A quest to dominate as Rogue has lead me to crafting one of my favorite decks to date.
I never played much Rogue. Handlock and control warrior are my bread and butters, but I did play a bit of Miracle back when it was a thing. I quite enjoyed it, it was very methodical and cerebral, and I managed a pretty fun variation using wisps and Edwin. But with the nerfs to Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Leeroy, Miracle is kinda dead, with only a few niche OTK decks using Malygos cheese remaining. So that got me thinking, without the auctioneers, the leeroy, the concelas, the shadowsteps, or the other cards that all went into the miracle build of draw your entire deck for a huge combo turn, that leaves quite a bit of room to build a more traditional midrange deck, but with the same tempo power of miracle.
What is tempo? Tempo is forcing your opponent to react to you rather than you reacting to him. Any time your opponent starts his turn with no minions facing your minions, you have a tempo advantage, because your minions will be able to act before the ones he plays will. Why is Rogue good at this? Because of cards like backstab, preparation, SI:7 agent, deadly poison, these all allow for cheap removal to keep board control while being able to play at or above your mana curve. The rogue hero ability is also great for this. You might not think that being able to stab for 1 damage is all that great, I mean druids can do that, and they gain effective health at the same time, and mages can do it without any health loss whatsoever. But what makes rogues unique is that their ability not only effects the current turn, it carries over into the following turn. That would be like a mage gaining 2 extra mana every other turn to be able to fireblast one more time. Miracle was always very good at getting to midgame so they could start up their combo, so now the goal is to get to midgame to play... well, midgame. Instead of giving a full decklist (because it depends a lot on what you're facing a lot of, and you can easily look up old miracle decks for the core) I'm instead going to focus on notable cards.
Notable cards:
Violet Teacher - 6 mana Gadgetzan is unplayable, but you still have lots of spells flying around for little to no cost, and that makes the 4 mana violet teacher worthwhile. Worse case scenario, you don't play any spells with her and she's a slightly worse yeti. Best case scenario, and one that happens very often, you get a slightly worse yeti and an army of 1/1's. Sure, they might get AOE'd down, but you're forcing your opponent to react to your threat, and if they can't, that's super value. They offer pressure starting at turn 4, and are just all around good in this deck.
Big Game Hunter - Meta decision tech card. Lots of handlocks out there still, and even against zoo the edition of a 4/2 body for 3 isn't bad, especially since a lot of zoo are now running a sea giant in their deck.
Bloodmage Thalnos/Kobold Geomancer - I run one of each. If I could run two Thalnoses, I would. If I didn't have Thalnos, I would totally run two geomancers. These are never used as a body on the board, but instead are used for their boost to spellpower, and since they're cheap at only 2 mana, can also start combos. They combine very well with backstab, shiv, blade flurry (if you already have a deadly poison set up, one of these combined with blade flurry is a 4 mana FLAMESTRIKE that also hits face) and fan of knives.
Fan of Knives/Blade Flurry - Zoo and facehunter are out there, and even some new army of ones Paladin variants. These cards make them cry, and combined with spellpower even beefier minions can be taken out in mass. Fan also draws a card, that's win/win.
Azure Drake - An old favorite makes a return, used here for the 4/4 body, extra card draw, and the aforementioned bonuses that spell power give you. Seriously, spellpower is amazing with this deck, and the 4/4 body is a nice threat.
Sabotage - a 4 mana assassinate that can't be targeted, but with your other cheap spells you can usually take out anything weak that you wouldn't want to waste an assassinate on. When combo'd, it even destroys that truesilver champion that darn Paladin is holding. One of only two GvG cards I'm currently using, I just run 1 because I already have a lot of ways to take out threats. Also of note: preparation makes this card free, and auto-combos for free weapon removal.
Sludge Belcher - almost an auto-include in most mid-range decks, and still good here.
Dr. Boom - the other GvG card in this deck. Dr. Boom is just too good not to include. Is it turn 7? Are you holding Dr. Boom? Then you play Dr. Boom. One of the only GvG legendaries I've crafted, since he's just too good, I naturally recently opened ANOTHER of him to punish me for my impatience. Oh well, maybe he'll get nerfed and I'll get 3200 dust out of it.
Ragnaros - Are you playing a midrange deck? Do you have Ragnaros? Yeah, you know what to do.
Sprint - I run one, because it is sometimes super awesome. With a prep, it's draw 4 cards for 4 mana, and without a prep, sometimes you find yourself somehow out-controlled and into a topdeck battle. Sprint is the perfect card to draw you swing things back into your favor. This also gives even more card draw to a combo heavy deck (total card draw: shiv, fan of knives, thalnos, azure drake, sprint)
Possible Editions: Cards I've thought about but haven't included.
Edwin Van Cleef - I love Edwin, and since this is a combo heavy deck, he could very well pose a big threat even early on. But with GvG bringing about a lot of new card effects, owls have become almost auto-include in a lot of decks, and at current I don't have anything that's really silenceable outside of removing spellpower (which would be a waste of an owl) or removing belcher's deathrattle and taunt. Edwin makes you vulnerable to owl, and I don't like that.
Trade Prince Gallywix - A fun card, leads to a more control-oriented game, but one I just don't think is right for this deck. While it does give you free spells, you already have a lot of spells at your disposal, and it also effectively makes all of your opponent's spells cost 1 less mana, which can be very dangerous. If you're super worried about spells, Loatheb or Troggzor might make better replacements. Loatheb I feel is a bit weaker, as it requires you to already have threats on the board to get the most value (ie they can't remove those threats with spells) whereas Troggzor has a persistent effect, and gains value even if he only spawns one trogg before getting obliterated. Though, again, Troggzor and Gallywix can both be neutralized with an owl, Loatheb can't... hard call. I might come back to these at some point.
Loatheb/Troggzor - see above
