Odd Rogue Deck List Guide – Rastakhan’s Rumble – March 2019

Check out alternative versions of this deck on our Odd Rogue archetype page!

Odd Rogue Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Dire Mole, Fire Fly or Argent Squire – The fight for board control starts on turn 1, and you really should be gunning hard for one of those early-game minions in order to get involved as fast as possible. In fact, it’s not unreasonable to hard-mulligan for them: without fail, these matchups are always going to revolve around a fight for board control, in which your Poisoned Dagger is undoubtedly one of the greater assets available to you, and is almost always your desirable play on the second turn. Southsea Deckhand is also a 1 mana minion, but it’s not really a 1-drop – you can play it on T1 if you have nothing else to do, but you prefer to hold it until you have weapon up and can give it Charge. 2/1 stats trade unfavorably against most of the other 1-drops, and you want to get ahead on the board early.
• Hench-Clan Thug – Since you almost always dagger up on turn 2, this card essentially starts out as a 3 mana 4/4 and goes from there: if your opponent fails to clear it early on, it can single-handedly win you the game.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• SI:7 Agent – Keep on Coin or with a Fire Fly (since the Flame Elemental might stick in your hand as a cheap activator) – the ability to deal 2 extra damage can go a long way in the early game board control game.
• Tar Creeper – While not a very aggressive minion, it’s a great way to protect the rest of your board vs Aggro decks. Your opponent will likely have to make some bad trades in order to get through it, putting you ahead.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Dire Mole, Fire Fly or – Again, you need to hit the ground running in these matchups. Since you most likely Hero Power on T2, not playing a 1-drop puts you behind on the board – you might miss a few turns of dealing damage.
• Hench-Clan Thug – Since this deck can’t rely on burn damage from hand to finish off the opponents, we really need a minion like this to be a consistent source of repetitive damage early in the game.
• Vicious Fledgling – Another good 3-drop, your opponent needs an early game removal to deal with it. If he doesn’t have it, and especially if you roll a Windfury, you can basically win the game around T4-T5.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Fungalmancer – With a good early game hand. Fungalmancer is often what cements your lead, since it puts your minions out of removal range while adding lots of pressure.
• Vilespine Slayer – In certain matchups, like against Even or Cube Warlock. Basically, if your opponent relies on dropping big minions to win the game, keep Vilespine Slayer to disrupt their plan. A swing of clearing an 8/8 AND putting a 3/4 body onto the board is one of the reasons why Odd Rogue is so good vs “Big” decks.

Odd Rogue Win Rates

Winrate stats are currently unavailable for this deck at the moment!

Odd Rogue Play Strategy

With Odd Rogue, the game-winning decisions usually come down to finding the right moment to commit to an all-out attack. While a guide like this cannot comprehensively go through every single potential break point, here are a few general guidelines.

First and foremost, try to avoid completely emptying your hand: if a game drags out, having an extra token on board or pre-equipping Deadly Poison is a million times less useful than triggering a combo on your topdecks. Granted, there aren’t that many of those in this particular deck, but the ones you do have to work with are really powerful: most importantly Vilespine Slayer. It require you to play something, anything, before you get its effect, and that can be the difference between winning and losing a close game.

Another opportunity to snowball doesn’t come up much later, because it’s on Turn 3. You have two 3-drops that can run away with the game if your opponent doesn’t answer them right away. The first and probably most powerful one is Hench-Clan Thug. Since you will have a dagger up going into your Turn 3 most of the time, just attacking means that you’ve put a 4/4 on the board. And that 4/4 will grow to a 5/5, then 6/6 etc. if it doesn’t get killed. Answering a 4/4 on T3 is not that easy, and if your opponent can’t do that, he will often carry the game. While answering a 3/3 is easier, Vicious Fledgling comes with an even bigger snowball potential. Every time it attacks the opponent’s Hero, it Adapts. Most of the Adapts are strong already, but it gets even better if you roll a Windfury. Windfury means that now you can attack (and thus Adapt) not once, but twice per turn. That’s a big deal, e.g. you might get +3 Health and “Can’t be targeted by spells or hero powers” to make it very hard to clear, and then start going for more aggressive ones like +1/+1 and +3 Attack. Try to protect your Vicious Fledgling at all cost, if your opponent has minions on the board, don’t leave them so they can trade – clear them. Also, if you can choose between Thug or Fledgling, you generally want to play Thug first – it’s harder to answer and you’d rather let it die than the Fledgling.

As for finding the moment to strike, Turn 5 is often the turning point in the game, thanks to the Fungalmancer. If you were ahead or even on the board (with at least 2 minions), Fungalmancer can turn the game in your favor. If you play in a board-centric matchup, you probably got two free trades and your board now looks so much stronger than your opponent’s, which means that while they will be trying to catch up, you will be able to deal lots of damage to their face. And if you play against a more reactive deck, buffing your minions not only means that you push more damage immediately (and 4 damage in this deck is not something to take lightly), but you might have buffed your minions out of removal range (especially AoE removal). Odd Rogue is a very explosive deck, and your opponent not being able to clear your minions is often a death sentence. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, Cobalt Scalebane can also snowball the game on T5. While it has a bigger body, his effect isn’t likely to go off more than once, and it’s not immediate, so your opponent can answer the buffed minion before you can attack with it. Still, if he finds no way to clear the 5/5 body, you will win most of the time.

Against slow decks with board clears, you want to get enough pressure on the board, but not go all-in. Try to have at least 2 minions and 5+ damage on the board all the time, but don’t overcommit – if you play your entire hand and then get board cleared, you can lose the game that way. It’s often much better to bolster the existing board than to go wide – for example, playing Fungalmancer is great, as it adds more immediate pressure while making your board more AoE-resistant.

Another important piece of advice is to play conservatively with the weapon in the early/mid game, especially in faster matchups. Against decks that rely on board presence, you win the game by keeping their board clear while developing yours – not by dealing face damage with your weapon. Resist the temptation to hit them with the weapon, especially on Turn 2 and/or when you have a Hench-Clan Thug in hand. You won’t always have mana to re-dagger in the mid game, and 2 damage is not worth making your turns awkward (e.g. Turn 4 when you just dagger up). Hit them only if you’re nearly sure that you will have enough mana to re-dagger soon, or you’re already pushing damage and want to maximize it by hitting them every turn. The latter part is especially important vs slow decks – you still want to play conservatively with your dagger in the early game, but in the mid game you want to hit them more consistently to start pushing damage.

As for the finisher, the deck packs quite a lot of burst potential. Getting some minion damage early is important, but once you get to the mid/late game, you might kill the opponent even if he answers everything you play. First of all, your weapon. You deal 2 damage per turn unless there’s a Taunt in your way – use that and hit your opponent’s face whenever you can to put them on the clock. Then, minions with Charge and attack buffs. Buffs like Fungalmancer should be played as soon as you get a good opportunity, the reason is that you might be able to double-dip on them by attacking with the minion twice (most of the time it will die, but there is a chance it survives). As for the Charge minions, they’re powerful finishers – Leeroy deals a lot of burst damage, while Southsea Deckhand is cheap, and thus is a good buff target. Be mindful of the Taunts your opponents can put up – try to save either Silence or Vilesine Slayer to clear them. If you have Charge/Buffs/Deadly Poison in your hand as well as SI:7 Agent, but no Silence/Vilespine, if you can get your opponent down to 2 health without using Agent, do it. This way if your opponent plays a big Taunt minion, you might still be able to get through. It won’t come up that often, but sometimes it will be a matter of winning or losing the game.

Odd Rogue Card Substitutions

When it comes to the cost, Odd Rogue is a pretty cheap deck to play. At the same time, most of the current Epics & Legendaries can’t be replaced. 

• Vilespine Slayer – It’s an amazing tempo play and a great way to get through big Taunts, or kill big minions in general. While the card is not absolutely necessary to perform your game plan, the deck will be much weaker without it. You can replace it with an extra 1-drops (e.g. Mecharoo or Glacial Shard) or, alternatively, a Void Ripper. If you’re missing one copy, you can put a second Cobalt Scalebane instead.
• Leeroy Jenkins – Deck’s main reach card, if you get your opponent down low, Leeroy will often be the way to close out the games. Great card, lets you win the games you wouldn’t win otherwise (because you often end up getting your opponent down to a few points of health and then they stabilize because you run out of steam), but you can play the deck without it. Replace it with Captain Greenskin (if you have it) or Cobalt Scalebane.
• Baku the Mooneater – Obviously, if you want to build the Odd Rogue deck, you need Baku. If you don’t have Baku, you can play the regular Tempo Rogue, but it’s not as successful in the current meta.