Legend Control Rogue Deck Guide: Wicked Weapons

Introduction

The rogue hero power is the most mana efficient hero power in the game, but its efficiency comes at the cost of your health. Also Rogue is a great class for making a tempo-style deck as a lot of Rogue cards such as si7-agent, Backstab, Perditions-blade, eviscerate and the neutral card the-black-knight let you kill minions and let you to play your own due to their cheap mana cost for the effect that they have.

The advantage that a control rogue deck has over other control decks is that you have cards like sap which can be insane against people running high mana cost minions such as Ysera as they take basically skip their turn and you get to either deal a lot of damage or develop a weak board and get back in the game.

Today I will be showcasing a Tempo-Control Rogue deck that I have built and hit legend with on the EU server with a decent 65-70% winrate against the meta consisting of hunters, warriors and priests. So let’s get started.

Deck Strategy

We are gonna take advantage of the fact the we will be losing a lot of health due to our hero power by running molten-giants. Your general strategy is going to be to keep the board clear through the early to mid game with the help of high value cards such as backstab, deadly-poison, scarlet-crusader, si7-agent, etc. and then overwhelm your opponent with threats like ragnaros-the-firelord, kelthuzad and molten-giants in the lategame.

Mulligans and how to play

Generally you want to Mulligan for a good early curve and removal. You basically want your:

• Backstab
• Si7-agent if you have  the-coin or a backstab
• Perditions-blade
• Deadly-poison

Against specific popular matchups:

Vs Zoolock

Mulligan: backstab, si7-agent, perditions-blade, fan of knives.

Strategy: Keep their board clear at all cost and keep pushing out threats every time you have spare mana, if you get your anti aggro cards this should be a fairly easy matchup. sludge-belcher is a great card as it will slow them down a lot. if you can get a sylvanas down do it, as she is a nightmare for zoo not only they have to trade a bunch of cards to kill her but also lose a minion from their board.Watch out for doomguards.

Vs Handlock

Mulligan: backstab, eviscerate, si7-agent and sap if you are going first.

Strategy:  You basically wanna be able to answer their turn 4 threat, either be it with a board or with a little burn, from that point on  they will be spamming taunts and maybe some more threats, the-black-knight is insane in this matchup if you can hit a taunted giant with it. If you face too many handlocks consider replacing an si7-agent with a big-game-hunter.

Vs Face Hunter

Mulligan: backstab, si7-agent, perditions-blade, fan of knives.

Strategy: Play around their secrets, don’t take too much face damage and get into kill-command range. After the nerf their card draw has become weaker, so you should start being aggressive once they run out of cards. If they run savannah-highamanes and you sap it you probably win.

Tempo Priest

Mulligans: backstab, si7-agent, perditions-blade, Deadly-posion.

Strategy: They have no way of dealing with your molten-giants and if you cna kill their cleric early they run out of steam, you have sap for their 4/7 injured-blademasters and your cards give you more tempo than the priests cards give him.

Shaman

Mulligans: Deadly-poison, Blade-flurry, perditions-blade.

Strategy: Clear their board whenever you get a chance, blade-flurry ruins them. They wont be able to keep up with you high value minions. And molten-giants just lock the game in your favour.

Matchups

Good:

• Priest
• Shaman
• Warrior
• Druid

Decent:

• Handlock
• Miracle Rogue
• Hunter
• Mage

Bad:

• Paladin (equality ;_; )

Deck Breakdown

• Backstab – A great tempo card but mostly a combo enabler for your other spells. occasionally helps you kill 3/2’s early on against certain decks. Most effective when used alongside an si7-agent or eviscerate.
• Deadly-poison – Really strong when combined with cards like assassins-blade and also the weapon from your hero power. It boosts up your blade flurry and gives a lot of burst potential .
• blade-flurry – Lets you clear the board against deck that swarm it with a lot of minions for just 2 mana if you have a poisoned dagger. You are running two weapons as well so this card will always be able to provide value.
• eviscerate – This card can let you kill a 4-5 cost minion and let you play your own minions as you will have enough mana. It is also a great burn spell. And can help control the board efficiently.
• sap – This card is amazing when you can “remove” a high costed minion of the board for just two mana, and play a bunch of minions yourself. If you can sap a huge threat such as a Savannah-highmane or sylvanas-windrunner you can gain a lot of tempo and basically win the game with a strong board position.
• perditions-blade – This is a great anti aggro card, need to kill two pesky 3/2’s or an annoying 4/4 perditions-blade does the job.  
• fan-of-knives – It is really effective in a meta where everyone runs haunted creepers. Also it cantrips.
• scarlet-crusader – This card is the card that counters the meta. Most decks run a lot of 3-4 health minions and combined with your hero power this card can help deal 4 damage and that too twice due to its divine shield.
• si7-agent – Anti-aggro specialist. Lets you get favorable trades and is a 3/3 body.
• defender-of-argus – This card is basically a part of you combo that is molten-giant x 2 + defender-of-argus which can easily turn the tides of the battle in your favor. It basically has the stats of a yeti for its mana cost and gives you taunters.
• assassins-blade – Amazing for dealing massive damage as well as clearing boards. Power it up with two deadly poison and if you opponent cannot remove it, it is very hard to lose from that point on.
• azure-drake – Spell power, Card draw, 5 Mana, decent 4/4 body. All these things make azure drake a great choice for any rogue deck. 
• loatheb – A well-timed loatheb can win you games, use it to prevent lethal, secure lethal or to lockdown the game when you have a snowballing board.
• sludge-belcher – The card that slowed down this bursty meta. sludge-belcher is the perfect card to slow down any aggro decks, or even hide weak minions behind it as it at least takes 2-3 attacks to completely remove of the board. Also since you will be dealing a lot of self damage, a taunter is always welcome.
• sylvanas-windrunner – The meta consists of decks that play a lot of minions, and sylvanas is the best card to play in such a situation, it is great for gaining lost tempo and can sometimes just win you games by stealing your opponent’s biggest threats and they end up spending removal to get rid of their own card which will net you card advantage. You definitely play her when there are big minions on the board. Just be wary of silences if you know your opponent is running them.
• the-black-knight – The sheer amount of decks that run sludge-belcher make this card a great inclusion in any deck. Also it lets you kill a sludge belcher while staying on curve which is great for tempo. also it counters decks like handlock, ramp druid which will be really popular after the Nerf. 
• sprint – In the lategame you might feel like you are getting behind on cards than your opponent because you run cards like backstabs and deadly-poison which mostly just trade 1 for 1 or two for 1. So this card lets you refill your hand and get even more answers. You almost never wanna cast this on turn 7 unless you are desperate or way ahead on board.
• kelthuzad – kelthuzad‘s effect is insane but the downside is that he costs 8 mana and requires you to have a board. But in a deck like this  you will almost always have a board and KT will give you your value. Getting a sylvanas-windrunner back after stealing a threat can be game-winning. And having kelthuzad behind sludge belchers is just hilarious as you get an infinite supply of taunts.
• ragnaros-the-firelord – Rag provides you that little extra damage that you need to finish off games or remove that one big threat that you otherwise would’ve had to remove inefficiently, you only need to pray to RNGesus and believe in the power of fire.
• molten-giant – Your trump card that will make your opponent flip their table. They well never expect a rogue to be running molten giants. You just plop them down on 0 mana get two 8/8’s taunt them up and win the game.

Conclusion

This deck is great against the current meta and can definitely be used to reach legend this season. I hope you enjoyed reading this guide. Any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated and if you have any questions feel free to ask me in the comments. I hope you have fun and Good luck on Legend.