New archtype concept: Dragonslayers

“Dragons are no masters nor friends, they are tools, and just like any other tool, we use them, and then discard it.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Mysterious Scientist.

 I greet you, before i introduce the dragonslayer concept to you, i want to explain where i got the idea of making the archtype. I was digging some old files in my PC for boredom reasons, then i’ve founded a custom Dark Souls themed expansion i created back in 2016, and one of the archtypes i created for this expansion was the “Dragonslayer”, wich was focused in discarding Dragons to gain huge Tempo boosts. The classes that used the Dragonslayers was Hunter, Paladin and Mage (If you’re familiar with the Dark Souls lore, you problally know why those classes were chosen and what they do).

 After taking the nostalgia shot, i thinked to myself: “You know what, i think it is worth to recreat the archtype”, and then did it, and now i present to you, the Dragonslayer archtype!

 What are the Dragonslayer and they do?

The Dragonslayers are a group created by Dia the Time Breaker with the inicitial goal to hunt all the evil dragons on Azeroth, but one day a mysterious scientist joined the organization, and gifted them with a new powerful artifact: The Dragon Essence Extractor, wich had the power to absorb the soul of a Dragon and transffer to someone else. Then the scientist convinced them that Dragons are a plague to the world, and they should be exterminated, and the Dragon Essence Extractor( i’ll call it DEE for short) was the weapon that would help them achieve this goal.

 Them the Dragonslayers, equiped with the DEE, went on a vicious hunt againts the dragons, capturing them, extracting its power and then discarding them. The main target was the Blue, Green and Bronze dragonflight, for they powers mixed very well with the classes of the organization (Paladin, Hunter and Mage). Paladins gained the limited power to control time, hunters gained the power of the wilds, and mages unlocked their full potencial with huges amount of magic power.

The Constructs

 Aloung with the DEE, the scientist also created construct dragons to increase the powers of the Dragonslayer’s armies.

  But amoung the constructs, three of them standed out, they were alot more powerful than the others, and also had the natural power of absorbing the essence of other dragons. Those constructs are: Kalysera the Rooted, Sethgos the Crystallized and Masthormu the Infinite.

 And now with an unstoppable army of constructs and the power of three dragonflights, they marched with a single objective: Destroy the dragon kind.

 There’s more lore and history i created for them, but i’ll just writte the basic for now, if people show interest, i might writte the rest. But enough lore, let’s talk about the cards. You should expect a VERY HIGH POWER LEVEL!

The Hunter set

 Hunter’s Dragonslayer focus in destroing their targets as quickly as possible and uses powerful early game plays to gain advantage and then uses their big weapons Kalysera the Rooted and Dragonslayer Orn to finish the enemy hero. In resume, they are the aggressive bunch of the Dragonslyers.

COMMONS

RARES

EPICS

LEGENDARIES

The Mage Set

 Dragonslayer’s mages focus in acumulate Spell Damage and finish their enemies in one shot, and to achive this, they use a lot of survivability and draw to reach the combo turn. They play similar to freeze mage, but in a more fun way.

COMMONS

RARES

EPICS

LEGENDARIES

The Paladin Set

 Dragonslayer’s Paladin are the control part of the group, but they play a more active control style, like Renolock and Cubelock, i know some people don’t consider those as control decks, but those are just labels, and i personally think they deserve the control label. Back to the set, they main thing is removing minions and summoning big dragons, with the ability to use time in their favor.

COMMONS

RARES

EPICS

LEGENDARIES

The Neutral Set

 Turns out, the mysterious scientist was actually Nefarian! He’s working for the Dragonslayers, creating and cloning dragons for them out of the dragons they slay. Something is different about him, but i’ll only explain what it is if i writte the full lore. The basic support consist of a mix of construct dragons and dragonslayers that provide support for all for the dragonslayer archtypes.

COMMONS

RARES

EPICS

LEGENDARY

 And that was the Dragonslayer concept, hoped you guys liked it, if more interest is shown, i’ll writte the full lore behind them and maybe even created an entire expansion based around it. And now a little trivia and clarifications about the Dragonslayers.

- The cards that discard Dragons will ONLY trigger its effect if you discard a Dragon, so if you have no Dragons in your hand, they will be nearlly worthless. And in the case of spells and hero powers, they can only be used you have a dragon in hand, otherwise you can’t even cast them.

 - As i said in the intro, they were based on my Dark Souls expansion i’ve made back in 2016, so they share some of its flavour. The mage part was inspired by Seth the Scaless, the betrayer of the dragonkind who usessed crystals to create his magic. Hunter was based on the Silver Archers and Paladin on the Silver Knights from Anor Londo.

 - All dragons used by the Dragonslayer are either indoctrinated constructs or slaves, none of them are helping on purpose.

 -There’s quite some references in the set, can you spot them all?

 -There might be some errors in the cards, if you saw one, please ignore it, i’ve maked and remaked a lot of cards, and if  fix every single mistake on them, i’ll take forever to finish the set. I ask the same for typos.

 -Warrior was HIGHLLY considerated to be a dragonslayer, but since i've had no idea of wich direction to give it, i've decided to cut it.

And that is all, what do you think about the Dragonslayers? If you have any comment or question, just say it. Also, i would love to see your cards based on the dragonslayer mechanic, if you have any idea, please share it! Ok, now it's for real, bye.

I really like the idea of this set, using dragons as a separate resource instead of a card to play is really cool. If you wanted to, you could also make it so that it’s less random by making the effects “discard your lowest/highest cost dragon” or even “Discover a Dragon in hand. Discard it to do XYZ”.

in terms of the cards themselves, I think most of them are really good, but a few seem a bit too strong. For example, the Paladin Hero Card is essentially a better Bloodreaver Guldan, since the dragons will usually be bigger and you don’t have to actually play them for them to count towards the effect. Maybe it would be better if the discarded dragons were shuffled into your deck with Casts when Drawn, so that it isn’t as much of an immediate board swing. Alternatively, it could be “Add 7 Dragons you discarded this game to your hand. Summon any that don’t fit”, so that it’s more conditional and summons 1 less dragon. The other card that I don’t like is the 1 Mana 2/3 Taunt for Paladin, since it seems way too good in the early game and awful in the late game. Maybe it would be better as something like a 1/2 Taunt with “Discard a Dragon to give this minion and adjacent minions Divine Shield”.

Overall, I really like your unique take on Dragon discarding, I think I might make a few cards based on the concept and post them here!

Time Jump would be a way for Paladins to "skip ahead" of the Mana curve by discarding Dragons. (Edit: I changed Time Jump to 3 Mana so that it can't be used to gain insane early game starts)

Crystal Broodmother gives Mage a way to generate Crystal Whelps in hand, either to play for their Spell Damage or as Dragons to discard.

Verdant Protector is another self-discard synergy card that gives extra power to the minion that discards it.

Fatestealer helps mitigate the randomness of discard by letting you choose which card to discard (if a card says "discard a dragon", Fatesealer will only Discover among dragons in your hand). The low cost makes it easy to combine with other cards, and could even be used in a Warlock discard deck. If you discard a card on your opponent's turn, a random one of the discover targets is chosen, just like when a Discover Spell is cast by a card like Yogg-Saron. 

Keeper of Legacies helps to keep your deck full of Dragons, and grants them +2/+2 to make even the small ones useful

Dragon Knight gives Hunter extra face damage, Mage extra removal, and Paladin more Silver hand recruits. The Hero Power doesn't even have to be used that turn, which makes Dragon Knight almost always useful. 

Here's another card I made!

Each dragon in hand is transformed into a "Dragonrider" that adds the Dragon it used to be back to your hand when it dies. The idea is that you can mitigate the downside of expensive dragons by transforming them into cheap cards, at the cost of not getting the original card back until the Dragonrider dies. Alternatively, it could be changed to transform the Dragons into "Rookie Dragonrider", if this design seems too unintuitive.

Quote From CursedParrot

Here's another card I made!

Each dragon in hand is transformed into a "Dragonrider" that adds the Dragon it used to be back to your hand when it dies. The idea is that you can mitigate the downside of expensive dragons by transforming them into cheap cards, at the cost of not getting the original card back until the Dragonrider dies. Alternatively, it could be changed to transform the Dragons into "Rookie Dragonrider", if this design seems too unintuitive.

Loved most of your cards, but my favorites are Crystal Broodmother, Verdant Protector and Master Dragonrider.  They capture pretty well the essence of the Dragonslayers, either by generating Dragons to discard or giving bonuses from discarding them. Overall, good job, thanks for sharing your own ideas of my archtype.