[Legend Top 200] Maximal’s Dragon Handlock

Proof and full guide can be found here

Hello. My name is Maximal. I reached top 200 with this deck with a
77% winrate in the legend ranks. I know 22 games is a small sample, so
the winrate might come down with more games especially against high
ranked opponents, but I don’t play a lot, as you can see I played only
22 ranked games in the last 3 days and I am not the one who grinds to
legend rank 1, simply because I have no time, I have work and life
matters to deal with daily..

Why this deck is good in the current meta?

This deck is a warrior killer. It destroys any kind of warrior.
Control, Combo, Tempo, C’Thun, Dragon, Patron, you name it. In fact just
like previous handlocks it is the King Of Control, it destroys control
decks.With the addition of dragons it also has insane tempo plays now,
which makes it really effective against aggro and midrange too. The only
so-so matchups for this deck are midrange hunter and aggro shaman,
which are still winnable if you play it right. Druids are pretty
hopeless against you, because of BGH and silence nerf. They can’t simply
deal with your giants and drakes. BGH and silence nerfs really buffed
handlock, no more giants getting bghed creating huge tempo swing, no
more 4/1 Drakes, no more silenced taunts. Rogues wish they never have
met you. Silence and BGH nerf buffed handlock.

Matchups:

Druid:

Mulligan: Mortal Coil, Hellfire, Twilight Drake, Twilight Guardian, Mountain Giant.

Against Yogg Druid:

Use Coil to remove early tokens since they will usually mulligan for
them, thinking you are zoo, cycle through the deck. The sooner you drop
Mountain Giant, the sooner they will concede, although Twilight Drake
followed by tap Mountain giant on turn 5 is really effective too. If the
druid won’t find Innervate Teacher/Power of Wild shenigans early, all
he is gonna do all game is try to remove your minions all game,
struglling to do that. Druid is quite easy matchup if they don’t draw
superbly early. The only 2 loses to druid you see in the chart were
against the same player who played dragon druid at rank 300 and was able
to burst me with 2 swipes the 1st game and got really lucky with
topdecking Ysera, which won him the 2nd game. I was easily suppossed to
win those games.

Against C’Thun Druid:

C’Thun decks have almost zero chance against you, be it druid,
warrior, renolock or priest. You stack the board with huge minions they
can’t deal with and their C’Thun can’t even clear the board he is
played, you simply BGH him and the opponent concedes.

Hunter:

Mulligan: Mortal Coil, Soulfire, Dark Peddler, Twilight Drake or Twilight Guardian.

Against Midrange Hunter:

This is quite hard matchup as it always was for Handlock, due to
Hunters nature to hunt you down. Try to deny hunters early game with
your early cards and lead into Dragon stage where you use your dragons
to taunt up, create tempo with Corruptor etc. It’s a matchup where you
can punish hunter for ignoring your minions with Faceless Shambler.
Force hunter to use his burst spells on your minions, by taunting them,
you need to be really careful with hunter and stall the game or race
him, before he kills you. Get the most use of Alextraza, if you know he
can’t kill you in any way, play something else before playing Alex.
Hunter is quite hard matchup, but I won many times against them while
testing the deck in casual.

Mage:

Mulligan: Soulfire, Hellfire, Dark Peddler, Twilight Drake or Twilight Guardian.

Against Tempo:

I didn’t meet a lot of them, but I believe this is a really good
matchup. Pretty standard start against tempo. Play Peddler leading into
big minion, keep soulfire for Flamewaker. Hellfire if the board gets out
of hand. Try to spam the board with minions, but don’t forget about
Flamestrike, play around it and don’t overcommit, when you have board
control. Don’t forget the mage might have a Yogg on turn 10 so don’t
overcommit too much too.

Against Freeze:

This was always one of the worst handlock matchups. And with silence
nerf it doesn’t make it easier. I din’t play many freeze mages, only 1
in casual while testing. To win this matchup you need to race the mage,
drop giants ASAP and damage his face. If he drops a minion taunt up and
go face. Hope he doesn’t draw freeze and doomsayer and burst to finish
you off in time. Good thing Freeze Mage is pretty much extict on ladder
and only appears occasionally in tournaments.

Paladin:

Mulligan: Mortal Coil, Twilight Drake, Twilight Guardian, Mountain Giant.

Against Aggro:

Typical against aggro start, coil, peddler into big minion. Hellfire
when board gets out of control. Try to keep your hand as small as
possible from getting punished by Divine Favor. Can’t say much about
this matchups since they are really rare.

Against Control (N’Zoth, Anyfin):

This matchup was really good for me with demon handlock, but got a
little bit harder, because of silence nerf, you can’t silence your
giants. But its still a quite good matchup. The key here is to bait
their Aldors and Uldamans on your smaller minnions, leaving Giants
intact. Alextraza plays a big role in this matchup, it’s used to finish
off the opponent. Fish for Soulfires and POs, decrease the mana with
Emperor and when the time comes make the combo with Alex. Always
consider equality in this matchup, don’t overextend, cause thats exactly
what the opponent wants you to do.

Priest:

Mulligan: Twilight Drake, Twilight Guardian, Mountain Giant.

Against Control Priest (N’Zoth, C’Thun):

Handlock was always a priest killer, it doesn’t change this time. The
deck just destroys priests especially since Lightbomb is gone now. Fill
up your hand and play a Drake to establish board control, priest can’t
do anything against it. This handlock can establish a lot of pressure on
control decks due to dragon tempo nature. Kill their 4/3 or 6/3 with
Corruptors. Play around Sylvanas by putting a lot of small minions on
board than killing her off. Put the pressure on and soon the priest
won’t be able to remove your minions and heal at the same time. You can
easily finish off the priest with Alex combo.

Rogue:

Mulligan: Twilight Drake, Twilight Guardian, Mountain Giant.

Against Miracle Rogue:

Valeera is easy since she spends first 3 turns basically doing
nothing while you fill up your hand with huge minions you will play for
cheap. Drop a Guardian or Drake to burn removal, follow up by tap giant
or corruptor to kill the agent. Rogue just can’t deal with your minions,
sap is innefective basically and she needs to go throught the taunts to
make any kind of combo, by that time she is usually dead anyway.

Shaman:

Mulligan: Soulfire, Hellfire, Dark Peddler, Twilight Drake or Twilight Guardian, Big Game Hunter (Only if you have a good starting hand).

Against Agrro/Midrange:

Similar matchup to hunter. Soulfire is best kept for Totem Golem
mostly especially if you have hellfire in your hand. The key here is
once again to bait the burst of shaman on your minions. A smart shaman
will look to get 7/7 on board at turn 4 or turn 3 with coin against
warlock, since we have no good hard removal. There are ways to save you
from that damage. One is BGH which will most likely win you the game if
you kill his 7/7 early. Another way is taunt up either with Guardian and
Watcher/Sunfury, that will usually set the 7/7 to 3 or 4 health, you
can finish him off with Corruptor or Soulfire, or in case of really bad
start of shaman you will get your Mountain Giant earlier than he gets
his 7/7. If you will play it right it will come to a point when he has
no board and almost no cards, maybe doomhammer in hand which you deny
with taunts. Moltens play quite a role in this matchups, if you are able
to manipulate shamans damage output you will set yourself on cheap
moltens and taunt up, from there on you race the shaman, he has 1 turn
to draw something good to finish you off.

Warlock:

Mulligan: Mortal Coil, Hellfire, Dark Peddler, Twilight Drake or Twilight Guardian.

Against Zoolock:

Zoo is a good matchup if you know how to play against it. Stall the
early game with coil/peddler, maybe farseer, leading into dragons. The
key against zoo is to know when to use hellfire. The best hellfire is
when you completely clear zoos board and he has no minions to make a
comeback on board. So if zoo has not that much damage on board on turn 4
you can play a drake or giant. You trick the zoo player here, because
he thinks you have no hellfire, but dropped a powerful minion, so he
will spam the board more and ignore your minion. That’s where you punish
him, you hellfire and kill off everything that is left with your
minion, from there you basically win, the only way for zoo to comeback
after that is respamming the board with tentacles. Also you can punish
him for ingnoring your minion with Faceless Shambler. Now if Zoo has
Flame Imps, Peddlers and other high damage minions that easily die to
hellfire on turn 4, you hellfire. Usually he will have few cards at that
point in hand and it will be hard for him to come back, because the
next minion he drops will most likely be killed by Corruptor anyway.
Manipulate the damage output and try to set urself on molten range, then
taunt up, zoo has no burst, apart from those occasional players who
play Soulfire. If you taunt up moltens its pretty much GG too.

Against Reno:

Reno is easy. Drop Mountain Giant or Drake as soon as possible and
push damage, apply pressure. play around shadowflame by killing their
high attack minions, Don’t overextend into Twisting Nether. Keep some
big threats in hand incase he removes be board. You are the aggressor in
this matchup, and renolock is just trying to survive. The time is gonna
come when he is gonna use Reno, you can Alextraza him back to 15 and
finish him off.

Warrior:

Mulligan: Twilight Drake, Twilight Guardian, Mountain Giant.

Against Dragon/Tempo:

Mulliganing against warrior is quite hard since there are so many
archetypes of them. But I generally mulligan as I am against control. Ok
so dragon or tempo warrior is pretty easy. Contest early game if he
drops some minions, but generally draw some cards to be able to play
drakes and giants early. He has only 2 executes and if unless he draws 2
of them early he will struggle against your big minions and taunts and
board clears. You pretty much take board control at turn 5 and from
there you are ahead. The key thing to remember against this matchup is
not to overextend into Deathwing and try to keep BGH exactly for.
Deathwing is one of the few ways Dragon Warrior can win against you.
Also always consider Grom or Rag being in his hand.

Against Control/C’Thun:

Control is also quite easy. Start with baiting removals on
Drakes/Guardians, follow up by giants. Don’t overextend into brawl.
Generally keep 2 Big minions on board, not more. Kill your small minions
into his or sometimes even mortal coiling your own minion, just to make
your board less brawlable is the right thing to do. Try to build up as
much burst as you can with Soulfires and POs during the game. Brann with
Corruptor great to kill 6/6 or for extra burst. Alex for heal or for
burst. Don’t heal yourself with Farseers, get into molten range to use
them asap. Soon the warrior will run out of cards and removals and
that’s where you are gonna finish him off.

Against Combo:

Put the pressure on, they have 2 executes only, bait them on Guardian
or Drakes, he can’t clear high health minions with Pyro. Clear his
board to deny good battlerage. Taunt up, he will be forced to kill the
taunts someway, but will struggle until he dies. Just be careful not to
get low enough on health with no taunts for him to combo you. Because
you never know what’s in his hand.

Against Patron:

Just hellfire patrons.