Hearthstone

[Ichabod]

Backstab is, in my opinion, one of the key rogue cards for arena. Usually it kills 2 drops and you can actually play another thing on turn 2. It also opens to easy combos, being 0 cost.

My best rogue decks (I think I had 1 or 2 12-wins with rogue) usually cascade the board control gained on the first turns due to very early removal (deadly poison into hero power - kills most 2 and 3 drops, can even kill a yeti combined with backstab; backstab; eviscerate; SI:7 Agent) into a win before the opponent can. Usually, you start losing steam after some time, when the better mid-late game cards of the other classes help them to stabilize (cards like sap and assassinate are good to keep board control if the opponent has a minion heavy deck, but there's not much you can do against spell removal like flame strike), so it's good to have finishers like Assassin's Blade and Eviscerate or cards with stealth/charge.

Take that with a grain of salt, though. My success with rogue decks was from some time ago, so it can very well be due to the fact that players were worse back then. I'm not having much success in the game lately, though I haven't been playing much rogue.

[Molach]

Speaking of OP decks, currently at 7-1 wins with this. The little window in the pic is the important stuff, rest is pretty average deck. A bit shaky early game.



(I just played my faceless manipulator)
Felt bad for this poor guy. After he killed my manipulated 5/10, I went flamestrike for a full wipe, then blizzard two times. Even drew back another flamestrike and a blizzard, so even after wiping his board 3 times I still had 3 wipers left.


Loss was due to weak starting game and smart opponent (only had 2 wipes and not enough mana to play one of them that time).

[Kuro]

So, I just went 12 wins for the 4th time since I started recording (3rd with a Mage!)

In addition to the golden Feral Spirit there I pulled a Cenarius from the pack. What was odd is I honestly thought the Deck was fairly average aside from the Illidan.

2:
Wild Pyromancer
Arcane Explosion x2
Acidic Swamp Ooze
Mad Bomber
Sorcerer's Apprentice
Bloodfen Raptor
Dire Wolf Alpha
Frostbolt

3:
Acolyte of Pain
Ironfur Grizzly
Harvest Golem
Earthen Ring Farseer
Wolfrider
Blood Knight

4:
Dark Iron Dwarf
Fireball x2
Dragonling Mechanic
Defender of Argus
Ancient Brewmaster
Twilight Drake

5:
Azure Drake x2
Darkscale Healer
Silver Hand Knight

6:
Boulderfist Ogre
Illidan Stormrage

7+:
Flamestrike
War Golem

[Jowy]

Made a highly experimental deck just to see how it'd fare. First opponent: Gaara. RIP deck.

[Bacchus]

First couple of turns went badly wrong for a giants warlock:



I have to say, the greatest satisfaction with priest is dealing with these insane epic/legendary heavy decks. He managed to deal with the situation by Power Overwhelming the Defender, then Shadowflaming him, and then Soulifiring the remaining health of the other giant. Five cards for two! His kingdom for a Siphon Soul.

[Gaspar]

If you have a half an hour, I highly recommend watching this Warrior Control Mirror between Tides of Time and Monk from Deck Wars today. Absolutely insane ending.

VOD Here.

[Nystul]

When I decided to try warlock this month I didn't realize *everybody* was going to be warlocks. All of the hunters really got scared away by 1 more mana on the doggies? It has to still be viable. I think I see 5 warlocks for every hunter since the change.

Playing zoo against the warlocks with giants is pretty intense. It seems like there is a very specific window of opportunity in which I can win the game. Argent commander and soulfire for the win on turn 8, before he can cheat on turn 9. But not too fast or molten giants for the loss.

[Bacchus]

If you have a half an hour, I highly recommend watching this Warrior Control Mirror between Tides of Time and Monk from Deck Wars today. Absolutely insane ending.

VOD Here.

Man, these commentators are even worse than the poker ones.

[WilliamLP]

Backstab is, in my opinion, one of the key rogue cards for arena. Usually it kills 2 drops and you can actually play another thing on turn 2. It also opens to easy combos, being 0 cost.

My best rogue decks (I think I had 1 or 2 12-wins with rogue) usually cascade the board control gained on the first turns due to very early removal (deadly poison into hero power - kills most 2 and 3 drops, can even kill a yeti combined with backstab; backstab; eviscerate; SI:7 Agent) into a win before the opponent can. Usually, you start losing steam after some time, when the better mid-late game cards of the other classes help them to stabilize (cards like sap and assassinate are good to keep board control if the opponent has a minion heavy deck, but there's not much you can do against spell removal like flame strike), so it's good to have finishers like Assassin's Blade and Eviscerate or cards with stealth/charge.

Take that with a grain of salt, though. My success with rogue decks was from some time ago, so it can very well be due to the fact that players were worse back then. I'm not having much success in the game lately, though I haven't been playing much rogue.

Yeah, arena seems to have gotten a lot tougher in the last few months, but a lot of people are better at rogue than I am, and the statistics on it seem quite good. According to that report Rogue gets odds on every class except mage. But even then it's close... To me, when I'm queuing up against a mage as rogue I almost give up hope immediately. If he has a good deck with good draws it feels almost like an auto-lose to me.

I tend to value the first backstab in a draft pretty highly. I don't know where to stop though. I feel like if I try to draft an extreme beatdown rogue, it eventually gets stopped when it starts hitting mage decks. But when my tempo rogues win they win big. One of the best feelings in the game is killing a mage who has a handful of cards just before they have 7 mana.

SI:7 and Eviscerate seem like key cards, but even those are situational to an extent. The famous coin + Defias is good on turn 1 with the coin but that's situational too. Deadly poison in practice is usually used as a 3 mana fiery war axe. Assassinate is great but expensive.

Spellpower for arena rogues is intriguing but I don't know if it's a noob trap. Well, Azure Drake is excellent, but I don't know about passing up other cards for things like Ogre Magi and Kobold Geomancer.

These are random thoughts, but I definitely have a lot to learn about how to play rogue well.

If you have a half an hour, I highly recommend watching this Warrior Control Mirror between Tides of Time and Monk from Deck Wars today. Absolutely insane ending.

I watched that, and yeah, wow. Matches that use every card in the deck are cool, it's hard to blame good draws for a loss. But [the loser] got pretty unlucky there.

[Bacchus]

Matches that use every card in the deck are cool..

That's about 80% of the constructed matches facing mage, warrior and mirror priest for me Just finished a match against an aggro mage with both of us in fatigue, no cards in hand and no minions on the board. If the match ends with 15 cards in deck against any opponent, I have probably lost. Also why Thoughsteal is so amazing, it increases your effective deck size by 1; even if it only hits a Leper Gnome, it is still an extra card that the opponent simply doesn't have.

Edit: Northshire Cleric, on the other hand, can be a real killer for its owner, as has been pointed out above in the thread.