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This deck is from Blizzard’s Off-Meta Spotlight #8, here’s what they had to say about it:
Kingsbane Rogue – 58.8% winrate/51 games
Kingsbane helped Rogues carve up the meta during Kobolds and Catacombs, but the Legendary Weapon hasn’t had the same level of impact since entering The Witchwood. This Kingsbane Rogue deck looks to get that edge back. Utilizing the arsenal of removal spells at its disposal, the deck focuses on managing the board until Valeera the Hollow comes into play, when it can truly take control thanks to its access to double the awesome options!
Gave it some more play and this deck is insane. Here‘s some of my encounters:
Druid:
Early game lets you collect cards quite nicely. Picking the minions apart one by one is fine. When Hadronox hits, you can vanish the board, most of the time killing a considerable amount of minions. Second Hadronox with cube is also an EZ vanish. By the third board, you usually have the AOE, so you can sap the cube and kill the board. After that you basically won. Not so much with Malygos druid or any OTK version, though!
Priest:
Weaker minions, watch out for OTK though. Flood with pirates from valeera early on, scream is absolutely great to even help you, especially when you can add another kobold to it going back into your deck. Amara priest you can simply outvalue. Just don’t have your kingsbane copied by Benedictus!
Big Warrior:
Super fun. They have lots of removal that needs to target minions. Just don’t do anything and watch them mill themselves. When their big boards hit, just vanish and heal.
Mage:
Tricky if they get to freeze you but overall doable. Not so many mages around atm. Try to keep the doomerangs in hand in case you get frozen, that way you should be able to take out the water elemental(s).
Hunter & other rogues:
Early game is pretty hard sometimes as there’s an early board flood. Sometimes prep vanish is a good choice here. Be wary of tar creeper followed by vicious fledgling as that is one of the games that can spiral out of your control easily.
Paladin:
Risky to let a lot of the minions live, rather play your pirates on curve to provide the occasional help with clearing off the board. Later, vanish after level up is great to mill and regenerate (and remove the stats). Sunkeeper is a concern, keep their boards small or your health high.
Warlock:
They are warlocks and therefore pretty hardcore. But usually a combination of doomerang and a direct hit will take out giants, you can also wait for a while as they just have to tap. So vanish is actually an aoe in itself here.
Try hiding the fact you’re playing kingsbane if their draw is bad.
Shaman really depends but I am really lucky here; didnt have to play against Shudderwock yet!
Really, if you have the cards, give it a spin, it’s like the old days!
I watch a streamer that plays this deck exclusively, J_Alexander_HS, and he says a lot of the things you mention. He’s in top 500 pushing for top100 and says you basically lose to aggro and otk (ofc only when they pull it off so kill em before that happens or mill) and if you’re good you should win against every other deck. Noting that generally, you should win against control deck, but if Jaina can freeze your face reliably you’ll lose. Stating also Kingsbane only cares about being buffed up, so that’s how the deck should be crafted around, using assassinate over vilespine for easier removal, and no minions, in general, like fal’dorei since it clogs up your card draw. I’m curious to what you winrate is with the deck, idk how big the sample size is for this build since I only see that streamer play it
Not so great atm because I had a face-off with about 5 minion based hunters in a row earlier today, haha… oh well. Aside from that encounter, it‘s like you said though, I won like 90% of the games against control and slower types of decks. I‘d love to post stats but I am currently playing iPad only as I have to get my computer fixed… no addon for that there. Sorry! But definitely recommended!
Lost 6 in row ..4 odd pallies and 2 hunters? but I did push far with kingsbane
Replacement for greenskin?
You could try and replace him but he really is OP here. I didn’t think that +1/+1 is that much of an effect but it’s absolutely insane. If he doesn’t get killed and your opponent tries to rush you, attacking and putting a lot on board instead, you can attack with him, vanish everything, get your KB attack in, play him twice next round. So he gave you 2 bodies with 5/4 and in combination +3/+3, which is a LOT of stats.
Having said that, you could try and go for either The darkness (yes, seriously) or more traditionally, for Zola.
Zola you would obviously use on one of the pirates or on a shinyfinder, so you can either get the weaker but alright buff of +1/+0 with a little combo potential or get your weapon back if the situation comes up that you have to use it but don’t have a way of getting it back reliably. It’s probably versatile enough.
The darkness, on the other hand, is actually fun in a kingsbane rogue. I played around with it during the Coldlight mill rogue era, Valeera is the key here. You get 2*darkness for 8 mana and then have enough wiggle room to either attack + shinyfinder or doomerang and re-equip, etc. since it gives your opponents 6 candles instead of 3, it will actually not even take long to activate them and 3 candles are enough for both to wake up. So it really discourages your opponent from drawing any more and a milled candle or 2 are not important. Slows them down either way and gives less opportunity for your opponent to play combos or very efficiently for that matter.
It’s definitely leaning more towards fun if you sub in the darkness (if you have it) but it’s so much fun to play when it works, even if you cannot attack once with it.
I’d been playing a version with Vilespines, Faldorei Striders, and Elven Minstrels and was getting upset how frequently (probably not that common but even once or twice is infuriating) I wasn’t able to get Kingsbane or Cavern Shinyfinders by turn 5. This version looks a lot more consistent, I’m excited to try it out. Assasinate’s vs. Vilespines could prove useful in certain match-ups too, and not having a board full of Spiders is going to make Vanishes way better.
Lots of little differences in this deck that I can see solving problems I was having with the more minion based one.
Assasinate over vilespine?
Was actually thinking about it myself earlier when playing mryaguts build. No activator needed. Still preferring his version though as it seems very hard to get the weapon buffed without poison, so faldorei are simply necessary to survive imo. Zola also doesn’t hurt…
I can see why you would drop vile for assasinate in this deck. It run no backstab so comboing is a lot harder in general and with valeera you are garantueed a double kill with assassinate. Also this deck don’t fight for board control by using minions but rather rely a lot on it’s weapon.
Naha corsair