by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

First, let me just say: thanks for the warm reception last week!

I was (and still am) excited to start writing for Blizzpro and your feedback and welcome made my first article all that much better.  Let’s keep that ball rolling this week with an in-depth look at the deck that currently has me sitting at Rank 1 (and, if not for kids, work, and school, Legendary already): Warlock Aggro.

What is “Aggro”?

First, let me explain what I mean when I say aggro; I realized that a lot of people are new to the card game genre and aren’t familiar with all of the lingo, so I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.  An “aggro”, or aggressive, deck is simply one that aims to start winning the game during the first phase of the game (the early game).  There are generally three accepted phases in card games: phase 1 (early), phase 2 (mid-game), and phase 3 (late game).  While it is incredibly hard to actually win in phase 1 in Hearthstone, aggressive decks aim to get ahead in the early game then ride that advantage to a win.

Different Flavors of Aggro

With Hearthstone, like all games, there are different flavors of aggro.  There are decks that don’t care about board presence at all and just want to get in as much damage as possible early and often.  You’ll recognize that this describes the Hunter decks with Unleash the Hounds, but it also applies to the Warrior aggro deck as well.  Basically, with a high enough density of cards that can deal huge chunks of direct damage, any class can support this type of deck; fortunately, only two classes really can sustain the type of pressure needed without amassing a board presence (the aforementioned Hunter and Warrior).

The other type of aggro deck is one that aims to build sustained pressure early and use that to create a snowball effect that allows the aggro deck to profitably attack each turn.  These decks usually have some finishers as well that allow them to close the game out if their opponent has closed the gap in terms of board advantage.  Examples of these types of decks are Paladin Aggro, Warlock Aggro, Murlocs, and Beast Hunters.

It’s vital to understand the difference, as playing against (or with) either type of aggro deck poses different types of issues.  Against a Hunter (non-Beast) deck, life total is paramount; anything you can do to save your life total while still pressuring theirs is going to help immensely.  Against a Murloc deck, they’re not going to be playing a ton of burn spells against you, but they are going to deal chunks of damage in quick bursts if allowed to progress their board unimpeded.  If you can disrupt their board early and often, you’ll have a much better chance of winning.

Why am I going into a lesson on aggro decks?  Well, again, I’m going to cover my current build of Warlock Aggro today and, like last week with my Druid Midrange article, I’m going to cover the different phases of the game and how to play with and against the deck.  I just want to make sure people understand that this isn’t going to be sound advice for and against all aggro decks; there is a big difference between each of them.

With a Little Help from My Friend (Jaraxxus)

Fun fact: I can attribute a decent number of my wins with Warlock Aggro to Jaraxxus (EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION) and I don’t even play the card!

Here’s the hidden benefit of playing with Warlock and Warrior decks; no matter what deck you pick, unless your opponent has played you recently, they’re not going to know whether to keep cards that are good against aggro strategies or cards that give a leg up in the control matchups.  For instance: Mortal Coil is a great card against both flavors of Warlock Aggro (regular aggro and Murloc aggro) but, when paired against Warlock Giant Control, it’s practically a dead card.  Do you keep it?

Are you that brave?

Obviously, I can’t see what my opponents ship back in the mulligan phase, but I know from personal experience that heart-wrenching quandary of “do I keep Mortal Coil?!”  I’ve made the wrong decision before and it has cost me games; I know that my opponents feel the same way.  Not a strategic advantage by any means, but it is a hidden advantage of playing one of those characters.

Warlock Aggro

The deck itself is a descendant of the old-school Blood Imp Aggro decks of yore (we never realized how good we had it).  I cut my teeth on those Old School Warlock Rush decks and they were the first decks I fell in love with in the game.  When they nerfed half the cards in the deck (including Blood Imp, Defender of Argus, Dark Iron Dwarf, and Sylvanas Windrunner), I disenchanted the cards that I could get full dust for and tried to find something else to play.  I wandered around the tabletops of Azeroth trying to find something that I could play that was similar to Warlock Rush and eventually settled on Beast Hunter.

Problem was, that was around the time that Midrange Druid became big and I couldn’t beat that deck to save my life with Beast Hunter.  I moved on to Faceroll Hunter and, while I won, I hated every second of it.  I switched it up and played the Druid Midrange deck I told you all about last week for a while and that got me all the way to level four.

But, as always, you never forget your first love; I came back to Warlock Aggro and, despite it requiring changes (you basically can’t play Blood Imp anymore), I chiseled out a list that I’ve been in love with:

Warlock Aggro by shoctologist

Class: Warlock

Cards sorted by Low Cost

Neutral (20)

• Abusive Sergeant x2
• Leper Gnome x2
• Young Priestess x2
• Bloodmage Thalnos
• Knife Juggler x2
• Harvest Golem x2
• Shattered Sun Cleric x2
• Chillwind Yeti
• Defender of Argus x2
• Leeroy Jenkins
• Argent Commander x2
• The Black Knight

Warlock (10)

• Soulfire x2
• Flame Imp x2
• Mortal Coil x2
• Power Overwhelming
• Voidwalker x2
• Doomguard

Early Game

This is where this deck makes its money.  If you can’t win this phase, you can’t win the game with this deck.  The ten one- mana minions are what make this deck tick; they’re independently strong enough so that, if you drop four of them in the first two turns (with the coin), you’ve already amassed an incredibly presence capable of controlling the board.  With this type of aggro deck, you can then use that advantage to plan out advantageous attacks and trades to pull even further ahead.

In your opening hand, if something costs more than one mana, you probably want to ship it back.  Against some decks this rule is adjusted, but it takes experience to know exactly when and how that changes.  When you first pick the deck up, if you don’t know what you should be sending back, just go with “if it costs more than one and isn’t a minion, ship it back” and you should be alright.  It’s obviously more nuanced than that, but that should get you started.

(To elaborate on circumstances where I keep other cards: against Hunters I’ve kept Doomguards in my opening hand.  I don’t want to play out a ton of minions into Unleash the Hounds and having a singleton minion, a 5/7 charge, to take huge chunks out of their life total is exactly what I want to have.  I keep Doomguard knowing I’ll draw into early action because, well, almost all of my deck is inexpensive.   I only play one Doomguard and I want to plan my gameplan around that winning me the game, so I keep it.)

The reason for the “one mana rule” is that, even though cards like Defender of Argus and Shattered Sun Cleric are strong, they need you to have a board presence to be the great cards that they are.  Nothing feels more wrong than dropping a naked Defender.  The one drops are the oil that greases the cogs in this machine; use the mulligan phase to find them.  You’ll draw your powerful cards eventually…

Life Tap will make sure of it.

Against Hunter Faceroll decks, you want to make sure that you’re not overextending in this phase (or any really); between Unleash the Hounds and Explosive Trap, there’s little incentive to playing a ton of minions out.  You want the ability to trade with their early minions (or attack for two or three if they just Steady Shot you) without playing into their best cards in the matchup.  All-star cards for us are big charge minions (Doomguard, Argent Commander) that allow you to pressure them without overextending.  If you can land a fully-powered Defender of Argus (with minions on both sides), go for it; just realize that while it’s good to do this, it’s by no means game over.  This is not a good matchup and it requires careful gameplay.

Against Murlocs, an excellent opening hand will have a Soulfire, Mortal Coil, and cheap minions.  Early board control is paramount to victory here (fully demonstrating the difference between playing against a sustained pressure aggro deck and a deck like Hunter Faceroll), so don’t be afraid to burn your Soulfire early; cards in hand do you no good here anyway.  Once you have wrestled control of the board away from your opponent, just make sure to kill their Murloc Warleaders and try to keep control of the board.

Against all other decks, you want to spend the early game building an advantage while keeping in mind the various board wipes they have available.  Don’t play into Fan of Knives or Lightning Storm if you don’t have to.  Consecration should always be in the back of your mind against Paladins.  Sometimes you can’t beat those cards even if you play around them, so you have to play into them, but avoid it if possible.

Mid-game

This is the “Harvest Golem/Defender of Argus” phase; by that I mean, this is the phase that separates this deck from other aggro decks.  We don’ want to just jam Wolfriders and Arcane Golems here; we want to continue to build a better board state.  Harvest Golem may not seem like it belongs in an aggro deck, but the knowledge that I will have at least one attacker next turn is nice when I use all of my mana on turn three.

Defender of Argus is a card that, if you can make it fully work (in other words, have minions on both side get the buff), you’ll probably win the game.  When my opponents let me keep two creatures on turn three and I get to play Defender of Argus, I just know I’m about to win the game.  It creatures a gigantic swing in both tempo and momentum, as it allows me to both deal more damage and force my opponent to answer whatever it is I just did.

If you can manage to put a Defender of Argus between a Harvest Golem and a Chillwind Yeti… well, “well played” indeed.

Chillwind Yeti is a card that I touched on last week; in  world of Druid of the Claw, Swipe, Soulfire, and Truesilver Champion, having a minion with five toughness is incredibly nice.  Again, it looks like a textless beater, but when you get to start your turn with a four toughness minion in play, you’ll realize how much virtual text is actually on the card.

Shattered Sun Cleric is still as good as it was at 3/3 even though its slightly easier to kill now.  The battlecry is basically half of a Defender of Argus for one mana cheaper (and one more power on Cleric), so we include it as a way of building a better minion.

Late Game
Calling this an aggro deck can lead to a misunderstanding about how it fares in phase three; while this deck isn’t a “late-game” deck (meaning that it’s not one that aims to turn the corner and pull ahead late in the game), that doesn’t mean that this deck doesn’t hope to have a board advantage when we get to this phase of the game.  In fact, the vast majority of your games are going to be won in his phase.  While we want to get ahead in phase one, that’s only because we want to be ahead throughout phase two  and when we enter phase three.  We want to get here and still be ahead.

That’s because our late game cards are dependent on us being ahead; Argent Commander can put out damage quickly (while being resilient), but if we’ve been struggling to keep up all game and our opponent is ahead on board (and at 20+ life), that commander is basically just going to eat an opposing minion before dying.  It can be great at taking chunks out of our opponents’ life totals, but only if we’ve established an early game that leaves them low on life and behind on board.

Between the commanders, Leeroy Jenkins, and Doomguard, we have a nice top end of charging beaters to finish our opponents off.  This is appended by our spell selection (2 Soulfires, 1 Power Overwhelming) that allows for giant chunks of damage out of nowhere.  In fact, with five mana, I can do 14 damage between Leeroy, Power Overwhelming, and a Soulfire.  That does me no good, though, if I didn’t already win phases 1 and 2 and have my opponent low enough on health.

You may be wondering why there’s only one Power Overwhelming in the deck.  Yes, it is a one mana Soulfire that doesn’t require a card to be discarded in the right circumstances, but the caveat of “sacrifice the minion afterwards” isn’t irrelevant in a deck like this.  Remember, we want to be building a board state, not throwing caution to the wind and giving our minions power that overwhelms them (and kills them).  It’s a nice card to have as a surprise 4 damage, but you only want to be using it to either finish off a big taunt minion or finishing your opponent off.

One matchup I want to specifically address here is the Warlock Giant Control deck; I’ve seen people play slower to avoid giving them the ability to play fast Molten Giants.  Don’t do this; they’re going to get to that life total anyway with Life Tap.  The difference is, they’ll have a ton more cards in hand when they get there (and more mana to work with, as you gave them more time).  While it seems that you’re playing into their hands by reducing their life total, you need to think about it differently.  You’re restricting how many cards they can draw and you’re restricting how much mana they have to work with when they hit a low enough life to start dropping Molten Giants.  In fact, if you restrict enough of their draws, they may not even find the giant or a Sunfury Protector/Defender of Argus in time.  Play aggressively, you’ll be rewarded.  There will be games where they get to go “Molten Giant+Molten Giant+Defender of Argus” and you have no response; it happens, it’s part of variance, but playing into their hands by not attacking early and often is subpar and wrong.

Their power comes from their ability to draw a ton of cards and use the loss in life (and gain in cards) to their advantage.  You attacking early and often restricts their ability to gain that advantage.

Wrap-Up

If you want to play this deck, I’d say the only “bad” matchup is the Hunter Faceroll deck.  The 50/50 matchups are going to be the Murloc deck and the Rogue decks with everything else varying from very favorable to somewhat favored.  If you want to beat this deck (or similar decks), again, Hunter is a great path to take.  This is just another indicator of an evolving metagame, as Hunters were going out of favor as of a week or two ago but now are starting to get favorable matchups.

One last word before I go: if you’re not updating your deck every other day or so, you’re likely falling behind.  There are negotiable slots in any and every deck, this one being no different.  If you’re not keeping up with the Jones’s, the Jones’s are going to pass you by.

Shoc
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