I just went 7-1 with new Dragon Warrior around rank 900 (i fell quite a bit trying out new shit). After priest quest and warlock card bans i think dragon warrior may be the best deck this patch, no joke. The problem is almost no1 is playing it, and the other problem is the builds on hsguru are terrible. Ofc, since this is r/competitivehs where people are supposed to be trying to win rather than playing for fun, i figured i would make this post for people trying to win games at all cost (like me).
So first, i think u 100% don't play Anvil of Reshaping. It has absolutely terrible stats on hsguru and it kinda compromises ur forge 6/6s, plus it's not that slot efficient anyway, it just deals 4 damage without doing anything else, tho it is Fire but we have enough fire spells imo (considering torch can be used multiple times). So yeah don't play this card, it's fuckin bad, the worst card in the deck based on stats.
The other card u should probably not play is Archaedas. I'll admit i didn't test it but it's 4 mana 4/3 which is bad stats for the cost, but ok next turn u can play a cheap 2 mana weapon to catch up on the lost tempo, right? But the problem is, many of warrior spells are situational and i already run 4 weapons anyway (u don't want more than 4 in a deck it's way too much, in fact usually 3 is the sweet spot, 4 is slightly too much generally). And also it gets copied by hogger so u get 2 of em so actually that becomes 6 weapons in the deck... On one hand it makes it harder to draw warptooth but it also makes it harder to draw ur good cards so i don't think it's good overall to have 1 extra copy, and the stats also seem to agree with me (tho it's not terrible like Anvil).
The new cards we actually want to play are stone gauntlet and forge of origination. Now, if it was just stone gauntlet by itself i'd say it's not really better than brood keeper, with brood keeper u pay 1 more mana but u get a 2/3 body which is worth imo (the weapons are the same, both 2/2), and the armor effect doesn't do much normally. But with forge, the armor effect becomes key to activate it. So i replaced brood keeper with this, in order to keep the weapons to a manageable amount (no more than 4) and as a forge activator. It also makes our deck bit less dragon reliant since removing brood keepers makes us less worried about having dragons in our hand (and thus in our starting deck).
Forge is the absolute MVP, if u play stone gauntlet on 1 u can summon a 6/6 with taunt on turn 2 or 3 and then another one on 4 or 5 (turn 2 and 4 with coin), it is sooooo OP. This card is by far the best card in the starting hand without a doubt, even by itself it's not bad but paired with stone gauntlet it's basically GG if u open with both. So while last expansion u would be a bit more flexible with the mulligan, now i think u should be less inclined to keep cards that aren't stone gauntlet or forge, since if u get the two it's like exodia.
But which cards do we remove to make space? Well, 6 locations can clog the board, and sanguine depths is not that good anyway (tho forge only has 2 charges rather than 3 so it doesn't clog the board that much since it's quick to spend the charges), so i removed the 2nd copy. 1 is enough imo, still nice for activating duck on 4 (or 3 with coin) without other minions. Maybe even 1 is too much, who knows.
Like i said i cut both brood keepers, and finally i cut 1 slitherdrake. Slitherdrake also has pretty bad stats this expansion, sitting at the bottom of the drawn impact column in hsguru. And keep in mind the most popular version on hsguru actually plays 1 copy, so the fact its stats are this bad when a decent chunk of the sample size is with 1 copy, means if every dragon warrior version played 2 copies the stats for slitherdrake would be even worse, so the stats are actually less worse than slitherdrake truly is currently.
That brings us from 8 to 7 drakes, but since we removed a slitherdrake and both blood keepers, we now have 3 less cards that need a dragon in our hand, so i think it's fine. I think cutting it to 6 might be a bit too little dragons, which is why i kept both stadium announcers, which also perfectly keeps 4 weapons. Brood keeper is also an early drop so cutting it for stone gauntlet which is also a cheap card makes sense. Cutting an expensive card for a cheap card makes the deck lighter which doesn't make as much sense (unless that's what u want).
Overall, we replaced one 1 mana card, two 2 mana cards and one 4 mana card for two 1 mana cards and two 3 mana cards, for a total net mana of -1, meaning the deck stays roughly the same mana-wise. U could play a brood keeper instead of 2nd stadium announcer but i don't think that's correct, too few dragons imo. And since slitherdrake looks so bad in the stats i don't think playing 2nd slither instead of 2nd announcer is better. Of course, i kept both fire locations unlike the lists on hsguru, i don't see why to cut em, they're not bad cards. U could cut 1 if u wanted to, but with 6 fire spells (the same amount as before) i don't see why, unless the 2nd slitherdrake proves more important for the dragon count, in which case u'd cut either depths or the 2nd volcano. The lists on hsguru are genuinely so bad, the anvil is terrible yet is also fire meaning they have 8 fire spells but 0 volcanos, that makes absolutely 0 sense. But no surprise that 1 person popularizes a list and then every1 copies it like sheep without thinking, so all the lists of dragon warrior are terrible.
Decklist:
New Dragon Warrior
Class: Warrior
Format: Standard
Year of the Scarab
2x (1) Cannonmaster
2x (1) Carrier Whelp
2x (1) Darkrider
1x (1) Sanguine Depths
2x (1) Stone Gauntlet
2x (1) Torch
2x (2) Hook n' Heave
2x (2) Searing Fissure
2x (2) Shadowflame Suffusion
2x (3) Erupting Volcano
2x (3) Forge of Origination
2x (4) Mother Duck
2x (4) Stadium Announcer
1x (4) Warptooth
1x (7) Prescient Slitherdrake
1x (8) Chainbreaker Hogger
2x (8) Windpeak Wyrm
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To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Btw my dragon warrior calculator has been updated with the latest cards.
