No one should want a new mechanic to fail utterly in any card game. People would like odd/even deck to work because it adds further variety to deck building through an interesting question: is it worth cutting out half of what I can play to have an improved Hero power from the very start of the game?

This is this set’s version of Reno and the three Princes, but unlike those cards, the benefits of playing Genn or Baku will always be had.

In wild, there will be twelve mage secrets. Playing this will only result in getting Ice Block less than 30% of the time. Plus, if they’ve already played their Ice Block, this cannot give Ice Block as an option since you can never double up on the same individual secret.

I suppose so, but the whole point of playing a ton of secrets in Secret Mage is to best ensure the use of the synergies. When you do have a secret in hand, which in the begining of the game will happen more often than not, Korin Tor is better than this.

It’s good in the same why Hydrologist is good. Plus there is a 1 mana discount on the body and the secret you choose.

And unlike Korin Tor Mage, you don’t need to play a handful of secrets to make the card more than a 4/3 and it doesn’t take two cards out of your hand.

As a result, this is more of a midrange card than Korin Tor and typically better in those sorts of decks. Granted, you probably wouldn’t play this over Korin Tor in a tempo deck if you can only choose one or the other.

This is a very well stated minion for the cost and ability. While Secret mage will be leaving standard with the loss of much of what makes that deck as aggressive as it is as well as Ice Block, this will likely see play at some point. Unless there is another secret in this set there will be eight mage secrets in standard of which three, Counterspell, Explosive Runes, and Mirror Entity, are always going to be good, three more, Mana Bind, Frozen Clone, and Spellbender, can definitely be good in the right circumstance, and the last two will usually be bad.

As far as the math goes, you will have just over a 40% chance of seeing any particular secret, so you will usually see at least one of the three always good secrets. This will be mage’s equivalent to Hydrologist and will see play outside of secret based decks. It may be more expensive than Hydrologist, but Mage secrets are worth more than Paladin secrets and this places it straight onto the board.

Great addition to Mage.

They could play Spiteful Summoner and use Flame Strike, Blizzard, and Pyroblast as your big spells along with Book of Specters. Doing so gives you the draw about of the last card I mentioned (You’ll usually draw 2 cards from it if you only play 8 spells) while also not hampering the use of Summoner too much.

As it is though, the lack of AOE has not hurt Secret Mage’s competitive viability. It is weak against the aggro Paladins, but that has more to do with Secret Mage wanting to be faster than the deck it plays against than the lack of AOE removal.

An elemental Mage deck would not want to play Shimmering Tempest, Ghastly Conjurer, Archmage Antonidas, and Thunder Lizard. Tempest is too weak to consider. Conjurer adding mirror image to your hand is less powerful than Steam Surger, Water Elemental, and some of the other four cost cards Mages might play. If you were to play a minion based Mage deck, Antonidas wouldn’t really do a whole lot, and an Elemental Mage deck would end up being very much minion based. Lastly, Thunder Lizard just sucks.

Yes. You probably will throw it into any Priest deck that has the room for it, but if you were to build your deck around it by adding sub-par cards like Lightwell and Sleepy Dragon, you would be relying on it to at least some extent.

The play it saw in that case was not really extensive then. I don’t remember it being too popular of a choice.

Most decks at the moment get crushed by Cube and Control Warlock, but if Secret Mage is anything to go by, a deck with a lot of direct damage cards and a good early game can more than compete with it. Such a Spiteful Elemental deck would also probably do well against Cube/Control Warlock inherently if the statistics on Spiteful Priest are anything to go by.

You probably wouldn’t play Ice Block in a dedicated elemental deck if you could anyway.

I meant Dispatch Kodo.

How is Pick Pocket good?
if your’re playing it once, Hallucination is better as it discovers and it half the cost and that sees no play at the moment even in Miracle Rogue.
Playing it twice is worse than Elvin Minstrel as it doesn’t come with the body and the cards it adds are random.
Playing it three or four times is worse than Sprint in both cases and Sprint see no play. The former because for one mana more you could draw four cards instead and the latter because for one mana less, you can draw four cards instead of adding four random cards.
When you get to five times in a turn, you might as well play Druid instead.
There is versatility to this and Cheap shot, but when there isn’t a mode the card can take shape in that is as good as another option, it probably won’t end up being good.

Blink Fox is not as good as Glimmeroot, and Glimmeroot exists in a class with far less draw than Rogue, and it only sees regular play in one of that classes four competitive archetypes. Combine that with the better Tempo plays provided by cards like SI:7 Agent and Edwin, it is hard to see it seeing regular play when its competition for that card slot is so intense.

N’Zoth can still save you in the same way this can save you. That doesn’t stop either card from being a deck’s win condition. Not too many, if any really, decks use burgle cards anyway and Lilian Voss will usually give you cards worse than what you started with.

There are a ton of inconsistent cards like Yogg as it is at the moment and Deck of Wonders that can outright steal games, but they do not see play. They are far too random and circumstantial to be considered in a competitive deck. I would not want to triple the randomness of my deck to potentially steal what would actually be closer to one in one hundred game due to the compounding randomness of getting the random cards and those cards being applied often to random targets.

This could easily be Mage’s Drakonid Operative, the extremely powerful card that will fully push the deck into relevance almost by itself.
With this and the other minion based Mage cards revealed, I can easily see an Elemental Baku or Spiteful Elemental deck being possible and competitive.

That’s like saying N’zoth or Yogg Saron aren’t win conditions. While they may not win you games instantly, N’Zoth certainly and pre-nerf Yogg most of the time were capable of turning even gamestates into winning ones.

If Thief of Burgle Rogue somehow becomes competitive, this will be the finisher.

The design team at Hearthstone has repeatedly made clear they wish to make card wording and fucntion as consistent as possible. It is not hard to deduct giving a card a similar effect to Yogg-Saron will not also work in the same way Yogg does when it kills itself, regardless of the card’s power level. There are exceptions to the rule but most of them involve card wording that has the same function.

If they were concerned with keeping a card’s power level in check over keeping similar wordings on similar functioning cards, why hasn’t the Naga Sea Witch interaction with Giants in Wild been fixed with all of the backlash such an interaction has created after its discovery? It is not because they don’t care about the Wild format as seen with the better-late-than-never nerfs to Raza the Chained and Patches the Pirate, but to make sure the rules of Naga Sea Witch stays consistent with other cost reduction aura effects.

Tess’ Battlecry will end if she kills herself. If the nerf to Yogg-Saron was never made, it would function as Yogg does.

Yes they are. The number of zero cost and cost reduction cards Rogue has access to makes summoning a 6/6 Edwin and a SI:7 that does damage a relatively common occurrence, but Sonya is the one exception. Turn three has rarely been an issue for Rogues.

This could see play if Tempo Rogues become competitive again really need another three drop, but I do not think it is powerful enough to see regular play in Rogue in general. It is very much possible this will functionally be a vanilla 3/3 when it adds a bad card, an archetype specific card, or a card of extremely high cost. Glimmeroot will typically add an above average card to your hand along with the solid body, and it doesn’t see extensive play outside of the Spiteful Priest decks and Rogue rarely needs the card generation due to the powerful draw options is has at hand.

Blink Fox still is a just above average card, but unless that just above average card is part of a good archetype, it is unlikely to see regular play. Swashburgler was part of Rogue’s Pirate package and Undercity huckster was part of its N’Zoth package. This has no crossover between this and archetypes other than just Theft Rogue, and that has never been good enough to be anything more than fringe and the Win Condition provided by Tess is unlikely to be able to change that without something about the archetype itself improving.

The issue with Thief Rogue and Discard Warlock has been you cannot guarantee anything from it. You will have the Rogue core package to work with, and maybe that’ll get you fairly far on its own.
However, I do not think making your deck less consistent in order to play an admittedly good card existing in a bad archetype will give you satisfactory results. Also, Cheap Shot is inferior to most of the removal options Rogues currently have and Fox, unless it is played alone on turn three, will usually be worse than SI:7 Agent and some of the other three drops Rogue has access to.

From the way you describe it, the midgame is when you’re intending to play more of the cards you’ve generated off of the theft cards, which is where the randomness of this mechanic will hurt you. While getting nothing but good, non-archetypal minions and spells is not out of the question, you will average out to as a whole mostly around average cards. Now around average cards may be enough to get your through Arena drafts, but not constructed. However, if this deck does ever emerge, playing Tess multiple times will usually result in a win, but remember certain classes like Mage, Shaman, and Priest have cards that will be more likely to get Tess to kill herself the first time, and getting Paladin buff cards off theft cards could easily backfire on you during the Tess plays if they hit herself or enemy minions.

You are right about secret Mage, but such an archetype is not inherently flawed like Theft Rogue is and has always been sort of bubbling just beneath the surface with Mage secrets regularly seeing play outside of dedicated secret decks. Two card were enough to make it competitive with a better minion secret was enough to make it tier 1. Just compare the number of direct secret support cards released since Karazahn to the number Discard Warlock or Theft Rogue has gotten.

It’s not the lack of good support but the very concept of the archetype that is holding Theft Rogue back.

First off, creating your own quotations is not how you quote someone. At best, you are paraphrasing me.

Secondly, Thief Rogue is bad against itself, its just both decks will be equally bad. They cannot get any rewards from playing against a Rogue deck. Tess Greymane would just be a 8 mana 6/6 against Rogues in general. A Thief Rogue mirror match would devolve into who gets more SI:7s, Vilespines, and Eviscerates and the least amount of WANTED!s, weapon support that isn’t deadly poison, and Razopetal Volleys.

If there is only one deck that can hard counter another deck, yes, that doesn’t mean that other deck will be bad. However, you will win or lose on the back of whatever cards you get from your theft cards. Playing them a second time will not always make things better unless all you played was well stated minions and spells that didn’t target. The very concept of the deck is too random against anything to be able to jump off the Rogue core game plan consistently like Keleseth Rogue was able to until the Patches nerf.

It is like Discard Warlock. You cannot guarantee anything will go the way you want it to go, and Discard Warlock has received a lot more good support, the quest, Zavas, Bloodqueen, Mel’s Imp, Silverwear Golem, and Cataclysm, than Thief Rogue. If all new Thief Rogue cards discovered what they added or were at least capable of generating more than one card, then it could become something worthwhile.

The game has been receiving enough Thief Rogue cards to be able to say it is an inherently flawed archetype and without some sort of massive reward and a collection of at least half a dozen good support cards like Taunt Warrior got with Un’Goro it is unlikely to be able to work as anything beyond a fringe deck. It now has half of that requirement. This is the win condition such a deck would need. Now we just need to see better support than we have right now.

Fledgling has and still is good enough to see play in Zoo Warlock, Aggro Druid, and even Priest sometimes.

If Swashburgler was so fantastic hasn’t it seen major play since Frozen Throne was release? Half of the reason why it say play was Pre-nerf Patches and the other half was because it was able to easily fill in holes left in your mana curve.

The same question can be asked about Undercity Huckster, but if you were to look back through the sort of decks that played it they were most often N’Zoth Rogue decks that would play it and then target it with Unearthed Raptor, something that is no longer possible in standard. The reason why it saw play is because to Rogue it functionally was a better Loot Hoarder.

I am not saying Swashburgler and Huckerster are bad cards, just circumstantially good ones. They are slightly above the average power of cards within their mana cost as is this by themselves and it could see play in an environment where there are fewer cards to compete with, but I cannot see this card being a powerhouse in the same way they were able to in the Rogue decks from the last couple years.