If you draft enough times there will eventually come a draft where everything goes wrong. Like when you are Alliance with two Alliance drafters on either side of you, or you jumped classes four times and might not make it to 30 playable; in short, a train wreck of a draft. For this situation I targeted Paladin as the class to draft, my bailout option. I'll share with you some of my knowledge of actually drafting this class and what your expectations should be when drafting Paladin.

Before I get to my usual comments on the abilities let me explain why I drafted Paladin. While at Darkmoon Faire Orlando I entered a couple of iPod drafts. In one of these drafts, I played against an Alliance Paladin deck in the finals. If it wasn't for a play error at the end of game three on his part, I would have lost. My allies were out-classed by his and my early game advantage was slipping away until he made the mistake. I was left with a nagging feeling that maybe Paladin was playable.

To get better you should be open to new ideas and always be willing to learn. When the set first comes out, everyone jumps to conclusions about which classes are better than others. Advantages come from exploiting cards that others have evaluated incorrectly. You should be willing to try new cards and learn from your losses; don't simply say he got lucky with a terrible class. Since I almost lost to Paladin, I wanted to know for myself if the class might be better than the, "worst class in the set label," I was giving it. There is also the advantage of being able to take allies and quests over abilities and see them table back around. Lets see what Paladin has to offer.

Common


Normally I would hate this type of card, it just looks like a card that is too situational and more importantly, card disadvantage. You slap it on a small ally to help kill a big ally but you lose two cards for his one. After playing with this card, it performed better than expected. There are a good number of protectors in this set so defending won't be a huge problem and most of the protectors have bigger healths to help them survive the first attack. I have found this best working with a couple of cards that usually get passed last, [Shanis Bladefall] and [Veline Bladestar]. These protectors work great with [Blessing of Defense] because they are cheap. Their cost matters because you want to be able to cast both the protector and have resources open to cast Blessing when your opponent attacks. The other reason to like them is because they have a large health number allowing them to survive the first attack preventing the usual card disadvantage. I like it best with [Jarrod Gravon], a card that I always want in my deck. [Blessing of Defense] will often come to you with three cards left in the pack, being able to find use out of last picks can really salvage a busted draft.


This is the top common ability of the class. The cost of this card is the reason why it's so good. There is a world of difference between keeping one resource open compared to two. This card can catch you up when you are behind, or let you keep the pressure up by delaying them from trading. The problem with this card is at times you will lose a card for nothing but tempo. They will simply recast their ally and now you are back to where you were moments before but down a card. It works best when you can use your five drop to attack their small ally, Censure their five drop and then use your five drop to trade with another ally. In this scenario you've used two cards (Censure and your five drop) for two of their cards (two allies, one small). Other times the tempo gained in the early game by casting this is huge. I wouldn't mind playing three of these in a deck; that's how good it is.


Now this is a trick of a card. Looking at it you see that you get a small effect for three resources, but it replaces itself. If you can take advantage of healing 5 damage you will be up a card. That sounds fine and dandy but really the problem is in its cost. Spending three resources is a steep price, and healing five damage is hardly worth the time. I found myself rowing this card more often then I would cast it. I always had something else I would rather do with my resources early game and late game.


It's good to have a common way to deal with weapons, too bad this doesn't do anything to [Lockjaw].


I talked about this during Warrior week and the same applies, good game closer.

Uncommon


+2/+2 for three resources is pretty standard, nothing special so it's the ability they add on that will make these type of cards good. What we have here is all damage done by this ally is unpreventable, uggg. Really? So now something we already have built in to [Rekwa Proudhorn] is our bonus? There isn't a ton of damage prevention in this set so having the damage unpreventable is near useless. Stashing this will trigger some of the green dragonkin, but making your team deal unpreventable damage is useless too. Now we have to look at this as just +2/+2 for three resources. Sure it's a fine deal, you get to boost a guy and get a favorable trade forcing your opponent to use another card to kill your big ally. It shines best when you dodge an expensive removal ability like [Black Blood] or [Earthen Blast] because they used a full turn to not kill anything. The problem I see is this card is rarely card advantage, they use two cards to kill your two cards. I'm greedy but I want more out of my uncommons; I want something that will generate some card advantage or swing the game in my favor. [Withering Decay], [Nature Resistance Totem], [Thunderous Challenge], and even [Fel Blaze] are cards that I want at uncommon. This card is fair, nothing bad, just not game changing.


This is a sideboard card; good against Druid ([Entangling Growth]) and Death Knight ([Withering Decay], [Chains of Ice], [Blood Chill]). It's nice to have a card that can kill some abilities in your class but it's just not great or exciting.


Why did this have to cost three? Would Paladin be too good if this cost one? At three this is nearly unplayable, too situational, and doesn't do enough. Could I please have [Glimmer of Hope] back? The best part of this card is by keeping three resources open you are practically holding up a 10 foot sign that says "I HAVE A COUNTERSPELL!!!!!!"


We all know and love this card from Alliance Druid. Unfortunately it's not flat out broken in Paladin, it is just solid. If you draft the combo of [Shanis Bladefall]/[Veline Bladestar] and [Blessing of Defense] this card will keep the headaches coming for your opponent.

Rare/Epic


I've had some good experiences with this card. It's got enough good things going for it, it's cheap, it's instant, and it stays around to keep give benefit coming. +1/+1 is enough of a bonus to really throw off combat for your opponent. This card is best when you draft it in the first or second pack, that way you can keep an eye on which classes you have and try to draft those. I had a horde deck with four warriors and [Cadon Thundershade] to reset [Blessing of the Kindred] if needed. Even with just four allies that shared a class this card was great. I'm not saying this is a bombtastic rare; it's not, it's a good card that can unexpectedly throw off math and keep giving other allies a bonus.


Remember Scourgewar? Paladin was pretty bad there too, but it had a few shining cards, one of which was [Vindictive Strike]. [Repentance] plays a lot like [Vindictive Strike], you run your hero in to their biggest ally and for the low cost of two resources, ally gone. Now we have the added versatility to remove pesky weapons, diseases, and [Steady Shot], but it remains a simple one for one card. This card feels more like an uncommon to me, I want my rares like my women: flashy, exciting, and expensive. Well maybe not that last one, rares can be cheap and we can still have a good time.


How many weapons would you have to have in your deck to reliably use [Seal of Wrath]? Three, would be my guess. Unless you stocked up on [Citadel Enforcer's Claymore], your weapons aren’t going to need much help. This card is hard to use and does not affect the game by itself, this is not the kind of card I want to play. If you could sacrifice it to do something relevant I would see its use, but as is I would avoid playing this.


Get back your best dead ally, and it will heal it every turn. Yes this card is a bomb, I suppose that’s why it’s purple.

Rare Weapons ([Warmace of Menethil], [Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King], [Ramaladni's Blade of Cunning], [Devout Aurastone Hammer], [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper])
I’ve talked about these weapons before, yes they are all awesome.

Heros
[Jaenel] / [Jaenel back]
As with most of the classes the alliance flip is much better. Giving your hero assault 1 will help finish off allies that your allies couldn't quite handle alone. If you do want to try out [Holy Light] this would be the better spot for it, having your hero attack will make the damage start to pile up and [Holy Light] can give you some breathing room.

[Rekwa Proudhorn] / [Rekwa Proudhorn back]
At least this flip is cheap, other than that there isn’t much here. Paladin doesn't have any damage spells in this set, if that were the case this flip would help out taking down aberration allies. There isn’t a whole lot of nature resist in the set for this to help out with either. Heck, there isn’t even a ton of big armor that would make this flip seem better, the armor in this set is pretty small so the benefit from the flip is small. Every once in awhile you will in counter a [Mahna Lightsky] or [Tattered Dreadmist Mantle] and this flip will seem decent, but it won’t be often.

Now that we’ve looked at the cards what does it all mean? From drafting this class I can say that Paladin is not something I would recommend drafting. Most of the abilities are too expensive to be of great use. There is no common removal spell, so problem allies like [Ruby Enforcer] or [Zakis Trickstab] will create huge headaches. There are no big card advantage uncommon or rare abilities; you will spend most of the game trading one for one. The pluses for this class are: nobody else at the table will fight you for Paladin, you will get your pick of the common abilities and rares will float around to the end of packs. It does have a few good spells so not all is lost if you end up in Paladin and there are some great rare weapons that you have the potential of opening.

Not every story has a happy ending and I’m afraid Paladin did not get the thumbs up from me. In all of the drafts I did, I often ended up 1-2. In games I felt like I was fighting up-hill battles. You're casting [Censure] and they are casting [Wrath]. The games I won I felt it was more because of my allies than my class abilities. At least I tried it out; I drafted it and played games instead of simply theorizing about it. If you’ve had better results with this class I won’t say you’re wrong, what I can say is that I couldn’t make it work here in Vegas and I won’t be drafting Paladin in the future.

Robert Swarowski is a WOW TCG Darkmoon Faire Champion and long time card game specialist. With wins in both a Magic the Gathering Grand Prix and a Spoils Championship, Rob has had success across multiple games. Considered a limited specialist, recently Rob Top 8ed Darkmoon Faire Los Angeles and can be found traveling the Darkmoon Faire circuit across the United States.