Midrange Dragon Warrior

Hi everyone, DaggyDwarf here. I've always preferred midrange decks over aggro; I like building a board, taking value trades, and generally the arena playstyle. Lately I'd been wishing for a midrange deck I could use to get my Warrior up to 500 wins, but in Standard all the Warrior strategies are a bit on the slow side. So I thought I'd try Wild. I built this deck from scratch, and I keep getting surprised by how effective it is! So far I made it from Bronze 10 to Diamond 6 with a 66% winrate (43-22). It's been great fun as well!

The idea of the deck is simple: play dragon-synergy cards, get ahead on the board early, draw & use rush minions to blast through your opponent's minions while the rest of your board, the Galakrond invocations, and eventually Galakrond himself, build up attack and go face.

Matchups

There are three synergies in the deck: dragons, rush, and Galakrond. In general, against aggro you want your early removal (Alexstrasza's Champion, Ritual Chopper, Awaken!) and in every matchup you can keep Town Crier. Firetree Witchdoctor is almost always good, and it's the only spell generation in the whole deck. If you can get two invokes out of the way early, the Scion of Ruin on turn 4 can be ruinous to an aggro opponent.

Against control, you're not exactly favoured, but I was able to get through a few Priests. The strategy is to rush them down. If they have Reno Jackson and they can destroy all your boards with Hysteria, Mass Hysteria, Psychic Scream, etc, there isn't much you can do. Most of your minions having rush means they don't get to attack face (other than Alexstrasza's Champion for 3) before they get removed. Even if you can get a fully-invoked Galakrond on 7, you aren't necessarily going to be able to get through their removal before they start doing broken things. Your only hope is to rush them down before they can get Reno online. (I was 6-6 against Priests overall.)

Against other control decks besides Priest, if you can stick a board, you can sometimes still get them even after they've restored their health to full with Reno.

There are two decks with terrible matchups: Odd Paladin, and Cube Warlock. Odd Paladin can almost always get ahead of you on board and stay ahead. Out of all the Odd Paladins I played, I only beat one, and I drew the absolute nuts -- both Awaken!s, Ritual Chopper (don't be ashamed to put 4 damage into a single 1/1 dude as your win condition against Odd Paladin is just to clear their board every turn), Scion of Ruin into Dragonmaw Scorcher. When you can clear their board every turn, they can't do much. Also, I was able to play around Never Surrender! by making sure I could clear both minions with rushers before proc'ing it with a spell. But other than that, every Odd Paladin crushed me.

The Cube Warlock is nearly impossible, again unless you can rush them down. There's no answer to an early Voidcaller, unless you have the perfect rusher to kill Mal'Ganis and somehow the opponent can't remove your stuff or follow up with any big demons. But this deck's main win condition of using rush minions to clear the board falls apart against Enhanced Dreadlords, Voidlords, and then finally the massive boards summoned from Bloodreaver Gul'dan and N'Zoth, the Corruptor. You can basically remove one or two big minions a turn, beyond that you're sunk.

That said, I was able to get through most of my opponents. I guess it depends on the local meta. For a while, I was facing a bunch of Mill Rogues, and I beat every single one of them. This deck could be called "Mill Rogue Slayer". As long as they don't mill your Galakrond (which only happened to me once), you'll have a hand full of cards that you can always use, you can pressure their face early on, you'll have an overwhelming board advantage by the mid-game (it won't even matter that they can wipe your board with Vanish against a full hand since you can just refill), and then it's just a matter of how to play through their stalling tactics like Cloak of Shadows, Valeera the Hollow, and especially Evasion. Since Evasion leaves the Rogue vulnerable to a single attack, you can either try to load up on invocations, or buff up a single minion. I was able to get one exact 10-damage lethal through Evasion with a full board of 5-attack minions, since I had generated a Shield of Honor for +3 attack and then played Kronx Dragonhoof to buff the board by +2/+2. Next turn the Rogue might have had counter-lethal with the infinite Coldlight Oracles, so it's important to find the lethal when you can get it.

Secret Mage is also not too bad of a matchup, unless they draw the perfect opener and have every follow-up (which does tend to happen). But you can play around pretty much all the secrets, rush minions are particularly good. Especially an invoked Scion of Ruin, which can play around both Mirror Entity and Explosive Runes at the same time. Your deck has very few spells, so Counterspell doesn't hurt too badly. The mage can't heal, and since you can hit face nearly every turn, they won't ever get to proc their Rigged Faire Game. One thing to watch for: if your first attack for the turn procs an Ice Block, the Rigged Faire Game will go off on the following turn, since you didn't techinically do any damage. This got me against a Quest Mage who was able to combo me after drawing those three cards despite still having 9 cards in the deck (grumble, grumble).

Deck Choices

As far as specific inclusions, a lot of the cards I chose are known to be "low power-level" cards, but I found they really suit the deck. The biggest example is probably Claw Machine, which if you can buff it to 8/4 with Stage Dive, I found lines up really well against big late-game taunt minions like Enhanced Dreadlord and Blood of G'huun.

I originally had a Primordial Drake, but I found it always sitting around in my hand. It doesn't pressure control decks, and aggro decks in Wild are so strong, you'll either be dead by 8, or their board will be way too big to be cleared by 2 damage (for example, Odd Paladin by turn 8 should have a board of 3/3s, possibly with divine shield).

Omega Devastator is another questionable inclusion, but it really helped me clear a bunch of taunt minions for lethals in those late turns, when a control deck is trying to stay alive. I guess a Spellbreaker could do effectively the same thing, and could also help against those Voidcallers early on, but I like the 4/5 body, and the Mech tribe means it can discount your Tent Trashers. On occasion you can even magnetise a 5/3 Zilliax on there for some surprise burst (or to take a better trade).

Loatheb is great against any control deck, can also slightly help against an aggro deck that uses spells to buff their board, such as Aggro Token Druid. Watch out for Warlocks, who can still clear your board on 7 with Lord Godfrey despite your Loatheb play.

I ended up not running Devoted Maniacs, even though my deck has both rush and Galakrond synergies, and also the Awaken!s damage your own board when you're playing against slow control such as Priest. But I don't want the Devoted Maniacs diluting my rush pool, which is mostly dragons and helps me activate my Alexstrasza's Champions, Firetree Witchdoctors and Twilight Guardian on curve. There are 4 "draw a rush minion" cards (2x Stage Dive & 2x Town Crier). And then of course Galakrond tutors for minions as well. Another issue is there just aren't a lot of good 3-mana dragons (Brightwing?), and having Awaken! against aggro on 3, alongside your early minions, clears almost any board.

Overall I've really enjoyed playing this deck! It has heaps of epics, so I don't recommend going out and crafting it, and if your meta is full of Odd Paladin and Cubelock, you might want to give it a pass. But if you're seeing nothing but Mill Rogues, give it a go!