Expensive Rogue

This is a semi-viable semi-meme deck that I’ve been working on for awhile. I made this post to collect my thoughts and ideas into one place so I could work on the deck easier. If you somehow wandered here I’ll leave some details so you can try to understand it a bit. It’s a really fun list.

Deck origin

This deck came to be when I tried to make a deck using the most legendaries possible (I didn’t have THAT many at the time). After playing a few games I realized I wasn’t losing as much as I expected, and with a few tweaks it could be a semi-viable rogue archetype. Since then a LOT of tweaks have happened and it isn’t very reminiscent of its original form, but the heart of the deck (an absurd dust cost) is still there!

description and deck goals

The deck is somewhere in between tempo rogue and miracle rogue in playstyle. I’m personally only really experienced in aggresive/midrange decks, so I built it to my own strengths (sort of). The deck has a LOT of value-generating cards, but not a lot of pure value cards. It has a lot of cards that can potentially snowball out of control — but not a lot of consistent cards to back those up.

There’s a trade-off here — consistency for fun. While filling the deck with strong-but-boring cards I could probably take it to legend easily *cough* tempo rogue *cough* but it would just be a grind. The current list might not win as consistently, but it does something else — it allows you to make big plays almost every single game. Those kind of exhilarating, snowbally, what-the-fuck kind of games are what make hearthstone so fun, and this deck is basically designed to make them happen as much as possible.

Possible Inclusions

The deck isn’t perfect, and I’m always looking for new cards that could strengthen the deck without taking away from the spirit of it. Here are some considerations:

I really haven’t seen Bladed Cultist played anywhere outside of arena but I think it has some potential. Swashburglar is a really fun card because of its steal mechanic. I really enjoy generating more cards, and it’s especially fun when you can steal something like  Lyra the Sunshard and turn into a priest. 

The problem is that it’s a 1/1, which, to me, is unacceptable in the current state of the game. A 1/1 often dies before accomplishing anything, it doesn’t really develop the board, and it also does something else really bad — it pulls Patches the Pirate. Usually pulling patches is great for early board clear, some extra presence, and to thin the deck. The problem is, patches by himself isn’t a great minion. He becomes really powerful with Southsea Captain. If you pull patches turn 1 with swashburgler, then southsea captain often gets played on an empty board as a vanilla 3/3, which isn’t good at all.

If you remove all pirates besides patches and southsea captain, it makes both of those cards stronger.

Bladed Cultist is a strong card because he’s a 1/2. This means he doesn’t die to patches (or most other 1 drops), and he can help do some work on the board early. If he’s played turn 2 with firefly then he’s a 2/3, which is really good stats for a 1 cost minion. Lastly, even without considering his stats he serves the same purpose as other 1-cost cards, which is to activate combos on more important minions.

This card does the same thing as Swashburglar…sort of. It’s good because you get to discover a card rather than it being completely random, this means it’s more likely to get something useful, and you can start to form a plan around that. Another advantage is that it doesn’t have a pirate tag, which works with our ideas mentioned above. The downside is that it doesn’t help develop the board at all. If we reduce our early game minions too much then the deck won’t be consistent enough to do what we want to do. I think the card could be good against slower matchups, and it could be good if we pulled it later in the game, but it could really hurt our early game against aggresive decks.

This is a card that doesn’t want to be played on turn 1, but it has a lot of utility that could be extremely useful. 1-off damage situations are fairly common and this card overcomes it, or it could just buff up another minion for a bit of extra pressure. It’s a solid card, but it might not be consistent enough for what we want.

Vanilla 1/3, pretty much just good for its stats. A 1/3 body is extremely good early against aggro, and it can often get 2-3 hits in before dying. Technically the beast tag is useful because it’s possible to steal hunter cards with synergy, but that’s not common enough to really be considered.

Although this card is extremely meme-y, it does have 1 good utility, which is that it generates combo-activators. I don’t think it would be consistent enough to actually be a viable card, but if I run out of ideas it could be a consideration…maybe?

I think this card is exactly as valuable as Acherus Vetern, it just provides a different kind of utility. Freeze could often be good to buy us an extra turn to set up some kind of combo. However, just like acherus veteran, it’s not a good card to drop on turn 1, and it’s not a good card to drop on an empty board. This probably makes it a not-so-desireable card since we have so many cards in the deck that are situational as it is.

This is a really good card for obvious reasons, but at one point I removed it in favor of Saronite Chain Gang. My reasoning was that there were so many combo-reliant cards in the deck that is was really messing up my games. If I saved my 1-cost cards I would have to sacrifice my early game — if I played my 1-cost cards I wouldn’t have activators and I would sacrifice my mid-late game. Saronite Chain Gang was chosen because it’s consistent, good on an empty board, and has synergy with Prince Keleseth. 

Despite all that, I’m still not 100% sure if my choice in cutting the card was correct. It’s an extremely powerful tempo card that can swing the game in your favor. At any time it might find its way back into the deck.