Welcome to my three part series on the Conclave Arcana archons. After making a top 30 of Units cards, this will be a little bit different. We will go over each archon in turn, discuss it and give it a grade. We start with the dragons, because in my view these are the two worst archons in the set.
Kavor Skarn / Rare Dragon / Grade: C+
Kavor Skarn is a three mana dragon archon who brings the Bloodline Dominion for Drakoshan and a boost of +1 speed for these units. His three mana cost makes him the cheapest dragon archon in Modern format, although not in Wild format where we have other three mana and even two mana dragon archons. His kit feels underwhelming, although it does bring value. There are twelve Drakoshan units in the meta, and some of them are quite good, so buffing them further can be of value. However, I don't think this card can compare to some older dragon archons like Quix the Devious, Brighton Bloom, Selenia Sky and even Sthispa, at comparable mana costs. If you want to play Kavor Skarn often, consider pairing him with Songale to give your Drakoshans a Bloodline Tribute. In summary, Kavor Skarn feels underpowered but he brings profound utility as a cheap dragon archon, and what he does bring is at least somewhat useful.
Sheng Xiao / Legendary Dragon / Grade: C
Sheng Xiao is a five mana legendary dragon archon with the ability to give two units Poison Burst and Corrosive Ward. This card looks powerful at first glance, but in reality I don't envision it being that good. The problem is that you don't get much at the start of the fight, while other archons can give tremendous buffs and debuffs, you have to wait for a unit to die to really get the main benefits from Sheng Xiao. To make things worse, Poison Burst can be totally countered by the Final Rest ability, making Craniax the Quick a hard counter to this archon. With Craniax in the fight, you end up paying five mana for two Corrosive Wards, which is very bad. In the meta, we have to compare Sheng Xiao with Akane, and that is not good for Sheng Xiao, because Akane is awesome and dominant. I'll take two Ambush over two Poison Bursts any day. Let us hope the final legendary dragon archon released in Conflicts will be awesome, because times have been tough for Dragon archons lately.
Thanks for reading, stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3!