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Mulligans
Intro
Descent of the Dragons was a wake up call for every Handlock-Fan as Blizzard printed a lot of powerfull cards for the archetype such as Dark Skies, Abyssal Summoner and Valdris Felgorge. Alongside of these new Handlock-specific cards Warlock actually got one of the best dragon package of the set. Crazed Netherwing is insane and an auto-include in this deck as it goes well with Twilight Drake and Nether Breath.
Strategy
The overall strategy of the deck is to use the best hero power of the game Tap on turn 2 and turn 3 to get a card advantage, which makes your curve from turn 4 on very consistent and allows a lot of synergy with cards in your hand (such as the dragon package). You usually want to play a Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant on turn 4, curve into turn 5 Crazed Netherwing or Tap + Faceless Rager / Mountain Giant into turn 6 Abyssal Summoner. Whenever you trade with your big minions Neferset Ritualist becomes a crazy good card. Dark Skies is best on turn 3-4 to set up your giant minions.
Since your minions from turn 4 on are very hard to deal with, you usually swing the board at turn 5-6 to your favour. Once you are in a favourable position you want to start hitting your opponent in the head and close out the game with the insane amount of burst potential this deck provides with Leeroy Jenkins, Nether Breath and Soulfire.
Depending on the matchup you sometimes want to trade a lot during turn 4-8. Here is when Alexstrasza comes in clutch as she allows you to finish the game easily (if you have 15 damage on board or 11 damage on board + Soulfire in hand) or you have a lot of burst in hand to end the game the turn after you play her.
Card Choices
This card is synergy-wise definitely not mandatory in this deck but it’s overall just good. You really wanna cycle fast through your deck and you often find yourself in a position where you have a mana to spare and an enemy minion with 1 health left (e.g. Lackeys). Moreover since there are a lot of Reborn-minions in the meta (such as Khartut Defender, Bone Wraith or through cards like Pharaoh Cat) Mortal Coil becomes a really good card.
This card is one of the best cards in the deck. A lot of matchups force you to trade in the early stage of the game and this card gives you an insane advantage when healing up your Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant. It’s obviously really good with Faceless Rager or if you play Crazed Netherwing that damages your own board to heal your minions back up afterwards.
This card is obviously not a 3-drop, it’s more of a 5-drop after dropping a Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant on turn 4 but costs 2 less mana (than a 5-drop) which also allows you to Tap or play Neferset Ritualist if you trade this turn.
There are some good reasons to run this card. One of them is it being a dragon to activate your powerfull cards like Crazed Netherwing and Nether Breath. I feel like it is the best dragon you can run in this deck aside of the auto-include-dragons. Since a lot of decks play Galakrond right now the Evasive Wyrm is a good way to deal with Shield of Galakrond on curve while leaving a untargetable 5/3 for you on the board. You really wanna be proactive with this deck from turn 4-8 therefor cards with Rush like Evasive Wyrm and Siamat fit your game plan really well because you can protect your board with them. If you don’t like the card but you see a lot of big taunts you could consider running The Black Knight instead.
In general: You really want to run at least 7 dragons to make their synergy consistent. I’ve experimented with a lot of dragons and was initially running Malygos (which I found only good if you also run Frizz Kindleroost in the deck as well). Overall Zzeraku the Warped proved to be stronger as it can be played one turn earlier and is obviously good on turn 10 especially if you already have a board. It also acts as a soft-taunt (same as Siamat with windfury) which means: As long as your opponent doesn’t have lethal the turn after you play those cards, he just cannot hit your face and is forced to remove Zzeraku first.
At first glance this cards seems only like a tech-card in this deck but don’t forget that you can activate it with the Whelps summoned from Leeroy Jenkins to push through a taunt which can give you lethal. But sure it’s mostly in this deck since there are a lot of dragons in the meta right now.
Why don’t we run …
The card just doesn’t fit our overall game plan. We want to have big powerfull minions from turn 4 on and close out the game soon after turn 6-7 with our burst cards. We don’t want to kill our own board on turn 7. Lord Godfrey mostly sits in our hand doing nothing but blocking a card spot which could have been a usefull card. I played a lot of games with and without Godfrey and in this deck it’s just not a good card. Sure there are moments where you think “oh now Godfrey would have been great” but this can be said just about any card and you have probably lost the game at this point anyways.
Most Handlock lists run this card but I think it’s a big mistake and here is why: Since not playing Sunfury Protector I only had one moment in a game where I actually missed here. On the other site Neferset Ritualist was awesome every time I had it in hand and I always got great use of it. Maybe there is a meta where Sunfury Protector shines again but right now you’re better off running other cards instead. Cutting Sunfury Protector for Neferset Ritualist was definetly the biggest improvement I made within this deck.
This card has similiar weaknesses as Lord Godfrey. As I already mentioned Handlock is a proactive deck which means we don’t wanna run board clears after turn 3-4 (Dark Skies) but play big threats every turn. If the opponents manages to deal with our board, sure, we just play more threats the turn after. If the opponent plays minions into our big board we can value trade and heal our minions back up with Neferset Ritualist and if he plays a bunch of smaller minions we can easily clear them of with Crazed Netherwing. There is just no need to play bad cards like Shadowflame in this deck.
Additional Info
Currently I am Rank 4 (non legend) in standard with this deck having a 67% winrate (30 wins and 15 losses). I also got Rank 5 in wild with the exact same list. If you like Handlock and practice the deck a bit you can for sure reach legend with it (I don’t have the time and I personally don’t think getting legend is worth the time effort).
This deck also doesn’t loose a lot of cards (only Zilliax) when the standard rotation hits in April which makes it considerable save to craft.
I hope you guys enjoy the deck and have a good climb! Feel free to discuss the deck or leave some questions!
