Hearthstone
Renounce Council
- Unknown Warlock
- Wild
- Ranked
Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off meta deck each week with an in depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.
Renounce Darkness Warlock is 10 classes in 1. You can play with cards from all the classes, and every game will be different. The interesting part of this deck is having to make up strategies on the go based on what cards you get, yet you can still win due to the buffs and/or cost reductions on your cards. In addition to Renounce Darkness itself, this deck also runs Shadow Council as an alternative effect to be able to transform your hand if you haven't drawn Renounce yet. To make the transformed minions from either of those have more power, in addition to the existing buffs or mana discounts, the deck plays Imprisoned Scrap Imps a turn before you transform your hand.
An interesting thing is that since there are so many Wild cards, after you Renounce there is a high chance your deck will have no duplicates, or that after a few draws your no duplicate cards will be active. This will become more and more likely with each expansion as the number of cards for each class increases. This is why the deck includes Reno Jackson, Zephrys the Great, and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. They are neutral and are not changed by Renounce Darkness, and can provide a major burst of power. Finally, the deck uses Multicaster and spells of 4 different spell schools to be able to refill its hand and be able to play more of your transformed minions after a Renounce.
Overall, this deck will make your games feel like a Tavern Brawl. It is not supposed to be competitive, however some inclusions make it more competitive than it seems.
Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.
Strategies
Renounce Warlock has 2 main strategies: Renounce Darkness and Shadow Council. Renounce transforms Council and will become your only strategy if you play it first, and if you have not drawn it you can play Shadow Council to have some board pressure and either win or stall until you draw a copy of Renounce Darkness later.
Renounce Darkness - Using Renounce Darkness will transform all Warlock cards in your hand and deck into cards of a different class and discount them all by 1. This also changes your hero power to the one of that class. After you do this, you can use the synergies you see from the cards you got to try and win in a different way each time. Draw more cards using the neutral Multicasters and use your Zephrys the Great, Reno Jackson, and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza to supplement them.
Shadow Council - Shadow Council transforms only cards in your hand, but it will transform all cards including neutrals. You can use this to get big buffed demons for a tempo offensive. Again, be mindful of various synergies you might get between the demons - this can get demons of any class, not just Warlock.
The fun part of playing this deck is that you never know what to expect, and you have to make up strategies on the go based on what random minions, spells, weapons, and even heroes you get from Renounce Darkness.
Mulligans
- Mulligan for Renounce Darkness, but keep a Shadow Council if you don't have it.
- If you have one of those in your hand then try to get The Soularium and Imprisoned Scrap Imps.
Gameplay
The key to playing this deck well is to be able to recognize any strong synergies among random class cards.
Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.
Pre-Renounce Setup
If you are not under a lot of pressure, try to play Imprisoned Scrap Imps one turn and then either Renounce Darkness or Shadow Council next turn. This will cause whatever minions your cards transform into to get buffed by +2/+1 for each Imp.
A great combo is to play The Soularium the turn you are playing one of your transform cards as the transformed cards will not be discarded.
Try to draw every turn you can in the early game, you want your hand to be full of cards or at least at 9 cards the turn you transform it. You don't have to draw as much if you have The Soularium in hand as that will be 3 cards on your transform turn. Also, the coin doesn't count for Renounce so you should cast it and draw an extra Warlock card if you can if going for Renounce first (it does count for Shadow Council).
If Soularium hits 2 or 3 neutral cards and you have both Renounce Darkness and Shadow Council in hand, you may want to play Shadow Council instead of Renounce Darkness as that will transform those neutral cards so they avoid being discarded.
If your no duplicate cards aren't active yet, you may want to draw cards first in case they will become active before deciding what to play.
Multicaster Synergy
For Multicaster, you have Warlock spells of the following spell schools: Shadow, Fel, Fire, and Holy. You have multiple Shadow and Fel ones, but for Fire only Hellfire and for Holy only Renounce Darkness. While you're playing removal before you cast Renounce Darkness, you should try to play removals of as many spell schools as you can so that Multicaster will draw more later. Sometimes you may even want to play a spell on your opponent's face or even if the board is empty just to get that extra draw later. You may even want to delay playing Renounce by a turn or two to be able to play more spells of different spell schools first.
Also, keep in mind that after your Renounce Darkness, you may get spells from other schools including Arcane, Nature, and Frost, which can be used to make your Multicasters draw even more. Zephrys the Great can discover spells of different spell schools as well, and you should keep this in mind when choosing which spell to discover.
Card Choices
This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.
Transformation Package
Renounce Darkness and Shadow Council transform your hand. The Soularium has synergy with this as your drawn cards won't be discarded after being transformed. Imprisoned Scrap Imps are in to buff minions in your hand after you cast one of your transform spells.
Neutral Cards
Which neutral cards to include is important since Renounce Darkness doesn't transform them. Multicaster is used to draw cards after your hero power is replaced from Life Tap while Zephrys the Great, Reno Jackson, and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza have powerful effects that often activate early after playing Renounce Darkness.
Warlock Cards
You need a lot of Warlock cards so that Renounce Darkness transforms most of your deck. They are various removal, healing, and draw, with the spells chosen such that they are of different classes so that Multicaster will be able to draw more cards later.
This deck is all 10 classes in one, and if you can't decide what class to play, you might want to play Renounce Darkness and let it decide for you. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.
What are your favorite wild decks? Which off meta decks have you been playing? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!
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17Update #2
Card changes 3 years ago (Mercenaries Launch)
Update #1
Card changes 3 years, 2 months ago (Battlegrounds Revamp)
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- 07+
- 1 Kobold Librarian x 2
- 1 Mortal Coil x 2
- 1 Shadow Council x 2
- 1 The Soularium x 1
- 1 Touch of the Nathrezim x 2
- 1 Unstable Felbolt x 2
- 2 Darkbomb x 2
- 2 Defile x 2
- 2 Drain Soul x 2
- 2 Imprisoned Scrap Imp x 2
- 2 Renounce Darkness x 2
- 3 Dark Skies x 2
- 3 Hellfire x 2
- 2 Zephrys the Great x 1
- 4 Multicaster x 2
- 6 Reno Jackson x 1
- 9 Dragonqueen Alexstrasza x 1
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Comments
Portrait: Gul’dan
Cardback: HearthS'mores
update: yes
I crafted 2 golden Renounce Darkness's back in the day and it's my favorite card by a mile, the complete opposite of mindlessly playing a meta deck. Big surprise factor and amazing for the amount of positive friend requests it generates. But honestly the decks never been that good and were too dependent on the mulligan.
This deck has a lot of cards I hadn't considered including, and is so much better than what I had before, even if you are super unlucky. I was at 5hp with both RD's and 1 Council at the bottom of the deck. Drew Soularium, it drew a Renounce and I would have been able to play Reno. Unfortunately it also drew the one bomb in my deck, but I still felt good about it. :)
Glad to see another renounce player! It’s my favorite epic card as well.
This deck is a criminal amount of fun to play AND low-key competitive at lower ranks? Heck yes it is! I love watching my opponent hover over my cards and start emoting when they realise it's a renounce deck with functional highlander cards XD Praise be to Yogg-saron!
Thanks a bunch for this one @Swizard!
I'm glad you like it! Renounce Warlock is one of my top 3 favorite decks of all time and it will keep getting better for each expansion. Now that all classes have more possible cards the chance of having active highlander cards after renouncing will increase. Especially for demon hunter the number of cards is a lot higher than with just 2 expansions and the chance of having no duplicates will increase.
If we run Kazakus, does Renounce Darkness transform it as a "warlock" card, or does it count as neutral? My guess is it gets transformed.
Yes, it's transformed. I tried it and the way to do it is with Expired Merchant which is amazing when it works but not very consistent.
Some swaps I'm personally using to replace demon synergy:
You could try life tapping more in the beginning and having a large hand size which you usually try to get anyway for Renounce Darkness to get Dark Skies to work better. It's usually an amazing board clear and is in most competitive warlock decks.
Imprisoned Scrap Imp isn't really there for any synergy, you usually use it before one of the two cards to make all your transformed cards buffed
I agree with a lot of the other changes, I will at least try some of them out, especially Gnomeferatu for Kanrethad Ebonlocke.
Thanks for giving your thoughts on this deck!
It's definitely one of the few decks that you enjoy playing even if you lose as you never know what can happen, or what crazy synergy you can get.
Very fun deck! Currently won me games from bronze 5 to Platinum 10. Every game is so unique, that even loss comes with laughter : )
The highlander cards especially Reno Jackson & Zephrys the Great are mind-blowing! I really appreciate the idea to include those "controlish" cards with the risk of randomness. Most of time their usefulness comes from later game, when the deck is likely to have non-duplicates. If not, it is always a bonus surprise to find the card frame turn from green to orange.
Crafted Kanrethad Ebonlocke for a try but didn't find it as useful though. Maybe because I'm not very comfortable to cast Shadow Council when highlander cards are at hand, so rarely utilize the demon synergies.
Thanks for sharing!
I think it's fine to cast Shadow Council if you have a full hand or at least close to a full hand as the tempo from all the buffed demons will outweigh the gain you get from the highlander cards in most cases, although it depends on the situation, if you have low health and really need Reno then it may be better to try to get to Renounce.
Kanrethad Ebonlocke is really good in Discard Warlock and some Reno Warlocks.