Hearthpwn

Classic Zoolock is a strategy that revolves around taking the board early, using minions and buffs to favorably trade up with higher-value minions.

 

As Warlock, you are able to play your hand liberally and refill it with Life Tap. The goal is to fill the board early so you can play an early Sea Giant or Gormok the Impaler, which provides you with massive tempo that can swing any game. Zoolock is a deck that provides you with a lot of great comeback potential, like Forbidden Ritual to refill your board alongside Knife Juggler for a bit of clear. How Zoolock closes out the game will depend on the player, but typically it will be with a charge minion like Leeroy Jenkins or Doomguard.

 

Since One Night in Karazhan, a Discard variant of Zoolock has become popular, with the inclusion of Soulfire, Malchezaar's Imp, Darkshire Librarian, Silverware Golem, and Doomguard for discard synergy. The strategy still revolves around flooding the board and maintaining board control, but also relies on high-impact/swing turns (such as a free Silverware Golem or extra card draw from Malchezaar's Imp) and taking advantage of high-value cards while negating the downsides of the discard mechanic (such as a 5/7 charge minion for 5 mana without wasting cards in hand).

First of all, I think I should congratulate Sjow for finishing Rank 1 Legend last month with Zoo; even though it was pre-nerf, it is still an amazing feat. What makes this even more of an accomplishment is that I personally feel like Zoo was not and still isn’t a very good deck in the meta.

 

Zoo got a big hit with the nerf to Abusive Sergeant being turned into a 1/1. The Battlecry might be good enough still to play it, but it looks very grim for the new 1/1, as it is very difficult for it to get a good trade or even push a reasonable amount of damage. I think I would go in a direction away from Abusive Sergeant, since there is a big variety of one-drops that Zoo already plays, so it could be good to maybe tech or try to play more powerful cards.

 

In Sjow’s post-nerf Zoo list that he has had success with, he is playing a Crazed Alchemist and Demonfire. These two cards run the risk of getting stuck in your hand, but when they go off, they're very powerful. With three one-drop Demons, I personally might go for the double Demonfire approach to make a big minion that can be problematic to deal with. I can definitely see going up to two Crazed Alchemists with so much Shaman in the meta – it is very likely to get value.

 

Zoo is still a deck that I find weak in the meta, but can improve with some experimentation after the recent nerfs.