Hearthpwn

Hi !

My name is Atralb (Battletag : Atralb#2201), play f2p, and this is a deck i created like 6 months ago during the Gadgetzan meta which led me in rank 5 each month until the Standard rotation in april. I then retried it in wild the past month with the addition of some Un'goro cards and managed to pass legend in August (2017).

This deck is a Demon Aggro deck. It is a spin off of the discardlock without all non-demon cards and filled with demon synergy cards instead. It originally was intended to be a fun or even meme deck but happened to be really competitive while being inexpensive for a deck that I would put in Tier 2 or even Tier 1 in August. Only one legendary and no epic.

Its power resides in the fact that you sacrifice a lot of health and cards to get an extreme tempo advantage really early on the board. This is a zoo deck. You have to completely rely on your board (apart from 4 spells) so be aware of it at anytime.

 

Explanation

This deck's objective is too achieve board control very quickly then burst your opponent down with big agressive statted minions.

It makes use of the core cards of discardlock such as Malchezaar's Imp, Silverware Golem and Doomguard. Two unusual cards are added in the form of Succubus and Lakkari Felhound that really shine in this deck because of the demon synergy coupled with discard.

The rest of the deck is composed of all other good early drop demons which are popularly played in a classic zoolock : Flame Imp, Voidwalker, Imp Gang Boss and the incredibly powerful Crystalweaver which is a permanent Southsea Captain on your current demons and well statted.

It has other buffs in the form of Demonfire, Bloodfury Potion aswell as a few good taunts to protect your other minions : Voidwalker and Lakkari Felhound. Lastly, four extremely efficient burst cards, Soulfire and Power Overwhelming, will help you finish the game.

 

It happens to be an entirely Warlock class card deck and is really fun, being able to snowball out of control in less than 3 turns and catch up with huge heals like even Reno Jackson while still getting board presence back after two or three board clears.

Playing the deck

Your two main resources are your minions and your cards, that you want to sacrifice in order to cheat out the board with very limited mana.  Each turn must be anticipated taking those two factors in account. You also have to remember you only have 4 non-minion based board recovery options : Demonfire (even if you'd rather use it as an efficient buff on a 1/3 body or an imp gang boss) and Soulfire (which you generally only use as removal when really relevant as a tempo play rather than keeping it for a final burst - same for Power Overwhelming). 

On the early turns you want to play cheap efficient minions like Flame Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Imp Gang Boss or even Wrathguard which is generally a quite bad card but does exactly what the deck is meant for (building a board) while also being a demon.

When the board is in your control, which should happen relatively easily on turns 2-3-4 with efficient trades, you want to not giving it back at any cost and try to protect it either with buffs like Demonfire, Bloodfury Potion and Crystalweaver or with taunts minions such as Voidwalker and Lakkari Felhound which replaces Defender of Argus from the classic discardlock. On the other hand or at the same time you should also begin the snowballing with discard synergy with the powerhouse Malchezaar's Imp and all your discard cards : Succubus, Tiny Knight of Evil, Lakkari Felhound, and eventually and obviously Doomguard.

Apart from dreamy plays with infinite malchezaar's imp draws you should quickly reduce your hand to zero cards and its NOT an issue at all. In fact it can be equally great since you have many discard cards which will  then become big tempo plays at zero cost and you stil have the warlock hero power for two cards in a turn anyway. This is your ending phase. Additionally at this time, a drawn Clutchmother Zavas means it will be buffed by any Discard card you draw and count as a discard for your imp if you have it or get it on board. A 6/6 Zavas isnt rare. Again, a card which seems like 400 dust but shows its true power in this deck.

As I said you sacrifice your life and cards for huge board presence which is where resides the strength of the deck. I've already had some games where I endured reno then nether and still won or was out of cards at turn 10-12 and won again.

Mulligan

You generally want to hard mulligan for one-drops or at least two-drops and avoid any discard card in the mulligan stage except Succubus in specific matchups like priest (4 attack) which you will learn with time. Malchezaar's imp is good even without a discard card in the beginning if you dont have another one-drop. Remember that you have a handful of buffs for your demons (6 in total) and a 3/5 on turn 2 (with the 2 mana potion) is good enough to take board advantage.

Matchups

Since you give up health you will be struggling against Pirate warrior. Apart from that you literally crush control and slow decks (except mage which oppose a resistance with his efficient boards clears) and midrange decks while being slightly unfavored against other aggro decks. 

 

 Context

I did my legend grind in the late Un'goro wild meta - Early KFT meta which quickly led to Druid Dominance, having a 59% winrate in a sample of 132 games between Rank 5 and Legend (103 games to get legend). I think I was a bit favored due to strong presence of Jade Druid and Control Priest beginning to appear but was compensated with Pirate Warrior and some old-school Aggro Shamans aswell as control warlock which destroyed me a few times thanks to a Defile on a board with an Imp Gang Boss... (Never play one against them)

But still a great meta-breaking deck which is really fun to play, having people raging at the end when they completely did not expect that at the beginning ^^. AND its a really cheap deck. Have fun !

Here are my stats for all games as of rank 5 and a sample of matches centered around my legend pass if it you would like to have a look. (click on pictures)