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As the game hasn’t gone through too many patches yet, I thought I’d make a record of my thoughts and progress. I’ll go through each of the heroes’ cards I have experience with first.


Hero experience in order:

1 - Rogue
2 - Mage
3 - Shaman
4 - Hunter


This is strictly just my personal playstyle, I have no idea if it’s the best or worst way to play. So this week let’s start with Rogue.

I’ve seen so many different styles of rogue. Although they may seem the same (coin + Defias Ringleader) but there are a lot of unique ways each rogue plays their deck. I’m a spell heavy rogue, pretty much a bum rush style. My thought process is “I’ll kill you faster than you kill me.”


Rogue cards:

- Backstab - I think this is rogue’s bread & butter. Every rogue deck no matter how different will have 2 of these. This is an amazing card to clear minions & combo with.

- Conceal - I don’t use this card at all. The way I’ve seen others use it is to protect their ‘miracle’ card (ie. Questing Adventurer, Twilight Drake). If your rogue deck relies on minions I’d imagine this is a must have card. The 0 mana is also delicious.

- Preparation - I get this card a lot when I play arena. I find it average, but in a constructed deck there are just so many other cards that could take its place. This card does give the opportunity to Defias Ringleader turn 2 if you went first, which is still deadly compared to coin + Defias.

- Shadowstep - I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately, but don’t use it myself as well. So many uses for this such as extra card draws with minions that have card draw battle cry, extra tokens on the battlefield, or taking back a injured minion. It’s definitely annoying to play against, but I feel this card is only powerful with all the cards align.

- Cold Blood - my personal bread & butter. I love using this early on like turn 2 or 3 and start hacking away with a 6/1 minion. IMO the damage output justifies getting off even 1 hit early on. Every turn the opponent doesn’t take care of Cold Blood is so much added pressure in game.

- Deadly Poison - I don’t know how to function with rogue without this card. This card just makes the impossible possible. At the very least no minion with 4 life will survive this 1 mana card. The damage our hero takes is nothing compared to how deadly this card is.

- Shiv - Also a must. 1 damage with draw card is too good to pass up.

- Sinister Strike - Surprisingly though I run a bum rush type of deck, I couldn’t find a good place for this card. I like the damage, I like the mana cost, but I don’t like that it only targets heroes. I feel this card becomes a gamble or top deck kind of card, which I wanted to build more consistency. There’s no doubt lots of rogues run it, and it’s pretty damn deadly.

- Betrayal - I use to rely heavily on this card for board clearing, later to find that it was dead weight against other decks that are spell heavy. IMO against any deck that has 15 minions it’s valuable, other than that there are better choices out there.

- Blade Flurry - I use to pack one of these in my deck as well, it has amazing board clear potential. I think it would have a place in my deck if I was playing a marginally different style. This would definitely be in my side decks.

- Eviscerate - all rogues must have. Period.

- Headcrack - I think no one is a stranger to this card, but the question is to have 1 or 2 in your deck? I went with 2 because I’m rushing the opponent, and these let me hop over taunts. In my previous rogue deck where it was more minion heavy, 2 seemed a bit much. Minion heavy decks would never have the mana to sustain constant double headcracks.

- Sap - Not a big fan of this card. Yeah it has its uses and all, but imo for 2 mana it’s a bit hefty for a simply ‘return to hand’ mechanic. We have cards with 0/1 mana that can ‘kill’ the card permanently, this card seems like a desperation move which if that’s the case perhaps you want to rethink the whole deck.

- Defias Ringleader - Coin.

- Patient Assassin - I never really had the chance to use this card both in arena/constructed. It’s a scary card late game, but 1/1 isn’t really going to last very long even with stealth imo. I can see a lot of scenarios where it would be useful, but they seem like limited scenarios.

- Perditions Blade - I run one of these. The battlecry is amazing early game to clear minions, especially the fact that the battlecry you can still attack with the hero.

- Fan of Knives - Run some spell power and this card feels a little imba. A must in every deck imo, this is our only AOE clear card.

- Edwin VanCleef - Never seen this card played in the game. No experience to comment on this.

- SI:7 Agent - a much much better version of Ironforge Rifleman. Very efficient card.

- Master of Disguise - Not of fan of this one too. I’d much rather run a Ogre Magi rather than this for the same cost. Stealth is nice, but not often deadly.

- Assassin’s Blade - Another must on the rogue list. Double deadly poison this and your opponent has the same amount of turns as the duration of the blade to live.

- Assassinate - yes. Yes yes yes. This is our tool vs those annoying taunt & divine shields.

- Vanish - Fun card. I’ve never used it myself, but had opponents use it a couple of times. Never felt the threat of it. I guess I’d call it a ‘oh shit’ card?

- Kidnapper - Not a fan at all. 6 mana for 5/3. Costs too much, and the combo is nice, but not deadly.

- Sprint - I use to run 1 of these in my previous rogue deck. 1 of these will do in most decks, I’ve found 2 to be overkill. This is also a very dangerous card, as we’re pretty much sacrificing 1 turn to draw 4 cards.



Nerf incoming

It’s been announced that Rogue will be getting a nerf, especially the coin + Defias issue. I think I’ll still stick to rogue after the nerf though. I truly enjoy rogue’s mechanics. Having a permanent weapon seems too good to pass up. Will just have to find different ways to be imba.


Next week

I’ll go over Mage next week. Mage is actually the 1st hero I had any success with and its thanks to Doa for inspiring to make it (he completely owned me with his Mage deck).


Till then! Well played ~


scrub in the wrong town,
Reere.