Hearthstone Featured Deck: The Warlock Murloc Aggro!
This past week an increasingly popular trend has been running aggro decks since the freeze on Mages was nerfed. There is no better class to play for an aggressive deck than playing a Warlock due to their Hero Power which allows you to draw cards. After doing a lot of research and messing around with decks myself, below is a deck list that has brought me much success and caused my opponents a ton of frustration.
Strategy
The concept of the deck is to just zerg your opponent down with several low cost card combos. Games are very quick – win or loss – with many people being unable to respond quick enough to do much. Those of you looking for some basic strategy behind the deck should keep reading!
Health Buffers
- Blood Imp
- Young Priestess
- Coldlight Seer
- Murloc Warleader
Murloc Cards
- Grimscale Oracle
- Murloc Raider
- Murloc Tidecaller
- Murloc Tidehunter
- Bluegill Warrior
- Old Murk-Eye (Legendary)
Additional Important Warlock Cards
- Void Walker
- Flame Imp
- Soulfire
Important Neutral Creatures
- Leeroy Jenkins (Legendary)
- Leper Gnome
- Abusive Sergeant
- Knife Juggler
Explanation
As mentioned before the concept is to zerg your opponent down hard and fast. Only clear minions when its important to do so and if not, keep slamming directly into the enemy player. The concept behind the deck is to take advantage of low cost card combos that murlocs offer and use health buffers to keep them alive vs other low cost cards and direct damage spells. If you take a look at the murloc cards, you’ll notice every murloc aside from the Murloc Raider offers a useful ability. The Grimscale Oracle brings +1 attack to other murlocs, the Murloc Tidehunter summons an additional murloc, the Murloc Tidecaller gains +1 attack for each murloc that is played, the Bluegill Warrior has Charge and Old Murk-Eye is the murloc equivalent of Argent Commander (sans the Divine Shield). When coupled together, you get high health and high dps cards for very low cost. The neutral creates in the deck help amplify the damage that you dish out with the Knife Juggler dishing out 1 damage for each minion played (which should be a lot since the murlocs are low mana cost) and the Leper Gnome dishes out a free 2 damage no matter what due to his Deathrattle ability (deal 2 damage upon dying). Leeroy Jenkins works great as a finisher in this deck as its a 6/2 with Charge but if you don’t have him, I’d replace him with another Leper Gnome. There is 1 Soulfire in the deck and it is there to help dish out direct damage to the opponent or to help you clear a minion that is causing you some trouble (for example a high health taunt). Last but not least the Abusive Sergeants are there to help buff the damage you are dishing out directly to the opponent or alternatively to help you clear a minion that you don’t quite want to sacrifice several minions for. Basic things to keep in mind include not playing your Abusive Sergeant or Young Priestess if you don’t have another minion out, since you don’t want their extra abilities to be wasted for no reason (this is very situaitonal so you’ll have to make the judgement call).
Potential Cards
One of the potential cards to drop in the deck would be Hungry Crab. You may be wondering why you would want a card that destroys a murloc but think of it this way – if you know he will die anyway and he isn’t buffed, you may as well destroy it and get a 3/4 card for 1 mana (very cost-efficient). Alternatively, if you run into a sucker who is trying to run a murloc deck as well – just destroy one of his murlocs instead – win/win.
Also, for those of you who don’t own Leeroy Jenkins and are still working your way towards one, you can substitute him for an Arcane Golem. The card isn’t as good as having Leeroy but is one of the only close replacements. It should be noted that Leeroy fits in many aggressive decks and is probably one of the most important legendary cards to have (aside from Old Murk-Eye in this murloc deck of course).
Conclusion
Try out the deck and let us know what you think! Keep in mind that the meta changes very often so if you aren’t experiencing success with the deck, it’s likely that the meta has shifted away from aggro decks to mid-range or control decks. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, drop a comment!
Credit for this deck goes to Cloak! You can check out the official forum post here and his stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/cloakndagger505
** For Patch 1.0.0.4217
