Beginner Rogue Deck List Guide & Tips 2017

Welcome to our Beginner Rogue Deck List Guide! If you are just starting out in Hearthstone this guide will help you learn how-to build and play this completely free Rogue deck list. The guide includes card explanations, mulligans, play strategy, and future card replacements/substitutions.

Find More Beginner Decks: Beginner’s Hearthstone Decks for Every Class

Beginner Rogue Deck Overview

Rogue is one of the premiere classes for tempo style deck builds. This means the class is good at removing opposing minions while producing minions of their own. Rogue also has a strong hero power which allows it to generate a weapon. Rogue can use this weapon to chip down minions or buff it up to remove larger ones. Rogue can sometimes have problems due to its inability to heal, which can sometimes make using its life as a resource problematic.

Don’t understand some of the terms in this guide? Check out our Hearthstone Terms & Glossary!

Card Choices

These card choices are broken down into two sections: Class and Neutrals.

Rogue Cards

Backstab – One of Rogue’s most signature spells is Backstab. The card is extremely powerful, and can allow you to remove a minion while developing one of your own.

Deadly Poison – This can can be a bit slow, but it can allow you to remove multiple minions with your hero powered weapon or use it on an Assassin’s Blade for maximum carnage.

Sap – A great card when you are ahead on the board and can delay your opponent especially if you land it on a slow minion. Cairne Bloodhoof was usually a prime target for this card when it saw play because it was so slow and didn’t make an immediate board impact. The problem with Sap is that you aren’t generating anything on the board, so you are essentially just delaying your opponent if you aren’t generating anything yourself.

Shiv – A bit of a high cost, but good for taking down a 1-health minion while generating a card. Can be combined with Kobold Geomancer to take down bigger minions.

Fan of Knives – Similar to Shiv but hits all of the opposing minions. Best used with spell damage, but is good for taking down a bunch of cheap token minions.

Assassin's Blade – Very strong weapon that gets a lot better when Deadly Poison is applied. It’s also very slow, and you have to be careful in the end game with your life total so at times it’s better for going face!

Assassinate – Decent hard removal, but is slow and doesn’t silence the minion which makes it kind of problematic against some of the more powerful minions.

Sprint – A great top deck if you and your opponent are in top deck mode, but really bad if you get it in the early game. A lot of Rogue’s spells are better when you are able to get your hands on Preparation.

Neutral Cards

Acidic Swamp Ooze – Decent stats and an ability that is very relevant against certain classes. It’s generally best not to be too greedy with the effect unless you know for sure they are going to play a weapon. It’s almost always better to play something rather than wait and hope to destroy a weapon. Be more conservative with this card against Warrior.

Bloodfen Raptor – Mostly just a body for stats and a cheap cost.

Kobold Geomancer – Spell damage is quite good with Rogue, you have a lot of spells that can be benefited from a slight bump in damage.

Razorfen Hunter – A pretty bad overall card, but spreading the stats out across minions can be valuable.

Shattered Sun Cleric – Solid minion that has a strong buff attached to it. While it’s nice to get the buff, it’s usually best to just play the minion on the board rather than hope for a best case scenario.

Chillwind Yeti – One of the best basic minions. 5-health is very important and can trade and survive against most minions of the same cost or below. The card saw some really early play in meta decks in the beginning of ranked play, but is just purely outclassed by better minions now.

Gnomish Inventor – We need a bit of card draw because cards like Backstab are great but do tend to force you to cycle through cards fairly quickly.

Sen'jin Shieldmasta – A good way to stop early aggression with a pretty decent stat line for the cost.

Boulderfist Ogre – This is essentially the 6-drop version of Chillwind Yeti. 7-health is very hard to remove with a single card unless it’s premium removal like Hex or Polymorph is used.

Beginner Rogue Deck Mulligan Advice and Strategy

Most of the time I recommend just keeping only minions in your mulligan, but Backstab is too good to pass up especially when you have an early drop to accompany it. You can also keep Kobold Geomancer if you get the Backstab which can help take out a larger minion and your opponent won’t expect it.

Keep your 2-drops, and if you get one in the opening mulligan you can look to keep a 3-drop. If you are going second then you can consider keeping a 4-drop if you already have a 2-drop.

• Always Keep: Backstab, Acidic Swamp Ooze, and Bloodfen Raptor
• Keep w/2-drop: Shattered Sun Cleric and Razorfen Hunter – If you have Backstab you can keep Kobold Geomancer.
• Keep w/2-3 drop Curve or 2-Drop & The Coin: Chillwind Yeti and Sen'jin Shieldmasta

Play Strategy

A key to learning how to play Rogue is knowing when to attack with your hero power weapon and when to hold it. If you don’t have a play the following turn and you are likely going to be hero powering is when you should attack the face with it. If you do have a play for the following turn it is usually best to just hold the weapon and preserve the durability. Classes that aren’t known for their healing are also better options for being aggressive against, such as Shaman, Rogue, and Hunter. Holding the durability allows you to get a full buff from Deadly Poison without having to use the extra 2-mana allowing for you to use that elsewhere.

Try to avoid playing Kobold Geomancer as just a 2-drop and look to get some value out of it with one of your spells. However, if you don’t have a 2-drop and Geomancer can challenge an on-board minion it is worth playing just to keep up with the board.

If you are going to use Backstab on a larger minion make sure you do it before damaging it. It can be easy to forget that Backstab only works on undamaged minions, and this kind of thing happens to the best of us at times when we aren’t focused on the turn.

I normally advise only using a weapon on an opponent if you are pushing lethal or have lethal, but due to Assassin's Blade‘s 4 durability you should probably be attacking with it every turn. If you hold it for every opportune moment you are likely to not get the full value out of the weapon. It’s best to use it to remove a minion, but you don’t want to lose it to weapon removal and you can’t always afford to eat a lot of face damage.

Try to save Sap for large and slow minions, it is better used in the late game. However, if your opponent gets some kind of card that is buffed (Edwin VanCleef) then that also makes for a great target.

Card Replacements and Substitutions

I’m going to list cards that you should start to look to replace to stick with the theme of this deck which is a Midrange Rogue. You should start to look towards budget decks and build towards them once you start to acquire cards. Once you’ve built a budget deck, you can then start to build towards a meta deck.

Find Budget Decks: Hearthstone Budget Decks for Every Class

You will want to start building towards a more budget/meta Tempo Rogue, so cards like Fire Fly, Acherus Veteran, Argent Squire, and Defias Ringleader are good options for replacing your weaker minions. Cobalt Scalebane and Bonemare are also great budget options that see play in meta decks and can replace your later game minions like Gnomish Inventor and Boulderfist Ogre.

Eviscerate is a solid Rogue card that you can stick in for Assassinate, and if you get SI:7 Agent he is generally a core to most Rogue decks so add him in for Razorfen Hunter right away!

Once you’ve gotten a few of these upgrades it’s time to start looking into those budget decks listed above! Good luck out there on the ladder.