Pirate Thief Rogue – Rise of Shadows

A somewhat competetive deck that I based on an earlier fun-based approach where I mainly wanted to test all the cool new pirates, now that we finally have a matching card back and a cool pirate legendary.

Before the rotation, almost the same pirate package was used in a tempo rogue build which I played quite successfully (on Rank 2). I merged it with a few ideas taken from the current Thief Rogue decks but put a bit more focus on general tempo to be able to get to the actual value parts of the deck, as the other thief rogue decks tended to be too RNG heavy and ran out of steam so fast. If enough people show interest, I will write a way more detailed guide for sure.

Some remarks:

– Inconsistencies that this deck has due to the number of tribe cards or ways to generate cards from other classes can easily be circumvented by using Togwaggle’s Scheme based on how the game plan developed

– The deck supports multiple win conditions / combos

– The meme dream here is to play Hooktusk after spending some of your cards to survive the early game and charge up your pool of other class cards alongside your Cutlass, then draw loads of cards with the Scalpers as you gain the upper hand for good. This will allow you to find the missing pieces for the Prep, Tak, Academic Espionage combo. Empty your hand and apply loads of pressure at that point. Then you play that combo and receive a full hand of 1 mana cards and simultaneously know what is now in your deck and will be drawn soon. Then the death blow is delivered by Tess.

– If you need to play Tess early but have great cards you wanted to see played again by her, just play Scheme on her

– If Hooktusk is late, don’t be afraid to drop your pirates anyway. Scheme on Burglar is pretty good as it builds up your stolen card pool and adds pirates to be pulled by Hooktusk

– In slower matchups or control face-offs, try to Scheme Face Collector. It sounds stupid but against Control you can continuously generate new threats and the opponent doesn’t have much pressure, so you can win in fatigue due to your Espionage, while constantly applying pressure spikes utilizing the new-found legendaries. Otherwise feel free to play him way below his full value and don’t scheme him, as he becomes bad draw otherwise. He is the card I think can be replaced most easily but he has his moments. Shadowstep is a good replacement, as it gives you a second Tess.