By now it is no secret that rogues have made a name for themselves. The winner of DMF Milan, Erik van der Laan, was running a Daspien Bladedancer deck and there was also a Rotun Daggerhand deck piloted by Claus Kropp in the top 8. In true rogue fashion, these decks began to pop up unexpectedly and have risen to the top very quickly. An argument can be made for both heroes as to which one is better but I’m not here to debate the two. I may write about Daspien later but for now I am going to give my rundown on Rotun.
Since the very beginning of WoW TCG rogues have gotten the shaft. It was incredibly difficult if not impossible to put a rogue deck together but it was even more difficult to find one that could beat a rush deck. It just took way too long to get everything a rogue needs into play and still control rush at the same time. Those days have now passed us by. Rogues can outrun the rush decks if they need to. They can penetrate the armor of equipment decks while having access to excellent equipment removal if they need it. They have always been at least decent against protector heavy control decks because they can combo out around the protectors. Rogues are now a viable option and you shouldn’t be surprised if you see a few at your local regional tournaments. The deck we have chosen to test with was piloted by Anthony Justice, the winner of the regional in Columbus, Ohio a couple weeks ago.
You can find the decklist at this link. http://wow.tcgplayer.com/db/Deck.asp?ID=3179
In our testing of the Rotun Daggerhand deck, we came to three distinct conclusions. The deck can play super fast and win by turn 5 or 6 fairly easily since it can now dual wield without much trouble, Steelsmith Joseph Carroll can be a gigantic beast, and Deadly Poison is one of the most annoying things in the world to deal with if you don’t have ability removal. These may seem like fairly obvious conclusions, and I agree that they are, but if you haven’t actually played with this deck then you probably don’t grasp the magnitude of the situation. The draw that absolutely tore up the other decks in our playtesting was a turn one Surprise Attacks and Eshkandar’s Right Claw. I believe in our testing that this draw has only been beaten once. Follow that up with a turn two Eye of Rend and Steelsmith Joseph Carroll, turn three Timeslicer, and you have quite a beating on your hands. I’m not saying that this is an ideal draw but it was one that we encountered often enough to be wary of it. If you can drop a Deadly Poison between turns 2-4 it is going to do some nasty damage. I even managed to have three 6/6 Steelsmith Joseph Carroll in play at one point, which was followed by two 10/10s later in the same game. The deck is a lot of fun to play and it is super fast.
I have to admit, when I first saw the heroes from Fires of Outland, I didn’t hesitate to ridicule Rotun’s flip ability. I couldn’t figure out why in the world someone would want to pay 3 to flip and do 1 damage regardless of the fact that it was combat damage or not. Through our playtesting I have come to realize that my premature accusation was very wrong. Using his flip ability to put a Deadly Poison on the opposing control deck’s hero was something that became commonplace. I also must admit that I did not like the idea of Major Healing Potion in any deck but it did manage to save me from death a few times even though it seems like it is mostly in the deck to pump up Steelsmith Joseph Carroll.
So how exactly do you play this deck against the other big decks out there? Well the first match-up that you will likely run into at some point is the mirror match. If you happen to come up against the mirror in the later rounds you should probably be thankful because you will have plenty of time to go get some food while the 50 minutes left in the round plays out. One determining factor for rogue on rogue is going to be who goes first unless that person just has a horrid draw. I know that’s a sad way to determine the winner but there isn’t much a rogue can do to control another rogue. You just have to hope that they don’t hit quite the optimal curve that you do if you go second. However, one thing to take note of, is that the player who draws the most daggers might actually come out on top. If you draw enough daggers to swing with yours and play a new one or two for a couple turns to swing back into them, you are probably going to pull it out. Just something to consider for those of you playing rogue. I honestly don’t think this match-up will go more than 6 turns each game. Yes it is a lot of fun to just go all out for 5 or 6 turns and see how much damage you can deal how fast. It’s kind of like two boxers trading hits to the face to see who goes down first. It will be fun at first but after a while it’ll grow old. So if you choose to play a rogue deck bare in mind that if you see mirrors all day it will probably come down to who wins the die roll.
Another prevalent deck is Gorebelly. The one thing that the rogue has over Gorebelly right now though is that it takes a while for Gorebelly to set up. In our testing this match-up favored the rogue although not by much. The rogue sets up and attacks for more than Gorebelly in the first 5 turns. However, from turn 6 on Gorebelly can usually heal back the damage with Wraith Scythe. If he doesn’t have Doomplate Legguards in play yet it usually isn’t quite as disastrous. The Surprise Attacks let you penetrate his armor and with all of the weapon pumps your two daggers usually hit for 8-12 by turn 5. One of the volatile points of this match-up though is Steelsmith Joseph Carroll. If you can put a couple of him out early on and keep them out of fatal range with equipment pumps then you will mostly likely win on turn 5 or 6. The reason he is so vital is because having two 6/6 guys on turn 5 swinging in along with you hero for 12 is going to generally be too overwhelming to heal back the damage with Wraith Scythe. You have to be careful when you put them out though because if Gorebelly can just take them out with his Striker’s Mark it isn’t a good idea to drop them until there are multiples. If Gorebelly can’t find his Striker’s Mark though, then this match-up swings further into the rogue’s favor. Some of the Rotun decks are running Leeroy Jenkins and while we don’t have him in our version of the deck, I can definitely see how he might squeeze in the last 6 or so damage. One thing to think about though, is the match-up after sideboarding. While I haven’t personally tested this, it seems like Gorebelly does not like Crippling Poison. I think you would bring this in from the sideboard and he would very rarely be able to un-tap if he actually wanted to set up his equipment. Granted, he can still swing back but I don’t think that is going to get it done, especially if you haven’t gigantic Steelsmith Joseph Carrols.
The search for the ultimate FoO rush deck is still taking place I believe so I’m not going to talk about a specific rush match-up but rather in general terms. For most the part, Rotun can outrun rush decks without much of an issue. If he happens to stumble out of the gates he might have to play catch up but that rarely happens. The draws are consistent enough that you can easily expect to out-rush the rush decks almost every game. The die roll is important as usual in fast deck vs. fast deck. This will be very similar to the mirror except sometimes the math will add up to where it will be beneficial for you to only swing in with one dagger and swing back into an ally with the other. Jackknife comes in really handy in these match-ups because you will almost always two-for-one with it. Against the mid-range hunter decks you will be able to take out a Fury and some other ally with it. This deck can very easily outrun the mid-range decks though so I wouldn’t worry too incredibly much about this scenario. It isn’t instant which is kind of a bummer but it’s still a very solid card that will almost always be a two-for-one. So in general, you will probably just need to approach rush match-ups as trying to outrun them with a little bit of board control mixed in as necessary. Don’t totally try to control the board because it is hard to run rush decks out of allies and you will be taking damage from at least some of them.
Now what about control decks made to beat solo decks? Well, sometimes you just have to concede that a person’s deck was built around beating the kind of deck you are running. It sucks and I hate it but it happens. However, one thing that most control decks don’t main deck answers for is Deadly Poison. We played Rotun against a few different control decks and fairly often the poison just ate away and eventually killed the hero while they were trying to deal with the giant Joseph Carrolls and rogue daggers. There are some things you need to watch out for though. Lots of protectors can become a problem fairly quickly, and warlocks with lots of protectors are even worse because they remove your Steelsmiths from the game and you can’t use Finkle Einhorn, At Your Service! to get them back. If they run Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire you are probably going to have a tough time as well. Deadly Poison does eat away at them though, and at 2 damage per turn it puts them on a pretty fast clock. The other match-up you need to look out for is a control paladin deck. Rotun Daggerhand does not like Hammer of Justice and Steelsmith Joseph Carroll does not like Holy Shield early on. Deadly Poison also seems to eat away at paladins fairly efficiently though too so they get put on the same kind of clock as a warlock.
The rogue decks took everyone by surprise. I was somewhat skeptical when I first got wind of them, mostly due to the fact that they have been absolutely terrible up until now. If you are going to play a rogue at your next tournament I wish you luck even though you probably won’t need it because it just runs right over a lot of decks. If you aren’t planning on playing a rogue, then make sure you have taken the proper precautions to deal with all of the different threats they throw at you because it can be quite a lot to handle.
Finding those decks that are the quiet steady workhorses is what I’ve come to enjoy about TCGs. I didn’t get to make it to the regional in Austin this past Saturday, but I was going to play a deck that I thought was a safe choice. It was by no means extravagant but it got the job done for me.
I’ve come to like control decks more than any other archetype. Obviously if I find a rush deck that is amazing I’m going to play it at a tournament, but if I can even find a comparable control deck, then that’s what I’m playing. I have also developed quite an affinity for two different classes in WoW. Warlock is a very powerful class that seemingly has an answer to almost any situation. With the new pet Hukkath, the warlock has a decent answer to the ever troublesome Mortal Strikes and Aimed Shots of the world. However, I have chosen to stick my initial effort post Fires of Outland into constructing a worthy Paladin deck.
I don’t mean to sound like a slacker, but I didn’t make it to Nationals this year either. Bryan and I were both qualified to go, but extraneous circumstances prevented that from happening. Had I gone though, I would have been playing Aleyah Dawnborn. I think the Paladins easily have some of the best abilities in the game. Equipment is a big time nuisance for almost any deck, and they have access to that as well. The Aleyah deck I would have played attempted to stall, stall, stall, drop a giant Tewa Wildmane or Heirophant Caydiem, and proceed to wreak havoc from there. I also ran Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros to provide a non-ally based win condition.
With the release of Fires of Outland, I decided to remake this deck. The first thing I had to take into consideration was that a lot of people would probably be playing Gorebelly after its performance at Nationals. That being the case, I opted to switch over to alliance due to its vastly more efficient equipment removal. The new ally, Vindicator Borovon, was very appealing to me. Ok, so what if I do happen to get Borovon into play against Gorebelly? How do I keep him alive? I needed to keep him from getting attacked by weapons and allies, so I would need to run protectors. I also needed to keep him from getting hit by Mortal Strike or Cleave. I chose to go with 4 Blessing of Freedom main deck.
Now, since I had chosen to go with Borovon I decided that I should run Magni, and Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker to compliment him since the alliance late game is so potent, not to mention you get access to The Missing Diplomat. I still needed smaller protectors to watch Borovon’s back the first few turns until I could get Magni out though. Kulvo Jadefist is the new super protector and he comes in very nicely at the 3 drop. I chose him over Parvink because it is too easy to get rid of Parvink with a Perdition’s Blade and I still had to take into consideration that rush decks would be everywhere.
I was starting to notice a trend with my allies at this point. Every one of them had big numbers on the defensive end and it started to look familiar to me. At one of the regional tournaments I attended, Tim Batow beat me with his control version of Phadalus. The thing that caught me the most off guard with his deck was that he threw out a Vindicator Enkallus and Lady Kath on turns 4 and 5. I liked this idea a lot, and it seemed to fit the deck I was assembling quite well. Running Lady Kath also opened me up to a win condition other than gigantic allies. She allowed me to run Acolyte Demia. I have been trying to squeeze Acolyte Demia into a deck for quite a while and every time I try that is exactly what it seems like… I’m trying to squeeze her in there. She just hasn’t seemed to fit anything properly. However, with so many allies with big butts and Lady Kath in this deck, she would fit in quite nicely.
Now I needed to start sifting through all of the great Paladin abilities. I am a firm believer that Hammer of Justice is an instant 4-of in almost any deck. It shuts down shamans swinging into you with two daggers, warriors swinging into you with giant weapons, druids swinging into you for no cost, and all of the Rapid Fire hunter decks. Also, given the fact that Fires of Outland is new, there are going to be ample rush decks. Consecration is obviously a good card to have on your side versus the rush decks.
I have already stated that I ran 4 Blessing of Freedom. Other than being able to protect allies at crucial moments, it is pertinent to keep one in your hand if at all possible to keep from getting a Mortal Strike to the face. One card in particular made me sway in the vicinity of Graccus for this deck and that card is Holy Shield. It really is a fantastic card. I am also going to put together a Nathadan deck very soon with Holy Shield in mind too. I originally had too much rush control main deck because I was running Devotion Aura as well. Since this deck is trying to stall its way to the late game, drawing cards is a very important factor. As such, Bryan mentioned that Blessing of Wisdom was probably a better play for the deck than Devotion Aura.
Now, all of the Paladin abilities are very good, but we somehow managed to sneak in an unexpected MVP for the ability group. Redemption is a fantastic card. I have used it so many times in so many different situations. I’ve brought back Kulvo with it to help keep tempo on rush/mid-range decks. I brought back Borovon to keep destroying equipment. I’ve brought back Magni because… well, he’s Magni. It has been used one time or another on every single ally in the deck I think. There were quite a few times in our testing that Gorebelly would Mortal Strike Magni or Borovon since he couldn’t get to them through the protectors, and I would just Redemption them back the next turn. This card is really good and it should by no means be underestimated.
Since Paladin is a class that can take advantage of the good equipments, we decided to run a few. There are a lot of shields that could come in handy, but Draconian Deflector has proven itself more than worthy. The ability to protect a Borovon or Acolyte Demia comes in very handy. In an effort to shore up the matchup with rush/mid-range decks we chose to run Fel Iron Hatchet. Being able to swing back for 2 damage at 0 cost is the motivating factor for the weapon. There has even been a few times when I would swing into a big ally, such as Infernal, with the hatchet and Holy Shield myself to finish him off. Or Consecration all of the opposing Magni’s tokens, swing into him and Holy Shield myself. Fel Iron Hatchet comes in very handy. The last equipment we ran was Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. The weapon should speak for itself just fine I hope, but a big part of the reasoning is that it provides us with an equipment based win-condition since most warlock decks tend to Shred Soul and Jar Soul the big allies.
As for quests, we chose to go with Gahz’ridian because the quest is great. However, we did still run a couple of In Dreams as well. To Serve Kumisha found its way into the deck since there are so many high cost cards. Chasing-A-Me might seem like overkill since we ran Redemption, but somehow it never seemed like overkill while playing the deck. The Missing Diplomat has to be in any deck that runs the big alliance allies, and this deck definitely has its fair share. Now, the one quest we have been debating about that I’m not sure is all that fantastic in the deck is Corki’s Ransom. I know it seems like continuous card draw late in the game, but this deck draws a lot of cards anyway. A lot of turns go by where all you really feel like doing is completing quests. I’m still up in the air on Corki’s Ransom, but I know at this point that I’ve never really been excited to complete it.
I suppose I can go ahead and show you the rough deck list we have together.
4 Consecration
4 Blessing of Freedom
4 Holy Shield
4 Hammer of Justice
3 Redemption
3 Blessing of Wisdom
3 Fel Iron Hatchet
3 Draconian Deflector
2 Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros
4 Kulvo Jadefist
3 Vindicator Enkallus
2 Lady Kath
1 Acolyte Demia
1 Vindicator Borovon
1 Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker
1 King Magni Bronzebeard
4 Gahz’ridian
3 To Serve Kumisha
3 The Missing Diplomat
3 Chasing A-Me 01
2 In Dreams
2 Corki’s Ransom
Now if my count is right, that puts us with 22 abilities, 8 equipment, 13 allies, and 17 quests. How does this deck do in play testing? Well I’m glad you asked. Somehow this deck has managed to confuse me greatly. It seems like every game is close. You will be sitting there playing, and then all of sudden realize you made it to turn 14 and have no idea how. Its like the deck never really wins, but it never really loses either. I know that doesn’t make sense. You will have a much better idea of what I’m talking about if you test with it though. I can safely say that it has a 50% success rate against any given matchup whether it be Gorebelly, Phadalus, or maybe even Moonshadow. (Disclaimer: I’ve never actually even thought of testing with Moonshadow so I have no idea of the results. I would like to think they are better than 50% though.)
Against Gorebelly it all comes down to if you can keep Borovon alive long enough to do his thing. There are generally protectors in the way that make it quite a pain for Gorebelly to get through, especially considering you run Hammer of Justice. One thing to remember though is to keep your hands on a Blessing of Freedom if you can just in case you have to use it to keep from taking a Mortal Strike to the face. If Borovon dies, you will usually have a Redemption to put him right back in play so he becomes quite a nuisance between 3 Redemption and 3 Chasing A-Me.
Against shaman rush decks it probably has a little better than 50% success rate. Consecration, Holy Shield, and Fel Iron Hatchet eat them alive. Not to mention the plethora of protectors that are in the way. As would be the case against almost any rush, the key is to maintain board control until turn 7-8 and then it starts to swing in your favor usually. The shaman being able to chunk daggers at your protectors does get really annoying though.
Against mid-range decks it does fairly well yet again. Fury and Moko do not like Holy Shield at all. You generally have Blessing of Freedom to prevent Aimed Shot to the face. Draconian Deflector soaks up a lot of damage in these matchups too. I’d say it does a smidgen better than 50% against these decks.
The worst matchup the deck has though is against warlock. Shred Soul and Jar Soul on your big allies is terrible since you can’t play Redemption or Chasing A-Me for them. What makes it worse is that they can even pull them out of your hand with Eye of Kilrogg. Granted, you do have Blessing of Freedom to prevent the big allies from getting removed, but between Eye of Kilrogg and whatever ally removal the warlock decides to run, it seems a little overwhelming. The key to this matchup is hoping that they don’t Kilrogg a Sulfuras and that you can get it into play. There is always the option of waiting until you have enough resources to complete Missing Diplomat, find your ally, play him, and still have 1 open for Blessing of Freedom, but it takes a while to get that far. This matchup is by no means good for Graccus, but somehow he still manages to do ok and I think I’d give him about a 40-42% success rate.
For some strange reason I really like playing this deck. If I had been able to make it to Austin this past weekend, I would have played it for sure. We are still doing some tweaking to it however, and if you have any ideas on what might make the deck better I’d love to hear them.
After witnessing the emergence of Gorebelly at the U.S. Nationals, one can’t help but think about tweaking the deck with some of the new Fires of Outland cards to make it more efficient. My brother-in-law and I did some testing before Darkmoon Faire Austin with Gorebelly and really considered playing it, but it didn’t do very well against the Phadalus deck we had together. Some of that was due to the fact that we ran 4 Chipper Ironbane and 3-4 Moira Darkheart. A big reason we didn’t play it however, was because Stronghold Gauntlets were an astonishing $20 apiece. We should have bought them back then…
4 Guardian Steelhorn
3 Doomplate Legguards
3 Deathdealer Breastplate
3 Stronghold Gauntlets
2 Lionheart Helm
2 Girdle of Uther
4 Wraith Scythe
4 Timeslicer
4 Striker’s Mark
1 Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
4 Intercept
4 Mortal Strike
3 Cleave
2 Bloodrage
4 Counterattack
4 Big Game Hunter
3 Swift Discipline
2 Standards and Practices
2 Poison Water
2 Gahz’ridian
The Gorebelly deck is really solid all the way around, and with the new weapons that let you dual wield, it is only getting better. So far we’ve seen two very big additions to our Gorebelly deck that we test with. The first is Timeslicer. One staple of the deck’s ability to curb rush decks is dual wielding any weapon with a Wraith Scythe. You heal insane amounts of damage with every swing while duel wielding these two weapons with only a few armor in play. Not to mention you also heal damage for your Striker’s Mark and don’t take damage back since it is ranged. Timeslicer opens up 4 card slots for you since you don’t have to run Dual Wield anymore. The deck that handles Gorebelly the best is the kind that beats him before he has time to set up. That is exactly why Timeslicer is so good. It lets you swing for 0 cost, so you can begin taking out allies as soon as you drop it, and those resources you don’t have to spend to swing can be used for armor to pump up your weapons. Timeslicer is a great addition to Gorebelly and it makes the deck much more lethal than it already is.
The second big addition we’ve seen is obviously Doomplate Legguards. Gorebelly wants to pump up his weapons as quickly as possible to Mortal Strike you out of the game. These new pants make that job much easier. You can drop a Timeslicer on turn 3, Wraith Scythe on turn 4, Deathdealer Breastplate on turn 5, Striker’s Mark and Doomplate Legguards on turn 6, and your turn 7 is going to be a gigantic swing into the opposition, even more so if you drop Stronghold Gauntlets before you swing. Each of your weapons is +7 attack in this case, so you swing in for 17 on turn 7. Not to mention you mortal strike for 10, and you heal all of the damage you swing for. The Doomplate Legguards provides 6 extra attack when you are dual wielding which is basically 1/3 of the 17 you are swinging for on turn 7. We have also been toying around with Sword of a Thousand Truths in this deck to get a feel for the card. There was one game where I just dropped this and played Mortal Strike immediately for 13 to end the game. Mind you, this is without an Onslaught Girdle. Sword of a Thousand Truths, however, was replaced by Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker because it is sometimes complicated to get around the bigger alliance allies to hit the annoying ones behind them.
One area of debate for Mortal Strike decks is whether to run Onslaught Girdle or Girdle of Uther. Personally I like Girdle of Uther. With the new pants, there is no reason you won’t have enough weapon pumps and Girdle of Uther allows you to swing twice for insane amounts. It makes the deck more versatile in my opinion. If you run Onslaught Girdle now it seems like you are putting all your eggs in one basket. Being able to swing twice on most any turn gives you an alternate win condition if you can’t seem to draw those Mortal Strikes. It also makes it much easier to get through protectors.
Ability selection isn’t incredibly difficult in this deck. Mortal Strike is an instant 4 of and Intercept is very nice to have around for those ferocious allies. Bloodrage is fantastic for card draw. The damage it causes may seem like an annoying little impediment at first, like you keep targeting yourself with your own Searing Totem almost, but don’t forget that you heal damage back because of Wraith Scythe. The last ability that we have debated about but has shown that it is very valuable is Cleave. It is really good against control decks that use the big late game allies. Any card that would theoretically let you two-for-one a couple of Magnis is ok in my book. As long as we’re theorizing, you could theoretically hit two Ivus the Forest Lord, or Lokholar the Ice Lord. Realistically, however, you could hit a Magni and a Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker or Vindicator Boroven. If you do that once, it is highly unlikely that you are going to lose the game. Cleave is one of those unsung heroes that is probably going to get overlooked for a little while. The game is going to slow down a little bit with a lot of good control cards in the new Fires of Outland expansion and I promise you Cleave is going to come in handy.
The last important aspect of the deck is quests. Card draw is very important as everyone should already know. In Dreams has always been fantastic for the late game kind of decks but a new MVP has shown up in our testing. Gahz’ridian is a great quest and should be an instant 4 of. The extra 3 resources come in very handy when compared to In Dreams. I am pretty much sticking this quest into every deck I put together now. Another new quest that really shines in this deck is Swift Discipline. Without giving it much thought, the general conception is that giving your opponent any allies is not a good thing, but when you are playing Gorebelly, giving your opponent a 1/1 token is basically null and void. Now that doesn’t mean do something stupid like give them a 1/1 token while they have Heroic Presence in play with 6 resources open and an Are We There Yeti? up in the row. Excluding that scenario however, giving your opponent a 1/1 is not going to be a problem. The real trick to this quest is running it with Counterattack. If you are playing against a solo hunter or paladin or even a mirror match, you can complete Swift Discipline, give them an ally, draw a card, and now that they have at least 1 more ally than you, you can also complete Counterattack. I’ve done this more than once in play testing the deck.
The new cards give us a lot of toys to play with in an already solid deck. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of equipment removal running around since Gorebelly did so well at Nationals though. There are a couple things to take into consideration when putting your own Gorebelly deck together. The first is whether or not you think you can outrun the presumed equipment destruction. The second, and probably the most important, is do you want to shell out close to a million dollars for this deck? The cards for it are outrageous and even more so since its performance at Nationals. The deck is really good though, and it is also really fun to play. So if you don’t mind spending the extra dough for it, I can promise that you won’t be disappointed.
