Hearthstone Handlock BrM

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Handlock Deck for BrM.

[Guest Modulo]

What are your thoughts on Loatheb instead of Sylvanas Windrunner? I kinda feel like Loatheb helps a bunch against some of the more combo-y decks out there that can kill you when low on life (any Mage, Patron Warrior, Druid) while Sylvana's seems to make these matchups better that you are already heavily favoured in...

[Khriz 0]

I built this deck except I dont have sylvanas jarraxus or emporor so I used 2 nerubian eggs and a loatheb was that what you would have done?

[Sottle 221]

Loatheb is good, there's a long list of cards i'd use before Eggs though. Farseer, Recombobulator, Acidic Swamp Ooze, Second Big Game Hunter, Alexstrasza, Mind Control Tech, Second Defender of Argus, Ragnaros, Sunwalker etc.

[batanete 28]

so handlock has been on my list of interesting decks that i want to try out for quite some time now.the problem is that i don't have the giants or jaraxxus.i'm totally fine with saving up dust for the giants,as i can use them on other decks too(i am also looking at the giants mage deck that you posted).but i kind of feel icky just spending dust on jara when i don't really have much interest in playing other decks that run him(demon zoo just doesn't appeal to me at all).

 

 

 

you say alex(which i do have in my collection) is a good sub for jaraxxus,but i have never seen any handlock actually run alex instead of jara,which leads me to wonder if you think the deck suffers too much without him or if you can play the deck just fine with alex in his place.i'm asking because i don't feel like crafting the mountain giants if the deck turns out not to work.i usually playtest this sort of thing myself,but i can't do that until i have the giants in my possession,so yeah.

 

thanks in advance.

Edited June 3, 2015 by batanete

[Sottle 221]

Alex is fine, many people do actually cut Jarraxus is there is a lot of Harrison Jones around in the Meta.

[Guest Ithiris]

Having trouble with this deck, as it seems that by the time I can play the giants or wyrms, the enemy is able to deal with them within a turn or two, and I am screwed. In fact since I started playing this deck in ranked I think I've won just 1 in 10 games =/

[Guest David]

Is Ogre Brute a suitable replacement for Ancient Watcher?  1 more mana to cast, but you don't need an Owl to activate it.

[Guest Sam]

Is Ogre Brute a suitable replacement for Ancient Watcher?  1 more mana to cast, but you don't need an Owl to activate it.

Ancient watcher is a really solid card in this deck not just because of the owl being able to silence it, but it's good synergy with sunfury and argus so I would personally say just craft it  it's normally used defensively as a taunt more than silencing it.

[Sottle 221]

Nah, Ogre Brute is pretty bad, the extra Mana can really hurt you if you need an efficient Shadowflame target, and like Sam said, the extra Health for one less Mana on watcher is really important when Taunting.

[Guest Ithiris]

Played some more with this deck, and I have to say that it really is not worth building - don't waste your money or gold or dust building towards this. 

 

I don't know whether the meta has just changed that much or whether it's just not great at low ranks because of the amount of players that just go for the face, but you just never really have time to get a decent line up of giants or wyrms before the enemy is able to counter or has already done significant damage to you.

 

Sorry Sottle I like your guides but this one really isn't worth it.

[Rarst 3]

Ehm? I am playing Zoo lately and if opponent warlock stalls early game I get nervous immediately, because I know handlock to be a bad matchup for me (tracking says my winrate against is 40%). I think experienced handlock players can really pummel aggro into dust.

[Guest Sam]

Played some more with this deck, and I have to say that it really is not worth building - don't waste your money or gold or dust building towards this. 

 

I don't know whether the meta has just changed that much or whether it's just not great at low ranks because of the amount of players that just go for the face, but you just never really have time to get a decent line up of giants or wyrms before the enemy is able to counter or has already done significant damage to you.

 

Sorry Sottle I like your guides but this one really isn't worth it.

I'm not sure if you're experienced or in-experienced handlock but I've been playing it a lot recently, went  around 19 down to rank 5 with it (so far, still climbing strong) but match-ups vs some aggro decks such as face hunter or an aggro mage unless you get the good early start you need to control the board it's really hard to beat, especially if they get a good start. But from myself playing this deck I can say I'm climbing more than what I lose by a mile, it's just so many people currently around the mid to lower ranks are playing a lot of face hunters, and heavy aggro decks. I would say it is definitely worth it, but it can fail vs a lot of aggro match-ups IF you dont get a good early start and they do. It's definitely a tough deck to play fullstop, but it's also just purely because of the amount of face hunters etc climbing currently. The only advice I can say from my experience is to play a bit different vs match-ups like face hunter, by trying to get an Ancient water + Sunfury combo on turn 4 if it's possible, or even using an Owl on your Ancient watcher just to get that early control so you can recover with Healbots, or some big taunts. 

 

Cant really give any other advice other than it's just a bad match-up.

[Sottle 221]

Played some more with this deck, and I have to say that it really is not worth building - don't waste your money or gold or dust building towards this. 

 

I don't know whether the meta has just changed that much or whether it's just not great at low ranks because of the amount of players that just go for the face, but you just never really have time to get a decent line up of giants or wyrms before the enemy is able to counter or has already done significant damage to you.

 

Sorry Sottle I like your guides but this one really isn't worth it.

Handlock is favoured against most aggro decks. The guide SPECIFICALLY advises against the strategy of tapping until turn 4 to activate your big threats in those matchups, and you seem to have ignored that point entirely and then come here to complain that the deck isn't effective and you can't win.

[Guest themuffinboyy]

Just wanted to say that I reached legend last season playing solely this deck from about rank 10 to legend.. so it's very much still effective.

[Guest muse]

I just got my hands on enough dusts to try out handlocks.

I'm still missing Jaraxxus which I use Alex in its place

And also missing a mountain giant. Currently using a faceless in its place or any other recommendations?

 

Though I have to say it's not been going well at the start of the season. I get wrecked pretty much with the abundance of aggro decks. 

[Sottle 221]

Yeah, the deck will definitely suffer if you don't have the full compliment of Giants, there's really not much that can replace them either, just gotta grind it out I guess.

[Guest themuffinboyy]

I can't really wrap my head around why Emperor Thaurrisan is good in handlock. Most of the time (at least versus aggro) you'll be playing from behind for most of the game, making Thaurrisan pretty much unplayable. 

 

I've replaced him with a faceless manipulator and every time I draw faceless I ask myself if Thaurrisan would've been better in that situation, and that's never been the case. I know that faceless used to be in EVERY handlock deck, but he's been out of the action as of lately, but I don't understand why. He can get so much value, whether it's copying a ysera or tirion, to simply copying another huge 9/9 taunted giant. 

 

The main thing I think is that Handlock doesn't really "need" the discount that Thaurrisan provides.. He's good in a lot of decks because he can allow you to quickly play out your hand, but that's not really how you want to play handlock.. So how cheap your cards get is not really all that relevant..

 

any thoughts on faceless vs thaurrisan Sottle??

[Sottle 221]

Thaurissan is just so much better.

 

Sure it can be a tough card to play against Aggro, but often, the skill in winning a close game is finding the turn you have enough time to play Thaurissan and then gaining an advantage from there.

Have you ever found yourself in a position with Handlock where you think "damn, not quite enough Mana to Taunt AND heal" or, damn, not quite enough Mana to AoE and play this minion". Emperor fixes all that.

Purely from a maths perspective, say you play Emperor on Turn 6 with 7 other cards in your hand, and the game lasts long enough for you play those cards, your Emperor was a Negative 1 Mana 5/5. And that's not even living in dream world either, that's a fairly reasonable example.

It also makes it MUCH harder for your opponents to play around Moltens. Good players will engineer your health so that you can only do with Molten Giants what they want you to. So, not let you Molten + Taunt, or not let you Molten + Shadowflame etc. Once you've played Emperor, they have no idea how much Mana each combination costs any more. 

 

I could go on forever here, but Emperor is just way better.

[Guest themuffinboyy]

Any TGT updates for handlock?

[Sottle 221]

Nope, the deck got nothing in TGT, it's fine as is and still strong.

[themuffinboyy 2]

Any chance you could update the matchups?

[Guest SpeeDy_G]

Hello I'm totally new to hearthstone, but I'd like to play warlock? Anyone can say how much money would I need to spend to get this deck, and how should I do it?

[Sottle 221]

You don't need to spend any money if you don't want to, everything in Hearthstone can be obtained through time and effort. I would suggest you start out with a lower budget deck like Zoo if you're starting out though.

[positiv2 953]

Hello I'm totally new to hearthstone, but I'd like to play warlock? Anyone can say how much money would I need to spend to get this deck, and how should I do it?

 

If you are able to stay above 4 wins in arena, that will speed up the process of getting the needed cards. Getting 8k dust is actually easier than it sounds. You can either disenchant useless cards or can even disenchant all the cards from other classes just as Trump did, but it is not something I would recommend to a new player. 

If you created an icy-veins account and sent me PM with your collection (preferably uploaded to Innkeeper/Hearthpwn), I could go through it and tell you what to disenchant.