Today I'd like to share my thoughts on the deck I really enjoyed playing past couple of days that actually surprised me with it's performance because it felt too swingy and dependent on "the nuts" draw. I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't and had a blast playing it with a nice win rate.

Rouge has been given really a lot of deathrattle tools but that kind of rouge archetype never seemed to have any success. This time it is different. Even though rouge didn't get any deathrattle stuff this expansion, we have seen many nerfs, mostly on cheap cards and druid ramp so the game slowed down a bit. This really helped this archetype quite a bit.

At first, I just wanted to play some funky deck that can pull off crazy tempo swings and does silly stuff in general. So I went from the Carnivorous Cube because that is the number one suspect when we are talking about "cheating" out a big tempo/value. Also, I haven't been playing Hearthstone during earlier expansion, Boomsday and I wanted to test out those cards as well. Boomsday had really a lot of deathrattle stuff like:

These cards were really well supported by some older cards including the nefarious Cube:

Starting to build a deck from all of these made a big core with over a half a deck so I just dumped as many other deathrattle cards as possible, double Backstab and Preparation for tempo and gave it a go. Myra and Violet Haze were too random for my taste so very early on I got rid of them because I had trouble defining my actual plan during the game before playing those cards in case I drew them and figured that the deck performed really well when I didn't draw any of them. So I got rid of those and put some deathrattle minions and came up with a deck similar to the one I ended up with after a couple of days:

You might notice Dollmaster Dorian in the decklist, most of the players even forgot about this card ever existed haha. Well, rightfully so, because this card is bad in general but this deck brings out probably the highest potential of it as possible, especially when combined with Roll the Bones that on average would draw like 3-4 cards and any deathrattle minion drawn has an immediate impact on the board even though they are only 1/1s.

Match-ups

This week most games I played were versus Wall Priest, Odd Warrior, Midrange Hunter, Zoo Warlock, Odd and Aggro Paladin and most recently a bit more of Odd Secret Mages.

Priest and Warrior are the easiest ones because of their strategy depends on board control with their high impact board clears but when to board is full of death-rattle minions their job gets a lot more difficult, an exception is a Psychic Scream but it is easy to play around and it costs Priest a whole turn after which you can again reload the board with power plays with Cube or Spiritsinger Umbra that create a huge board presence with only 2-3 cards played.

Mulligan for: Roll the Bones, Umbra, Cube, Onyx Spellstone, Necrium Vial
This will ensure you don't run out of stuff to create huge pressure and make them play their removals fast and then you can just take over the game.

Midrange Hunter is a bit harder but their plan is also centered around board control only difference is they are establishing it with minion trading. The way to play is to slow down the game until you can pull off some crazy tempo turn and close the game. It is important to clear and stay relevant on the board or you will suffer too much face damage and probably die before getting to your power plays.

Mulligan for: Backstab, Necrium Blade, Plated Beetle, Kaboom Bot, Roll the Bones
Early game is the most important part of this match-up to reduce taken face damage as much as you can so you get the time to out-tempo your opponent and close out the game before dying.

Odd and Aggro Paladin are probably the hardest match-ups, at least for me. Luckily Rouge hero power is really effective to get rid of the "dudes" from Paladin hero power, but sometimes they are just too fast and wide on board that they overwhelm with tokens too early to react to them. I don't have any concrete plan in these games other than playing anything I can play and try to get the grip on the board. To get better odds in the match-up it is best to substitute Dollmaster Dorian with Zilliax and utilize him with other mechs to get a decent taunt and a considerable life gain to stay alive.

Mulligan for: Plated Beetle, Backstab, Kobold Illusionist, Umbra
Maybe a bit surprising I try to mulligan for Umbra, but actually, this is mostly an ok play on turn 4 because the dagger helps you clear most of the tokens and Umbra will usually survive a turn and that is where you can play a deathrattle minion to get the advantage on the board.

After Rotation

If it doesn't get some really powerful cards this deck archetype will die out after the rotation. It will lose the Cube, Umbra, Spellstone and pretty much everything that could be considered a core for this deck. So if you don't own these cards and don't have too much dust, it makes crafting this deck a bit too much of an investment. I wouldn't recommend it. But for those that have cards required definitely try it out, it is lots of fun and has a decent success on the current ladder.

Lastly, I would like to show you my stats with this deck, games were played in Legend around rank 1500-950. The deck has potential but the fun I got from it was amazing. Just slamming Umbra and Cubing something filling the board with sticky deathrattles and numerous big minions in one turn is so satisfying to me, hope you guys have as much fun as I had while playing this deck.

Thank you for reading!

,z3ll