_{Alexstrasza's Champion was the single most influental card in this deck, the potential 3/3 with Charge (attack immediately when played) is super strong. With 8 dragons in the deck, there's quite a good chance you'll get one of them in your opening hand by turn 2 for the effect. Blackwing Corruptor was another crazy strong and influential card allowing the existence of dragon archtype for its powerful synergistic effect.}

It was year 2016, Spring Season, month two. I think I had gotten one point already from the previous month for being positioned in Top 100 Legend. I was playing with the aggressive Dragon Warrior – I was on fire and rushing through the ranks, through 5 to 1, to Legendary. The last day of the month I was smashing it through the Legend ranks to the top 1000, 300, 100, 50, with crazy win streaks until I found myself at top 10. TOP 10! I have no proof of it, but I'm pretty sure I topped at 6 or 7.

But here exactly lies the regret.

I became scared to continue, because it was about the last hour or two of the whole ranked season (month) and I knew that if my rank stayed in the top 10, I would've gotten enough points to guarantee my place in the Preliminaries. Just one game lost and I would likely lose 10-30 ranks, if not more. But being at the very last moments of the season, everyone else too was fiercely competing for the top finishing positions and the valuable points.

I had some in-game friend who was excited and pushed me to go for the ultimate Top 1 position, but I was so scared and my heart was racing, adrenaline rushing through my veins for being higher than ever before in the ranks. Fear got into me, and I didn't continue. Instead, I watched my rank fall... Top 10...15...17...20...25 and in the very last minute upon refreshing I remember seeing it drop down to 27... which kicked me out of Top 25. I got some points, but it wasn't still guaranteed for the Preliminaries. On the third month, I didn't manage to reach Top 100 again – only 1 point for reaching Legend – and I was left short from the Top 100 of the entire Spring Season missing the Preliminaries.

Now you can guess, that the regret was quite big, and in hindsight I should've just gone all in when I had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to go for the truly Legendary Top 1 position when I had the momentum, instead of playing it safe and failing anyway. Now given the choice, I would always go for it even if I knew I would get to the Preliminaries for sure.

My Favorite Deck Ever: MalyLock (Malygos Warlock)

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^{From the pre-nerf era and before introduction of Standard Mode}

One Turn Kill combo

The deck uses a combination of Malygos + Spells to burst through opponents health on a single turn (or rather two, because Emperor Thaurissan played earlier is rather needed for the Mana cost reduction).

In theory it's possible to deal 43 damage (Malygos + 2x Darkbomb + 3x Soulfire, 2 of which from Dark Peddlers(*). Note: when the mana cost of all the cards is reduced by Emperor Thaurissan before the OTK turn down to 10 Mana in total). But that combo is highly unreliable and requires you to have 10 or 9 cards in your hand so that you will be able to burn something else than your Soulfire with another Soulfire, if you're lucky.

^{*The reason there's only 1x Soulfire in the deck, was because with Dark Peddler you could Discover more (choose one card from three almost random options; the emphasis is on class-specific cards). 2x was an option, but it just wasn't as optimal as a single copy.}

Though finding a 4 piece combo (Malygos + 3 spells) for 25-26 damage (27 with 3 Soulfires, but that was a rare occurrence) was much more reliable, or even just 3 pieces (Malygos + 2 spells) for 16-18 damage which might've been enough if early damage was succeeded to be dealt to the opponent.

The idea of the Malygos OTK (one turn kill) with Malygos + Spells wasn't an original concept of mine, I think a player called Purple was the one who played it the first time, at least in a competitive setting. However, this particular decklist was unique – I created it myself based on the old iterations of Malylock.

The main difference with my decklist was the introduction of Blackwing Technician. It seems like an obvious introduction to a dragon deck, but most people used Imp Gang Boss in its place for the higher reliability compared to Blackwing Technician which has a condition of needing a dragon in hand to get its effect active. However, I found the effect getting off enough times for it to be justified inclusion in the deck. Also, the immediate 3 attack made a big difference at times, because it could kill the OP Piloted Shredder and still survive at 1 health to potentially deal with another threat, for 3 mana only.

^{Imp Gang Boss was more reliable, but was easily eaten by Piloted Shredder.}

The dragon package (+ Malygos)

Similarly to the Dragon Warrior, Malygos Warlock utilized dragon synergy and that's where its beauty lies: winning with the OTK wasn't the only way. In certain match-ups you could win just by out-powering the opponent with minions.

Sometimes the correct move was to abandon the OTK plan and use Malygos + Mortal Coil or even Soulfire – or spells alone – to a minion and take over the board. This was a good move especially against Combo Druid at the time that didn't have any single target removal, so just the 4/12 stats of Malygos was a lot to deal with.

Support cards

• Zombie Chow for early board control – enemy healing is largely irrelevant if you get this on the board on turn 1. Makes a huge difference against aggro.

• Hellfire: board clear for opponent minions, potentially for enemy face damage too.

• Antique Healbot: healing proved to be quite necessary with this deck, especially against aggressive decks and because of Warlock's hero ability (Life Tap).

Tech choices

• Ironbeak Owl: removes any card text, buffs and abilities from a minion, was later nerfed from 2 Mana to 3 Mana as in the picture.
• Big Game Hunter: necessary inclusion on the era of infamous Dr. Boom present in almost every deck. (Strangely, not in Malylock though – for some reason it just didn't have room for the deck.) The nerf of this card from 3 Mana to 5 Mana together with the nerf of Ironbeak Owl, made Malylock unplayable in the future :(
• Siphon Soul: single target removal + heal, useful card, 1 copy was optimal.
• Shadowflame: this was rather experimental replacement for Hellfire, I think I eventually opted this out and moved to 2x Hellfire instead.
• Imp-losion: another potential replacement for this was Defender of Argus.

Oh! One should not forget...

^{"Who knows what secrets we'll uncover?"}

Brann Bronzebeard!

Brann was the star of the deck. There are so many good Battlecry minions that including Brann was a no-brainer; Heal 18 (Antique Healbot), deal 6 damage (Blackwing Corruptor), draw 2 cards (Azure Drake), 2x health gain for Twilight Drake, or discover 2 cards from Dark Peddler.

This deck is my ultimate favorite ever in the whole game because it summarized everything that Hearthstone was all about for me (or was supposed to): innovation, creativity, but at the same time, competitive.

While it wasn't a completely unique as a concept, the deck wasn't popular but rather almost forgotten. It was a deck with unusual cards compared to the meta – no obvious OP cards like Piloted Shredder or Dr. Boom stale in almost every deck at the time. It was different. It came as a complete surprise to my opponents, some who even sent a friend request because they were impressed by what they saw and asked if they could see my full decklist. It was the rare occasion when there was a truly undiscovered niche – and I figured it out.

Part of the enjoyment of the deck came from the fact that it indeed wasn't one with a linear game-plan like with many aggro-type of decks, for example. With two win conditions – OTK and board control – you had to be able to potentially shift the game plan depending on the situation, match-up and the way you drew your cards. You always had to keep track on the combo peaces and how much damage you could potentially deal.

Playing against Control Warrior was like a game of chess: you had to deal face damage and create pressure – but not over-commit to Brawl – and keep track on single target removals from Warrior's side. Also, it was always a pain to figure out if you should Life Tap because the game usually went down to Fatigue (when your deck is empty, you start taking damage consequently every turn; 1, 2, 3 and so on...). But, warrior was able to out-fatigue you in any case because of armor. So many things to consider. I don't think I ever got to fully master the deck, but I enjoyed the process of trying to figure it out.

Truly one of the hardest but also the most rewarding decks I've ever played with.

Whew... I obviously went quite deep and technical showcasing this deck, but that is simply to show how much I care about it.

If there are any Hearthstone players, you know how incredibly hard it is to come up with something original yet competitive enough to reach Legend with. But with this deck I managed to do it, and I have no shame of taking some pride of it.

^{Reaching Legend with Malygos Warlock.}

You all know (Hearthstone players, I doubt anyone else is left anymore) that usually there are the Tier 1 Meta decks which are just superior in many ways. Period. Then Tier 2 which are mostly counters to Tier 1. Then Tier 3, and Tier 4 which was just trash. So, finding that one deck "outside of the meta" was incredible – and actually winning with it. I have no definite proof, but I'm quite sure I briefly visited Top 100 Legend with it.

^{Beating Legend rank 4 player with the MalyLock.}

But currently, I haven't played Hearthstone seriously in year and a half, barely at all. For some reason I just lost the interest – like I have done with many other things – and moved on. However, I still have fond memories from the era when I almost got into Blizzcon, if you exaggerate just a little. And however stupid it may sound, Malylock will always have a special place in my heart as my own (almost) unique creation that I crushed my unaware opponents with.

They say that life can only be understood backwards, and looking back at it now, those days must've been the best times I've spent with a video game. I almost wish I could go back for a while and experience it again, but we all know, there's no going back.

Perhaps I'm being overly nostalgic about this, but I rarely get this nostalgic about things anyway, so it must've been at least bit special even if I'm overblowing it in my memory.

I think that's all, in the end some "funny" ranks I achieved on the short but glorious Hearthstone "career" of mine.

^{Oh yess...}

^{Blazing through the ranks.}

^{Lost the game, but at least I got the devil's mark.}

^{The highest rank I have proof of. I was playing Aggro-Druid, another deck that I really liked.}

^{All the pictures are screenshots from Hearthstone.}