Handlock is one of the oldest decks in the game and it was a dominant deck in the early days of Hearthstone. Over time the relevance of the deck faded with nerfs to Molten Giant and the rotation of other key cards that kept the archetype alive. With Knights of the Frozen Throne bringing in some really good cards for Warlock, the deck has been revived by pro players and it just might be here to stay for a while.
Card Choices
Mortal Coil: A tool to cycle through your deck while picking off 1 HP targets that you need to clear off. You can combo it with Tainted Zealot to get spell damage value.
Voidwalker: An early game taunt that helps you stall against aggro decks while also fueling synergy with Bloodreaver Gul’dan.
Defile: Defile is one of the most interesting cards of this expansion and it can allow you to pull off some interesting and creative board clears combined with other spells or spell damage minions.
Drain Soul: A decent early game spell to pick off low HP targets while also healing you for the amount of damage dealt.
Despicable Dreadlord: One of the cards that make the Warlock Death Knight card viable. It is a very powerful card against token decks as it is a constant threat against their board and can keep clearing off low HP targets repeatedly if not dealt with fast enough.
Siphon Soul: A hard removal that can take out any big targetable minion and also heal you for 3. With The Lich King and other big minions being quite popular in the currently slow meta, we definitely get value out of the card.
Abyssal Enforcer: A large body and AOE spell packed into one. With plenty of aggro decks that try to flood the board floating around, the card is quite powerful when it comes to dealing with decks like Token Shaman and Aggro Druid.
bloodreaver-guldan: One of the strongest Death Knight hero cards in the game and it allows you to bring back a massive board and gives you a hero power that allows you to deal 3 damage while also healing you for 3 each time you use it.
Doomsayer: Doomsayer can help you wipe the board early in the game and it also serves as a great follow up to AOE spells to make sure your opponent does not get to play any minions and hands you the initiative instead.
Tainted Zealot: The card has a lot of synergy with your spells and it works particularly well with Defile and can help you chain a massive amount of value out of the card.
Earthen Ring Farseer: Earthen Ring Farseer is one of your few heal options and is a decent tempo play early in the game. If you manage to combo it with a Happy Ghoul, you get 6/6 of stats for 3 mana.
Happy Ghoul: Happy Ghoul works quite well in the deck as you have 6 heal sources in the deck (ignoring the Death Knight hero power of course).
Faceless Shambler: With plenty of high stat targets in the deck, Faceless Shambler is a solid card. Being able to copy things like Mountain Giant and Twilight Drake very early in the game makes it a viable pick in the deck over something like Defender of Argus or Sunfury Protector.
Twilight Drake: Twilight Drake gets the most value out of Warlock, compared to any other class you get the most HP on the minion and it is a solid taunt target.
The Black Knight: With plenty of taunts floating around in the current meta and The Lich King being in many decks right now, The Black Knight makes a comeback after a long hiatus and it has definitely been doing some serious work in the decks I’ve included the card in.
The Lich King: Arguably a stronger version of Ysera that provides you a lot of value and the fact that the card has Taunt makes it a solid choice in the current meta, that is devoid of too many silence effects or hard removals.
Mountain Giant: A very strong component of the Handlock archetype that can be put out on board as early as turn 4. You need to aggressively tap in the early turns to get the card out to maximize the pressure on board.
Mulligans
Against Aggro
- Mortal Coil (and Tainted Zealot)
- Voidwalker
- Defile (and Tainted Zealot)
- Drain Soul
- Doomsayer
- Earthen Ring Farseer (and Happy Ghoul)
- Twilight Drake
Against Control
- Twilight Drake
- Mountain Giant
- Faceless Shambler (if you have any of the above 2 cards)
The goal of the deck is to aggressively tap and get your big minions out as early as possible and then follow up with Faceless Shambler to wall up with taunts. You also have access to early game board control in the deck to combat aggro as well. The deck is very good against any greedy deck in general and it’s probably the perfect time to give the deck a shot.
Conclusion
The deck is quite solid in the current meta because of so many greedy decks running around and Jade Druid being a popular deck. Druids are not able to deal with high HP minions quite easily and Handlock’s ability to push out big threats very early makes the deck a big threat.
Published: Aug 23, 2017 10:01 am