Legend: Warlock ‘Battle Rattle’

AngryafricanRW recently shared his Legend rank success on Reddit – featuring his Warlock deck, the ‘Battle Rattle’.

Decklist

2 Soulfire

2 Mortal Coil

2 Shadow Bolt

2 Void Terror

2 Hellfire

1 Shadowflame

2 Siphon Soul

1 Lord Jaraxxus

1 Acidic Swamp Ooze

2 Ancient Watcher

1 Bloodmage Thalnos

1 Ironbeak Owl

2 Sunfury Protector

2 Harvest Golem

2 Defender of Argus

2 Twilight Drake

1 Sylvanas Windrunner

1 Cairne Bloodhoof

1 Molten Giant

Guide

This is a really fun and powerful deck that has solid matchups vs most decks. It uses many of the core Warlock control cards and throws in Void Terror and cards with favorable death rattles to allow very powerful combos in addition to just being solid value cards.

Favorable Matchups:

Druid, Rogue, Aggro Warlock, Priest.

The deck really shines vs other control decks due to Life Tap and Jaraxxus, but has enough tools to deal with early aggro decks due to running Hellfire, Shadowflame and plenty of removal spells. Thalnos is added to pack an extra punch when needed. Sometimes certain combos can outright win the game, such as using a Void Terror on Sylvanus to MC a key minion, or on Cairne Bloodhoof to suddenly create a powerful board.

Control Druids currently dominate at the higher ranks, which is this decks most favorable matchup.

Weak Matchups:

Aggro Mage. Pyroblast kills you before you can use Jaraxxus and makes your Lifetap hero power largely useless. However, at the higher ranks I was playing Mages less than 1 in 10 games. If the meta ever became Mage-heavy again, this deck would become very weak.

Key Cards

Voidterror:

A very interesting card, and one that becomes a real powerhouse in this deck. With the ability to activate several powerful death rattles while simultaneously creating a powerful minion, Voidterror puts huge pressure on your opponent to use silence or hard removal or simply die.

Since currently in the meta no deck is running more than 2 silences (usually Druid and Warlock control), you are always guaranteed later in the game to use many of these cards to their full potential.

Ooze:

I currently run one Ooze due to the growing popularity of OTK Warriors in the meta. This gives you the option later in the game to melt a Gorehowl to prevent an OTK next turn. If this was not a concern, I would run a second owl.

Thalnos:

Thalnos is a very powerful card, and I would never think of removing it from the deck. The extra spellpower makes shadowbolt and soulfire 1-shot Sylvanus (A card you will be facing at higher ranks every game) and has many situational uses with Hellfire and Shadowflame. Finally, it is very powerful as a turn 3 play with Mortal Coil, allowing you to kill most 2 drops with amazing efficiency.

Ancient Watcher:

This deck has a huge amount of cards that can utilize the Watcher. Not only the taunt givers and the owl, but the Void Terror can devour it to become a 7/8 for the total cost of 5 mana… on turn 3! Finally, Shadowflame can be used with the Watcher for cheap board clear.

Harvest Golem vs Earthen Ring Farseer:

I still have not decided, as both are excellent options. Harvest Golem absorbs a ton of removal and has synergy with Void Terror, but the Farseer gives much needed healing.

Thoughts on Giants:

While I think giants can be very powerful, they are situational and I find they lack consistency in this kind of deck. Molten Giant is a dead card if you draw it after you become Jaraxxus, and topdecking a Mountain Giant is horrible. I do run one Molten Giant, but I feel running more giants in the deck would open it up to too many conditional weaknesses.

If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free.

I will be streaming this deck (and depending on how the meta looks, modify or change decks) on EU during this weekend as I regrind to legend. You can catch me at http://www.twitch.tv/angryaa/.

Source