[WILD] Bonemasher's Disco Lock - Scholomance

Bonemasher here with my Disco Lock list I piloted to top 50 legend in September 2020. In this guide I will run through general strategy, and also discuss cards that didn't make the cut (and why they should not be in the list).

General Strategy:

We want to put minions on to the board and go face. Our discard package allows us to cheat minions out and draw. We want to maximise our percentages to hit these discards. In certain matchups we may need to trade, but in general we want to go face.

When I say maximising percentages I mean we manipulate our hand so that when we discard we have few cards we don't want to discard in it. For example at 3 mana I have Felstalker, Voidwalker, Boneweb Egg and Tiny Knight of Evil. I play the Voidwalker. If I play the Felstalker I have a 50/50 chance of discarding Boneweb Egg (good) or Tiny Knight of Evil (bad). If I instead play Tiny Knight of Evil, next turn I have Felstalker, [Hearthstone Card (Bonewebb Egg) Not Found] and whatever I draw. At worst I have a 50/50 chance of discarding something I don't want to discard, but if I draw say Silverware Golem, I now have 100% chance of hitting a discard.

Mulligan:

We always keep all 1-drops. If we don't have a 1-drop we full mulligan.

If we have a 1-drop and are going first evaluate your remaining cards for a good turn 2 play, we want to curve out and be mana efficient. Be aware of discard synergy also. For example if we have a Voidwalker, a Felstalker and a Doomguard, we don't want to discard the Doomguard. The Felstalker is a strong turn 2 play so we keep it and mulligan the Doomguard to look for a card  we want to discard.

If we have a 1-drop and we are on the coin consider our next few turns, at what point do we use the coin. We never want to coin out a 2-drop unless it's Kanrethad Ebonlocke, and only if we have 2 1-drop demons we can combo him with. If for example we have Kobold Librarian and Kanrethad Ebonlocke, he is still a keep, we can play Kobold Librarian on 1 drawing for cards to combo with Kanrethad Ebonlocke.

Discard synergy:

The cards we want to discard in our deck are Boneweb Egg, Silverware Golem, Fist of Jaraxxus and Hand of Gul'dan, we run 2 copies of each.

Cards that can discard other cards are Soulfire, The Soularium, Expired Merchant, Felstalker, Nightshade Matron and Doomguard.

We also have cards that benefit from cards being discarded. Malchezaar's Imp allows us to draw when a card is discarded. Tiny Knight of Evil gains +1/+1 for every card discarded. This minion can scale quickly, and if not answered can deal a lot of damage.

Let's run through some strategies when using our discard cards:

Nightshade Matron - discards the highest cost card. We never want this to be a Doomguard. Our other expensive cards are all good targets though in Hand of Gul'dan, Fist of Jaraxxus and Silverware Golem.

Expired Merchant - also discards our highest cost card, with deathrattle add 2 copies to your hand. As we are getting cards back discarding cards we don't want to discard is ok. For example discarding a Doomguard and getting 2 [Hearthstone Card (Doomguards) Not Found] back can be quite good. Just be wary of silence effects or devolve, though don't necessarily play around these. If we discard Hand of Gul'dan we can get into the pitfall of drawing without impacting the board.

The Soularium - this is one of the most interesting cards in the deck for when we use it. It can be played on turn 1 to highroll any of our 8 discard cards (not advised). A better option is to play it after Malchezaar's Imp with 2 mana to discard the 3 cards it draws, drawing us 3 more cards. This scenario also gives us a chance to highroll some discard cards in the process. We can also use it later in the game to search for a card we want to play, or to make our hand bigger giving us a bigger discard pool. For example with 6 mana holding 2 Doomguards and The Soularium we can play The Soularium before a Doomguard, now giving us only a 25% chance to discard the other Doomguard.

Cards that didn't make the cut (and why we don't play them):

Darkglare - after receiving the nerf treatment it now refreshes 1 mana when taking self damage. Our list only runs Flame Imp and Kobold Librarian that do self damage, other than them its our hero power that essentially costs 1 instead of 2. I don't see the benefit of running it unless you have more cards that can damage self. More on that in a minute.

Raise Dead - this is a card that can be played alongside Darkglare. This issue I have is that you are likely only getting back 1 cost minions most of which damage self. You may be able to highroll a decent board but you are doing a lot of damage to yourself. Our list maintains a high health total giving us a better chance against opposing burst damage decks.

To comment further on these 2 cards, if you play them what are you cutting from the list? The build I saw them in cuts the Boneweb Eggs and Fist of Jaraxxus, cards you want to discard. In my opinion you only want to play them if you are playing Flesh Giants and this is a different archetype. These cards do not belong in Disco Lock.

Lakkari Felhound - this is the other card I've seen included in lists. I understand the appeal being a decently statted taunt minion. Our list however is a proactive one not a defensive one. The cards we have that discard card are overstatted minions for their cost (Felhound), can impact the board (Nightshade Matron), or can go face (Soulfire and Doomguard). Furthermore at 4 mana it pollutes the discard pool for Nightshade Matron as discussed earlier. For these reasons we don't run this card.

Summary:

I believe this list to be the best 30 cards for this list. It has served me well getting me top top 50 legend. My overall stats with the list in September 2020 were 59-34 @ 63.4% WR all on stream and all inside top 300 legend, and that's with me throwing a few games here and there.

I hope you have enjoyed the guide. If you do play the list would love to hear how you went.

If you have obtained the list from here I appreciate giving credit for the list if you post on social media.

Proof:

https://twitter.com/BonemasherHS/status/1307781906356867072

https://twitter.com/BonemasherHS/status/1308053308364320769

https://twitter.com/BonemasherHS/status/1309133442584633345

https://twitter.com/BonemasherHS/status/1309855803717816322

GGs Bonemasher

https://twitter.com/BonemasherHS

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