Wild Giants Warlock Deck List Guide – Kobolds

Our Wild Giants Warlock deck list guide will go through the ins-and-outs of this deck! This guide will teach you how to mulligan, pilot, and substitute cards for this archetype!

Introduction to Wild Giants Warlock

Giants Warlock is a control/combo deck that revolves around the interaction between Naga Sea Witch and the mana-cost reducing Giant cards like Molten Giant and Mountain Giant. In a patch shortly after the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion was introduced Blizzard silently changed the order in which Naga Sea Witch and the various Giant cards reduce their cost, allowing players to cast several Giants for no mana as long as Naga Sea Witch is on the board. This is an entirely neutral combo, and while Warlock along with Druid were initially strong candidates due to their draw and anti-aggro tools, they eventually fell out of popularity in favor of Hunter’s consistency in finding the combo by turn 5. After the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion was introduced, Cube-lock variants were dominating the ladder, and a couple weeks in players discovered that including the Giants package all but assured victory in the mirror match. As time went on lists have phased out the Cube-centric combo pieces, landing on a more Giants focused list.

Giants Warlock Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Everything

• Kobold Librarian – This is the earliest minion you can play, and with the Patches nerf you can often get a pretty decent trade with it. Kobold Librarian not only replaces itself in your hand by drawing a card, but the damage it deals to you is often necessary (you need to have taken 5 damage by the time you play Naga Sea Witch if you want to play Molten Giant). Depending on the archetype it can be worth it to throw it back if you going second against Priest, as you won’t have much opportunity to play it without allowing your opponent a free draw with Northshire Cleric. These days however, if you don’t already know exactly which variant your opponent is running, you can safely assume they’re playing Big Priest, which won’t be running Cleric if they expect to win.

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Mortal Coil and Darkbomb – Early game removal is always helpful against aggro. In addition to directly removing a minion, these cards can help set up an efficient Defile turn.
• Defile – One of (if not “the”) best Warlock cards ever printed, Defile is an excellent way to clear even the stickiest boards. Defile plays around Divine Shield and Deathrattles alike, and can be played effectively as early as turn 2. Almost essential to survive the early turns against aggro decks. The only matchup where Defile is a sketchy keep is against Secret/Burn Mage. Almost all the minions have 3 life, so unless their board is exactly Kabal Lackey/Mad Scientist and 3-health minions then you’ll be hard pressed to make use of it. In these games Defile becomes an excellent card to test for Counterspell.
• Voidcaller – Without Possessed Lackey and Skull of the Man'ari Voidcaller is the only remaining method in the deck to summon high-cost Demons sooner than they should be able to hit the field. If Voidcaller dies with a Voidlord (or even Mal'Ganis sometimes) in hand against aggro then you’ve bought yourself a lot of time if they don’t have a Spellbreaker ready to go.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Sacrificial Pact – Heals for 5 and destroys your Voidcaller, hopefully summoning something enormous. You really want to have this card against aggro if you have a Voidcaller but it’s pointless if you don’t, so only keep with Voidcaller.
• Naga Sea Witch – A bunch of Giants on turn 5 beats most everything, even aggro. The problem is turn 5 is pretty deep into the game against aggro, so you can’t afford to keep Naga Sea Witch against it if you don’t have an early game plan. With a Defile and/or other removal in hand you can afford to keep this card.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Naga Sea Witch and Company – Against the slower decks Naga Sea Witch is everything; if you don’t have one you need to mulligan for it fairly aggressively. Most of the power behind this combo comes from being able to do it on the earliest possible turn. Each turn after not only gives your opponent another shot at drawing an answer, but also widens the spectrum of answers your opponent is able to play. Some of the Giants are worth keeping depending on the matchup. Mountain Giant is always fairly safe because of Life Tap, and Clockwork Giant can be effective against the mirror for the same reason. An 8/8 minion on turn 4 against a slow deck is pretty strong on its own. The other two giants should only be kept if you have Naga Sea Witch already.

Giants Warlock Play Strategy

Ideally this deck wants to play Naga Sea Witch on turn 5 into a board of Giants that can deal lethal damage on the following turn (4 Giants if your opponent is at full life). Thanks to Life Tap this is fairly reliable against the slower decks that allow you to hero power for the first few turns, but can be difficult against more aggressive decks.

VS Aggro Decks

The idea here is to survive while taking as little damage as possible. Voidcaller into Sacrificial Pact into Voidlord is a soft win condition against these decks. Your opponent loses a lot of steam removing Voidlord if they don’t have a Spellbreaker in hand. In these matchups this deck does suffer from not including Dark Pact, which means you have to be much more careful with your life total. This deck runs some of the best board clearing tools available to any class, so protecting your health is very doable. As the game goes on if you can keep your opponent relatively in check you will find opportunities to play a Giant here or there. With a Giant on board your goal is to clear the board while leaving the Giant alive so it can hit face. After a few rounds of that, or if you can safely play a Naga combo, you’ve won the game.

One of the nice things about the aggro matchup is you can more easily stick a Naga Sea Witch. If you find a turn where you can clear the board and then play Naga, even if you don’t summon any Giants you can easily summon Voidlords or Bloodreaver Gul'dan before they could normally be played on the next turn.

VS Control Decks

Hard mulligan for Naga Sea Witch, and if you have one keep every Giant you can. If you can make a big Naga play on turn 5 then your opponent’s answers are pretty much limited to The Coin/Lightbomb and Frost Nova/Doomsayer. Malygos Druid used to lose to this deck almost automatically, so they started adding in Poison Seeds to give themselves a fighting chance. This is a soft counter to your Naga combo, when this happens just keep pressuring face. If they can’t follow it up immediately with Spreading Plague then you can get a lot of damage in with those 2/2 minions.

If you wiff the combo on turn 5 then the next safest time to go in with your Giants is turn 10. On turn 10 you can play Loatheb along with your combo to protect your Giants from almost any removal card that could have cleared them. If by some miracle they manage to save themselves anyway, then you still have Bloodreaver Gul'dan to fall back on. In between turns 5 and 10 playing one Giant at a time is often better than flooding the board against decks likely to have a full clear. Malygos Druid’s best single target removal (bar Naturalize, which usually isn’t included) is also their only full clear: Poison Seeds. So, if you summon Giants one at a time eventually your opponent is going to be forced to waste their Poison Seeds, after which you are free to go in with your Naga. Against Big Priest this plan is less effective. Big Priest runs Shadow Word: Death to supplement Lightbomb and Shadow Visions to generate additional copies of them, so you pretty much have to wait until turn 10 against them if you don’t have combo on turn 5.

In the mirror match, ideally you’re going second so you can use The Coin to summon a Naga board before your opponent. If you don’t have Naga, or went first, it’s important to play a Giant on turn 4. If you do this, then when your opponent sets up their Naga, you can hit them in the face and play Shadowflame to clear their board, keeping you in the game. In Warlock matchups it’s also important to remember that Sacrificial Pact can target opposing Demons, so save it for them if you can. Voidcaller turn 4 also combos into Sacrificial Pact/Mal'Ganis/Shadowflame on turn 5 to clear an opposing Naga board.

Giants Warlock Card Substitutions

This deck needs to do two things: survive and play Naga Sea Witch into a bunch of Giants. This list contains the best cards to accomplish this, and creates a strong backup plan with Mal’Ganis and Gul’dan. Just about any change to the deck makes it less consistent, but there are some options. You could run a Carnivorous Cube package by cutting archetype specific techs like Shadowflame and Mortal Coil. This would add some burst and value potential to the deck, but both Cube and Giant combos are probably better without the other.

The mandatory cards in the deck are Naga Sea Witch, all 8 Giants, and I would argue Defile. Apart from that, this deck has a lot of room for budget replacements while remaining playable. Here are some options if you’re short on dust:

• Dark Pact and/or Possessed Lackey – This deck doesn’t run Dark Pact mostly because it doesn’t run Lackey, but also because ideally you can’t combo it with Voidcaller on turn 5 (as that would compete with Naga Sea Witch). However, the extra healing is much preferable against aggro decks, so if you’re having trouble staying alive against aggro or want to include Lackey then it’s a good option. Possessed Lackey is still a great card, but this deck prefers cards that you can play before turn 5. Each 5+ mana card you add to the deck increases the amount of potential “dead” cards against certain matchups.
• Power Overwhelming – Combos well with Shadowflame, helps you trade up, and increases the deck’s burst potential. PO is not at its best in this deck but it’s almost never bad.
• Drain Soul, Shadow Bolt, Imp-losion or any other dust-friendly removal card – This deck loves it’s removal cards. The main list already includes the best ones, but some of the less premier Warlock removal can still be very effective against aggressive opponents.
• Siphon Soul – Nice single target removal that also buffs your life a bit. The earliest it can be played is a turn later than you’re planning to win, so not ideal.
• Demonwrath – There is a lot of aggro Paladin plaguing the ladder right now, and they do have a lot of 2 or less health minions, but a lot of those minions have Divine Shield or Deathrattle. Supplementing Defile with this card is an option that could be worth it.
• Sense Demons – A pseudo Arcane Intellect, Sense Demons increases your chances of having a target for Voidcaller while also increasing your hand size for Mountain Giant. If you include this card only add a single copy. There are not nearly enough Demons in the deck for two to be worth it.
• Despicable Dreadlord – While not ideal for a lot of matchups, if you were exclusively fighting aggro Paladin this would probably be ideal. Despicable Dreadlord has decent stats and removes Divine Shields and pesky 1 health minions every turn it remains on the field.

You could consider N'Zoth, The Corruptor, but this deck runs a bare-bones late-game plan only for just in case, you really want to win on turn 5. Do not substitute another Giant for Arcane Giant or Frost Giant, they can’t be played on turn 5 with a bunch of other Giants and thus are not candidates for your turn 5 win plan.