Beginner Paladin Deck List Guide & Tips 2017

Welcome to our Beginner’s Paladin Deck List Guide! If you are just starting out in Hearthstone this guide will help you learn how-to build and play this completely free Paladin deck list. The guide includes card explanations, mulligans, play strategy, and future card replacements/substitutions.

Find More Beginner’s Decks: Beginner’s Hearthstone Decks for Every Class

Beginner Paladin Deck Overview

Paladin is a solid starter class for a new player in Hearthstone. The Hero Power is very good and can help you learn how-to trade minion’s efficiently while learning the value of controlling the board! Paladin also has some great buff cards which can pair nicely with their minion creating hero power.

Don’t understand some of the terms in this guide? Check out our Hearthstone Terms & Glossary!

Card Choices

These card choices are broken down into two sections: Class and Neutrals.

Paladin Cards

Blessing of Might – A versatile minion buff that can be used aggressively to attack the opponent, or can be used on a weak minion to make a trade.

Blessing of Kings – A very powerful buff that leads to solid trades or can make defensive minion’s even stronger.

Consecration – AOE that helps to clear off wide boards or can even help finish off an opponent when you are struggling to do so.

Truesilver Champion – One of the better basic cards in the entire game. Gives you the power to remove minions while retaining some of or all of the health you lost by doing so. It can also work as a way to pressure the opponent or finish the game.

Guardian of Kings – A bit high costed and fairly outclassed by most cards, but 6-health makes it playable enough and the healing can help get you out of trouble against classes that are reliant on burst damage.

Neutral Cards

Stonetusk Boar – Might initially seem like an odd inclusion, but the card pairs extremely well with your buff spells and minions. This card should never be just played on the board (unless it’s for lethal damage), you should wait until you have a buff for it to get maximum value.

Acidic Swamp Ooze – Decent stats and an ability that is very relevant against certain classes. It’s generally best not to be too greedy with the effect unless you know for sure they are going to play a weapon. It’s almost always better to play something rather than wait and hope to destroy a weapon. Be more conservative with this card against Warrior.

Bloodfen Raptor – Mostly just a body for stats and a cheap cost. The beast tag is largely irrelevant to Paladin.

Razorfen Hunter – A pretty bad overall card, but is more relevant in Paladin due to the multiple buffs you have in the deck plus Frostwolf Warlord.

Shattered Sun Cleric – Solid minion that has a strong buff attached to it. While it’s nice to get the buff, it’s usually best to just play the minion on the board rather than hope for a best case scenario.

Chillwind Yeti – One of the best basic minions. 5-health is very important and can trade and survive against most minions of the same cost or below. The card saw some really early play in meta decks in the beginning of ranked play, but is just purely outclassed by better minions now.

Sen'jin Shieldmasta – Similar to Yeti but loses 1-attack stat for Taunt. This card can trade with a lot of early minions and help stave off pressure from aggressive decks.

Frostwolf Warlord – Not relevant in some of the other beginner decks, but Paladin has the ability to build a board of small minions with its hero power and can put down this strong threat that is reasonably costed.

Boulderfist Ogre – This is essentially the 6-drop version of Chillwind Yeti. 7-health is very hard to remove with a single card unless it’s premium removal like Hex or Polymorph is used.

Stormwind Champion – This is a great card when you have minions on the board. It also helps against AOE by giving your minions additional stats.

Beginner Paladin Deck Mulligan Advice and Strategy

We’re generally always looking to keep our cheap drops, but in this deck we don’t want to keep Blessing of Might or Stonetusk Boar. Why? Well, Blessing of Might is only good when you have another minion, so if you keep it and don’t get a playable minion then there’s no point in having it early on. The Boar is only good with a buff card, and it’s usually best for making a necessary trade or pushing lethal.

Keep your 2-drops, and if you get one in the opening mulligan you can look to keep a 3-drop. If you are going second then you can consider keeping a 4-drop if you already have a 2-drop.

• Always Keep: Acidic Swamp Ooze and Bloodfen Raptor
• Keep w/2-drop: Shattered Sun Cleric and Razorfen Hunter
• Keep w/2-3 drop Curve or 2-Drop & The Coin: Chillwind Yeti, Truesilver Champion, and/or Sen'jin Shieldmasta

Play Strategy

With this beginner’s Paladin deck we are looking to control the board and beatdown our opponent with our minions. The great part about Paladin is that against most classes you will be able to eventually win the game with your hero power because the minion’s will eventually lead to enough damage to finish the game. For example, the Mage hero power can do 1-damage per turn, but the Paladin hero power can start to increase every turn one of the Silver Hand Recruit‘s manage to stay on the board. This is also why minion damage is usually valued higher than spells because it can repeat each turn your opponent leaves it on the board.

This is a deck that relies on its minion buffs, and you want to make sure to get value out of them. It is rarely a good idea to play a buff on a minion only to use it to attack the opponent’s face unless you have lethal damage. You want to make sure you are doing this to remove one of your opponent’s minions so they can’t just remove it with one card and gain card advantage over you. You also want to try and spread out your buffs, do not just buff the same minion because if your opponent has silence or hard removal all that you invested is gone. When looking for a minion to target, generally try to find one that will survive the exchange, and that potentially might survive your opponent’s AOE cards (Lightning Storm, Consecration, Holy Nova), or single-target damage cards (Lightning Bolt, Holy Smite, Frostbolt).

If possible you’ll also want to buff your weaker, low-cost minions and preserve the health of the stronger ones. If you are against a Priest, try not to buff a 4-attack minion because the class struggles against those due to Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Horror not being able to target them.

Do not use your Truesilver Champion to attack your opponent’s face unless you are pushing towards lethal or have lethal. The weapon does not need to be used every turn, and if you are fairly confident that your opponent does not have weapon removal (Acidic Swamp Ooze or Harrison Jones) then you can just leave it equipped. Weapon’s are extremely good at removing minions while allowing you to increase your board. Getting a small amount of damage on your opponent early in the game is rarely relevant.

Because of Frostwolf Warlord it might be better to play multiple minions in a turn rather than one higher cost minion. This is determined by your hand, and if your opponent is likely to have any AOE cards.

If you think an opponent is likely to have AOE cards in their hand it is sometimes best to just use your hero power rather than feed a card into it.

Card Replacements and Substitutions

I’m going to list cards that you should start to look to replace to stick with the theme of this deck which is a Midrange Paladin. You should start to look towards budget decks and build towards them once you start to acquire cards. Once you’ve built a budget deck, you can then start to build towards a meta deck.

Find Budget Decks: Hearthstone Budget Decks for Every Class

Righteous Protector is a solid 1-drop minion for the Paladin class that is great for buffing because of the divine shield. You can swap out the Raptors to make room for the card.

If you have or get Hydrologist it’s a pretty strong 2-drop that can replace Razorfen Hunter in the deck. Hydrologist allows you to choose from three randomly selected Paladin secrets which gives you a chance to pick something optimal based on your current situation.

Spikeridged Steed is a strong buff card that can be added to the deck in place of Guardian of Kings.

Got Bonemare? Well, add it to the deck because it’s a very good card in just about any budget deck. I would replace the Stormwind Champion with it.

Once you’ve gotten a few of these upgrades it’s time to start looking into those budget decks listed above! Good luck out there on the ladder.