Hearthpwn

 Dragon Lord Velen has gotten me to legend 3 times (capping at rank 51 legend in S12), and I have since put almost 4,000 hearthstone games in with this archetype. It's not T1, it's not the next "easy legend" list, but it's strong enough to keep me at a solid 70% lifetime win-rate with the list, and I consistently use it to climb to rank 5 every season on the wild ladder.

Dragon Lord Velen is a tempo deck at its core. The deck establishes an early board presence via Northshire Cleric, Twilight Whelp, Netherspite Historian, and Wyrmrest Agent, takes advantage of this tempo into the mid-game via Blackwing Corruptor, Twilight Acolyte, and Twilight Guardian to either solidify board control or push face damage (match-up dependent), and finishes off the game with surprisingly long reach granted by Holy Smite, Mind Blast, and Prophet Velen.

 

You may notice that this deck runs almost no single target removal. As per its tempo nature, this deck establishes and maintains board control via minion combat. Dragon Priest is especially adept at this as its minions are naturally high stated for their cost, and the priest hero power lends itself towards keeping minions around. If you lose the board, you typically lose the game (unless you have set up the combo kill, which we'll get to).

This deck is built around a magic number at which it can consistently kill its opponent: 15, although it has a number of damage ceilings, which are as follows:

Combos requiring Emperor Thaurissan to reduce costs:

36: Prophet Velen + 2xMind Blast + 2xHoly Smite + Bloodmage Thalnos (5 reduced)

30: Prophet Velen + 2xMind Blast + 1xHoly Smite + Bloodmage Thalnos (4 reduced)

28: Prophet Velen + 2xMind Blast + 2xHoly Smite (3 reduced)

24: Prophet Velen + 2xMind Blast + 1xHoly Smite (2 reduced) OR Bloodmage Thalnos (3 reduced)

20: Prophet Velen + 2xMind Blast (1 reduced)

Combos that require no cost reduction:

18: Bloodmage Thalnos + 2xMind Blast + 2xHoly Smite

16: 3xShadowreaper Anduin's hero power + 2xMind Blast

15 damage combos:

Blackwing Corruptor + 2xMind Blast + 1xHoly Smite

Bloodmage Thalnos + 2xMind Blast + 1xHoly Smite

Any damage combo that does less than 15 should be obvious, as it will involve 3 or less cards, and/or involves the shadowreaper hero power.

These are tips, and do not apply to ALL situations you will encounter when playing this deck, but they are rules you should try to live by in 99% of matches.

 

Mulligans:

Mulligan for dragons. If you have a dragon, mulligan for low costed cards with dragon synergy, like Twilight Whelp, Wyrmrest Agent, and Netherspite Historian. If you do not have a dragon in your start hand, mulligan EVERYTHING  -and I do mean everything- to find a dragon. This deck redefines the term garbage when it gets a hand stuffed full of "better with a dragon in hand" cards, and no dragon in hand. With a dragon, it can be an unstoppable juggernaut in the right hands.

 

Rules:

1) NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, play the last dragon in your hand unless you are out of dragon synergy cards in your deck.

2) While the first Holy Smite can be used as removal in turns 1-3 against aggressive decks, NEVER burn the second Holy Smite as removal unless you absolutely have to in order to prevent yourself from dying. Against classes that are prone to healing, such as priest or jade druid, do not use Holy Smite for anything but combo damage.

3) If you are still fighting for board control, prioritize playing high stat minions over high value minions (EG: Wyrmrest Agent over Netherspite Historian). If you have solid control over the board, instead prioritize playing the value minions.

4) Don't play Shadowreaper Anduin against aggro decks. It doesn't work out for you.

5) In match-ups against decks which tend to have large amounts of health, save Bloodmage Thalnos as a cheap way to boost your combo ceiling. Against the more aggressive decks, playing him out for cycling is a perfectly viable strategy.

6) Don't be afraid to play a Twilight Acolyte on turn 3 with no targets. Having control of the board, and thus the tempo of the game, is a very valuable thing for this deck. That said, Twilight Acolyte MUST target a minion if there is one on board, which means that playing him for tempo on a board which only has 1 attack minions on it is a bad idea.

7) On the play, try to save The Coin to boost the health of your Twilight Drakes (if you run them). It matters a lot more often than one might think, and establishing a solid early board presence can be the difference between winning and losing games.

8) Don't be scared of Temporus if you get the chance to discover him with Netherspite Historian. Against late game decks like jade druid, big druid, big priest, reno-lock, reno-mage, and control warrior, Temporus can take your combo ceiling into the forties by abusing Shadowreaper Anduin's hero power. He's a very niche card, but he can win you games that would otherwise be absolutely impossible to win. He is, however, too situational to actually play in the deck.

It goes without saying that this list does not function without Prophet Velen and Emperor Thaurissan. This means I am assuming that you have the Blackrock Mountain expansion's first wing if you desire to play this deck. I am also assuming that you have access to all common/rare rarity cards excluding the ones from purchasable adventures, and access to all basic set cards.

 

Bloodmage Thalnos

Replace Bloodmage Thalnos with Tainted Zealot. They are of similar cost, both serve the cheap spell damage function required to boost this deck's damage ceiling, and while Bloodmage Thalnos cycles himself, Tainted Zealot sticks around pretty well, allowing you to stick it to the board a turn early for combo purposes... sometimes.

 

Shadowreaper Anduin

Shadowreaper Anduin is a powerful card that can swing otherwise unwinnable games against control decks, but he's not irreplaceable. Aside from Emperor Thaurissan and Blackwing Corruptor, this deck runs no 5 attack minions, which means that Shadowreaper Anduin's battlecry rarely back-fires (watch it, it still can). It's a unique card, functioning both as removal and providing inevitability, but you can try Dragonfire Potion/Lightbomb for the removal effect, or could swap in a Drakonid Operative to go for OP tempo swings. I used to run Alexstrasza in this slot, as she can provide useful healing against aggro decks, and can knock control decks down to that magic number 15. She increases the dragon count, but the drawback is you can only ever play her when you have a "free turn" to set up your combo, which is a big ask of a tempo deck, especially since you already needed to find a "free turn" to play Emperor Thaurissan to help set up your combo. This is a tech slot as far as I am concerned, so feel free to fiddle with it. Just note that Shadowreaper Anduin is not just the whole package, but covers a range of weaknesses that this deck has without him.

 

Blackwing Corruptor/Twilight Whelp/Netherspite Historian

Let's say you don't have the adventures these cards came in. In the case of Twilight Whelp and Blackwing Corruptor, I recommend crafting them as they are common rarity, and therefore quite cheap to craft, and Blackrock Mountain is no longer available for purchase which means you can indeed craft them. In the case of Netherspite Historian, which you can't craft because Karazahn can still be purchased, GET KARAZAHN! The adventures are some of the most high-value/high-return content that Hearthstone has to offer. Note: Blackwing Corruptor CAN be swapped for Drakonid Operative if you prefer more value and are willing to sacrifice a little tempo, and the Twilight Whelp can be substituted for a Book Wyrm, though it hurts aggro match-ups. Netherspite Historian is irreplaceable though.

 

Wyrmrest Agent & Twilight Acolyte

Wyrmrest Agent is irreplaceable. Craft him. Twilight Acolyte is also irreplaceable. Bite the bullet and craft him too.

 

Twilight Guardian/Duskbreaker/Twilight Drake

Twilight Guardian and Duskbreaker are powerful anti-aggro tools. Twilight Guardian and Twilight Drake are powerful high tempo minions which are good against control. Twilight Drake and Duskbreaker are a sort of middle ground which really shines in a priest heavy meta. In testing I have found the Duskbreaker + Twilight Guardian combination to be the most well rounded and rewarding, being strong vs aggro while still protecting your card draw minions vs control. If you lack the Twilight Guardian it can be replaced with Twilight Drake.

 

 

Every other card in this deck is from the basic/core set, and is at rare rarity or under. While this list isn't extremely expensive as far as dust goes, it is also not designed to be a budget deck.

This deck has two tech slots: Shadow Word: Pain and Bloodmage Thalnos

 

Versus Hyper-Aggro:

Replace both tech slots with Potion of Madness. It has a high degree of synergy with Twilight Acolyte to bypass big taunt minions and help open up lethal opportunities, but more importantly is an extremely powerful anti-aggro tool on its own.

 

Versus Weapons: Aggressive Metas

Replace one Bloodmage Thalnos with Acidic Swamp Ooze. Yes I've tested Harrison Jones, he's just too slow against aggro decks, which will make up a large percentage of decks in a meta which requires weapon removal. Weapons are good at hitting face, and aggro will never truly die. Aggro decks are also why we cut Bloodmage Thalnos instead of Shadow Word: Pain.

 

Versus Weapons: Legendary Weapons like Aluneth and Skull of the Man'ari

Replace one Acolyte of Pain with Harrison Jones. These decks use their weapons as ways to win games, meaning that if they don't have their legendary weapon out, they probably aren't killing you any time soon. These decks don't pressure us, so we can afford to run Harrison Jones instead of Acidic Swamp Ooze to get that sweet card draw that will bring us that much closer to our combos, which also lets us cut a card draw engine in Acolyte of Pain instead of one of our combo/synergy cards (Bloodmage Thalnos & Shadow Word: Pain).

 

Versus Control:

Replace Shadow Word: Pain with Book Wyrm. You don't need the higher mana-efficiency that Shadow Word: Pain provides, and can therefore afford to slot in another dragon for the sake of consistency. You will need a VERY slow meta for this to occur, since Book Wyrm's higher cost makes it significantly worse against aggro. We pick Book Wyrm because it retains the ability to act as unconditional removal when combined with Twilight Acolyte. You can also try removing Twilight Whelp instead of Shadow Word: Pain, although its a swap that I have not tested yet myself.

 

Warrior:

• Pirate: 55/45 favored; You have all the tools to beat Pirate Warrior, it's just a matter of draw variance and high-roll potential on the part of both decks that keeps the match-up so close. Keep the Pirate Warrior's board clear and try to use your hero power as often as you can.
• N'Zoth Control: 30/70 against; Warrior gains too much armor for your combo which makes cards like Mind Blast completely dead, and N'Zoth, the Corruptor gives enough stopping power that the warrior can usually stabilize before your high tempo dragons can mob him down. Sometimes you just high roll the warrior with perfectly curved answers to his taunt minions, and you steamroll him.
• Mill: Not enough data. Guessing 45/55 against; You might be able to out tempo the mill warrior some games and kill him before he goes nuts, but mill warriors gain a lot of armor, and they won't stop gaining it EVER thanks to Dead Man's Hand.

 

Shaman:

• Malygos Shaman: 65/35 favored; You put way more pressure on the Malygos Shaman than he does on you due to your deck's dragon priest core, and both decks reach their combos relatively quickly. Because you will have board control all game, the Shaman will have less health, and thus enter "combo range" much more quickly, which means you can kill him faster a significant amount of the time.
• Evolve Shaman: 65/35 favored; Duskbreaker is your best friend in this match-up, and evolve shamans usually just concede when you play him. He swings the match-up that heavily.

 

Rogue: Note:I will be calling all Kingsbane decks "X"-blade decks.

• Keleseth Tempo: 50/50 split; This match-up is all about who gets early control of the board, and thus the tempo lead, because both decks suck at recovering on board. As such it's very draw-variance based. Get the board, hope your opponent doesn't get Prince Keleseth. High-roll him before he high-rolls you.
• Tempo-Blade: 40/60 against; You have to fight for tempo in the early game in a manner similar to keleseth tempo, except that life-stealing and buffed up Kingsbane usually takes the rogue out of combo range after you've expended all of your resources on getting board control. This is all assuming they draw the blade though, and you have an easier time wrenching board control from tempo-blade than keleseth tempo, so you tend to win if the rogue can't build a giant life-steal blade fast enough.
• Mill-Blade: 60/40 favored; You consistently have control of the board and can bring the rogue down into "combo range" pretty easily. The rogue can mill over some of your combo cards as you do tend to over-draw, which means you can lose to variance, but you tend to assemble enough combo pieces to kill the rogue when combined with minion damage.
• Mill: 65/35 favored; Same idea as mill-blade, but the rogue loses the long game plan of assembling an annoyingly large weapon with lifesteal, which makes the match-up better for you. You can still lose games to mill-based variance destroying all of your combo pieces though.

 

Paladin:

• Aggro: 60/40 favored; Duskbreaker is an absolute beast against aggro decks. Sometimes you don't draw him and lose to variance, sometimes he has Divine Favor right after the first Duskbreaker and you can't get a second Duskbreaker fast enough and still lose. Sometimes you have both Duskbreakers and he can gets spanked.
• Tribulation (four horsemen): 65/35 favored; Your combo can do 36 damage and paladins can only have 35 health maximum. You tend to go back and forth for the board which means neither deck really snowballs out of control. The paladin can heal a ton so you can't really kill him with tempo, but he has no damage reach and Tribulation Paladin is intentionally horrible at pushing face damage. Both decks have game ending combos. You just have more card draw, so you tend to get yours off first.
• Midrange: 55/45 favored; You usually can get control of the board earlier than the paladin can, but he has more board recovery mechanics, and if you lose the board it's much harder for you to regain control of it thanks to divine shield shenanigans. Your combo means you have a bit more reach than the paladin does and a sense of inevitability, but this match-up is relatively even.

 

Hunter:

• Face: 80/20 favored; You have taunts. You're a priest. You have good early game. You have reach to kill the hunter before he draws enough burn to squeeze out a win. You only ever lose this to terrible draw variance on this deck's end.
• Giants: 25/75 against; You don't have good board recovery mechanics, and giants hunter is a deck that can pretty consistently fill the board with 4+ 8/8's by turn 5/6. Sometimes his deck cant draw Naga Sea Witch and you win, sometimes you just clap back on his giants with two Twilight Acolytes and stall for enough time to get off Shadowreaper Anduin. Usually you just die.
• Other Shenanigans: 65/35 favored; Other hunter decks (like spell hunter, jurassic hunter, and control hunter) lack refinement and/or the cards needed to really be powerful, which means you can often just out tempo these kinds of decks. Hunters are always hunters though, and sometimes you lose to high roll Huffers, Kill Commands, and that hero power.

 

Druid:

• Token: 65/35 favored; Duskbreaker ruins them. Another aggro deck bites the dust. You lose to crazy high-roll on the druid's end and draw variance on yours, specifically when you fail to draw Duskbreaker AND fail to discover him from Netherspite Historian by turn 4.
• Everything else: 25/75 against; Druids these days just gain waaaay too much armor to combo kill thanks to Malfurion the Pestilent, have fantastic stall mechanics to make it to the late game when combined with their copious ramp options, and have an inevitability to them (usually involving huge minions) that this deck just cannot overcome. You only win against non-token druids by high-rolling them with turn 8-10 lethal OTK set-ups.

 

Warlock:

• Zoo: 60/40 favored: Duskbreaker helps clean up many of zoo's small minions, and for those few minions that survive the Duskbreaker, Twilight Acolyte can put them in their place. You just have more efficient ways to use minions to fight for board control than zoo does which means you tend to win. Zoo also hurts themselves a lot which means sometimes you just Mind Blast them out of the game. You can lose to this deck's draw variance though, as zoo is both consistent and highly capable of punishing bad draws.
• Cube-lock: 35/65 against; A good cube-lock player will use their healing elements to keep themselves out of combo range while Voidlord stops a tempo win just long enough for their own combo to ruin you. Their combos are easier to assemble and often just as game ending, and you just don't have the tools to interact with their combo. You can still high-roll OTK them a reasonable amount of the time though.
• Demon-lock: 45/55 against; Demon-lock doesn't have the same reach that cube-lock has, and has less healing. This means they get left in combo range far more frequently. Mal'Ganis can be nuisance, but if you save a Twilight Acolyte + Shadow Word: Pain for the first copy, and Shadowreaper Anduin for the copy made by Bloodreaver Gul'dan, you can pretty consistently handle the turtle. You lose when you can't handle Mal'Ganis, or when the demon-lock deck just cheats all of their huge demons into play by turn 8.
• Reno-lock: 90/10 favored; Reno-lock has to high roll you to over-come the disadvantage that the warlock hero power puts them at due to self damage. They can high-roll with a Mal'Ganis you can't answer or just string perfect answers to your plays, but draw variance is against them here, as you can continuously build boards that demand answers, and Mind Blast them to death if they get too low tapping for answers.

 

Mage:

• Tempo: 40/60 against; Tempo Mage can close out games and pressure the opponent's health just as well as you can. They do just about everything you can do either just as well or better. Except for drawing cards. Conveniently this is fixed when they draw Aluneth or just happen to have exact lethal topdecks, but you often win if they are a bad topdecker. Note: This match-up might be a bit better than 40/60. It needs more testing, although it's just not fun to play against so I haven't made an effort to test it.
• Exodia/Freeze: 80/20 favored; Your dragons can pressure their health very efficiently, getting them into range where you can use Mind Blasts and Holy Smites at your leisure to keep popping Ice Blocks. This deck just puts too much pressure on the mage's health and doesn't give them the time they need to set up their combo kill. You lose when they high-roll the crap out of drawing the combo.
• Reno: Not enough data. Guessing 65/35 favored; You can pressure control decks which don't have a game-ending combo, and can usually kill them before they grind you out. They can probably set up wins with Frost Lich Jaina, but their health still caps out at 35, which is within your combo range.

 

Priest:

• EZ BIG: 35/65 against; This match is entirely draw variance based. If they land on minions like Ysera with their Barnes and Shadow Essences, you can just out-tempo them more often than not and kill them. However, if they can stick an early Ragnaros the Firelord or Obsidian Statue or The Lich King, you usually aren't able to push through any more than the first two copies before they run you over. This deck isn't good at handling big minions.
• Inner Dragon Spirit: 70/30 favored; The Divine Spirit+Inner Fire dragon decks play many of the same minions that you do, but they just don't draw cards as quickly and have more dead cards in the match-up. They can still high-roll you, but you tend to just have more gas and can thus kill them before they can kill you.
• Razakus: 40/60 against; It may be a highlander (singleton) deck, but man does it seem like they always have Raza the Chained on turn 5 and Shadowreaper Anduin on turn 8. What it really comes down to is that they have a two card combo, the assembly of which can out pressure your minion damage, and that razakus can assemble it more easily than you can assemble your OTK, since they only need 5 cards for their OTK combo (raza/reaper/velen/smite/blast) and you need 7 (emperor/velen/thalnos/2x smite/2x blast). They draw cards just about as fast, but since their combo requires fewer cards they tend to combo faster. Despite all of this, they can lose if you can set up a lethal combo first, which isn't too uncommon due both to their own draw variance and your high-roll potential via early game board pressure. Your combo ceiling is 36, which is above what their health+armor cap of 35, so if you can draw your deck first, you WILL be able to kill them.