Dragons Deck Guide

INTRODUCTION

ASol Shyvana dragons is a pretty straightforward midrange deck that consists of playing big dragon units to favorably trade with your opponent’s units and win the board. Later in the game you play Aurelion Sol and if he levels (which is not too hard to achieve with big dragons) you win the game. Alternatively, you can use Dragon's Clutch to grant your dragons overwhelm and win that way if you are ahead on board.

CARD CHOICES:

3x Shyvana: Your first dragon champion and cheapest dragon in the deck. She has an easy time trading with other units on turn four since she gives herself +1/+1 each time she attacks making her a 4/5 attacker on turn four. Almost no four drops can block into her which makes her a good tempo play.

Her level up gives you a fleeting Strafing Strike which can exert tremendous amounts of pressure on your opponent. If you have a big dragon on board it is often good to keep Strafing Strike up to threaten to remove an important unit your opponent wants to play, forcing him to pass and burning mana.

3x Aurelion Sol: Your biggest dragon and main late-game finisher. Aurelion Sol is arguably the card that generates the most value and with the strongest level up in the whole game. He invokes a random card each round and when he is played and makes those invoked cards cost 0 if he’s leveled. This means 

Aurelion Sol can outvalue any deck if he sticks on the board. He's pretty hard to remove because of his enormous 10/10 stat line and spellshield keyword.

Your main combo to get Aurelion Sol out as fast as possible is to play Eclipse Dragon on turn seven and then play Aurelion Sol on turn eight. You can also discount him with Herald of Dragons. You should also keep at least two spell mana up when you play him to threaten Single Combat on Aurelion Sol against an important unit if your opponent develops.

3x Dragon Chow: This is a good card that gives you a body to block on turn one against aggro decks and can also help you cycle your deck and buff your dragons when you drop them as they will kill Dragon Chow and get a fury proc. 

A nice combo to pull off with Dragon Chow is Dragon Chow +Sharpsight as it can make some good trades for tempo and most people don’t expect it.

3x Dragonguard Lieutenant: Great card that helps you deal with early game threats as most of the time it is a challenger unit in this deck.

3x Herald of Dragons: This is one of your main value cards as it discounts your dragons by one mana cost. This is huge as dragons are usually overstated units and dropping them one turn earlier is a huge tempo gain.

2x Solari Sunhawk: Good two drop that helps you deal with aggro matchups as it stuns a unit and can block another one, compensating dragon’s main weakness which is getting swarmed.

3x Ruined Dragonguard: The one attack buff to these cards makes it so it is not a tempo loss to play him. He trades well into the other three drops and if he sticks to the board he can grant a lot of value. He also synergizes well with Dragon Chow and Shyvana as you can play turn one Dragon Chow turn three Ruined Dragonguard into turn four Shyvana for a 5/6 Shyvana on turn four!

2x Radiant Guardian: Helps against aggro and fast midrange decks as they have no way to deal with a 4/5 body with tough gaining you a lot of nexus health if you protect her.

2x Screeching Dragon: Great dragon as it has both challenger and fury keywords which helps with our game plan of making good trades for board control.

3x Eclipse Dragon: You normally want to play this card for its daybreak effect to discount Aurelion Sol and play him on turn eight, but he can also be played for his nightfall effect if you are low on cards and need to generate some value. He has a huge stat line and is very hard to deal with. Pair him with spells such as Single Combat or Concerted Strike and you get big unit removal.

3x Sharpsight: The best card in Demacia, helps you deal with elusive units and most likely grants you a favorable trade plus a fury proc in this deck. Can also be used as protection for removal spells.

3x Single Combat: Amazing removal spell in this deck as all of your dragons are overstated and can trade well against other units plus it grants them a fury proc.

3x Dragon's Clutch: This card is nuts right now as it serves as either a refill for your hand, a dragon tutor, and an alternative finisher. If you are low on dragons you cast this to draw two and if you already have a lot of dragons you cast it to finish the game.

One cool combo to pull with this card is: Daybreak Eclipse Dragon turn seven, Aurelion Sol turn eight, and if you have the attack token on turn eight you can swing to threaten seventeen nexus damage, then when your opponent chump blocks you grant both your dragons +1/+1 and overwhelm dealing a tremendous amount of damage to their nexus. Funnily enough, this also levels Aurelion Sol on turn end in case your opponent didn’t concede.

Another cool combo to use this card is while attacking with a leveled Shyvana, as she generates a Strafing Strike. This way you grant your Shyvana (and all your other dragons) overwhelm and you can remove your highest damage dragon’s blocker with Strafing Strike dealing direct nexus damage.

2x Concerted Strike: Good removal spell for big units in the late game or mid-sized units in the mid-game.

1x Molten Breath: A very surprising card in the mirror and midrange matchups as it kills two units and grants two fury procs, this one has single-handedly won me a couple of games as people do not expect this card at all in ladder.

1x Judgment: Good one of card as it can sometimes win you the game because you can board swipe a full board swing from your opponent with just one unit with the bonus of procing fury multiple times.

GENERAL MULLIGAN:

The deck mulligans are mostly the same with few exceptions in a couple of specific matchups, most notably aggro matchups. But normally it should go something like this:

Keeps: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard and Sharpsight.

One thing you should keep in mind when choosing your keeps is to play on curve. For example, if you have the option to keep either Dragonguard Lieutenant or Herald of Dragons think about the matchup and which card fits more to play on curve as you

probably won’t have time to play both.

 For example, if your opponent has a threat that Dragonguard Lieutenant can deal with you should probably keep him, or if your opponent is playing a deck that has a hard time dealing with Herald of Dragons you can keep her instead. In some matchups you will want to keep both as they might both be key in the matchup and in that case it is fine to keep them.

What we are trying to avoid here is keeping a lot of dragon support with no dragons. This can feel bad but it is a rare instance as we run Dragon's Clutch to get our dragons.

MATCHUPS

Shyvana Aurelion Sol (50/50):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard and Sharpsight.

This is a tricky matchup because a lot of things can decide who wins, but basically, the player that gets the dragons on the field first and the one who uses his strikes spells last is the one who wins the game as strikes counter strikes.

You still want to play on curve but be a bit more careful when playing Dragon Chow or Herald of Dragons as Dragonguard Lieutenant can kill both of them and stay alive. Watch how many cards your opponent mulligans and which ones he plays to see if he has a Dragonguard Lieutenant in hand.

Dropping Shyvana on curve is very important in this matchup as if she levels she starts generating a lot of value with each attack.

 A well-timed Molten Breath can blow out your opponent if he taps out of mana and you have a big dragon on board. 

The player to drop Aurelion Sol first usually wins the game or the player that has the most Aurelion Sol because it is very hard to deal with in this deck since we need to take off his spellshield and then strike him to remove him. Aurelion Sol’s Skies Descend can be huge in the mirror if you have an Aurelion Sol on board as it board wipes your opponent.

Pyke Rek’Sai (Unfavored): 

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard and Solari Sunhawk.

Remember when I said we want to make value trades to win the board? Well, Lurk doesn’t let you do that as they have high attack cheap units with low health. Your best hope is to high roll and gets a big Shyvana on board with cards like Dragon Chow and Dragonguard Lieutenant.

Two good cards that can swing the game in this matchup are Molten Breath and Judgment as this can blow out your opponent if you remove his big units, these spells are weak against Bone Skewer and Death From Below so watch out for that!

Solari Sunhawk can be a great card in this matchup to stun Rek'Sai if she gets played, preventing her from leveling up. 

Save your strike spells for either Pyke or Rek'Sai as they are the most problematic units in the deck.

Fizz Poppy Bandletree (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight and Dragon's Clutch.

Bandletree beats dragons because by the time we can finish the game with Aurelion Sol they have already won with The Bandle Tree, that is if you can even play Aurelion Sol as he can get discarded by Aloof Travelers.

The only way we can beat Bandletree is by playing dragons on curve and buffing them up with Dragon's Clutch as they only have chump blockers with low health and we can attack with high attack overwhelm dragons.

Herald of Dragons is a great card in this matchup because they don’t have efficient ways to remove her. They can’t remove her by turn two so Herald of Dragons into Shyvana is a great tempo play that can win you the game. 

Save your Dragonguard Lieutenant to kill either Poppy or Bandle City Mayor as these are their most important units.

Single Combat is a good card in this matchup to remove Bandle City Mayor in this matchup, although this leaves you vulnerable to Ravenous Flock.

Veigar Senna Darkness (Favored): 

Mulligan: Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight.

This is a very easy matchup as long as Veigar is kept in check. Use tools such as Single Combat, Screeching Dragon, Concerted Strike and Molten Breath to deal with Veigar and you should be fine.

Aurelion Sol outvalues their deck and they have no way to remove it besides a ping and Minimorph. Even if Aurelion Sol dies he generates a celestial card making their removal not worth it at all. 

Prioritize playing Dragonguard Lieutenant on turn two as it can trade with Twisted Catalyzer slowing their darkness progression.

 Some decks run Aloof Travelers this can be problematic if you're trying to finish the game and your Aurelion Sol gets discarded, so try to always keep a Dragon's Clutch in hand for the overwhelm win condition.

Poppy Ziggs (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight, Solari Sunhawk and Radiant Guardian.

This is a very bad matchup because Poppy Ziggs goes very wide very fast and our deck plays usually one unit per turn which does not allow us to keep up with their aggression.

Your best hope against this deck is to get early game units, play them on curve and get Radiant Guardian active and use strike spells to stabilize. Also, try to save your strike spells for when they try to Fervor their units to save yourself some valuable nexus health. 

Gangplank Sejuani (50/50):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight.

This is a very manageable matchup as we have a lot of strike spells and big units to deal with their important units such as Gangplank and The Dreadway. The real problem against this deck is Sejuani because if she levels it is suddenly very hard for us to win. Because all our removal spells rely on our dragon’s attack, a leveled Sejuani can shut our whole strategy down.

Early in the game you play for value trades and try to deny as many Gangplank and Sejuani level up procs as possible. 

Screeching Dragon is a great card in this matchup as it can remove most of the units in the opponent’s deck, the only counter to this card is Monster Harpoon so watch out for it!

Ruined Dragonguard is also a great card in this matchup as it can block most of the units in your opponents’ deck and survive, plus he makes your dragons harder to remove and can take them out of Monster Harpoon’s range.

If your opponent drops a leveled Sejuani try to stall the game until you get Aurelion Sol down and try to fish for an obliterate spell from his invokes to remove Sejuani as this will probably be your best way out.

Solari Sunhawk is a great card in this matchup as it can stun either Gangplank or Sejuani on their attack turn.

Draven Sion (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight.

This matchup is very bad for you for two main reasons: First, this deck can go wide in early turns with fearsome units such as Risen Rider and Twinblade Revenant. They can also pull away blockers with Flame Chompers! dealing direct damage to your nexus. Second, their ten-attack unit comes down on turn seven while ours comes down on turn eight if we are lucky. By the time we get to play Aurelion Sol the game is over, especially since they run a lot of burn.

The best way to survive this matchup is to try to get a good hand and curve out while making value trades. Cards such as Judgment and Molten Breath can swing the game back in your favor so keep those options open.

Radiant Guardian can help you gain some health back before they drop Sion and she is a good Sion blocker as you take no damage from him.

If you manage to stabilize try to remove Sion when the rally doesn’t matter as much or you have high health blockers. Concerted Strike is a good tool to do this.

You can tech in a couple of Hush cards in your deck if you are running into a lot of Sion decks as you don’t have to deal with Sion Returned if you Hush Sion. 

Solari Sunhawk can stop Sion on his tracks for two mana so try to save him for turn seven. 

Sivir Akshan (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight and Solari Sunhawk.

Sivir Akshan is an interesting matchup, they are also a deck that specializes in making favorable trades and winning the board but it is much faster than you at doing so. You need to try to get card advantage over them and shut down their rally turns to win in the late game.

A good way to get ahead of Sivir Akshan is to have Dragon Chow and Ruined Dragonguard on board before playing Shyvana. This will make Shyvana a 5/6 and she will be extremely hard to remove. 

 Many players will try to put damage on Dragon Chow with Fleetfeather Tracker. Punish them by playing Sharpsight on it forcing them to waste a combat trick to save their Fleetfeather Tracker.

Solari Sunhawk is great in this matchup as it can shut down Vekauran Bruiser on turn five and can alternatively remove Sivir’s spellshield for two mana while getting a body on board.

Because Sivir Akshan is a midrange deck Molten Breath does wonders against this deck if they tap out of mana so keep this card in mind when planning out your turns.

Lux Poppy (Slightly Favored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight and Solari Sunhawk.

This is a very popular deck but a bad one too, it has bad matchups all over the ladder and only has a few good matchups. The powerhouse of this deck is to play units on curve from turn one to turn two, drop Vanguard Sergeant on three, Poppy or another unit on four, Lux on five and then cast For Demacia! on turn six or seven for a huge blowout. Besides that, it is a pretty mediocre Poppy deck.

This deck does not trade well into your units so try to get your dragons down as fast as possible while getting rid of their units, as you do have to play around For Demacia!. 

When trading with units remember this deck runs three Riposte so your dragons can die if you try to remove the wrong unit. 

Solari Sunhawk is a great keep in this deck as it shuts down the Poppy turn, so try to save it for this since their deck doesn’t exert a lot of pressure.

If you manage to drop an activated Radiant Guardian your opponent is going to have a very hard time killing you as they will only be able to remove her by using Riposte on a unit.

Don’t get too greedy with your developments when they have a wide board because they run Golden Aegis and can blow you out with either Poppy or For Demacia!.

Lee Sin Zoe (Slightly Unfavored):

Mulligan: Dragon Chow, Shyvana, Dragonguard Lieutenant, Herald of Dragons, Ruined Dragonguard, Sharpsight, Dragon's Clutch and Solari Sunhawk.

Unfortunately, our deck tends to finish the game with Aurelion Sol and by the time we get to turn eight or ten Lee Sin has already kicked our dragons into our nexus.

The best way to beat Lee Sin Zoe is to play for the Dragon's Clutch win condition, this can be done by buffing our dragons with Dragon Chow and Ruined Dragonguard and then swinging with a huge board of dragons with overwhelm. 

Herald of Dragons is an amazing card in this matchup as Lee Sin Zoe has a very hard time removing back row threats, the only way they can remove this card is with Sonic Wave or by silencing it with Equinox.

Use Sharpsight to punish your opponent when he swings with Zoe as Supercool Starchart can be a real problem for us since they can get Equinox and Crescent Strike from it.

Screeching Dragon is a good card in this matchup as it can threaten their back row units such as Zoe and Eye of the Dragon.

If your opponent has tapped out of Deny mana you can Molten Breath to blow them out as their deck runs very few units and getting rid of two with one spell can mean doom for them.

Hush is a very good tech card against Lee Sin as you can combo it with Concerted Strike to remove him. It can also save you from Lee Sin overwhelm damage if Zenith Blade or Infernum has been cast on him.

OTHER MATCHUPS

If there is a matchup that wasn’t covered in this guide but would like to know the stats of it you can check out our matchup table by clicking here.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Dragons is a very fun deck to play if you love big units and playing on curve. I would recommend this deck for newer players as it is sort of straightforward and doesn’t have too much room for big mistakes.

This deck can also be used to climb in lower Elo but I would not recommend climbing with it in higher Elo because there are many people playing counter decks on the ladder right now because of this Dragons’s popularity. 

Competitively speaking this can be a good tournament deck if you are targeting very specific decks such as Darkness but in general, you shouldn’t be playing this deck in your lineup in the current meta. 

Thanks for reading through this extensive article and I wish you good luck on the ladder!

Wamuu

Top 200 Master LoR player. I have a lot of passion for this game and love sharing my thoughts and game knowledge through deck guides and articles for competitive play. 

If you would like to watch me play you can follow me on twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/elwamuu

If you would like coaching from me you can dm me in Discord at: Wamuu#7531