Dadghar Summoning Hand Mage (Rise of Shadows Era)

Please note, this is an old deck guide I wrote and has been added for historical value. This deck is no longer viable though if you make it work, that's cool!

This is one of the more fun decks I've played in Hearthstone in a long time.

This sucks against aggro though. You need to get to late-game (most of the time). I can't guarantee that you're going to become Legend with it, but I'm almost certain you're going to have fun. 

I do not recommend crafting this deck if you are missing cards. Missing one or two higher dust cards, maybe. It's still early in the expansion though and you may want to save your dust for something more competitive that will show up in a few weeks as the meta solidifies. If you're just looking to have some fun though, and really, that's a core part of gaming, craft those cards and join me!

Synergies in the Deck

We've got a few different synergies with the deck that are important to point out.

• Summoning and getting crazy value through Khadgar.
• Hero Power goodness whether that's through buffing its damage or letting it attack multiple targets.
• Hand Size through plenty of draw and minions that benefit from the amount of cards in our hand.

Our Win Condition Khadgar

This is your boy that enables serious nonsense later on in the game. He helps us win by giving us insane value that your opponents will have a hard time dealing with. He's a solid pick to keep in your opening hand to ensure you will be able to make use of him with several of your combo pieces. Speaking of which, here's what he works with in the deck.

• Conjurer's Calling - The main card you're going to get value through. Destroying those Mountain Giants early on will let you pop out some additional Giants or the dream against aggro, Grave Horror.
• Mechanical Whelp - Playable in the mid-game, if you can drop this down and follow it up with Khadgar + trade, you'll get yourself a couple of nice 7/7 bodies on the field. It's not the best use case but it's certainly better than nothing. Bonus points if you follow up Whelp with Khadgar + Conjurer's Calling!
• Astromancer - One of the primary goals with the deck is to have a large hand so we have lots of options. Astromancer's effect plays into this quite well and can give us some decent value. I've considered dropping one copy of her though to pickup another anti-aggro tool.
• Power of Creation - This card has been invaluable in finding taunt minions before we can get out full combos to help protect myself. It works well as a turn 10 play though with Khadgar since you can summon FOUR copies of the same minion. Lord of the Arena or Sunwalker are really fun to throw onto the board. It isn't our most reliable effect though.
• Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk - THE ABSOLUTE DREAM - nothing will get you more excited! Holding onto Khadgar with his best new bud, Jan'alai brings great joy when you can actually make it happen on turn 9. I've had a couple of opponents just leave and damn does that feel good.

With all that said though, we do not need Khadgar to win the game. All of these cards that work well with him also give us decent value without him.

Anti Aggro

As I mentioned earlier, Aggro makes this deck cry. Although our curve is on the lower side for a deck that really only shines in the late-game, our lower-cost cards kinda suck at dealing with the swarm.

One tool that I discovered I really liked thanks to RNG early on was Spirit of the Dragonhawk. It can help you clear three x/1 minions from the field early on which can really screw over those pesky Druids and Shamans that only want to make your life hell. More importantly, though, it works perfectly with Daring Fire-Eater allowing it to deal 9 damage spread out evenly on the three targets. If you can pull this off, it instantly makes Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk's effect activate and it can then be dropped as soon as you have enough mana to do so for that sweet, sweet Ragnaros the Firelord.

I would love to include a second Spirit of the Dragonhawk in the deck and may remove Astromancer for one of them. It would help you fetch it from your deck, the only downside is having more 2-drops means you're polluting that area of the deck, hurting our chances of getting Khadgar with Witchwood Piper (assuming both Fire-Eaters have already been drawn).

Zilliax is a card we've also included in the deck to make some favourable trades. Although at turn 5 when we can play him, we're probably in a pretty lame situation against aggro so he may only be delaying the inevitable if you haven't been able to make a dent in the board in other ways.

Pyromaniac helps us make very effective trades against little minions while potentially giving us great draw value with our hero power. Works very well if you can pop out our Spirit of the Dragonhawk friend and kill multiple minions with Pyro on the field.

The All-Important Mountain Giant

If you have a Mountain Giant in your opening hand, especially if you're going second with The Coin, I recommend you hold onto it. This deck fills up its hand quite quickly thanks to Book of Specters and even Messenger Raven thanks to it not letting us lose that hand slot.

Dropping one of these down on turn 4 makes for some wicked play that can be hard to deal with on its own. Following that up a turn later with Conjurer's Calling without Khadgar (or with if you were lucky enough to have both) is absolutely insane. Just be careful about flooding the board. Warriors are likely to be running Brawl and there's definitely been many games I've seen Paladins running their silly Wild Pyromancer Equality nonsense or Equality + Consecration. Luckily though, those two Paladin combos come way later now though so they don't hurt us if we can pull out some awesome early Giants and Khadgar nonsense.

What makes Mountain Giant so unique though is that in Standard, there are only two choices we can get from Conjurer's Calling since its a 12-cost card. Those choices are itself, Mountain Giant, and Grave Horror, the priest 7/8 with Taunt. That taunt has frustrated so many opponents of mine I can't even begin to count them.

A Note on Archmage Arugal

The card can feel a little out of place at times in the deck but he's fantastic if you end up low on cards and you can follow him up with a Book of Specters.

He makes for a really good turn 1 + coin play if you're going second though since he can usually spend a turn or two out there and with our minion heavy (24 cards) and deep synergistic deck, we're very likely to make use of his effect.

He can be paired up later on with Witchwood Piper to potentially draw out an extra Khadgar which is pretty sweet.

Overall though, I don't seem to get to play him as often as I'd like, but he's there for good value when you need it.

A Note on Messenger Raven

This card is stupid, and I mean that in a good way. Since we can only Discover mage minions, that puts us in an EXCELLENT position to get ourselves some additional, core cards.

In Standard, there are currently thirty mage cards that can be picked. This is outdated information as of posting.

• Khadgar of course is the best pickup imaginable.
• Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk is a damn close second. Maybe even first if we have a Khadgar in hand and no hawk in sight.
• Archmage Antonidas can close out games. Since I like to hold onto The Coin when going second for that hand size increase for Twilight Drake and Mountain Giant minion plays, it can work very well with Antonidas granting us a certain Fireball. Really fun playing him on turn 10 alongside coin to bring us back up to 4 mana and then casting that Fireball.
• Hex Lord Malacrass has seen some good use. He not only can give you cards that you really wanted since you held onto them, but he's also great at increasing your hand size.
• Stargazer Luna has actually been an interesting pickup to get some extra draw thanks to our high amount of lower-cost cards. She's not perfect though since so many of our cards want to be played in combination with others.
• Meteorologist can be a nice way to get rid of something annoying on the enemy field. The random component sorta sucks but since we have a large hand size, there's plenty of missiles to be sent out to fight. Great against aggro, I've even been a little tempted to find some room in the deck for one of these.
• Curio Collector synergizes pretty well with some of our nice card draw, though I haven't had a chance to go for it yet since the other options have been better. I wouldn't discount it though.
  Water Elemental can be a nice piece of needed control, don't be afraid to take it to help clear out the board or just to put an end to weapons.

That's just some of the cool stuff we have available in the pool. You definitely don't want to pickup anything that has "cast a spell" synergy though since we don't have much of that. Maybe Sorcerer's Apprentice to help combo some stuff out sooner, but there are usually better options available and mana isn't really our limit in the deck. Also, avoid all the Elemental synergy stuff ^^.

A Note on Faceless Rager

A rager? In a deck? WHAT?

Sometimes it feels like we're just taking up hand space but it's actually pretty awesome. Not only does it stay in our hand for a while, giving us that hand size synergy, but it plays nicely with our high health minions, giving us a potential 5/8 for only 3 mana if we have a Mountain Giant or Ragnaros the Firelord on field and slightly less health with other options.

Faceless Rager trades into minions so effectively for its cost that it can help us re-establish some control of the board.

Thanks for taking the time to read my write up for Khadgar Mage!