Pure Paladin Deck (Lightforged) – Descent of Dragons

Our Heartstone Pure Paladin Deck List Guide takes a look at this archetype from the Descent of Dragons expansion! We've got a look at the best list for the deck as well as mulligans, play strategy & combinations, and card replacements! This deck is referred to as "Pure", because it only uses cards from the class and no neutrals. This is due to the new Lightforged cards from that have effects that trigger if you have no Neutral cards in your deck! They are pretty powerful effects, so it has encouraged people to build around this idea. Whether or not this style of play will last further into the meta game is unknown at this time.

This whole Pure Paladin archetype is a relatively new idea that is being explored. There have been some popular decks in the past that have not featured neutral cards. An older version of Tempo Mage comes to mind. However, there was no incentive towards this type of play. Now that there is an incentive, it does seem like an interesting deck building exercise and we hope that Blizzard toys with more ideas like this in the future.

Pure Paladin Deck List

Here's a look at the top performing Pure Paladin deck in Descent of Dragons so far:

Pure Paladin Mulligan Guide

Always Keep

• Crystology - Grabs two 1-drops from your deck that you'll be able to follow up with the following turn. This gets us an extra resource to work with which we're happy about it.
• Glow-Tron - This is your best early game drop. It's got good stats and can sometimes get a couple of trades if you're lucky. With all of the Lackeys and tokens out there, you'll be glad you have this to drop on the board.
• Sanctuary - We'll usually be able to pull this off more reliably in the early game, so keeping it is a good option. Hopefully we get a 1-drop to prevent any damage from happening on a turn. Your opponent will have to go out of their way to deal damage to you, so that might include not trading or making a poor play.
• Lightforged Zealot - Mid-game card, but it's very powerful so it is worth keeping the majority of the time.

Possible Keeps

• Brazen Zealot - This card is a whole lot better when you've got something to pair it with. It's best kept with another 1-drop.
• Sandwasp Queen - While the 1-health is concerning, it does have 3-attack which can trade with most things in the early game. We also get a couple of additional cards to throw on the board in the following turns.
• Micro Mummy - We absolutely need a 1-drop to keep this with, it's just a bit too weak on its own.

Pure Paladin Tips & Play Strategy

This is pretty much a Midrange Paladin deck, so it's fairly straightforward to play. We're looking to take good trades and continually place minions on the board. We have some defensive tools, so we can deal with problematic minions and comeback against aggressive decks. We can also risk dumping a lot of our cards at times due to things like Lightforged Crusader giving us additional resources in the later stages of the game.

We're hoping to get a bit ahead early because we do have some cards that benefit from having minions on board. One way we can get ahead is by getting an early Sanctuary to trigger which gives us a fairly sturdy minion on the board. If we can combine this with hitting an early game card with Blessing of Kings then we're pretty much set for future turns. Sticking a minion and then getting a buff on it is one of our main paths to victory.

Lightforged Zealot is going to be one of your powerful turns, it's a great card that not only gets a body on the board but equips us with a weapon we can utilize. This card is one of the main reasons to run this type of deck, so playing it on curve is going to improve our success rate immensely! Based on win-rate percentages, this is the card that swings it into our favor with the highest frequency.

If we get beat up in the early game, we do have some help in Amber Watcher that can heal us back up a bit. We've also got Tirion Fordring which poses a formidable obstacle in front of our opponent's minions. Aldor Peacekeeper is another big piece of our defensive strategy, if we can land it on one of their big minions, that's a pretty considerable tempo play for us!

Lightforged Crusader is another of those purity cards, and it can help us take back the game if we've been forced to use up all of our resources. The cards are random, so we won't always get something useful, but most of the time we should get something at least usable.

The path to victory mostly involves sticking a couple of hard to kill minions and slowly beating up our opponent with them. We don't have huge burst, but we do have a few buff cards that can get us enough reach to get the job done!

Pure Paladin Card Substitutions

• Righteous Cause - This Sidequest does pair nicely with this minion based deck. The question is the effect powerful enough to warrant playing it. I'm not sure that it is, but it can be played in a deck like this one.
• Crystalsmith Kangor - Solid card that gives us some protection against aggro in the early game and can stall some later game minions and get us some healing.
• Argent Protector - Strong card for trading up, but it's really bad on an empty board.
• Subdue - If you're having trouble against big minions then it might be worth throwing this in the deck to deal with them.
• Bronze Explorer - You don't need a Dragon for this to work, so it can be put in your deck as a card that gains you resources and produces a body on board.