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Mulligans
General Mulligans
Note: This doesn't include the Quest which is obviously suppose to be in your starting hand.
Only keep either Youthful Brewmaster or Gadgetzan Ferryman NEVER BOTH. And only keep them IF you have a card to cycle back into your hand. Otherwise the rest speaks for itself.
Aggro Mulligans
(If you are against pirate warrior and you read the 4/11/17 update down below, you can add Golakka Crawler
This deck is based off Dog’s deck. http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/dogs-ungoro-caverns-rogue-april-2017-season-37/
I made a few tweaks that seems to be working better as more people are able to counter this deck since it’s more well known now. Please use Dog’s Deck as a reference.
Mimic Pod this card is very frustrating sometimes, it could give you crappy cards, or it could save you. But more often than not, it gives you crappy cards. So I replaced it with 2 different cards that seems to be working A LOT better for me. Coldlight Oracle and Vanish. Coldlight Oracle helps cycle through your deck when you really need to draw what you want, unlike Mimic Pod it lets you draw twice instead of relying everything on that one draw. At the same time it also gives you a 2/2 body (potential 5/5) as well. Yes it does give the opponent 2 draws as well but it helps more than it does harm. (Also with handlock back in the meta – you can mill them to death and it’s HILARIOUS). Basically it’s how you play it that counts.
Tip: Don’t play Coldlight Oracle if you don’t need to, use it only if you truly need draws.
Vanish this card helps counter counters. This deck is extremely weak to pirate warrior, taunt warrior (when they are able to remove all your minions – which is most of the time). Vanish helps with removing all the taunts on the board or all the pirates on the board to let you live an extra turn to otk pirate warriors. Pirate warrior don’t usually have too much health left by the time you can Vanish. Vanish also lets you return your minions to your hand to let you play them again to complete the quest (if you manage to play Vanish early game with Preparation).
Violet Teacher this card isn’t a bad card, but majority of the time – it’s a dead card in your hand. Yes it gives a bunch of tokens BUT they don’t have charge nor helps complete the quest. So I’ve replaced it with some more flexible cards. 2x Igneous Elemental and 1x Fire Fly. (Note: I do not own Edwin VanCleef so I was able to add in an extra card). Those two elemental cards gives the same token that lets you complete the quest earlier in the game as well as not being a dead card if you draw it early on. There are also times when I often try to cycle through my deck to find that one Shadowstep, Youthful Brewmaster or Gadgetzan Ferryman to complete the quest but I didn’t get it. The tokens lets you complete the quest early on at a higher rate than you normally do. (You can return the tokens to your hand as well which lets you complete it super easily as you get 2 tokens from Igneous Elemental. Second reason is that by the time you complete your quest during turn 4-5 you either have a dead board or you are out of juice (no cards in hand). These tokens help solve those problems by always having an extra 2-3 minions on your hand for 1 mana to play them for 5/5s each. If you used your tokens to complete your quest, you’ll probably have cards with charge in your hand to help with otk. If you used all your other cards to complete the quest, you’ll have the tokens as a back up.
Bonus Tip: If you haven’t play pirates all game and you have the quest done and activated – don’t forget when Patches the Pirate pops out he’s also a 5/5 with charge. (Sometimes I get excited and forgot about him)
Let me know if this works better for you guys or not! Or just tell me what you think below.
Update 4/11/17:
As the issue was brought up in the comment section and I’ve replied to it. Pirate warrior are finally back as the meta is settling (in larger amount at higher ranks). Therefore there will need to be changes upon this deck to counter them. And here they are (currently at least)
-1 Moroes and -1Fire Fly for +2 Golakka Crawler
If this helps you have a better fighting chance against pirate warrior let me know!
Tip: Don’t always waste Golakka Crawler on 1 health pirate minions. Returning Golakka Crawler is not a bad idea to counter them later on, cause once you remove pirate warrior’s pirates, they are nothing but weapon warrior left. If you wish to absolutely counter against them you can also add in Bloodsail Corsair but finding a replacement (assuming you add in Golakka Crawler) will be hard. I suggest to only add 1 Bloodsail Corsair if you really want to.
Coldlight Oracle will remain because drawing 2 cards is very crucial in tough situations when you really need something to save you. Especially since we don’t have Mimic Pod our only draws are limited to Novice Engineer and Fan of Knives. But if you were to add Mimic Pod you might as well use Coldlight Oracle instead cause it gives you a better odd at getting something that will save you.
Update 4/14/2017:
Golakka Crawler has been doing pretty well against pirate warrior so far. I’ve been experimenting a bit more and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. But I’m posting the options down below.
Option 1: -2 Fan of Knives +2 Glacial Shard
Reason: Golakka Crawler is doing great against pirate warrior as mentioned, however pirate warrior still have their nasty weapons and Heroric Strike. Adding Glacial Shard lets you freeze Garrosh in addition to taking out his pirates. Fan of Knives hasn’t actually been doing much at the higher ranks because the variety of deck is sadly limited. Most of the time it’s quest rogues, pirate warrior, and taunt warrior. Every once awhile you get a unique one outside of those 3 decks. The only loss you will be taking by switching out Fan of Knives is the 1 draw.
Option 2: -2 Fan of Knives +2 Bilefin Tidehunter
Reason: Ever had a situation where you could otk an enemy the next turn but you can’t because you are about to die? And that you wish you had 1 really good taunt to help you last that one turn to otk them the next? Well here you go, 2 mana 5/5 and 1 5/5 with taunt.
Option 3: +2 Fan of Knives +2 Golakka Crawler and +2 Glacial Shard +2 Bilefin Tidehunter
Reason: By adding both Glacial Shard and Bilefin Tidehunter you won’t really need Golakka Crawler because now you can freeze and enemy and set up taunts. However if a pirate warrior has Southsea Captain you are very vulnerable if you don’t have a good hand.
Hi, would you fit in Edwin VanCleef if you had him? And if so, which would you replace?
VanCleef is not that good in this deck
Yeah what Tramixor said is correct. The reason is because you wouldn’t want to waste your mana on getting edwin when you can get the quest complete at the same amount of time.
If you wish to use Edwin – check out some Sherazin Miracle Rogues or Miracle Rogues in general
Sergeant Sally is another option as well, with caverns it becomes 5/5 and will wipe the opponents board…
I’ve thought of that too! Except the problem against pirate warrior is living long enough to complete the quest and activate it. Sally is 3 mana and doesn’t have immediate board impact nor does it have taunt. Which is why she wasn’t included since she’s too slow and requires turn 6 to use (turn 5 earliest with prep and quest)
Hi.
I was just wondering if you have any tips against Pirate Warrior decks?
The frequency of pirate warrior increases dramatically the higher up the ranks you come.
I believe that using a Coldlight Oracle when playing against Pirate is a bad idea, but I am not sure if there maybe is any scenarios where it is useful. Sometimes I truly need to draw, yet I feel that the downside might be bigger than the upside when playing Oracle against Pirate specifically.
I also feel like there really isn’t any room to remove or add any cards.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Pirate warrior are generally Quest rogue’s weakness no matter what version you play (at least currently), because rogue doesn’t have a stable board (minions constantly going back and forth between your hand and the board).
Against pirate warrior, in general pray for prep and vanish. Most of the time you would have to rely on your draws, ferryman and igneous are great to play on the board early game to stop them. You basically have to stall till your quest is done then pirate warrior will be out of juice and you can pretty much trade all your 5/5s against theirs.
For oracle situation against pirates, if you are in danger and you think giving draws to pirate warrior will make it worst. I suggest you to just play it. The main reason is because if you are about to lose, might as well gamble for something that might save you rather than hesitating and not try to fight back. Yes there will be chances that they will draw good cards, but they can also draw bad cards too.
For climbing up ranks, what I do is that I usually switch between decks due to pirate warriors. It lets me keep my win streak stable, if you’ve played a few games without pirate warrior and you feel one coming up, switch to something else maybe taunt warrior or dragon priest to counter them.
Oh and backstab is generally a decent card to keep early on if you can predict that it’ll be a pirate warrior (instead of a taunt warrior). But NEVER waste it on any 1/1 and 2/1, cause the odds of your opponent summoning a 3/3 or an x/3 on turn 3 is very high. Fan of knives – you don’t need to be too stingy with this card, if you can remove at least 2 minions with it – do it. Sometimes even 1 is fine, cause you desperately need the draws.
I’m also trying to come up with something that gives a better fighting chance against pirate warrior but no decks are perfect and are bound to have some form of weakness.
I hope this helps.
Adding on to my previous comment –
If you were curious about what kind of deck I’m experimenting for playing against pirate warrior, I removed 1 moroes and 1 fire fly to add in two golakka crawler. However this will make the deck more offensive towards pirate warrior but towards taunt warrior.
The reason for the 2 addition is that Moroes is meant to be played after you get the quest to get great board sustain because of the free 5/5 every end of your turn. However, against pirate warriors it means absolutely nothing if you can’t survive long enough to use it. Therefore I would like to take advantage of golakka crawler’s ability to destroy a pirate. Basically the idea is that you save 1-2 cards in your hand to play golakka then bounce it and wait for the next big pirate to stop them. I’ve managed to use it in this situation a couple times.
Turn 1
Me: quest
pirate warrior (pw): southsea + patches
turn 2
Me:weapon-> southsea
pw: 3/2 weapon (or 2/3 pirate)
turn 3
me: igneous
pw: pirate captain (or 3/3 taunt and a second minion)
turn 4
me :gollaka pirate captain (or whatever was the biggest threat on the board) -> ferryman/brewmaster/shadowstep (whatever you have)
pw: “ASTONISHING” -hesitate- because he knows that you have another golakka in your hand and doesn’t want to play any good pirates but does it anyway cause they want to go face. If they have a 4/3 charge (which isn’t a pirate) it’ll make your situation trickier but you can backstab and face it, trade your minions against it, or eviscerate.
During turn 3 a bunch of combination is possible. If you don’t have golakka you usually would want to play oracle to try to draw it. If you don’t have oracle or golakka Just play a 1 drop minion and return it to your hand by brew or ferryman to keep some board presences.
During turn 2 – if you have shadowstep you are free to play it this turn but I don’t recommend it cause eating a 2/1 or 1/1 is a waste which is what A LOT of people do. And I often get baffled by it cause why would you use it on a 1 health minion when there’s a 2 3/3, 3/4 and a 5/4 pirate coming up. IMO people just get too excited by it cause in their head they go “DIE PIRATE WARRIOR” and play it lol.
Note using this version will cause mulligan to change.
One of my friend used this argument
Him: “but isn’t it harder to complete the quest using golakka?”
me: “Was it hard using novice engineer to complete the quest?”
Him: “but it lets you draw a card”
Me: “and this keeps you safe”
him: “fair enough”
One last tip: if you truly need to use golakka on a 1 hp pirate minion to save yourself then do it. Because there’s an infinite possibility of situations that could happen so it’s your judgement to make.
glhf
Thank you for adding onto what was previously mentioned!
Sorry for a late response on my behalf.
Thank you for responding to me and writing such a well thought out and helpful reply.
It helped me a lot!
Not a problem!
I just want to know why do you prefer 1 fire fly and 2 igneous over 2 fire fly and 1 igneous?
A couple reasons, but mostly personal preference. Igneous is meant to replace Violet Teacher, Violet Teacher is mostly a dead card in your hand but it does have a 3/5 body, I traded it for a 2/3 body for 3 mana in addition to 2 tokens going into my hand. The two tokens going into my hand can be summoned and returned from the board, if you were to use 2 fire fly you only get 1 token at a time each – but if you are returning fire fly to your hand to try to get tokens to complete the quest you might as well just finish it using fire fly instead.
Basically igneous offer a better body to trade and at the same time makes it easier to complete the quest than fire fly.
Example situation: you have 2 cards that can return a minion to your hand but only have igenous as a minion. (this does not count any other minions that you will be drawing or could be drawing). You trade your igneous and now you have 2 1 mana tokens with 2 cards that lets you return them to your hand, lets use one brewmaster or one ferryman and one shadowstep as an example, you play 2 1 mana token (2 mana so far) brew master 1 (4mana) resummon it (5mana) then shadowstep it and summon it (still 5 mana) in a single turnand the total amount of cards you truly use is 3. Igneous – brew – shadowstep. Compare to lets say swashburglar (1mana) -> brew (3mana) ->swash (4mana) ferryman ->(6mana)-> swash (7mana)-> shadowstep (7mana). total cards used – 4. turns required – possibly 1 turn more unless you get good draws and get them all in order.
Igneous requires less cards – trade-able body cause you WANT it to die, and less mana overall.
Typical start for quest rogue – turn 1 quest – turn 2 weapon – turn 3 combo, on turn 3 instead of combo you can igneous and turn 4 kill igenous -> summon tokens and if you have 1 brew/ferryman and 1 shadowstep it’s turn 4 quest completion and turn 5 quest activation
If you want to use 2 firefly, I told a couple of my Hearthstone friends that didn’t have patches to use a second firefly instead and it works just as well.
Hope this explains everything and I was clear enough for you
Thx for the explanation. Now I understand.
Not a problem!
Well said about the Igneous. Some opponents are wise to it in the higher ranks like quest warrior and won’t kill it.
I have been playing this deck for a couple hours and it only has one counter: its self. I was able to out value a priest at 40 with no cards in hand. He got to heal up twice. This deck is nuts. I would not be surprised is the rouge quest got a huge nerf. Great deck!
Glad you’re having fun with it! And I don’t think there will be a huge nerf, maybe a small one. All they have to do is increase the quest mana cost by 1 and it’ll slow everything down. Because the point of these quest is to get these op cards, (although they screwed up with paladin imo – but maybe someone will think of a method). For now, enjoy it while you can!