Author’s Note: I wrote this the week before Tennessee’s State Champs. Since it isn’t going live til afterward, I’m making a couple of small tweaks, but it’s not exactly an after-action tournament report. How’d I do? 3-2 overall and missed the cut to top 4. Total number of aggro decks I faced: zero. Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior, Mage...every match was far less aggressive than what I’d planned for. Without further ado, here’s what my gameplan was prior to State Champs.

Block format being the current "Build-A-Bear Workshop" topic amongst the community, I figured I'd share the list I brought to State Champs this past weekend. I've looked on various forums and talked to a few friends, and it seems that aside from a popular thread about Paladin Control, every decklist is an aggro-oriented list of critters designed to kill your opponent by turn 4. Alliance and Horde with pretty much every class as the base, you can find a list floating around.

Rather than attempt to build a deck that tries to be faster than Fire Shaman, Nature Shaman, Nature Hunter, or whatever...I've tried to stick to my guns by building a control-oriented deck that can outlast any of these variants.

I honestly don't have the skill to play an aggro deck effectively. Roll your eyes all you want, but there's a certain amount of finesse in playing an aggro deck. When to trade allies versus going for the dome. When to keep a second wave of allies in your hand versus making the mistake of over-committing to the board. One wrong play can cost you the game. Finally, there's lots of math involved as you calculate future life totals. Math and I don't get along well. We stopped talking to each other somewhere in Elementary School and have had a rocky relationship ever since. I've self-diagnosed myself as having Numeric Dyslexia. I don't even know if that's a real term, but it pretty much describes what happens to my brain. Numbers get jumbled around and my mental chalkboard implodes, leaving me more confused than I was before I started trying to figure out life total swings. It's kinda embarrassing that a guy in his 30's can't keep up with simple math, but I've come to accept the fact that I'm a math idiot.

Rather than try and pilot one of the uber-kill decks that is floating around, I'm going with the "If you can't beat 'em, control 'em" philosophy. To this end, I've picked Warlock as my choice for a Control deck for no other reason than the amount of Remove From Game effects to deal with graveyard recursion shenanigans and the Obsidian dragonkin. There’s still math involved in piloting any deck, but having a handful of control-oriented cards keeps my brain from freaking out too much.

Warlock has some nice options to control the board. A bit of burn with cards like [Fel Flame], [Drain Essence], [Seed of Corruption], and [Fel Blaze] for board-wide splash. Direct removal with [Void Rip] and [Fel Covenant]. Damage over time thanks to [Everlasting Affliction], [Siphon Life], and both [Fel Immolation] and [Immolate].

I also wanted an excuse to try out [Demonic Corruption]. This was my new favorite playtoy when the set was first released, with the added benefit of making whatever is copied immune to my own [Fel Blaze]s thanks to it being a Demon. My opinion has changed a little bit over time, but the concept is still neat. It didn’t make the cut into the final version of the deck due to my pre-States testing, but a trio of them in the deck would have helped quite a bit during my actual matches. I’ve waffled back and forth with this card so many times and have come to the conclusion that it will either win a game, or be totally worthless. The meta will determine which that is.

After the abilities, there's the Equipment. [Glyphtrace Ritual Knife] brings back some of the old school flavor of [The Bringer of Death], but in an admittedly more vulnerable form. [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending] has proven to be a powerhouse in Limited format, and could be neat in Constructed as well. [Corrupted Egg Shell] is available to Warlock, and certainly becomes a magnet for opposing players to focus on. I haven't seen it pop yet in any game I've played (either with it, or against it), but the inevitable is bound to happen at some point to glorious effect.

Heirloom items in the Block format are also receiving a second look. [Dignified Headmaster's Charge] might be a more efficient form of card draw than any quest in the format, but living long enough to draw with it is a challenge all its own. [Tattered Dreadmist Mantle] might not technically be Heirloom, but in a format that is seeing so much Nature and Fire-based sources of damage, it's certainly something I'm considering wearing to the party.

When it comes to picking Horde or Alliance, it sorta turns into a Robert Frost poem...two roads diverge, both about equal in their qualities. Go Horde, and you gain access to some nice control elements like [Timriv the Enforcer] and [Gollum Skybang] (I want to use this guy just for his name!), along with a few cheap protectors like [Korlix Grimvik] and [Telor Sunsurge]. Go down the Alliance path, and you have a suite of Abberration allies that can ignore the [Fel Blaze] damage you may want to splash the board with, along with some useful ability destruction in the form of [Koeus] to replace the less favorable option of [Obsidian Drakonid].

In most of the versions I've tried so far, the Horde/Alliance faction is almost an afterthought. Early on, I tried building the decks to be almost completely neutral and then figured out which faction lends strength to the weakest areas. [Amani Dragonhawk], [Obsidian Drudge] (a huge boost to Warlock's ability to deal with Equipment), and pets like [Sardok] and [Jhuunash] leave a lot of breathing room in picking a faction.

The largest hurdle in the survival game is dealing with early Abberation allies. Unpreventable damage is available to some of the classes, but in limited quantities (Priest and Paladin being the only two who have it in spades). Warlock only has [Fel Flame]. To back this up, I'm eyeballing some early protectors and [Timriv the Enforcer] to keep the opposing board from doing what they do best.

At the moment, I have a strategy in mind that requires Affliction talents. [Everlasting Affliction] and [Siphon Life] both require a hero to commit to this specialty, so we won't be utilizing [Jhuunash] in this particular build. The importance of [Everlasting Affliction] is in the ability to put FREE cards directly on the board from your deck. Each one that gets fetched out not only thins the deck, but also adds more fodder for the primary win condition: [Sinestra]. Running [Everlasting Affliction], [Fel Flame], and [Sinestra] can bring out a mess of damage from nowhere. Even if it's Turn 8, playing a [Sinestra] and activating [Fel Flame]'s ongoing ability even once can lead to a slew of 2/1 Ferocity tokens.

Even if not used as the finisher, [Sinestra] can happily grind away the [Everlasting Afflictions]. Just leave one left in play, and respond to its fetch trigger at the start of your next turn by completing [The Torch of Retribution] to shuffle your graveyard back into your deck so you can fetch out a freshly-shuffled copy to put back into play. It sounds pretty good in theory, but I've only encountered one opportunity to use this sort of trick early on in testing. As the deck evolved and I learned how to play it a bit better, this has become a fringe benefit. Sinestra rarely survives to your next turn. If she does, you've probably won anyway.

With this in mind, here's the decklist I brought to State Champs this past weekend. As far as revisions go...this thing has been in an eternal state of morphing from one version to the next. I started writing this article about a week after the set was released intending it to be a "Here's my rough idea of a control deck" sort of idea, but I wasn't quite happy with it. The deck has evolved so much that if I posted side-by-side "before" and "after" lists, it'd look like the fake weightloss ads you see around the internet.

Hero: [Amaxi the Cruel]

Allies: 24
2x [Amani Dragonhawk]
4x [Korlix Grimvik]
3x [“Fungus Face” McGillicutty]
3x [Obsidian Drudge]
4x [Sardok]
3x [Sinestra]
3x [Telor Sunsurge]
2x [Gollum Skybang]

Abilities: 20
4x [Everlasting Affliction]
3x [Fel Blaze]
4x [Fel Flame]
3x [Siphon Life]
3x [Drain Essence]
3x [Fel Covenant]

Locations: 4
4x [Twilight Citadel]

Quests: 12
3x [Blackout]
4x [Challenge to the Black Flight]
3x [The Crucible of Carnage: The Twilight Terror]
2x [The Torch of Retribution]

Total cards: 60

So there's the list. Here's some of the thought behind it.

As I said before, [Fel Flame] is just plain evil. Leaving just one [Twilight Citadel] token on my side of the board long enough to attack with it can turn into a ridiculous trade. [Korlix Grimvik] is great as a 2-drop Protector, but gets monstrous if I can pump him.

[Amani Dragonhawk] has also been a clincher. It shuts down entire deck strategies like Druid Gift decks, Nature Shaman's [Primal Strike] buffing, and can open the way for a win simply by shutting off the Protector keyword.

Amaxi's flip is a gem. This alone made my decision to travel down the Horde path. Timriv was shuffled in and out a few times and though I still think there's a place for him in the deck, my expected meta for State Champs would make him a dead card in many of my matchups.

[Fel Covenant] was originally [Void Rip], but the extra resource to play [Void Rip] became a problem. Normally, I'm trying to remove Abberation allies or a [Windspeaker Nuvu] that's trying to swing in buffed by a [Primal Strike]/[Aspect of the Wild]. With [Fel Covenant], I can do this a turn sooner. The 1 to 3 damage I take is a small price to pay.

The only card I really wanted to add is [Seed of Corruption]. I simply couldn't find room for it, and this close to State Champs I didn't have time to test. I'd initially overlooked this card til I noticed it was Instant. That makes it pretty darn good.

Like it? Hate it? Hit the Discuss Article button below and let 'er rip.

-Tripp Allen