Big Dragon Gameplans

No intro lets just jump into this

I am in the process of adding new match ups and updating old ones

Briar

Briar is typically a deck I feel reasonably favored into as it's very tough for them to out value dragons, especially ashwings. If Briar draws a nuts Channel Mount Heroic (CMH) round very early in the game you usually have to block and give them space and it can lead to them finding a second CMH which usually snowballs the game out of control. If this doesn’t happen then they will fall behind on board as they can’t keep up with the value of our dragons. Prioritize playing anything that makes ashwings since they will have to waste damage into them to get them off the board and they don’t want to send their Attack Action cards into them since it's so much wasted value. They can use Force of Nature as a catch up mechanic to clear your board and kill multiple dragons which is another reason to focus on smaller dragons like ashwings. If they want to spend their turn doing that, make them waste as much damage as possible. Try to get a defense reaction into arsenal and don’t block vanilla damage unless you need to, you want to fight over their draw triggers more than anything. Once you get into the late game though if life totals are close Dromai is much better in this spot as you play much better small hands than Briar does. You actively want to trade cards as Dromai, and low life totals forces that to happen. On top of that the dragons you prioritize in the match up lend themselves to being inefficient to block so you will have another edge in the late game if you’ve managed to keep your ashwings around.

Note: if the opponent is fatigue briar then play like they are bravo without any crush effects. If you go into the matchup blind and side like they are regular CMH Briar and find out after they are fatigue make sure you conserve your Chromais/Miragais/Passings/Ouvias till later on. You need to try and play them when you have a board of dragons so you can get a lot of chip damage in on them. Consider playing dragons and not attacking on the first cycle of the deck so you can establish a wide board.

Uzuri/Arakni

Usually a Fatigue matchup with a lot of poppers so see the bravo notes on how to play that. They will usually have some go again attacks in their deck (Hurl/Looking For Scrap) to push a few bigger rounds so you need to preserve your life total a bit more than you would vs other fatigue decks but I'm usually willing to trade health to establish dragons for a while. Once I get close to 20 I start to care about my life total a bit more. They can’t really clear dragons very efficiently so going wide with dragons usually kills them. Usually popping dragons and attacking you is how they will try to win but sometimes by getting the popper out of their hand they don’t have a meaningful attack anymore. Prioritize getting defensive cards in arsenal if they are attacking you so you don’t have to play the guessing game of how much you should block on stealth attacks. Otherwise I usually try not to arsenal if I have the option of playing all my cards as it makes their arsenal destruction cards much worse which is a lot of the power of their deck. If they keep a big hand odds are they are looking to either use Blacktek Whisperers or Razor Reflex to go wide so block accordingly. In that spot I will somtimes block with my whole hand since they took a bunch of damage to try and go wide, they need to hit to gain go again so overblocking will shut that down. If they play Spreading Plague don't do that though. Ideally I want to block exact on the card they attack with and let them play an attack reaction that lets them hit and wait for them to crack Blacktek, then I will react with a defense reaction shutting down their turn and making them waste their boots. Be careful about the reach they have at the end of the game with attack reactions and Flick Knives. Don’t block with furnace unless you know they can’t cast Shred as it will put its defense to zero and when the combat chain closes it will be destroyed.

Azalea

Just block 5 head. Specifically block all the damage she presents that you are able to block. If an arrow isn’t dominated, block it, if it's dominated and you can cover it up still then block it. Try saving your armor for some key blocks on either a turn you want to try actually playing a dragon or a dominated on hit that you really can’t let through. Prioritize playing dragons with higher attack values when you can because a lot of your turns will be blocking with your entire hand and just attacking with one dragon. When she plays a Boltyn Shot with a pump on it to give it go again, consider what could be behind it and if the reload matters. Basically just don’t trade life with Azalea and you should be fine.

Boltyn

You have a lot of non attack actions to block with and defense reactions so this matchup is fairly cursed for Boltyn. And on top of that they have to deal with your dragons or they will get run over. Try to keep your life total high so you don’t get Lumina combo’d and so they can’t surprise kill you with some attack reaction pumps at the end of the game. They will be packing a lot of poppers so it can be hard getting damage in but just take it slow and steady. Think of it like you are playing against Dash that doesn’t have an item end game.

Bravo

This matchup is the entire reason I switched back to big dragon Dromai. The bravo matchup is incredibly brain dead to play which was really important for me going into nationals. I wanted to make sure that if I played a bunch of rounds into fatigue decks that my strategy was simple and easy to execute so I didn’t get mental fatigue by the end of the day like I did last year at nationals.

You will try to win the game on multiple axis. First is the normal swarm of dragons with Chromai + Miragi. The next is using Tomeltai to kill their Arcane Barrier and then get 15 or so chip damage in on them with Burn Them All and Azvolai. Next is overwhelming them with ashwings from Rake the Embers, Ouvia and Billowing Mirage which will either run them out of poppers and you can catch them with their pants down on second/third cycle or get your Ghostly Touch big enough that you can use it with Mage Master Boots to play a Passing Mirage to kill them.

What makes the match up brain dead now is remembrance. The way the matchup usually plays out is you can’t run out your important dragons early as they will get picked off but they are the only thing that can get a bravo to stop punching you in the mouth. So you would play them just for the bravo to play the Zealous they had sitting in arsenal all game and pick off your Chromai + Miragi and go right back to punching you. And if you somehow get them to stop punching you after a while they could pivot into fatigue from there because you already burned through most of your important dragons trying to get them to stop punching you.

What remembrance does is lets us play a singular gameplan where we will for the most part play out our “distraction dragons” (Chromai, Miragai, Ouvia, Passing Mirage) on the first cycle of the deck instead of trying to pitch stack them. This will force the Bravo to stop punching us and deal with the board and then we just keep remembranc’ing them back to the deck over and over. Generally you will just get back Chromais but sometimes you’ll grab something else. The other nice part about this is that if we have to block with any of these we aren’t punished super hard for losing one of our win conditions since we can just get it back, this was always back breaking in the past if you had to block with a Chromai or something.

Some important rules for the match up:

Try not to set defense reactions unless the bravo is completely ignoring your board and going face all game. If you think the bravo might stop punching you to clear dragons you will end up with the defense reaction stuck there all game and it will cost you the game.

Play your cards like Chromai, Miragai, Ouvia, Lost in Thought and Passing Mirage in pairs or trios. You do not want your opponent to pick these off one at a time so by playing them together you make sure that one of them will probably survive. In the case of Ouvia I really want to try and pair that with other higher priority to kill targets for them so that way I will get 2+ ashwings out of it. I will often arsenal one of these while I wait for a hand/turn cycle where I can play 2-3 distraction dragons or play two and set one so I have another one for the next turn. You want to try chaining rounds like this back to back.

Don’t be afraid to play dragons and pass turn with no attacks early in the game. There usually isn’t much point in attacking with them early on as they will just get popped plus you will get valuable info on how Bravo wants to play the game. If they ignore the dragons and go face then you know this isn’t going to be a fatigue game but if they just hammer all the dragons you know this will be a fatigue game. If they are going face and you start getting low, consider starting to attack with dragons to strip some cards from them, this is where ashwings are your best friends. Otherwise just block what you can and slowly build out your board until you feel like it's time to pivot, this will punish them for not dealing with your board all game. If they are fatiguing you though then your life total is almost completely irrelevant, just try not to go so low that you die if they dominate an attack.

If they present AB 2 or you just aren’t able to kill their AB with Tomeltai then you can still use Burn Them All later in the game to demand a full card on one damage or they take it and when you combine that with multiple other sources of damage they can’t pop like attack actions it can be more than they can block in a turn so it doesn’t matter that they still have AB they don’t have enough cards.

Prioritize making ash, you will need a ton of ash for your Ouvia’s and Rakes.

Try to pitch your attack actions with go again as they are very good later on in the game when you are demanding too many cards from their hand compared to early on where they will just use it as a way to get a non six power card out of their hand.

Remember you can still use Sand Cover and Oasis as a source of go again in a pinch.

Themai can be really good in the late game if you’ve seen them pitching defense reactions.

When you get to the end of the game and think you need to go for a Ghostly Touch kill you want to make sure the attack of the Ghostly Touch is enough that it threatens lethal if your opponent doesn’t give you every card in their hand. You want to make sure they don’t try to keep one card in hand to try and kill your Passing Mirage.

Dash

First you need to quickly identify which kind of dash you are up against (Boost, Midrange Pistol, or treefrog fatigue) which usually isn’t that hard to tell based on their equipment and how they play the start of the game. If they are Boost just block 5 head, they will run out of cards before they kill you if you just block and when they leave you with extra cards you either gain life or set defense reactions carrying forward defense value. Be careful if they are Boost starting with Induction since you can’t straight up fatigue them if they do that, you will need to play some dragons and play the game with them while preserving your life total. If they are treefrog then treat them like a bravo or fatigue briar. Pistol dash is a bit more nuanced. Generally what I try to do is tank damage to play dragons and try to price them into boosting so they will be threatened by fatigue. Early on try prioritizing dragons they can’t pick off with Pistol and then as the game goes on switch back to smaller dragons like ashwings once they have Purifiers in play. Dash will take off turns to play items and when she does she usually won’t be able to clear much of your board so you need to use these turns to snowball your board and spiral the game out of control. Remember that they will play more than 6 poppers into you usually so some of your rounds will get cut short but you still need to present boards big enough that it will get out of control for them. Kyloria is obviously good if you can connect with it in any version of Dash but that almost never happens. They will save their armor just for Kyloria. Usually I will try sandbagging a Kyloria in arsenal for a turn where they block with a card or two on one of my other attacks and then surprise them after with the Kyloria and get the rest of or most of their hand or best case catching them with a non block in hand and they have to basically give up their round stopping Kyloria.

Dash I/O

I see a lot of Dromai’s play this match up as Royal. I do not like to play the match up that way so I won’t be going over that. If you want to play it that way still by all means go for it but this guide will be going over how to do it with a block 2 Helmet. This is a fatigue match up where you will try to block as much damage as possible, you win the game by not losing. Dash will burn through her deck faster by boosting than you will by blocking so you usually don’t need to proactively win the game. Since dash can never win trying to slam her hands into you blocking with 4 cards every turn Dash will usually take set up turns where she plays items. Ideally you should use these set up turns to punish Dash for letting you keep cards. Use these turns to play dragons, cast Tome of Fyendal, or play a disruptive attack like Command and Conquer. Kyloria is another great attack to disrupt them since in this match up it will steal their items instead of drawing cards. It will also force them to spend an attack killing it if they don’t have a popper in hand when you attack with it. Dash really doesn’t want to block so forcing them to do so with disruptive attacks wastes a lot of their time burning cards from their deck. If you find you would like another card for this match up that fits this roll I recommend Erase Face since all of their cards specify Mechenologist. The best time to do this is when they play a Teklo Core. Teklo Core rounds are usually when they are going to try and push really hard with multiple Boom Grenades and more attacks than you should be able to reasonably block. Prioritize arsenal’ing cards that either punish their set up turns or defensive cards to block out their big rounds. When you do get space to play dragons try to prioritize the ones with a higher attack value since most of the time you will be blocking with your whole hand thus you won’t have go again so you want your one attack per turn to be for the most damage. Themai can sometimes be annoying for them as well since it means they can’t play items off the top of their deck during our turn, this is niche but it does come up.

Here are some things to be careful of. If you see they are playing this combination of cards: Prismatic Lens, Scrap Harvester and Hyper Scrapper you might have to win more proactively since those 3 cards with Back Up Protocall create an infinite loop letting them attack with Harvester twice every turn at the end of the game. So you need to either kill them or attack them with something that breaks up the loop like Kyloria. Try to save your armor for a big push turn out of the Dash. Typically there will be a really big turn like the Teklo Core turn mentioned earlier where they will play at least three boost attacks with at least one Boom Grenade in play and cap it off with a dominated Max Velocity for 12 because of Goliath Gauntlets. If you have a defense reaction in arsenal, a 3 block in hand and all 5 points of armor still up you will be able to block this out. Because of this it is very important to conserve any armor you have that has zero block value like Mage Master Boots or Snapdragon Scalers. What the Dash will try to do is chip away at your armor with T-Bones. If you have zero block armor you can throw it in front of T-Bone without losing your important armor.

Dorinthea

Spend the first half of the game blocking, making ash and playing attack action cards while pitching dragons. If you play dragons early they will use them to farm Dawnblade counters so we don’t play dragons until we get enough chip damage on the Dori. You want to try and get Dori to about 20 before you pivot but you can do it sooner than that. If the Dori has enough chip damage once you start playing dragons she won’t have enough time to farm your dragons for counters before she dies because her choice every turn will be either ignore what you are doing and go face, attack a dragon then attack you, or attack two dragons and pass. In all of these she is taking almost all of the damage from your dragons and you will push her into lethal range faster than she is able to do anything back to you if you have preserved your life total enough going into this stage of the game. The Dori might try and fatigue you also since you are blocking so much so be careful about that. When you do pivot it's important that you present 2-3 dragons a turn and ashwings are especially good here. You want to try and make the Dori waste as much damage as possible into the dragons. If the game goes long you can also try to punish the Dori for running out of go agains in deck since they will burn through most of them trying to kill you then playing whack a mole with your dragons. Prioritize getting defensive cards in your arsenal in the first phase of the game.

Dromai

This list has a huge edge in the mirror in a few places. For one, double seekers lets us start the game with two ash giving us a leg up in the ash economy over our opponent. Two are the three remembrances in the deck. The most important card in the matchup is Rake the Embers. Normally you need to be very conservative with this card and even potentially pitch it early so they come out later in the game. With Remembrance you no longer need to worry about that and can just play them when you see fit because you have 12 copies in your deck now. Beyond that you are looking to focus on playing annoying dragons that are either hard to clear efficiently or clear your opponents board efficiently. Nekria you are able to play and attack into another dragon making an ash. Usually it takes at least two attacks from your opponent to get Nekria off the board so each will make on average 3 ash which is huge. One of the most important parts of the mirror is having a better ash economy. Azvolai is great since it can attack one dragon and then kill two ashwings with its arcane. Azvolai single handedly clears the board of ashwings from a Rake. Because of this I suggest putting Azvolai in arsenal and waiting for your opponent to cast Rake. Ouvia is good for many of the same reasons Rake is, ashwings are op but she's also hard to get off the board usually eating at least two attacks. Tomeltai is usually a big swing in the match when you get to play it and kill their Furnace. This again gives you a leg up in the ash department since you will have a Furnace and they won’t. Other than that any hit triggers you have like Dustup are great in the match up for clearing dragons. Generally the gameplan in the matchup is just clear their board every round with your dragons until one player falls behind on board then the player with a lead on board gets to start dealing chip damage. The chip damage usually doesn’t matter for a long time but once you get the opponent low and they have to start blocking everything falls apart very quickly.

Fai (Updated)

Before this match up was cursed, you could win but usually it involved getting an early Tomeltai to blow up Mask of Momentum. Mask is what makes this match up so bad since they will be able to farm you dragons for draw triggers. Tome of the Imperial Flame (TotIF) made this match up a lot better. For one it makes Tomeltai’ing them much easier as it not only lets you cast Tomeltai easier but it also helps you dig for it. Card velocity is a strength of TotIF that people don’t talk about much but when you have specific cards in a match up that swing the game this is very important. Next is between the starting Gold token and TotIF itself your ash generation is much better. Making ash was always one of the difficult parts of the match up since you end up blocking so much making it hard to play as positive hands without sacrificing a lot of value. Because of the extra ash, when we draw a good hand that lets us try to push aggressively we can actually play it instead of only focusing on playing ash neutral dragons. This opens up most possible play lines in the match up. The last big thing that TotIF does is let you have really explosive turns that can overwhelm Fai. The number one thing that I have found wins me this matchup is having a TotIF turn where I’m able to present 3-6 dragons in a single turn and say “deal with it”. The Fai player will spend their entire round trying to clear your board but unless they have a popper they will end up taking all the damage from your board. Importantly they usually won’t attack you on this turn since they are busy clearing so you will get to play another 4-5 card hand into them and they will take all the damage again. Depending on what dragons you played and the texture of the Fai’s hand they might not even clear all your dragons. You will usually get 2-3 turns of slamming dragons into their face by doing this and push their life total down before the game resets to you having an empty board. But now you should have a life lead and importantly the Fai’s life total is now getting to the point that they have to start actually blocking. If you can bring the game to the point that the Fai has to start blocking the game will usually end in your favor. This gets even better if you are on Tome of Fyendal since you can play TotIF then use the two resources on Mage Master Boots if you don’t have a Cromai, then draw 2 cards and gain 5 life if you didn’t block with any cards, then activate furnace pitching a card and making 3 resources and play the other 4 cards in your hand. It's an explosion of value that will be hard for the Fai to deal with. The one thing that throws a wrench in this plan though is if you slam your hand into the Fai and they have a popper. Fai usually doesn’t play many poppers if any so if this happens then well, unlucky. Try getting a Cromai down on this turn if you have the option to.

A drawback of being royal though is you do have less armor. As I previously stated you end up blocking a lot in this match up. Armor is very important for blocking some of their awkward break points like Snatch and Mounting Anger. The other thing is there will usually be a turn where you don’t want to block and keep all or most of your cards like a big tome turn. This is where you will use your armor to try and fight over a hit trigger and hold your grip. Having less armor you can throw at them on this turn is a big draw back of being royal but I think the upside of royal is too high.

Iyslander

A lot of people think Iyslander is a good matchup for Dromai and I do not agree with this, I think the match up is entirely skill based and the player more versed in the matchup will usually win. If we just ape them and monkey our hand into them getting ganked every turn the Iyslander will usually win. But also if the Iyslander doesn’t do propper board management and be patient with how they disrupt us Dromai should win. First I want to outline how we lose the matchup and how we win. We will usually win the game if we get at least one round during the game where we don’t get disrupted and are let loose with the dragons. We lose if we let them get us low and they are able to kill us while we can’t do anything about it because we don’t have enough resources in hand or no prevention.

The first thing I do while playing the match up is be mindful of both of our pitch stacks. I want to know where their Blizzards and Channel Lakes (CLF)  are in the stack because that's going to be where they try to stem the bleeding and try to win. Because of this I want to mirror their stack with cards that don’t let that happen. I want to make sure I have blues to pay for the taxes and AB on those rounds as well as damage prevention cards such as Sand Cover and Oasis. Ideally we try and set one of these damage prevention cards as we near the end game so we are insulated from getting killed. When using Sand Cover though make sure if you use it and they are still holding a card in hand you are able to pay for AB on Waning Moon otherwise the Sand Cover will just eat the Moon. The next thing I want to ensure is that my stack has zero cost red starters, especially Chromai. I want to be able to play a single card to give my board go again so I can use the rest of my hand to prevent damage or pay for taxes if I need to. Chromai also has the added benefit at this point of the game that if they blizzard it we can just decline to pay the 2 but still gain an action point from chromai.

I usually treat early game CLF’s differently than late game ones. Early game ones the best thing they can do is use the space to try and play some other permanents like Insidious Chill or Frost Hex. If they do that and you keep your hand then try playing cards but otherwise if they use the early CLF to just throw damage at you then I will usually just try to prevent as much of it as I can wasting their CLF. Late to mid game ones on the other hand I usually treat a little differently. If I can, especially if I have a blue, I will try to push while I’m under it because they are usually low at this point and really desperately need to keep their hand to try and pivot here. I want to ask them just how badly they want to keep those cards and get damage in. If they give you more cards then either the CLF goes away sooner or they waste the CLF because they don’t push any damage or disruption while they are under it.

In the early to mid game block the physical attacks they throw at you while slowly developing your board. The game plan is to preserve your life total while applying pressure to them. Prioritize playing ashwings and what I like to call big butt dragons, basically dragons with high health totals. I want them to have to either attack the dragon or pop it, not shoot it with an arcane damage spell ending our round. Doing this will also make it harder for them to kill us because they are spending all their poppers on defense not throwing them at our face. When they do throw attacks at us just block them with 1-2 cards and cash in your armor when you can, you don’t want to end the game with armor still up. Consider keeping furnace around if they are playing Frost Hexes as it gives you a way to break Frostbites. Also while we are on the topic of Furnace, don’t activate it in response to them giving you a frostbite if all you are doing with that is using it to pay for the frostbite or AB. They will respond to furnace with Waning Moon before you get the resources, usually making it pointless. You can do this though if you plan on playing something else after that costs one resource.

Some other random advice, don’t run Themai out by itself. If you do that you are just asking for it to stick around for half a turn and they kill it right away having very little impact on the game. I will usually either sandbag it in my arsenal for a turn where they already spent some cards either playing cards or blocking. Now they weren’t planning on dealing with this so it will catch them by surprise and often lead to you either getting a lot of free damage in or the Themai sticking around for another turn. The other thing I will do is play it in pairs with other dragons they have to get off the board right away such as Miragai. Often in these board states I’ll even keep attacking with dragons I don’t want them to pop because one of two things will happen. Either they are holding a popper and plan on throwing it at my Themai or whatever dragon they have their eyes set on. Or they don’t have a popper at all and their answer was a card like Scar for a Scar leading to me getting in extra damage.

Do not expect the Iyslander to fuel your ash economy with Coronet Peak, most of the best Iyslanders I play only use that if I have more ash than I know what to do with so it doesn’t matter anymore.

Kano

Push down their lift total as fast as you can. Try to play a Themai. Hold onto an Oasis or Sand Cover for the turn they try to kill you. Prevent damage where it makes sense but try not to be overly defensive and give them time to set up and kill you. The game will usually turn into blind Kano flipping if you put enough pressure on them since they didn’t have enough time to set up. If they Have the combo and you don’t have damage prevention you probably lose, the match up is fairly luck based on the Kano side imo.

Kayo

This matchup is very difficult to navigate. At first I wrote it off as a cursed match up and considered not playing Dromai so long as Kayo was meta. But then I developed a game plan that actually worked. At its core the idea of the plan is to block very aggressively and win the game in the second cycle when Kayo’s hands start becoming much worse. When Kayo hits his blue stack a lot of hands will start being attack with one card and pass. This will let you block with 2 cards and play a 2 card hand, eventually you will start catching up as your 2 card hands are much better. Similar to the Dash IO match up if the Kayo wants to just throw his hand at us every turn we will leak damage but he won’t kill us. Also like Dash IO, Kayo will need to take off turns to set up for big damage turns which usually involve him playing a Cast Bones. The next turn will usually involve a Blood Rush Bellow, one really big attack, a claw for 5 and another big attack. It is imperative to punish Kayo as hard as possible on these off turns where he leaves you with a hand. Again like Dash IO, disruptive attacks such as Command and Conquer are great here. This is a great opportunity to play multiple dragons since you don’t get many chances to establish a board if you are blocking a lot. Lost in Thought to mess up their hand is effective, usually it's best to take one of their pitch cards but use your judgment. Tome of Fyendal to gain the life you are going to lose from the Cast Bones are also effective. This can also be an opportunity to push their life total down if you have a board already since it is very likely they won’t want to block with any of their cards this turn and even if they do you are happy with that.

Unlike Dash IO we do need to actually win the game since he won’t fatigue himself. If all you do is block all game you will get to the end of the game with not enough cards to close the game and end up fatiguing yourself. You might want to consider playing a couple extra cards in your deck just in case you aren’t able to get anything going at the start of the game. Generally there are only a few cards I’m looking to take damage to play. The first one is Rake the Ember and Ouvia. Ashwings are super annoying for them to deal with and they won’t want to spend time clearing them. Once I establish some ashwings I will just keep asking them to pop every single turn. Kayo has less actual poppers than it seems like he should since a lot of them don’t block or are base power 5 so they won’t work as poppers. Forcing a popper out of his hand every turn will usually strip him of the cards he actually wanted to play. The macro game plan is to get to the late game where their hands start getting bad so forcing Kayo to block with his good cards also facilitates this. Once I have some ashwings I’ll try playing a mid game Burn Them All. Since we are blocking so much it's going to be very easy to fill our grave with reds so this Burn Them All will stick around for a long time. I will usually try to keep it around for 8 or so uses. Of course the classic distraction threats Miragai and Passing Miragai are good too. Try not to play Miragai if you can avoid it when they have a Might and Agility token since you are making it very easy for them to clear it with a Claw before sending another attack at your face. Themai can also be annoying for them since it means that they can’t discard Agile Windup on our turn to guarantee the go again on their turn. Try to pitch your Cromai’s if possible as they aren’t very good early on since they only have 2 health and get picked off by claw. Later on they can be game winning when they are running out of poppers. Usually you also will end up with one turn during the game where you break through and get a lot of damage in, catching up on life total. This is either because they don’t have a popper or they can’t afford to block with it and still do what they want to do on their turn.

Lastly, here are a few things to watch out for. A big one is to be careful with your arsenal and how you block. They play 3 Send Packing and 3 Command and Conquer so always keep that in mind when you block. I usually try to save my armor for these incase my hand either doesn’t block well or they have a Might token buffing them. Once I’m out of armor I usually try not to arsenal cards other than Sigil if they still have these floating around in their deck. If they don’t have any more of these left though I don’t mind using my armor on a Swing Big to get the Quicken token, being able to use Dustup as a chain starter can be nice.

Kassai 

Kassai is a very good match up. The core of your gameplan revolves around amassing a crazy board and running them over. Kassai doesn’t have the kill pressure to race you and can’t ignore your board. Generally she will spend most of her turns blocking with boots and a couple cards then killing two of your dragons. The key to this match up is finding a turn to create 5 or so dragons in one turn. For example playing Rake the Embers, Ouvia, and Azvolai on one turn. From here your board will continue to grow out of control and the game will end quickly. I’m willing to take the game slow and block until I draw a hand that lets me have one of these explosive turns. I generally will wait to get a Tome in arsenal then draw into a hand that lets me go crazy with it. Prioritize playing dragons that are inefficient for them to clear with their weapon such as ashwings or dragons with higher hp than they can kill with a single weapon swing. Burn Them All will be great for closing the game out since I wouldn’t expect them to be playing Arcane Barrier. Even if they are playing arcane barrier you are generally overwhelming them where they can’t afford to spend a full card pitching for that.

There are a few things to be careful of. Kassai will sometimes play Ironsong Pride and try to stack multiple counters on one of their weapons. It will be basically impossible to get those counters off the weapon so long as you have a dragon in play. This will make it much easier for them to start clearing the medium health dragons and make it so they can start pressuring your life total if you don’t have enough of a board state for them to care about. It will be impossible to fight over copper generation against them since Spoils of war will trigger into your dragons, be ready to go into the later phases of the game with them able to cast 2 max value Blood on Her Hands. These Blood on Her Hands turns will generally be the only scary turns of the game and everything else will be pretty medium turns from them. Try to make sure you are healthy enough going into the later phases of the game so that you don’t die to one of these big rounds. Ideally you should be able to block with all but one card and keep a red that pushes your board. The gold from Kassai’s hero ability you can fight over since she has to hit you but I generally find that it's not worth fighting over. Raise an Army is awful in the match up so it’s just Cash In that they can use it for which is good but generally at the stage of the game when they will finally have gold they are just trying to stem the bleeding from out board so the extra card doesn’t really do anything. Another reason to try to be healthy going into the late game is poppers. One way you can lose the game is if they are able to pop your first dragon and then swing into your face for multiple turns at the end of the game. Having a Cromai as this stage of the game can help you close the game out without dealing with any of that. Like most match ups try and pitch your early Cromais.

Katsu

This is a really tough matchup that you are very unfavored in. There are two strategies I have found that can work. Both involve blocking very aggressively. The first strategy involves buying time until you can find Tomeltai and trying to blow up their Mask of Momentum. Mask is the thing that makes this matchup hard since they can farm your dragons for mask triggers but once thats gone you can actually just play a real game with them. The other strategy is to block basically everything but Kodachi’s. The idea here is that we block as much as we can on the first cycle of the deck trying to preserve our life total so later on we don’t have to worry about getting Kodachi locked and at the same time we try running Katus out of threats. Ideally we get to the second cycle and Katsu has burned through most of their Surging line cards and aren’t able to close the game out. They will start drawing up hands where all they can do is Kodachi, Kodachi, plus some random bad attack. This is where we look to pivot and start playing dragons again. Ideally we don’t play that many dragons before this but I think it's fine playing some as they do pseudo gain you life by making them attack the dragons, it's a bit risky though since it might let them get a Katus trigger they need. There might be another way to win this matchup but so far this is the only thing I’ve found that can work.

Levia

There are two ways to play this match up. One is a more defensive oriented game plan which I will have outlined below in my guide from the DTD meta. The second is a more proactive gameplan. Currently I like the more proactive style as Levia players have adjusted their game plans into Dromai expecting the more defensive one. When taking the defensive approach they will have infinite time to set up and kill us. The core of the proactive gameplan revolves around using the early turns to establish a board when Levia doesn’t have her grave set up yet. Then put pressure on her engine by asking her every turn if she can both pop our dragon and turn off Blood Debt.

I like to go royal with this game plan as it speeds up our ability to establish a board. Use your early turns to make ash and play dragons. If possible do not attack and give the Levia player an opportunity to block as this will give her a chance to put cards in her grave. Levia’s early turns when she doesn’t have a graveyard yet suck. Outside of a couple cards like Swing Big and Blood Rush Bellow there aren't many meaningful things she can do on early turns. Continue to block and establish dragons ideally until Levia finally banishes a card with Blood debt, now you can start playing the game. Now that the Blood Debt has been started they will have to try and turn off Blood Debt every turn which will usually create more Blood Debt. Start attacking them and asking the question can they turn off Blood Debt and pop you every turn. A lot of Levia’s hands won’t be able to do this either because she doesn’t have a popper, her only popper is the card she needs to turn off blood debt, or she doesn’t have a way to turn off blood debt at all. One turn of Levia missing on this can lead to the game spiraling out of control. Keep pressuring her engine and the cracks will start to show. Ideally we should be fishing for poppers with ashwings so we don’t throw away real dragons. As always Miragai, Passing, and Cromai are great here as they will have to spend time clearing them and can’t afford to leave them on the board.

The game changes quite a bit once Levia flips into Consumed. If possible try to have an arsenal before Levia flips that will let you push really hard on the turn before and/or after she flips. If you can push really hard the turn before she flips you might be able to deny it all together, arcane damage is great at doing this. Usually Levia will save her armor for this turn so she can manipulate her life total, but if you managed to get her armor earlier in the game then you should be able to deny the flip. Even if you can’t deny it you can usually make sure that the turn she flips will be a really mid turn where she just throws one attack and flips or just passes and flips meaning you won’t be under much pressure and can once again push really hard. The push after she flips will be to try and make her first flip turn be for one attack since you will be stripping a couple cards on blocks. You don’t want to let Levia flip and be able to throw multiple attacks from banish, the game will slip away from how much value she gets off this.

If you aren’t able to pressure Levia around her flip and she is able to do this uncontested we need to evaluate some things as how we play the game from here changes depending on a number of factors. The first factor is what our life total is like, if we are low then it's going to be hard to be proactive from here. Next is what Levia has in banish. Check the banish for some key cards like how many Dread Screamers, Endless Maws, and Writhing Beat Hulks she has. Understand what you are playing around and how many threats she has that you need to play though. If there aren’t many Screamers then you can probably just block out those  turns and then go back to playing the game since she might not be able to throw two attacks a turn anymore. If Levia has a ton of Blood Debt, then consider how many cards are left in her deck and what your life total is like, you might be able to just block out for the rest of the game and fatigue her. I can’t give you a heuristic for how to play the game every time after she flips, you’ll need to just use your judgment on where the game is at and what she has in banish.

Lastly, a couple reminders. Try to keep a Defense Reaction in arsenal to play around Pulping and Barraging Beat Down. If you go to 2 or less and don’t have a Sigil of Solace don’t attack with an Attack Action card or you might die to Reckless Swing. Lastly, always consider how Scowling Fleshbag will affect your next turn when you are blocking since it might mean you should block with additional cards so you don’t get bagged. It might be worth trying to bait out the Fleshbag earlier in the game so you don’t have to deal with it on that big push turn around her flip.

Old:

Levia has very efficient damage and high damage rounds. I typically block a lot to preserve my life total. You will end up taking a lot of damage on their big Blood Rush Bellow rounds so keeping your life total high so they can’t push you down to a life total where a dominate attack could kill you is important. I will usually try playing distraction dragons almost as soon as I see them because I want to pressure Levia into starting to banish cards. Keep an eye on how many cards they actually have in the grave as sometimes it will be correct not to attack them because they really need to block for grave fill. If they are playing Scabskins they will usually start rolling when you leave them with a big hand. Just block on turns they do this since it's really hard for Levia to actually push damage outside of her big rounds and they will eventually roll snake eyes and give you space to play the game. Try to set a defense reaction if you can so you can block a Pulping but if you have dragons in play they can always get the go again by attacking the dragon. If you see them getting close to 13 you can either try pushing really hard on that turn so they can’t flip or let them flip if you are healthy enough and try to fatigue them since they will mill their entire deck. I can’t stress this enough, preserving your life is the key to how the end game plays out.

Lexi

I feel like I'm slightly ahead in this match up but Lexi can run hot and run you over. I tend to block the important break points and let in the vanilla damage. On those turns that is where I look to play dragons. When you find space to play dragons try to prioritize playing ashwings especially if your opponent is trying to loop an Endless Arrow into your dragons. One of the best ways to win the match up is blowing up their New Horizon with Tomeltai but finding space to play it can be very difficult. You don't want to take like a million damage to play it. Generally what I will try and do is preserve my life total until I find Tomeltai and try to set it. Then I will wait for a round where my opponent comes in for less or they block or deal with my board and then play Tomeltai. From there you should win. One wany to find space to play it is by using Command and Conquer, this should make them give up two cards and come in for less that round.

Some other general tips:

Try to always keep a card in your arsenal so they can never force you to discard off of Codex, even better if its a sigil so you can block with your whole hand and if they play Codex you can respond with Sigil and get a free card in arsenal. Save your armor for either a Pivot round like when you play Tomeltai or to cover up a 5 power arrow with card and armor. Don't get juiced by reloads. When Lexi has a big hand they usually can't use every card in their hand unless they can get a reload off so if the first arrow they shoot doesn't have reload and you know there is something else coming in after that I usually don't block the first arrow. "Prove to me you can use all your cards" is usually my line of thinking there. When blocking always be thinking about if you should block with your blue in hand or not. You either want to block with it or use it to pay for frostbites so think about whether or not Lexi might ice you after the current attack. You don't want to to get juiced by Arctic.

Prism

Play rake the embers, watch as they go into cardiac arrest. I don’t really have much to say here the match up is so free. If they are auras you can use Chromai to kill two auras in a turn, attack them first with Chromai so you gain the extra action point then use your two action points to clean up two auras. 

Rhinar

Plays very similar to Lexia but they trade damage efficiency and a late game flip for evasive damage from intimidate. Same idea though, block where you can and prioritize getting defense reactions into arsenal so you can stop a Pulping or Barraging Beatdown. Play some distraction dragons and try to get them to start rolling Scabs till they roll snake eyes. Sometimes the only popper in their hand they need to play out their round so if you notice they didn’t block as much as you expected them to consider attacking them with dragons you were holding back for fear or a popper and demand the popper, it might wreck their round.

Riptide

Similar to Azalea matchup but they don’t throw big dominate arrows at you. Block and play dragons you will win by not dying usually. You get more chances to keep cards in your hand as they don’t punch nearly as hard.

Viserai

I don’t want to go too deep on this right now because the match up is so cursed but with Rosetta leaving the format the match up should change a lot. Previously the match up was really hard because they would farm your dragons for hit triggers like Mauvern Skies and slowly kill you with arcane damage from that and Rosetta. And on top of that they got to free roll a ton of poppers in the deck. You also had no real way to disrupt them to stop them from pushing one of their crazy Mordred Tide rounds into you. So much about this match up is cursed but with Rosetta gone the cost curve of the deck needs to change unless they are going to use Reaping Blade which seems unlikely. Prevent arcane damage with your blues and block what you can while playing dragons when you find space. Prioritize ashwings and other small dragons so they waste as much damage as possible into them when they go Mauv Shrill Rosetta.

Vynnset

Weirdly enough this matchup is the opposite of Viserai, you are very favored. It plays out more like Levia than anything else where you block when you can and play distraction dragons when given the space. They have a lot of poppers to work through but they don’t have the same level of end game as Levia and they have no way to turn off Blood Debt. Generally I will try to block and poke down the Vynnset until they start getting low then look for a spot where I can push really hard. Vynnset tends to fall apart once they get too low since the banish is mandatory so if you make them block with 3 cards they are forced to banish the last card in their hand or block with it too often leading them to do nothing on their turn. When Vynnset has Runeblood Incantation active I usually just accept that I’m losing the turn cycle till they go away and block as much as I can. Vynnset also has an issue with running out of threat density so by blocking a lot and waiting till later in the game to start being more proactive they won’t be able to do as much at this point. Vynnset also has trouble a lot of the time actually using every card in her hand so by blocking you make their hands less efficient. When they have a hand that doesn’t let them use all their cards I usually use this as a spot to play dragons. I generally try not to arsenal very often unless its a Sigil while they still have Widespread Destructions in the deck since they can attack one of my dragons and if I don’t have a blue to prevent the Runechants I will lose my arsenal without being able to Crown it away since they attacked my dragon. When you do arsenal I usually prioritize defense reactions so I can cover up a pummel when they decide to keep a big hand. Save your armor to block their Flail of Agony.

Closing

I could probably write more on all of these matchups but I’m not sure what else to say since a lot of it is just intuitive to me. If you guys have questions or need me to expand on something please tell me and I’ll either answer you in the comments or add it to the guide, feedback is greatly appreciated as this is my first time doing something like this.