Hearthpwn

With the addition of Scourge Supplies, Walking Dead, and Soul Barrage, I believe it's clear that Discard Warlock is a powerful deck. But it can be better. Discard Warlock has clear weaknesses against a number of meta decks, and this modified decklist is intended to shore those weaknesses up.

The Problem

Discard Warlock has two principal problems. In terms of burn, it has at base 2x Soulfire, 2x Fist of Jarraxus, and 2x Soul Barrage, which comes out to 28 damage IF it all goes face. In practice, about half of it will usually go into enemy minions. Tome Tampering and Expired Merchant do have the potential to significantly increase your total burn output, but they're unreliable - you won't pass up discarding a Hand of Gul'dan with Expired Merchant and you frequently need to play Tome Tampering just to pump a Tiny Knight of Evil or to refresh your hand.

The rest of Discard Warlock's damage must come from minions. Tiny Knight of Evil is a great source of minion-based damage, but it's fragile as a 2-drop and relatively expensive to play alongside Tome Tampering and Malchezaar's Imp. Past that, most of your minions are 2/1s (Kobold Librarian, Expired Merchant, Boneweb Egg) and are easily cleared by any Whirlwind-like effect, nullifying their damage potential.

These limitations make Prince Renathal control decks particularly powerful against Discard Warlock. Unfortunately for us, Prince Renathal control decks are particularly popular right now. Given that Discard Warlock already tends to stomp aggro, the best way to increase this deck's winrate is likely to shore up Prince Renathal matchups by addressing both of our problems - mostly 1-health minions and lack of burn.

As a note, Discard Warlock can easily turn into a Yes! deck by discarding too much at the wrong time, especially if you don't draw into more card draw. I call this the Death Spiral, and it needs to be considered if any changes are to be made to any version of Discard Warlock.

The Solution - What to Cut

When building this iteration of Discard Warlock, I had my eye on three cards that were not contributing to won games as well as other cards in the deck - Wicked Whispers, Soulfire, and Tamsin Roame.

Wicked Whispers - Great for explosive openers by discarding Boneweb Egg, or sometimes even Silverware Golem or Walking Dead. A good source of damage from hand and a way to make your board that much more difficult to remove. Unfortunately, the damage from hand and stickiness aspects of this card tend to be mutually exclusive - do you play Wicked Whispers on the turn you create a board, potentially into a larger board clear, or do you play it after you stick a board, guaranteeing the extra face damage but usually buffing fewer minions? In addition, this card is often bricked by your more important 1- and 2-drops, and discarding these more important cards can bring you into a Death Spiral.

Soulfire - Good, hyper-efficient, flexible burn or removal. On the other hand, this card suffers from a number of flaws in this particular style of deck. Soulfire is the only fully non-targeted discard effect in this deck, which frequently makes it a risky play in the early-to-midgame. If you play this card early and discard a Malchezaar's Imp, The Soularium, Expired Merchant, or Tome Tampering, you frequently shoot yourself in the foot and enter a Death Spiral. For this reason, Soulfire is best used in the lategame for lethal pushes, which conflicts with this deck's preferred method of finding lethal - Cataclysm. If you play Soulfire first, you risk discarding Cataclysm or one of the discard synergy burn spells (Fist of Jaraxxus and Soul Barrage) not going face, as it would have with Cataclysm. If you play the Cataclysm first, you discard Soulfire. The icing on the cake is that this is a late-game card which does not benefit from Tome Tampering's cost reduction.

Tamsin Roame - A one-card commitment which can copy Soul Barrage, Hand of Gul'dan, The Soularium, and technically Wicked Whispers (although Wicked Whispers tends to immediately discard the new 0-cost copy of itself). This is a mid-to-lategame card which usually gives you one extra copy of Soul Barrage or helps to prevent a death spiral by copying your card draw. The problem with Tamsin Roame copying Soul Barrage is once again this combo's interaction with Cataclysm. If you play Tamsin Roame into Soul Barrage, enemy minions will frequently soak the damage of the first Barrage, resulting in very little extra face damage.

The Solution - What to Add

There are 3 slots in the deck for these cards, and I ended up filling these slots with solutions to Discard Warlock's problems - Astalor Bloodsworn, Brann Bronzebeard, and Seeds of Destruction. The inclusion of these cards is predicated upon the fact that Discard Warlock can easily (unless it Death Spirals) draw through nearly its entire deck before an opponent typically wins.

Astalor Bloodsworn - The point of this inclusion is the 8-16 damage (or 16-24 damage with Brann Bronzebeard) WITHOUT including a card in the deck that initially costs more than 4 mana, as to not prevent Expired Merchant from copying Hand of Gul'dan or Soul Barrage in the early game. Astalor Bloodsworn's first form is a nice reactive play when Manathirsted, his second form is frequently a very nice 1-cost 5/5 after a Tome Tampering, and his third form usually wins the game on the spot. The inclusion of Tome Tampering makes playing this card alongside Brann Bronzebeard a common occurrence each game in which you draw through your deck. Although 5- and 8-cost Astalor Bloodsworn will be discarded by Expired Merchant instead of Soul Barrage or Hand of Gul'dan, you usually don't mind additional Astalors by that stage in the game.

Brann Bronzebeard - This card is principally included to combo with Astalor Bloodsworn. It has the nice side benefit of doubling your Kobold Librarians and Expired Merchants, which can help you to stay away from a Death Spiral.

Seeds of Destruction - The 30th card in the deck, beating out Wicked Whispers and Soulfire for their tendency to cause Death Spirals and beating out Tamsin Roame because Astalor Bloodsworn and Brann Bronzebeard are enough control hate. This card can be played on curve without regrets (as opposed to the fragile Tiny Knight of Evil) and represents 12/12 in total stats. This 12/12 in stats is made up of 3/3s which are significantly more difficult to remove efficiently than the 2/1s that this deck is filled with. When playing this card, I find that I tend to draw Imps about once a turn on average, clustered around when I play Tome Tampering. This deck may be one of the first to efficiently and effectively use Seeds of Destruction, since no other Warlock deck (that I'm aware of) has both had the draw power to quickly and reliable pull the Imps from the deck and is willing to pass turn 2. This deck, on the other hand, can feel comfortable passing turn 2 because of its over-the-top removal in the form of Soul Barrage and Catalysm.