The Comprehensive March of the Lich King Preview

 

Data Reaper Report - Paladin

Feast and Famine

Feast and Famine

This card is very comparable to Demon Hunter’s Fury but is stronger as a standalone card. It provides 3 attack from the start, and then gives your hero lifesteal on turn 4. While Fury does have the upside of Jace and other synergies, Feast and Famine works incredibly well with Lightforged Cariel: if you play F&F before Cariel, the AOE effect gains lifesteal too.

So, this is a very good card for the purpose of early game removal, scales with weapons and other effects and should be a strong consideration for different Paladin decks. Strong.

Score: 3

Seal of Blood

Seal of Blood

This is an extremely powerful buff. +3/+3 and divine shield is arguably better than Blessing of Kings at 4 mana, turning any minion into a very sticky and dangerous threat. The hero damage matters about as much as Flame Imp’s drawback since you’ll be playing an aggressive deck with the intention of being the one to pressure the opponent. For that purpose, Seal of Blood does an amazing job and carries crippling synergy with Stonehearth Vindicator and Sunwing Squawker, putting the parrot back on the constructed map.

One of best cards in the set and possibly the best aggressive one.

Score: 4

Daring Drake

Daring Drake

A 4/4 dragon with rush that gains +1/+1 if you’re holding a dragon. This isn’t very daring, and we’re a little disappointed at how tame this bonus is. Don’t get us wrong, a 5/5 rush for 4 mana is respectable, but this could have been pushed to a 6/6 and no one would have batted an eye. Dragon Paladin will have a tough time competing with alternative shells in Control Paladin, so it needs all the help it can get. At 6/6, this card would have been great. As a 5/5, it’s just alright and doesn’t really make us want to play dragons.

Score: 2

Flight of the Bronze

Flight of the Bronze

A Manathirst spin on Draconic Studies for Paladin. Instead of a mana discount, we get a bonus 5/5 dragon with taunt on turn 7. That seems very strong, allowing us to find a dragon and potentially developing it on the same turn with the taunt, putting us ahead on the board. Cards that provide both quality resources and strong initiative are not too common, but when they exist, they’re usually very good. This card should be played by both Dragon Paladin, and other Control Paladins.

Score: 3

Sanguine Soldier

Sanguine Soldier

This is going to be one of the best 1-drops in the format. Sanguine Soldier provides so much pressure on a 1-drop. Righteous Protector is similarly sticky and provides a very effective blockade on the opponent’s ability to trade and control the board, but Soldier is much more threatening. It is a 1 mana Shielded Minibot, shaving off a single point of health as a tradeoff. That’s worth it.

Again, we don’t care about the self-damage effect. Those concerns are best left to the cowards who run Renathal because they’re scared of dying. This card goes hard on the board and is very annoying to remove. A new staple for aggressive Paladin decks, and a big boost to their chances of seeing competitive play once again.

Score: 4

For Quel’Thalas

For Quel'Thalas!

This card deals 5 damage for 2 mana if you have a minion on the board. That seems like a very powerful nuke for aggressive Paladin decks. The best part of it is that you can buff a minion on board, such as a Sanguine Soldier, go face and use the hero attack damage to pick off an opponent minion that tries to contest board. This is also a card that makes us take a second glance at Kotori Lightblade. Together with Seal of Blood, the forgotten legendary could suddenly become an extremely intimidating buff target.

Another major boost to an aggressive Paladin deck.

Score: 3

Timewarden

Timewarden

An initially weak 4-drop that looks to leverage a powerful ability to swing the game. The ability works on any summoned dragon, which means that we can play this alongside Flight of the Bronze to give the 5/5 taunt, divine shield. The most powerful direct follow up on turn 5 to a Timewarden is Onyxian Warder since you get to buff three bodies. Amber Watcher is also nice against aggressive decks.

Later in the game, this could offer a powerful set up to Raid Boss Onyxia or allow you to play Kazakusan while protecting yourself with it. The more dragons you run, the better Timewarden is, but it can only work well in this specific archetype.

Score: 2

Blood Crusader

Blood Crusader

This is the last of the Blood Knight cards, and it’s quite a big one. Blood Crusader can enable a very strong swing turn by cheating an 8-mana Paladin minion and put a lot of pressure on the opponent. A card like Templar Captain suddenly becomes a reasonable consideration, and we like that option best, though Ragnaros the Lightlord and Brasswing could be interesting options. There are also The Countess and The Leviathan of course, which are still very good minions to cheat a turn earlier on top of having a free 5/5 on the board.

Blood Crusader isn’t a great fit in a purely aggressive deck with a low curve, but every Paladin deck with late game ambitions will try to fit it in, though it’s a bit trickier than it looks because of its anti-synergy with Order in the Court. Order encourages a lean top of the curve to draw specific cards, while Crusader encourages a robust line up of late game minions.

Score: 3

Blood Matriarch Liadrin

Blood Matriarch Liadrin

Liadrin is a very versatile card. She has synergies with multiple Paladin mechanics that are commonly utilized by its aggressive and proactive decks.

The first is Silver Hand Recruits. Liadrin buffs every ‘dude’ that we summon to the board, making our threats stickier and more difficult to remove. She makes for a good combo with Stand Against Darkness, for example.

The second is board buffs. If you buff Liadrin and stick her to the board, she starts to give divine shield and rush to larger minions that wouldn’t normally benefit from her ability, so she’s a big buff threat that the opponent must deal with immediately.

And then there are hand buffs. A pre-buffed Liadrin can set up some crazy swing turns for a deck running Prismatic Jewel Kit.

Overall, she’s too versatile and too good in multiple directions to not see play.

Score: 3

Anachronos

Anachronos

This dragon “poofs” minions from the board, and they return after 2 turns. It doesn’t trigger deathrattles or reborns. It doesn’t record a minion’s death for resurrection. If those minions don’t have any space to return because the board is full, they fizzle out and are stuck in a time loop forever.

This is a very powerful effect to attach to a 7 mana 8/8. Paladin can now reset the board and develop a big threat on the same turn. Any type of late game Paladin strategy should consider Anachronos as it helps you stall until you find a board clear or take such a board advantage that you’re able to deal with a returning board 2 turns later. Reminds us of Gigafin in terms of mana cost and utility, though Gigafin only clears the opponent’s board. Good card.

Score: 3

 

Final Thoughts

March of the Lich King Set Rank: 3rd

Overall Power Ranking: 5th

The Blood Paladins are looking like lean, mean, killing machines. Paladin could be back on the aggressive plan with what could be the most powerful aggressive package of the set. Seal of Blood is one of the best buffs in the game’s history, and it has very good synergy with multiple pieces in the class set as well as the neutral set.

We see two main directions with aggressive Paladins. There is the Pure route, with the idea of pressuring early with buffs and sticky minions and then falling back to The Countess to win in the late game, with the consistency of finding Countess and Lightforged Cariel boosted by Order in the Court. This kind of approach looks very flexible.

The other option is to go for the most explosive early game and take advantage of buffs to put games beyond reach by turn 5-6. We’re eyeing a Breakfast Paladin running eggs to guarantee strong Seal of Blood targets. Great Hall could be a complementary piece to the buff package. Dropping Order in the Court allows us to abuse Stonehearth Vindicator with Seal of Blood and threaten a backbreaking follow-up with Sunwing Squawker. A turn 3 6/4 with divine shield and a turn 4 6/7 with divine shield sounds like a solid plan for opponents’ annihilation.

But there’s more to Paladin than the promise of its aggressive builds. Control Paladin has been very successful during the 2nd half of Castle Nathria, and it could also find novel ways to approach games in March of the Lich King. There is the dragon package that could push the archetype into utilizing Kazakusan during its last 4 months in Standard. It could maintain a neutral Denathrius shell with strong additions such as Astalor. It could also amplify its Jailer shenanigans with Bonelord Frostwhisper. The late game options available to Paladins are too many to count and we’re quite excited to see how it approaches the upcoming format.

For the first time in a long time, Paladin looks like an extremely versatile and well rounded class, capable of fast and furious aggressive approaches as well as having a plethora of late game win conditions to choose from. Order in the Court has been a lifesaver, and we suspect it will continue to be a cornerstone for the class.