Even Dragon Warrior

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Wednesdays is a series aiming to highlight a different off meta deck each week with an in depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

Even Warrior. For years, it was far inferior to Odd Warrior and even building it as an off meta deck was quite a challenge. It lacked clears, draw, and most importantly, an endgame finisher. Over the past 2 expansions of Alterac and Stormwind, Warrior suddenly received a lot of new tools that were even costed, which finally allows Even Warrior to be, while not a meta competitive deck, a pretty fun off meta deck with an interesting gameplan. It has been helped so much by the past two expansions that close to half the deck is from those expansions alone (13 out of 30 cards). Crucially, it received Shield Shatter as another clear option, Blacksmithing Hammer as a win condition that also activates Deadly Arsenal for yet another clear, Onyxian Drake as a dragon and removal that synergizes with your armor, and Raid Boss Onyxia and Kazakusan for your endgame. Due to these powerful new dragons and the existing dragon synergy for Warrior that is even, this deck is built around dragons and is called Even Dragon Warrior. If you want to play with a lot of new cards as well as long forgotten old ones that are actually quite good in this particular deck, give Even Dragon Warrior a try.

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

Even Dragon Warrior is mostly a control deck, using clears and removals to survive. It also has a lot of card draw to keep drawing more removals. In the midgame, you can start developing a board and pushing face damage with Charge minions and weapons. Finally, you have Kazakusan as a lategame win con.

Survival - Your 1 mana hero power lets you stack armor easily over time, and you should be hero powering almost every turn. You have a lot of removals to help you survive against aggro. You should be drawing cards while surviving to get to your endgame faster.

Face Damage - Face Damage can win the game for you even before Kazakusan. You can get the durability of Blacksmithing Hammers up to 7 or higher easily, meaning the weapon can do over 30 damage over time. Combine this with the survival strategy to stall against any enemy board and you can keep pushing face damage and win with the weapon over time. You also have Alexstrasza's Champions and Captain Galvangar for even more face damage. You can use Outrider's Axe for face damage as well if you have a full hand or other draw to start setting up this strategy. If you see that the opponent health is getting low and you can push some face damage with minions instead of trading, you may want to do so to later set up this strategy for success. This deck has won as early as turn 7 with a Galvangar finisher where you start going face early against a slower deck.

Kazakusan - Kazakusan is the ultimate late game win con for this deck. His Treasures are very powerful, and delay fatigue by 10 turns. You can even double him with War Master Voone if against a super slow and removal heavy deck, and you should have no problem out valuing almost any Control deck.

Even Dragon Warrior does best against hyper aggressive decks (other than Pirate Warrior since it also has infinite value and damage) and Control decks. Its strengths are clears and stabilizing the board against aggro and having value and damage to beat Control. Combo decks are its worst matchup as its mostly controlling gameplay is too slow to beat them.

Mulligans

• Keep Alexstrasza's Champions.
• If you're against an aggro deck keep Minefields and a Guard the City.
• Keep Forge of Souls, 2 copies if not against aggro.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is timing your removals. If you use them too early you may run out, but if you wait too long you will take too much face damage and lose. Plan your turns by predicting what minions or face damage the opponent deck has and by seeing how much removal you have in hand, as well as keeping in mind you may draw some depending on how much card draw you have in hand. You should also always be mindful of your face damage potential, sometimes going face with minions and weapons instead of trading and drawing cards may give you a fast win with your Charge minions to finish the game.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Deadly Arsenal deals 5 damage with Blacksmithing Hammers, but only 3 with Outrider's Axe. Therefore, you should try to manipulate Forge of Souls to draw the Axe as fast as possible, and use other removals earlier in the game if you can.

Forge of Souls should never run out of cards to draw, as you can always trade Blacksmithing Hammers back into the deck. However, since you want to draw your Outrider's Axe faster to guarantee Deadly Arsenal hits a Hammer, you should avoid trading a Blacksmithing Hammer in hand back into the deck before you play Forge of Souls if you have a Forge in hand if you already have 2 weapons in the deck. The exception is if you are desperate to draw something specific like a removal, you should trade the Hammer.

War Master Voone duplicates your high quality dragons. One Kazakusan is almost always enough to win so you shouldn't wait to be able to duplicate him unless you're against a very slow and greedy deck. Onyxian Drake and Deathwing, Mad Aspect are generally good targets as they are strong bodies and removal. Raid Boss Onyxia has synergy with being duplicated as if you run out of Onyxian Whelps with the first one, you can play the second one and the first one will now regain Immune.

In general, you shouldn't hold Voone too long against aggro, even duplicating one dragon can be good enough. Against slower decks though, you should try to get more value from him, at least two dragons and preferably Kazakusan. If you are planning on playing Voone, you may want to draw less for a while to make some hand space. Keep in mind that in cases of low hand space where he can't duplicate all the dragons in your hand, he duplicates as much as he can from left to right. So the leftmost dragon in hand will be duplicated for sure, but the one on the rightmost will only be duplicated if you have the hand space.

Frozen Buckler is an important card to activate Shield Shatter, as it makes it cost 0. It also combos with Onyxian Drake to increase the damage it deals by 10 and with Geosculptor Yip to make him summon 10 cost minions, or if played on turn 7 to increase the cost of the minion summoned by Yip by 5 on turn 8. Therefore, you should avoid playing Frozen Buckler on turn 2 or on any other turn unless it's being used to combo with one of these cards, or if you need the armor gain to set up Captain Galvangar. An exception is if you need the armor to survive an aggro onslaught while you're drawing into removals or waiting to play a removal that costs more than your current mana. You should also feel free to play this card without waiting for a combo if your hand size is getting full and you want to draw more cards. 

You generally have armor gain almost every turn from the 1 mana hero power from Genn Greymane. You should try and protect this armor as it is useful for many cards in the deck, which means you may want to use removals earlier to avoid your armor being chipped. You may also want to use Shield Shatters first if you have a lot of armor, as Deadly Arsenal is less conditional, as well as using Onyxian Drakes earlier for removal and also as a Taunt that protects your armor as using them too late might mean you won't get full use out of them. It's especially important to try and protect your armor, even if it means using removals a bit less efficiently, if you see that you are going to play Geosculptor Yip in a few turns. Also, be careful with using your weapon on high attack minions if it destroys a lot of armor and you have armor-synergy cards in hand. If you have a Frozen Buckler in hand, you can be less protective of your armor as you will be able to gain 10 when you need it.

Since you have two Blacksmithing Hammers, feel free to play one that isn't too upgraded (so maybe it only has 3 or 5 durability) to be able to clear minions with it or start pushing some face damage. You can use the other one to stay in the deck for a while to activate Deadly Arsenals and later use it as a win condition.

Amalgam of the Deep counts as a dragon for Kazakusan and you can use it to discover more dragons, but you can also use it on the naga from Guard the City.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

If you don't have certain Legendaries, you can instead put in Drywhisker Armorers.

Dragon Package

Dragons! The most important part of Even Dragon Warrior. The dragons in your deck activate Alexstrasza's Champion to be a 3/3 with Charge, and are duplicated by War Master Voone. The dragons serve various purposes from removal to an endgame win con.

Removals

These removals are crucial for surviving to your endgame and beating aggro decks. You can also use your Rush and Charge minions from other packages as removal.

Armor Package

Armor gain is useful for survival and to activate Onyxian Drake for removal, Captain Galvangar for Charge, Geosculptor Yip for a snowballing threat and minion pressure, and Shield Shatter for board clears. Frozen Buckler is your key card for this, and Genn Greymane setting the cost of your hero power to 1 helps you gain armor as well.

Face Damage Package

These cards help you push face damage, using Charge and going face with weapons can lead to victories over time with a very high durability Blacksmithing Hammer as the finisher as you use your removal to survive.

Card Draw

Card draw is extra important for this deck as you want to get to near fatigue faster to be able to activate Kazakusan. Forged in Flame is a good one off that can draw 3 or 5 cards for 2 mana depending on the weapon. It's generally good to be able to draw a lot as your consistency of combos like Frozen Buckler and Shield Shatter will increase.

Even Warrior finally got a powerful endgame with Kazakusan, and is a pretty fun deck to play. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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