Primordial Drake

Primordial Drake is an epic neutral minion card, from the Journey to Un'Goro set.

Strategy
A strong but expensive play, combining a decent Taunt minion with a board-clear Battlecry. The Primordial Drake fits well into control-type and Dragon-themed decks, where damaging your own board will not matter as much.

The Primordial Drake is a perfect late-game minion for the Warrior Quest Fire Plume's Heart; as an added bonus, it can be pulled with The Curator. It also has excellent synergy with the spell Sleep with the Fishes, dealing 5 damage to all other minions.

Lore

 * ''s (also known as proto dragons, protodragons or proto-drakes) are the feral, long-forgotten forebears of the dragon species. The frequently use them as mounts.


 * ''The proto-dragons descend from elementals who avoided being imprisoned in the and instead remained on, where some of them gradually transformed into creatures of flesh and blood. More specifically, Brann Bronzebeard recently uncovered evidence, corroborated by reports from adventurers in , that proto-dragons may have origins in elemental drakes such as  and . The inhabitants of Deepholm, the , the , and the  are less than talkative on these matters, however, and most of them were not around when the elemental prisons were created.


 * ''The proto-dragons are thus early version of dragons before they evolved into the sapient, beautiful majestic creatures they are known as today.


 * '', a massive proto-dragon, is known as the "progenitor of dragonkind" and long ago resorted to cannibalism. This act of consuming other proto-dragons gave Galakrond unbelievable strength and increased his size, but horribly mutated his body as well. His breath reanimated the dead proto-dragons around him into a form of undeath. It is said that from Galakrond the s created the, but this is a rumor the Aspects actively encouraged so as to keep the truth about Galakrond a secret from the dragonflights.


 * ''Proto-drakes are generally bestial and display none of the great intelligence and wisdom of true dragons, though those that would later become the Dragon Aspects proved otherwise when they fought alongside against Galakrond.  noted in his visions of the past that this was extremely odd.


 * ''Proto-dragon whelps grow at an incredible rate and can devour nearly twice their weight in raw meat per day. Some proto-dragons have a wide array of strengths and abilities, with examples including incredible fortitude, massive size or the ability to unknowingly tap into latent elemental energies in order to breathe fire or frost at their enemies.


 * ''The frequently use proto-dragons as flying mounts in the  and other parts of, and could be seen doing so in their constant siege of . Wild proto-drakes can be seen in areas such as  and . Bronze proto-drakes were used as mounts by the  in  after they were discovered in the  by the . The  is famous for being extremely hard to catch.


 * ''Black proto-drakes were bred specifically to honor those heroes who showed exceptional resilience and fortitude facing the dangers in Northrend, and the plagued proto-drakes to honor those who showed significant courage and persistence.

Trivia

 * In an official blog discussing the art of Journey to Un'Goro, Senior Concept Artist Jomaro Kindred remarks: "Since we were going to a more primordial area, I thought it would be fun to pay homage to the Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I haven't been able to catch it in World of Warcraft, but at least I could possibly have a Hearthstone card featuring it!"
 * The card's flavour text, "Before he became a rap artist", is likely a reference to the rap artist.

Patch changes

 * Added.