79% Winrate Pirate Rogue

Here’s my take on a midrange Pirate Rogue. It’s pretty close from many other lists you’ll see on the net, but I’ve tried to adapt it a bit and it seems to work pretty well. I am currently running 19-5 with the deck at rank 5-3.

Card Choices

The deck is built around Captain Hooktusk, meaning we don’t want to play any small pirates. The package is only made of Southsea Captain, Dread Corsair and Ticket Scalper. The later is amazing when brought by Hooktusk since the rush makes it almost certain that you’ll draw 2 cards.

Alternatively, the scalper can be given rush by Serrated Tooth (really strong when curved on T4 – meaning that when you get the weapon on T1 you should start hitting face with it in case you topdeck scalper). It does not provide infinite value the way Kingsbane would, but I believe the rush really makes up for this : it’s less strong vs control but can save your life in aggressive matchups. The weapon also has a nice synergy with Deadly Poison, Dread Corsair and Hench-Clan Thug ; I’ve also added Shadowblade for more consistency with weapon-based combos (and also to make sure you’ll get 3 draws out of Raiding Party).

Speaking of which : Raiding Party should draw you 3 cards most of the time. Along with Hooktusk, rushed ticket scalpers and of course Elven Minstrel, you actually have A LOT of draw. This means that you can frequently go for a miraclish game plan and draw most of your deck, which justifies running Fal'dorei Strider.

FInally we have Backstab and Fire Fly as early game management or combo activators, keleseth since there is no 2-drop we really want to run (small pirates would mess with Hooktusk), and Vilespine Slayer because, well, it’s strong as hell (duh!).

Game Plan

As I said, the deck can draw a lot if you play it that way, that is, saving your Ticket Scalpers until you can rush them and playing your Raiding Partys with the combo activated. Depending on the matchup, you can really adopt different game plans. As a midrange deck, you typically have two options depending on whether you run into control or aggro : board-pressure and full face if you think you have no chance of outvaluing the opponent, or board control when you’re defending.

However, here, there is also an intermediate value plan, akin to that of a miracle rogue : you draw your entire deck, and the opponent, control deck he might be, simply runs out of answers. This works extremely well against Druids : it’s hard to rush them down with the armor (and the deck does not have a high potential for bust damage), but on the other hand they don’t have THAT many removals (I mean it’s not an odd-warrior or a big-spell mage). 2 thugs, 2 striders, 6 pirates with decent bodies and 6 spiders (not mentioning keleseth), all within 10-12 turns, is just to much for them to handle.

One thing you have to be careful of is what your Captain Hooktusk will bring. With only 6 pirates appart from her, you cannot get a full value out of it AND both raiding parties. The way you use her depends on the matchup. Against a deck that has strong AoEs she might not be that good, so simply getting more resources with raiding parties and dropping your threats little by little could be better. However, vs decks that are vulnerable to a strong board-swing, bringing 3 pirates is often game-winning – I’m thinking hunters in particular, a good Hooktusk can practically overturn their Katherina turn. I definitely feel that 7 or 8 pirates would be preferable, but there
aren’t that many good options (I tested Cursed Castaway but apart from being brough by hookstuk it’s just terrible). Captain Greenskin would probably be worth adding but I don’t have it in my collection (I think I’d take either a SI7 or backstab out).

Matchups

So far the deck just seems to stomp over all matter of Druids and Hunters. Priest is a good matchup as well, both dragon and resurrect archetypes. Big-spell Mages are tough but you can definitely get them if you draw a lot and balance properly between offense and resources management. The same goes for Carniflore Shaman. I didn’t play against many Odd Warriors so I can’t be sure, but I don’t expect it to be a good matchup, Super Collider could destroy the deck single-handedly. Finally, as you’d expect, Odd Paladin is tough ; once you get your engine running in the midgame you’re sure to overwhelm them quite quickly, but at this point your life total is generally pretty low and we don’t run any heal. It all depends on whether you can contest the board in the early turns.

Conclusion

That’s all folks ! It might not be a top-tier deck, my winning streak probably has to do with the easy-going meta we are still in ; still, it’s extremely fun to play, it’s like a more punchy version of the usual Tempo Rogue. I love Captain Hooktusk and I think this is really the deck where it can shine to its brightest.

Hope you’lle like it !