Tess Miracle Rogue Deck List Guide – The Witchwood – April 2018

Our Tess Miracle Rogue deck list guide will go through the ins-and-outs of the potentially viable deck from the The Witchwood Expansion! This guide will teach you how to mulligan, pilot, and substitute cards for this archetype! For now the deck guide is theorycraft, but as soon as the expansion goes live we will start updating it right away!

Introduction

Miracle Rogue is probably one of the most persistent decks in Hearthstone. Despite multiple nerfs, cards rotating out etc. it seems to keep coming back thanks to its powerful Classic shell, with win conditions changing depending on the meta.

This time around, I feel like one of the ways to play Miracle Rogue might be by including the new “Burgle” package. I think that building an entire deck around Burgle mechanic isn’t good enough yet – there are just not enough support cards. However, by adding only a small package, we can still keep the main Miracle shell intact, while adding an extra long-term win condition in a form of Tess Greymane. Even summoning just a few minions or casting a few spells can go a long way in Miracle Rogue – and if you get good ones, you can even use Shadowstep in order to replay her.

Mulligan

Against Aggro, your early game plays are most important. Backstab is probably your best card, because its lets you clear an early game threat without taking any damage. Your turn 2 will most likely be Hero Power, and your 2 mana cards aren’t great keeps anyway. However, your 3 mana slot has some great keeps. Both Blink Fox and Hench-Clan Thug are good keeps no matter if your’re going first or second, while Edwin VanCleef is a great keep on the Coin. It’s still good going first if you can combo it with Preparation + a spell. Other than that, Fan of Knives might be a good keep against decks that tend to flood the board with low health minions early. If you have some of your early game tools already, keeping 4-drops like Elven Minstrel (if you have a way to combo it) or Fal'dorei Strider can be good.

In slower matchups, you’re mostly looking for the minions to put pressure – that’s why you don’t keep cards like Backstab or FoK. Blink Fox, Hench-Clan Thug, Edwin VanCleef, Elven Minstrel and Fal'dorei Strider are your best keeps.

General Strategy

Deck’s general play style is not that far off from the Miracle Rogue you see now on the ladder. Basically, getting lots of mid/late game tempo is your main win condition. You want to set up the Fal'dorei Striders to put lots of free 4/4 tokens into your deck, then use Gadgetzan Auctioneer with some cheap spells to cycle through your deck as quickly as possible.

So instead of talking about the general strategy, I’ll focus on the new cards and their role in the deck instead:

• Hallucination – Yes, you’re correct – this is not a new card. And it was played in the Miracle Rogue already in the past. It’s a cheap spell, so it’s a good way to combo out some of the cards, as well as more fuel for the Auctioneer. It gets extra value in this deck thanks to the Tess – generally you want to try to pick a card that will work well with her. 
• Cheap Shot – This is a pretty flexible removal, but I think that one copy might be enough. I suspect that Warlock will be very popular, and this card will not be as useful against Control/Cube decks – Sap will work much better against them. It’s still a solid mid/late game board clear – you can either use it to clear a single minion or spread the damage between a few smaller minions. In the late game, you can use it with Auctioneer even if you don’t have lots of other spells in your hand. Preparation + Cheap Shot alone are 4 card draws from Auctioneer with full mana.
• Blink Fox – While you’d probably prefer to run Swashburglar instead (or maybe even both), the card has rotated out and Fox is the way to go now. 3/3 for 3 is solid, plus you gain an extra card. While the random cards might be unplayable, they can also combo very nicely with Tess in the late game – e.g. if you get some mid game minion, playing Tess will replay it.
• Hench-Clan Thug – Probably one of the best Rogue cards printed in a while. Since you will very often use your Hero Power on Turn 2, playing it on Turn 3 will usually mean that you’ve got a 4/4 for 3 – that’s good already, but there’s more. It can grow by +1/+1 every single turn – against Aggro it gives you a nice body to trade with, while against Control it’s a solid threat they will often have to waste their precious removals on. And the best thing is that it will be out of range of the 3 damage removals like Frostbolt, Wrath etc. as well as out of range of Shadow Word: Pain. 4/4 might be pretty awkward to kill so early in the game. 
• Rotten Applebaum – One of the Rogue’s problems is the lack of survival tools, and this might fix it a bit. Miracle Rogue can often find wins against slower decks, but Aggro decks just rush you down. Applebaum can stand in their way – between the Taunt and extra healing, it can be really potent in faster matchups. Of course, how well will it work heavily depends on the amount of Silence in the meta – if there is too much Silence, you can run something else instead.
• Tess Greymane – Current Miracle decks usually run the Leeroy Jenkins + Cold Blood combo as an alternative win condition, and it will still be possible. While Tess is more RNG, I feel like she has a bigger potential too. Given how well Miracle Rogue cycles, you should be able to draw her pretty consistently. Even if you’ve played just 2 or 3 cards from the opponent’s class, she might be good enough. Just for example – if you’ve stolen two minions and played them (e.g. 3/3 and 5/5), Tess will already be a nice board refill – 6/6 + 5/5 + 3/3. On top of that, she will replay any Secrets, and lots of cards with purely positive effects. The only issue is that playing some cards might be risky – e.g. Fireball might hit your face instead of your opponent. One cool thing about her is that she will also replay cards you get from The Lich King – e.g. Death Coil is always neutral or positive, because it either heals one of your minions/you or damages one of the opponent’s minions/his face.