Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that dragon decks are strong in melee, but virtually non-existent (competitively anyway) in joust.  Why is that?  What is it about dragon decks that won't allow them to compete in joust?  Or are there those who disagree with my premise?

Please discuss!

Vaapad said:

Well, a deck with some Dragon tech has just made 1st after Swiss/4th overall at the big tourney in Spain (Decklist on agotcards), although I don't think I'd call it a Dragon deck, and I hear combo decks with Balerion and Drgon Lore are on the upswing, so I'm not sure about the premise.

That said, what hurts Dragon decks is their reliance on a few expensive, beefy Uniques (namely Dany and the Dragons) plus a bunch of locations. And you need to have several of those pieces in play at the same time for the deck to really take off. That tends to make those decks slow, inefficient and vulnaerable.

Ratatoskr said:

Agreed.

 Alright - accepting that as true, that they are slow and inefficient, why then are they effective in melee?  Don't melee games often end more quickly (ie fewer rounds) than jousts?

They can be very effective in joust, if they can get there all important locations out early, it can be a very frustrating time for those on the receiving end.

As the other poster said though cost and the reliance on certain locations are key.

I would even go as far to say that a good Dragon deck should win a lot more than it loses, in my opinion..

Vaapad said:

Well in Joust anything that hurts you helps me, so i tend to include a lot of card effects that hurt my opponents. In Melee the same rules don't apply, anything that hurts you doesn't neccessarily help me in fact it might help my opponents. so in joust i include a  lot of ways to deal with your best charcters and locations and do things like blank cards, remove traits, targeted kills and location hate. In Melee people tend to build decks that have significantly less control cards like that so a Dragon deck can for the most part run in a way that it never could against an aggresive joust deck, which is to say it runs unmolested without nearly as many speed bumps thrown its way. 

A Targaryen Kings of Summer Deck made 3rd place in the Spanish Nationals this year (74 players, probably Europe's top meta).

The deck used 7 Dragons (1 x Balerion, 1 x Drogon, 1 x Viserion, 1 x Rhaegal and each of the Hatchlings (non-shadow) as well as Daenerys (QoD).

With Black Ravens, 3 x  Myrish Villa to get out expensive cards and early-game control cards such as The Hatchling's  Feast (with TftN) and Flame Kissed (also dragon-themed cards, aren't they ?) the deck was able to stall until the big guns (= dragons) could take over.

I don't know if that is a "Dragon Deck" in your eyes, but I think its pretty close to one.

Of course, it was run by an experienced player who knew his deck inside and out.