Hearthpwn

Hey guys, i'm lexek, i've been playing handlock exclusively for the last 5/6 months and hit legend a couple of month ago for the first time in a hunter heavy meta.

When GvG finally came up, a lot of people were hyped about Recombobulator,the 2 mana guy that gives you fresh giants after your traded into whatever minion you'd want to destroy.
Personnaly i was more excited about Antique Healbot that i consider the best addition to handlock.

No more getting rushed and no more frustration when you're 1 mana off playing your moltens, now if your opponent doesn't want to drop you low enough, then simply get back your hp and put pressure on him since a 3/3 is relevent with all the mechs around.

Antique healbot lets you actually go to fatigue against heavy control decks and draw your entire deck without being too woried about a surprise kill, all you need to do is play it and get an extra turn, or two, or completly reverse the game to your advantage since your enemy is low on cards.

The nerf of Soulfire, coupled with the arrival of many resilient 4 health minions made it clear that dark bomb, as good as it seem, can't deal with these minions, so instead of building a handlock that try to get a drake or a giant on turn 4, i built a deck that is more focused on not getting too low so that we can get to mid/late game without being afraid of dying every turn to a card or combo that your enemy might not even have.

Explosive Sheepsuddenly started looking very attractive since it acts like a mini doomsayer, easy to kill but too low to justify using a silence on it, making your opponent trade his board or at least not overextend since you're threatning to wipe everything.

Shadow Bolt is a great card to deal with those tinkertown technicians and spider tanks that could get too much value or do too much damage, it also is great against many other minions like beltcher if you add in a mortal coil or against those shreders: he play a 6 mana shreder, you simply silence it and kill it with shadowbolt for 5 mana.

With the health not being a big problem as it used to be before antique healbot, i decided to go for double helfire that gets instant effect on the board and doesn't require a set up and only 1 shadowflame for those critical moments against some midrange/control decks.

The addition of oose is justified by me facing too many warriors on the ladder, but you can replace it to help against any specifique matchup.

Big Game Hunteris another card that is only there to counter all those fel reavers that might get too much value if you can't deal with them the turn they are played.

The deck so far seem pretty solide with a good matchup against most decks except the warriors that sometimes get too high armor values that turn to be hard to remove at the end of the game making the deck loose to fatigue rather than any combination of cards.

The deck is also weaker in the mirror match against the argus+recombobulator handlock variation but those are rare and i didn't run into one yet.

Against any agro deck you'd want to have a dark bomb, a shadowbolt, a silence/mortal coil/aoe.
Once you get to turn 5/6 against any agro deck without loosing too much hp, you're probably winning since all your cards outvalue your opponent's.

Last i would like to add that priests can be frustrating to play against but unless you get a bad draw,or they get a super thoughtsteal, you only need to play agressive against them and you'll eventually win.