Well, I tried a creatureless warlock "equip build" last night and it went well. My forge spit out all but one piece of equipment in my book (demon armor) before my opponent finally destroyed it. He did dissolve my hellfire whip though, so to anyone wanting to play this kind of deck, i'd recomend proxying an extra. Even without it though, I was still rolling 7 attack dice for melee. In the future I might try to include at least one creature to create a blood reaper, both for healing, support and extra flame tokens.
Other than that, I spammed fireballs on him until my melee was built up, then used a teleport wand + cheetah speed on myself to keep him from running away and pummeled him. I really like this type of aggressive playstyle.
...Still interested to see what kind of equip deck your playtester came up with though.
