Hearthpwn

After watching Trump pull off an 80% win rate with this deck, and then quickly going 5-0 myself, this deck is unquestionably pretty strong. In a meta with very little healing, it's a great way to keep the aggressive board focused decks in check. It's been part of the game for a while that whenever a strong midrangey aggressive deck is too prevalent  (Midrange hunter in the past, Midrange Shaman right now) the best way to beat it is be even more aggressive until the meta reacts.

It's an interesting mix of board control and then just going face. It's certainly not brainless as you have to balance survivability with killing your opponent quickly.

A year ago when I ended up opening Cairne, if I would have asked on this site whether or not to dust him a significant portion of the player base would have said "He's too slow, dust away". It would have been horrible, horrible advice at the time, and I feel sorry for anyone who might have listened to it.

The fact of the matter is at a 4/1 disenchant to craft ratio, dusting any non-duplicates is a bad idea if you're looking at playing the game longer than a few months. It's just not worth it in the long run. If you want to completely disregard wild, that's your choice, but to consider DEing adventure cards already is just pure stupidity. 

Quote from CGDPodcast >>

Would've been better at 4 mana with "Give each successive Pawn +1/+1." Your opponent has 4 minions, you get a 1/1, a 2/2, a 3/3, and a 4/4 taunt.

For everyone saying this card is only useful against zoo, I think you're discounting the potential synergy and power with bolster. Even with only 2 enemy minions on the board, this with bolster becomes 6/6 stats with taunt for 5 mana. Not amazing, but nothing to overlook. 

But, because of the way bolster scales, if you have any board at all that's quickly 8/8 or 10/10 stats for 5 mana. If you can't build a board bolster is useless, but this card can be an instant board. Cards that help when behind shouldn't be dismissed easily.

Does absolutely nothing to help against a heavy control deck that doesn't let you build a board however, so whether that downside hurts the card too much remains to be seen.

So in the year since the card has been out, I've been the only person I've see try to play Bolster competitively. On one hand, it's awesome to see more bolster synergy, but on the other my hipster deck might not be so hipster anymore. Feelsconflictedman 

But seriously this seems like a pretty decent card. The problem I have found with bolster is that it is a bit of a win more card, this helps give the deck a bit of a comeback mechanism.

Quote from Sowitroli >>

Thanks for the answer. I think i would like a deck with more big dragons, that deck seems good but i dont know if there is a big threat that makes you win if left uncontested.

I would appreciate more opinions!

I too wanted to make a Dragon Pally deck, and decided to go the Tempo route since if I wanted to play control N'Zoth would probably just be better. Here's the list I came up with, it's not top tier and it likely needs some fine tuning but I find it pretty fun to play and I've had a 50%+ win rate with it. It might be worth slowing it down a little and replacing some of the buffs with Tirion/Sylvanas. What I'd really like is a good tempo oriented 6 or 7 cost dragon to top off the curve, maybe Chillmaw would fit the role.

In any case, I hope it can be some inspiration for how a dragon deck can look.

N'Zoth works fairly well in hunter; you only need to bring back a Highmane or Sylvanas in order to make it a good minion. It would probably be a better finisher than Justicar.

Since card draw has been mentioned as well, you could switch out arcane shot and on the hunt for loot horder and polluted horder. Not only do they get brought back by N'Zoth, but they're pretty good at cycling your deck and giving you a playable minion on 2 and 4.

If you have Dreadscale I'd highly recommend him. I haven't quite been able to convince myself to craft him, but I really like thevery card in controlling hunter decks.

I tried making Reno hunter work yesterday, it was an abject failure for me. I went back to a Malygos control version where I try and do 20+ damage with Malygos and the 1 mana spells. N'Zoth is an alternate win condition for me there.

I feel your pain, I generally like Paladin but I'm not a huge fan of the control playstyle and aggro gets boring for me quickly. I was wondering if Dragons were the way to go so was messing around with them and came up with something really successful this morning.

Some people might disagree that it's Midrange, I'd call it a Tempo deck myself, but it's rather fun to create a board full of dragons and protect them all with divine shield. It'll need some refining, but I'm happy to have found a Paladin deck I think I can enjoy.

Quote from iandakar >>

Quote from Zyxus77 >>

Well I have 350 gold and 13 free packs. thats 16. My intent is to open no more than 25 WoG packs and pray for at least a legendary in those 25 packs, then I'll have 3000 dust from nerfs and gvg and naxx to cash out on a single legendary and enough epics/rares for a deck. But I also want LoE...

Rip im poor asf. I'd buy the preorder cos I'm not particularly poor IRL but my parents aren't a fan of me doing any in-game-purchases, especially not a $65 one. gonna stick to making classic cards because that's all i have as F2P ;-;

 I was in the same boat for TGT.  About 30 packs and some dust.  It's workable IF you do one big thing:

Buy your packs when the expansion hits but DO NOT CRAFT ANYTHING FOR 2 WEEKS.

I mean literally 2 weeks. I don't care what anyone brags about or if you have 1 card left until you are done with a deck or even if the card you want is classic/TGT.  DO NOT CRAFT for the first two weeks.  

Two weeks is the point where all of those "OMG THAT CARD IS AWESOME" starts turning into buyer's remorse.  Meanwhile, the cards that will stick around stay around.  In TGT for example, everyone was screaming about Varian, Mysterious, and Aviana.  As the two weeks went by, the posts about Varian/Aviana turned from "OMG I PWNED" to "you have to use them carefully" then finally "they are crap."  Mysterious, meanwhile, stayed as raged about as as before.  OTOH, Twilight Dragon wasn't talked about at the start and Justicar was Meh.  Two weeks later, dragon priest came into the limelight and Justicar found her home in Fatigue Warrior.  

Thus two weeks after the expansion, I crafted two Challengers, two Twilights, and later Justicar and was mostly set.  

 

For you, I'd say get the 13 packs, and save up for a bit.  Pay careful watch of the decks coming up and see how heavily they use, or don't use LoE That'll determine if it's appropriate to get the expansion.  If LoE isn't that necessary (or, say, you only need Reno from week 1), then go for WoG for a bit until you get to 25-30 packs.  

Sidenote, if you DO get the option to buy something I'd go for buying LoE.  $20 might be easier for your parents to swallow and you can always just spam Arena for dust+packs.

 

Judging off my experience with TGT, which might be off since TGT had less of an impact on the meta than was hoped, I think 40 is too few but the answer will be closer to 70-80 than 100 or 300. I think what makes sense as a f2per is hoping to buy packs till you have most or all of the rares and then hoping you get lucky with epics and legendaries. In the past there have really only been 4-5 needed legendaries and maybe 8-10 epics from an expansion, that once you have those you can create a solid majority of meta influencing decks. 

I'm hopeful that 75 packs and 3200 dust before I disenchant anything should be enough for me to feel like I've "gotten" the expansion. If the legendaries I open aren't all Boogeymonster/ Nat, Dark Fisher quality level, I'm optimistic about how I'll feel come Tuesday. 

Quote from LefticusRighteous >>

Every card that has the potential to instantly lose you the game is a bad card.

Silence is an incredibly powerful effect that can both be anti-fun and greatly overshadows the far more interesting class specific removal that tends to exist. In an aggro context when all you want to do is hit face, Owl is much more prevalent than the other removal options that could be run instead; execute, hunter's mark, polymorph, etc because none help you Smorc quite as good as owl. 

It's continued existence also hurts buff decks and any big minion without immediate impacts on the board. While there would always be cards that one needs to play around, having your big threat dealt with for 2 mana is just game losing in many cases. BGH has many similarities in this instance; cheap, neutral and future design limiting.

As has been mentioned by others, I really wish the card said "After you cast a spell, this minion will cast ice Lance on a random enemy". That way you're not penalized if it keeps hitting the same enemy over and over. It would also synergize nicely with Frost Nova and Cone of Cold to create a more tempo oriented freeze Mage, which I would love after playing a frost Mage in WoW for years. 

As it stands I think it's a little too weak for regular play, but maybe it'll surprise.

Even if you get unlucky and get the bare minimum from opening packs, 400 dust is like 2 weeks worth of pack opening from dailies. Meanwhile, if you want to craft Nefarian again you're looking at months of saving dust to earn enough to get him back. 

Take some time, learn to think long term and delay gratification and play with a slightly weaker zoo deck in the meantime. You'll be better off. Nefarian is playable as is, and if you ever want to make a dragon deck he's likely the 2nd best high end dragon after Ysera (unless you have a specific combo where Alexstrasza or Malagos might shine).