Void Contract

Void Contract is an epic warlock spell card, from the Rastakhan's Rumble set.

Strategy
Void Contract is an extremely disruptive card against control and combo decks, wiping out half the players' decks, potentially removing their most powerful cards and even game-ending combo pieces, as well as accelerating the game by putting both players closer to fatigue. However, the cost of play this card is not only losing half your own deck, but also paying 8 mana to effectively do nothing. To balance out its heavy price which affects yourself as well as your opponent, wait until you have drawn most of the necessary cards before playing this, but not too long to where fatigue becomes an issue.

You can use Bloodbloom to greatly decrease its mana cost, although it will result in heavy self-damage. It can also be used to speed up Mecha'thun combos (after acquiring all combo pieces) or as a method to make Hakkar's Corrupted Blood more likely to be drawn for the opponent.

Trivia

 * Void Contract was created somewhere in the middle of the final design stage of the Rastakhan's Rumble development process following the removal of another epic warlock spell called Grimoire of Service. At the end of a work day, Dean Ayala gathered the team in a circle and asked them to pitch ideas for another card to fill the same slot. The team members "probably sat there for 20 minutes throwing out card ideas" until Peter Whalen suggested making a spell that destroyed half of each player's deck. Everyone gathered was excited for the idea and Ayala wrote it into the sheet, after which everyone went home for the day, but Ayala explains that "of course the next day we came back in the morning and we're like, 'Seriously, are we actually going to make this card?'"
 * According to Dean Ayala, Void Contract was not designed to be an "auto-include" card in every warlock deck. Rather, it can work in a specific meta where many decks potentially rely on individual, powerful cards, but it was also made to appeal to a specific audience of players who simply enjoy cards with big, splashy, exciting effects. This meant that Void Contract did not see many tweaks to its Cost during development; in a heavy control-focused meta where Void Contract is useful, its effect is always going to be good regardless of Cost due to the slow nature of control match-ups.

Patch changes

 * Shadow spell school added.
 * Added.