons, same as Twilight Whelp) 
          - Then you definitely want to keep those drops and roll for a Dragon, and especially if you have a Twilight Whelp or a Twilight Guardian, roll for other dragons or cards that activate off of them that curve better. 

The goal for this deck, that you have to think about and utilize when you mulligan, is that your number ONE objective is to fill all of your mana crystals with use of a minion to establish board control every single turn. You want to put out powerful minions every turn up until turn 4-5 with a minion that fits that objective.

Even sometimes a turn 1 Northshire Cleric, turn 2 trade and heal for the draw, is a good enough play as long as you're establishing your hand if you don't have the activators for your dragons already.

*RECENT CHANGES* WILL COVER!

Downfalls:

Though this deck is consistent, sometimes you end up missing your early game curve out with powerful minions, or you lack an activator and wait on it. In my opinion it is very rare unless your mulligan RNG was bad, or you don't know how to mulligan with this deck, but that is one of its major downfalls: Relying on having another dragon in hand to get your plays off.

You can overcome this by using better mulligans or if you're severely desperate to keep the board, tempo out your dragon cards even if you don't have the activator in hand (ONLY IF YOU'RE DESPERATE, I WOULDN'T SUGGEST THIS IF YOU'RE NOT BEHIND ON BOARD... SERIOUSLY YOU'D LOOK JUST PLAIN WEIRD LIKE A CRACKHEAD IN A PARK).

*I'd like to mark this complete. If theres anything you think I should further include let me know!*

I would hope you guys know how Dragon Priest plays but if y'all want a guide for that too I'm happy to help, and will get to streaming my climbs with this deck on my twitch account: https://www.twitch.tv/nonigget/profile

Again please leave a comment and thumbs up if you can! I worked really hard on this and would love to share this deck and help people out in the future! Thank y'all

- Nonigget (Ty)