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Our Infliction (Self-Damage) Warlock deck list guide will go through the ins-and-outs of this potentially viable deck from The Witchwood Expansion! This guide will teach you how to mulligan, pilot, and substitute cards for this archetype! For now the deck guide is theorycraft, but as soon as the expansion goes live we will start updating it right away!
Introduction
As one of the three competing resources in card games, your hero’s life total can be leveraged as a resource to generate an advantage. No class is capable of utilizing life total quite like Warlock. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the strength of Life Tap in which Gul’dan is able to refill his hand at the cost of his life total. This draw mechanic attached to a hero power is widely regarded as the most powerful in the game, despite the fact that it causes a dip in health.
Beyond Life Tap, several of Warlock’s core cards, such as Flame Imp and Hellfire, wrap the player’s life total in their cost. Doing so gives the Warlock player a chance to get a tempo advantage by playing cards at a reduced mana cost.
Thematically, Warlock leveraging life total for an advantage makes sense. Practically, with new cards released in The Witchwood expansion, a potential new archetype is born.
The Witchwood
Several new cards released with The Witchwood not only support the archetype of Infliction Warlock, but potential enable it as a viable deck. Duskbat and Deathweb Spider reward you for taking damage, something that is not difficult to accomplish. Blood Witch, in addition to several cards from past expansions, ensures a consistent stream of self-damage. Unlike other cards, however, this four mana minion requires no mana invested after the turn she is played.
Read on to see some details about Mulligans and General Strategy for this new The Witchwood archetype!
Mulligan
Like Zoo Warlock decks, Infliction Warlocks really want to find early game minions. Flame Imp and Kobold Librarian get the ball rolling, but landing Vulgar Homunculus can be just a crucial on turn two. Unless you can cheat out or active your three-drops, most are fairly low tempo. Following that, your curve opens up a bit and can help get some of the self-damage synergies going.
With this in mind, finding those early turn plays is your highest priority in the mulligan phase. Throw back anything that doesn’t help gain an early board lead. Bloodbloom is a card that has the potential to generate a tempo advantage, but only when paired with a relevant spell. As such, this two mana card is a risky keep in most situations. In many cases, you’d prefer to develop on board a bit more consistently.
General Strategy
Generally, Infliction Warlock wants to play a board-centric, tempo-based game. Early game minions are overstatted, offering the potential for value trading.
On turn three and beyond, self-damage and healing creates the opportunity to cheat out significant amounts of mana. The obvious examples of doing so involve Bloodbloom paired with a spell or self-damage plus Duskbat. However, Happy Ghoul (everyone’s favorite zombie) can easily be played for free after healing up from some of that self-inflicted damage.
Hero Powering not only helps dig for better cards, but it activates some of the critical synergies involved in this archetype. Should you get low enough, Hooked Reaver can double as both a late-game threat and a difficult on-curve roadblock for aggro.
Yes, you’re taking a lot of damage over the course of the game to realize your deck’s game plan. Fortunately, there are numerous options for healing back some of the life total you (sometimes) intentionally reduced. Deathweb Spider can consistently regain health turn-after-turn while Lesser Amethyst Spellstone can provide some burst healing.
At the top end of the deck, Lord Godfrey can swing an overwhelming board back in your favor. Similarly, Bloodreaver Gul'dan isn’t going to pull a swarm of Doomguards back from the dead, but the Battlecry and new Hero Power both present legitimate late-game threats. If nothing else, Siphon Life can be enough to pull you out of kill range against aggressive decks.
Self infliction deck? Does Guldan need some suicide prevention services?
This deck is interesting as an idea but I don’t think it might actually be viable or competitive. The payback of damaging yourself is just too small. Being able to spawn two 1/1s or get two lifesteal minions isn’t enough to justify running some pretty underwhelming cards. Not to mention it’s not even consistent.
I think I agree with the above posters. Doomguard is still a very solid card, even without Malchezaar’s Imp, and he’s also great with Gul’Dan. I think I would maybe try and find room for Glinda Crowskin (perhaps instead of Godfrey?) She seems pretty good in this sort of deck; Gettiing 2 Hooked Reavers or Chittering Tunnelers seems pretty good. Maybe find room for Gnomeferatu as well.
How do you win with this deck. This would’ve been good 2 years ago because the synergy is strong. But now all the decks are so broken this deck is just good (not broken) so it will be hard to be competitive. Cool deck idea hopefully in the future expansions this will revive more support.
Also Bane of Doom equals howlfiend.
Never doomguard
Never lucky
This deck seems undecided between being an aggro deck, a mid range deck or a control deck. You just kill yourself for the first half of the game, then you’ll switch gears and be a control deck for the second half of the game while having an extremely low life total. This is never were you want to be as a control deck. I think the deck should be more aggro intensive, without siphon soul, lord godfrey, guldan, or dreadlords. Anyhow, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.