Hearthpwn

Hey guys,

This is the very first deck of mine with some amount of effort being put on it in terms of a detailed guide. Please excuse me, if I don't post enough info and make any grammatical mistakes.

Renolock was always been one of my favorite decks to play with. This expansion has really allowed warlock decks to have serious firepower, including the bonkers legendary weapon of warlock.

Mulligan

These mulligan strategies are based on a small set of games I have played. It will surely require an update once the meta settles.

1. Priest: Skull, Blast crystal, Darkbomb, vulgar and tar creeper are good to keep.
2. Druid: Hellfire, Mistress of Mixtures, Defile, Vulgar or tar, Skulking Giest. Here is the tricky part is aggro/druid. This is where Warlock's hero power is the biggest saver. 
3. Mage: Reno, Defile, Vulgar, Blast crystal.
4. Hunter: As Many AOE as possible, As many taunts as possible. This is the worst matchup for this deck. 

So how good is this Skull?

Turns out its pretttyyy good (In wild though). The thing is this card particularly is a tough card to sell against decks which are fast and extremely tempo oriented. But in wild, there are so many ways to regain tempo that this card just makes it absolute bonkers. Even if you lose key minions like Abyssal Enforcer, you have a lot of AOEs and taunts to support yourself. 

Win condition

The important point of this deck is the multiple win condition you have. Honestly, Its pretty amazing how many insane removals and AOEs priest have. in most situations, it becomes pretty difficult to get through them without having a plan B or Plan C. 

So here are the win conditions:

1. N'Zoth, the Corruptor: You have a total of 5 minions with Deathrattle. Often times you won't even hit 5 with N'Zoth. Honestly, N'Zoth has become a Psychic scream bait against Priest for me. But often times it is so good against decks which have minion heavy mid game or late game. Like miracle rouge or mid-range paladin. 
2. Krul the Unshackled/Skull of the Man'ari: In many times I have felt removing one because of the other. In theory, they have complete anti-synergy. but In reality I have felt when you can't draw one, the other comes in support. Also, I have never felt bad getting Krul out of hand because of Skull; This is because the body is ultimately big for almost no loss of battlecry because both of them have essentially the same purpose. 
3. Rin, the First Disciple: This probably the least used win condition and the one which I am not completely convinced. Basically, I have faced only one situation where I could use Azari: Milling dead man's warrior. Honestly, the card is too slow. But the combination of master oakheart with voidlord/Rin is too juicy to not try. This is the essence of why this deck is called 'BigLock'

Explanation of the cards included in this deck

1) Removals: The backbone of your survival. Defile, Blastcrystal Potion, Shadowbolt, Hellfire, Twisting Nether. All of which are completely indispensable. In almost 85% of my matchups, I have used all of these removals. Remember you only have one of them, so think twice before using them

2) Healing: The cards that are gold for this deck. LAS (Lesser Amethyst Spellstone), Drain soul, Siphon Soul, Mistress of Mixtures, and finally the MVP of this deck: Reno Jackson. The key to my losses was a poor and extremely greedy use of these cards. Often times I felt like throwing them down just to gain a small bit of health. 

3) Defence: Taunt is the cheating you must abuse well. This is where understanding your opponent's solution for it. How would you be ready for Deadly shot? which cards to sacrifice for hex or polymorph. A greedy deck is only viable if you know your opponent well. Its a bit tough for a meta so many improvements need to be made for the deck. 

4) MVPs: The Surprise killers of this deck are Bloodreaver Gul'dan, Master Oakheart, Reno Jackson, Twisting Nether. These are must craft for this deck. Oakheart even without Rin is just mindboggling good.

Notable exclusions:

1. Malganis is not part of this list because of how slow that card is. This deck already heavy and has many tempo draining cards to allow Malganis.
2. Wild deathrattles like Piloted Shredder and deathlord are also not part of this because I wanted to bring many Demons into the picture instead of deathrattes. Though I do think there is scope to include some of them. 
3. Lekkari Felhound is also not part of this because how useless that card is without the help of Skull or Krul. Besides we have a ton of Taunt which makes this card redundant. 
4. Imp Gang boss: It seriously dilutes the demon pool which a source of major frustration for me. You can put that argument for Voidlord as well. But the truth is void lord still better returns than Imp Gang Boss.

Do's and don't on the deck

1. Poor Mulligan means the end for you. Even though I have provided a general set 
2. Too many cards return something back to your hand. So be very careful with your card count. I usually keep my hand count to 8 most of the times.
3. Using Master Oakheart is a double-edged sword. The biggest is its probability of pulling out Librarian instead of Vulgar, pulling out Kazakus instead of voidlord/rin. Which is why don't get over excited with him. Against druid, Master Oakheart is an absolute killer of a card. Against Aggro, poor draws from him will lead to death. 
4. Never underestimate your opponents power to kill you when your health is down. Especially Mage. They have enough burn to damage you up to 15. 
5. Against aggro, Always keep a back removal ready. don't play skull if you need Abyssal. Against control keep point removals absolutely ready, especially against combo decks like Highlander.

That's all I could think of so far. Let me know what I should add to this deck so that I could improve it further. Also if you guys need to put proofs, I don't mind doing that. I haven't posted it because I play exclusively on my iPad/Mobile without any deck trackers. But for the sake a lucid presentation of the matchups versus various classes, I can easily start playing on my laptop to share a snapshot. 

Let me know what you guys think. Thank you for reading. Means a lot to me.

Cheers!