Control Warlock Deck List Guide

Table of Contents

• ×Control Warlock
  • 1. Aim of the Deck
  • 2. Strengths and Weaknesses
  • 3. Key Cards and Crafting
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Handlock Warlock Deck
  • 1. Card List
  • 2. Mana Curve
  • 3. Strategy
    • 3.1. General Playstyle
    • 3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies
    • 3.3. Key Skills
      • 3.3.1. Understanding the Pace of the Game
      • 3.3.2. When to Life Tap
      • 3.3.3. Ending The Game
    • 3.4. Card Swaps
  • 4. About the Author
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Bloodbloom Doom Warlock Deck
  • 1. Card List
  • 2. Mana Curve
  • 3. Comments On The Variation
    • 3.1. Pros and Cons
  • 4. About the Author
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +J4ckieChan's Deathknight Warlock Deck
  • 1. Card List
  • 2. Mana Curve
  • 3. Comments On The Variation
    • 3.1. Pros and Cons
  • 4. About the Author
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Urana's Rank 1 Legend Handlock Deck
  • 1. Card List
  • 2. Mana Curve
  • 3. Comments On The Variation
    • 3.1. Pros and Cons
  • 4. About the Author
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Wild Malygos Warlock Deck
  • 1. Card List
  • 2. Mana Curve
  • 3. Strategy
    • 3.1. Synergies & Combinations
    • 3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies
    • 3.3. Card Swaps
  • 4. About the Author
  • 5. ChangeLog

Control Warlock is a broad archetype that relies on using the Warlock Hero Power throughout the game to consistently maintain card advantage over opponents. Having additional cards in hand provides more possible plays each turn and allows for a more reactive playstyle due to the increased likelihood of having key cards in hand.

Most of the early turns will consist of simply using Life Tap, sacrificing Health and giving full tempo advantage to opponents. To counter this, a large number of healing and board clear effects such as Hellfire and Mistress of Mixtures are used to stabilise later in the game. In addition to board clear and healing effects, other high value cards such as Twilight Drake and Mountain Giant are frequently used to to advantage of the large number of cards in hand, often requiring multiple cards for opponents to answer, furthering cards advantage.

Although the general playstyle is quite consistent across variants, the win condition can greatly vary and can range from grinding down opponents to playing a large number of big threats to overwhelm opponents, and assembling combos to burst opponents down using cards like Malygos or Leeroy Jenkins.

Below, you will find link to our deck lists for Control Warlock, starting with our featured deck, which we consider the most common variant.

This Handlock Warlock Deck is based off of Handlock, an archetype that has been around for most of Hearthstone's history. It aims to develop an impenetrable board of huge minions to lock opponents out of the game. It takes advantage of Life Tap to be able to create high value minions such as Twilight Drake and Mountain Giant in addition to using Humongous Razorleaf in combination with Faceless Shambler and Defender of Argus to create huge Taunt minions.

This Urana's Rank 1 Legend Handlock Deck is a powerful Handlock variant that uses demons to aid board control throughout the game. It sacrifices some healing effects knowing Bloodreaver Gul'dan can be used to stabilise later into the game. This version was use by Urana to hit rank 1 Legend on the Asia server in August 2017.

This J4ckieChan's Deathknight Warlock Deck is a new approach to Control Warlock from the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion that takes advantage of Bloodreaver Gul'dan. It was created and used by professional player J4ckieChan with great success on ladder. It contains a large number of removal tools and healing effects in an aim to slow down opponents while also threatening them with powerful demons.

This Bloodbloom Doom Warlock Deck takes a more unique approach to the Control Warlock playstyle. It cuts out most big minions in favour of additional removal and healing. It was created by StanCifka and is known for the unique combination of Bloodbloom and DOOM!. Cards like Violet Illusionist and Medivh, the Guardian empower the combo and allow it to be used as a win condition, in addition to high value cards such as Elise the Trailblazer and Lord Jaraxxus.

This Wild Malygos Warlock Deck, often refered to as "Malylock" is a Control Warlock variant that uses Dragon synergies to control the board throughout the game. It uses Malygos in combination with Soulfires and Darkbombs for large amounts of burst damage to end games.

1. Aim of the Deck

This archetype aims to maintain a significant card advantage over opponents by consistently making use of Life Tap throughout games. By making use of many AoE and healing effects, any tempo lost through the use of Life Tap can easily be negated. High value minions like Twilight Drake are frequently used to take advantage or the large number of cards in hand to draw additional resources out of opponents. By maintaining this playstyle, the board can eventually be dominated as opponents run out of cards or powerful combos can eventually be assembled from the additional card draw.

2. Strengths and Weaknesses

The additional card draw from Life Tap puts Control Warlock decks in a strong position against slower decks that lack burst damage to capitalise on the self-damage done by Life Tap. In other matchups there is usually enough healing and AoE effects available to perform reasonably against both Aggro and Midrange decks.

Control Warlock can sometimes struggle against hyper-aggressive decks such as Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman that are able to put out a huge amount of damage during the first few turns. Decks with large amounts of direct damage can also be particularly problematic, such as Freeze Mage, which can capitalise on the self-damage taken from Life Tap and spells such as Hellfire to end games with a large amount of burst damage.

3. Key Cards and Crafting

Control Warlock decks are quite flexible in how they are built and therefore many of the cards are interchangeable, as long as certain tools are available. Twilight Drake is probably the exception to the rule and is used across all decks due to excellent synergy with Life Tap

The three main components included in decks are healing, AoE effects, and Taunt minions. For healing, Mistress of Mixtures and Earthen Ring Farseer are most commonly used and occasionally Cult Apothecary. Siphon Soul and Lord Jaraxxus also provide healing effects, however this is often merely a bonus on top of their other effects. For AoE effects, Hellfire and Shadowflame are most commonly used due to their low Mana cost and Abyssal Enforcer also regularly sees play due providing a huge minion in addition to the effect. For Taunt minions, Sunfury Protector and Defender of Argus are most commonly used to fill this role and can provide huge cheap Taunts out of minions like Twilight Drake, Humongous Razorleaf, Ancient Watcher.

4. ChangeLog

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• 19 Jun. 2017: Added new guide format for Control Warlock.