Silence or Bust: How Cubelock Slowed the Hearthstone Meta
“This card could potentially just shape the meta game,” Firebat mused about Carnivorous Cube in the Omnistone Kobolds and Catacombs set review. “Everyone’s deck might just be required to be fast enough to kill you so that you can’t play this.”
At the time I thought his take, echoed by Kibler and Zalae, verged on hyperbolic. I was wrong.
While the meta has slowed rather than sped up, we can attribute that change in pace to what Carnivorous Cube has done to the Warlock class, improving Control Warlock’s match-ups with other control decks while maintaining a suite of anti-aggro cards. Cubelock forces fast decks — Aggro Paladin, Tempo Rogue, Face Hunter, Burn Mage — to race to a finish before turns five and six, hoping to defy odds and dodge a devastating Defile or Hellfire along the way.
These fast decks are still viable, and Razakus Priest still dominates, but Firebat was right: Carnivorous Cube has helped to shape the Kobolds and Catacombs meta as we know it, spawning an archetype and a whole lot of Spellbreakers. Cubelock is the new control-combo hybrid archetype borne out of the Cube’s powerful interactions with a few cards. The deck has tools to stifle aggro, out-value control, and sometimes charge down Razakus Priest — and the Cube plays a large part in all of those win conditions.
We Dare Summon Doomguard
In general, the gameplan is to draw cards early and set up for massive swings in both health and tempo with combinations of Possessed Lackey, Skull of the Man'ari, Doomguard, Voidlord, Carnivorous Cube, and Dark Pact. The specific combination you’re aiming for depends on the match-up. Against an aggro opponent without access to a silence effect, Voidlord ends games; Dark Pact on a Cube or Lackey helps you stall to get there, as does Defile, Hellfire, and Mistress of Mixtures.
Against control decks, some versions of the deck can threaten 25 points of damage in a turn. The combo is as follows: cheat a Doomguard onto the board with Skull of the Man'ari or Possessed Lackey, hit the opponent’s face, play Spiritsinger Umbra, eat the Doomguard with Carnivorous Cube, hit face for 10 more damage, and finally use Dark Pact on the Cube to deal another 10. Sure, it’s a fringe, multi-card combo, but the deck has the tools to draw cards and stall to consistently threaten such a play. Bloodreaver Gul'dan then threatens all that damage over again — this time from one card.
But the combo is not an imperative. As with the old Renolock combo — a discounted Leeroy Jenkins, Faceless Manipulator, and Power Overwhelming — it’s merely an option. More than that, it’s a possibility that sends your opponent into a panic. A tempo Spiritsinger Umbra on turn 4, for example, can be played to bait out a silence effect and clear the way for Possessed Lackey, your much more consistent value card. Zalae’s list, which we’ve featured, uses Prince Taldaram and two Dark Pact to push the same amount of damage in the late-game. The flexibility of Prince Taldaram arguably makes it the better version, at least while valuable Deathrattle, Taunt, and Divine Shield minions roam the meta.
A Misplay, or Three
All that said, there are significant difficulties in playing the archetype. Chief among them: it is very, very difficult to assess optimal lines of play against control decks — especially with a clunky hand of incomplete combo pieces. Successful players will need to carefully consider the odds of drawing key cards while using life tap and monitoring their health. They will need to consider sub-optimal tempo plays against aggro and the odds and opportunity cost of jamming a Doomguard onto the board. And they will, in all likelihood, need to draw Mountain Giant early against Razakus Priest.
Also, there’s a little card called Defile. One of the most efficient removal cards in the game happens to be often one of the most complicated. Last month pro player and streamer BoarControl shared with his Twitter followers a screenshot of a full board of minions, offering that there was indeed a full board clear available. These math puzzles are a lot to contemplate in a 75-second turn, so cheers to anyone who can find the clear so quickly. (He didn't.)
Now and Ahead
Competitive circles haven’t yet settled on one list, but many are gravitating toward Zalae’s, which features two copies of both Mountain Giant and Faceless Manipulator to threaten damage versus Priest before their Psychic Scream and Shadowreaper Anduin turns on 7 and 8. Mulligan hard for the giants in this match-up, along with Skull of the Man'ari. If the meta quickens, you can reinforce Cubelock’s dominant position by trading the giants for two Plated Beetle. Against aggro, mulligan for Mistress of Mixtures, Kobold Librarian, Defile, Mortal Coil, and Hellfire — you have many options.
In a month, Cubelock has proven itself a powerful and rewarding, albeit challenging, new archetype. Against aggressive decks, it dominates. Versus control, it is at least viable — and Zalae’s innovative list has made the match-up with Razakus Priest, far-and-away most powerful and popular standard deck, a winnable one. Going forward, expect decklists to change often, sometimes by a lot, as we all learn how to pilot it optimally. And barring a nerf (or two), I predict you would do well to practice playing both with and against it — because after the first expansion of 2018 goes live, Razakus Priest will lose Raza the Chained to Wild and become unviable, while Cubelock loses only Mistress of Mixtures.
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it's difficult to play against in skilled hands, and free wins VS. a novice.
I got my practice in with this deck during the first 2 iterations in the first few days of K&C, it doesn't take too long to actually learn what's what, but a lot more people are savy to the deck now and basically everyone techs against it.
Not that tech alone will save you VS. a monster of this calibre.
I predict this becoming the beginning of an utter beast come the next expansion. If this gets more support, expect warlock to be on top for a while.
I have barely faced this deck to be honest, and it isn't even that consistent
I'm getting way more sick of perfect curving paladins lol
What do you think about changing the Cube, so he can only eat deathrattle minions?
The Cube whould be still viable with Void Lords und Lacky, but you whould not combo it with Doomguards and Giants anymore.
Dark Pact is the key, too easy to activate their Lackeys, your silencers don't mean jack shit a lot of the time...and all these ways to cheat out 4-5 mana more expensive stuff on the board are getting really boring and annoying...
I wanna play this deck but it's too expensive. By the time I collect the dust, they will nerf it.
They're not gonna nerf all the cards. Let's say i lack Prince Taldaram, Voidlord and Skull of the Man'ari. Blizzard nerfs the Voidlord giving me back the dust for those, but now i might be stuck with a useless Skull of the Man'ari and Prince Taldaram because the deck is no longer viable.
What a cool F2P deck out there. Along with Razakus Priest. Nice job, Bli$$ard.
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Wow, so many minuses. You disagree with smth, guys?
My biggest issue with this deck is that it has so much heal it's stupid for tempo and agressive decks.
Without even counting the DK you have very easily 80 health points from healing.
At the start of the year we were all saying how Warlock had no healing as a class to work as a control deck. Now it has by far the most healing a character ever had in this game
Rename article to "How Cubelock got Doomguard HoF'd".
I complety agree with you. Because of that I have also thought that an easy way to solve this problem and future desing problems is to change completly how charge works to: "can attack minions the first turn". Yes people will hate it at first, but I think it would be healthy for the game in the long run. Also it simplifies other cards with this mechanic.
Edit: And change specific cards to allow attaking heroes the first turn like Leroy Jenkings, either as a passive ability, or by battlecry.
Wow, we all got downvoted by people who spent their dust on this. Funny thing is when Doomguard goes bye bye and this becomes trash tier, they won't get a speck of dust back.
I think he meant 'per say', although it is something of a fox paw.
no blizzard are going to nerf Skull just because of the dumb reasons they nerfed quest rogue, they love charge way too much so they nerf the cards that break charge even more instead of just fucking nerfing charg, i can see them nerfing skul, doing nothing to doomguard and letting charge keep ruining cards ebcause they love it waay too much. even after they wilingly admited charge was problematic because thy had to scrap set back and flat out eliminate a lot of designs because of stonetusk boar being a 1 mana card with charge yet they refuse to nerf the mechanic, like really? a 1 mana harger scrapping designs? isn't it an indicative that the mechanic shouldn't exist in the game?
Charge seems reasonable when you come from a background that is centered around defender's choice. It doesn't translate to this game and the game maker has been stubborn about admitting their error and moving on. Given the "can't attack minion this turn" on some new cards, it seems like the dev team may be fighting a holdout.