Mastering Miracle Rogue: Advanced Guide

Tips / Pointers

• Because of the bursty nature of this deck, you need to be aware of the damage you have on the board and the potential damage in your hand (especially the longer the game goes). For example using any potential burst on Turn 6 on a minion that does not need to be removed, can later cost you the game, especially if you don’t draw Gadgetzan Auctioneer.
• Only go for a very big Edwin VanCleef against decks that don’t have any good way of removing him, like Pirate Warrior or Aggro Shaman. Otherwise a simple Hex or Execute will make you lose the game on the spot.
• Sap is a rather complex card to play. Don’t use it on a minion you can easily remove otherwise. Example: Wasting Sap against Druid of the Claw, if you already have another good way at dealing with it, can later lose you the game against Ancient of War. But sometimes using Sap on a smaller minion like the Druid of the Claw can be correct, if you find yourself the next couple of turns busy playing more minions. It all depends on the situation and the cards in your hand.
• In general, the slower the deck you play against is, the more greedy you want to be with your Gadgetzan Auctioneer and draw as many cards as possible. On the other hand the faster the opposing deck is the less greedy you want to be with Auctioneer, and simply drawing 1-3 cards is fine.

Against Aggro Deck Types

You want to get board control against aggro decks as soon as possible. Having early board control will inevitably result in victory, while not having control of the board will very likely lead to a loss. Thus removing your opponent’s minions is a top priority. Keep in mind that you need to start racing aggressive decks at some point, so sometimes ignoring a 2 attack minion in favor of dealing 5 damage to the opponent is the right play.

Against Midrange Deck Types

There are a lot of different Midrange decks on the ladder. Some are aggressive (such as Midrange Shaman), which means they can pressure you and kill you quite quickly, while others are slower and play like Control decks (such as C’thun Druid). In general the slower the Midrange deck is, the more important becomes Gadgetzan Auctioneer and not making too many inefficient plays.

Against Control Deck Types

Every Control deck is a very good matchup. They usually have a hard time pressuring you, so you will dictate the pace of the game and force the opponent to be reactive. Due to their slow nature, Gadgetzan Auctioneer can draw you an absurd amount of cards, because they give you a lot of time, where you can wait and play other minions before like Azure Drake, Tomb Pillager and Violet Teacher.

Tech Choices / Alternate Cards

Dark Iron Skulker

Dark Iron Skulker is very powerful against swarm decks like Zoo Warlock. He is also quite good against Shaman builds. Especially the nerf to Blade Flurry made Dark Iron Skulker much better. The reason why he sees very little play is that he is very underwhelming against Warrior and various other decks. I would only recommend playing him in favor of Leeroy Jenkins in a very Zoo and Shaman heavy metagame, where you face not so many slow decks.

Xaril, Poisoned Mind

A four mana 3/2 is horrible stat wise, but the Toxins really make up for the bad stats. They are extremely powerful against Control decks and sometimes can be the difference between victory or defeat, especially the Shadowstep– Toxin is very good against Control decks when combined with Leeroy Jenkins.

Southsea Deckhand and maybe Faceless Manipulator

If you face very few slow decks or maybe don’t have Leeroy Jenkins, feel free to cut Leeroy Jenkins for Southsea Deckhand. You then can also maybe even cut 1 Violet Teacher for Faceless Manipulator (Southsea Deckhand+ double Cold Blood+ Faceless Manipulator is 20 damage).

But I must say that I don’t like Faceless Manipulator in this deck, because it is kind of inconsistent outside of the combo finish with Southsea Deckhand. It is by no means a bad card, but I feel like the deck already plays enough inconsistent cards.

Earthen Ring Farseer

Don’t play them. The small lifegain is too often irrelevant even against Face decks, and every other card in the deck you might cut for them (like a Violet Teacher) is just better against decks where the life gain seems good like Aggro Shaman. So to simply put, there are much better cards you can play in favor of Earthen Ring Farseer. I would only recommend playing one of them, if you don’t have Edwin VanCleef.

Shiv

Shiv is a fine card to play over one Violet Teacher. It’s almost never completely bad, but unlike Violet Teacher it also does not win games. In the current metagame a second copy of Violet Teacher is just too strong. If the metagame is more control-heavy, Shiv becomes a better card to play than Violet Teacher. Violet Teacher is not that great against some Control decks, whereas finding your Gadgetzan Auctioneer in time is of utter importance, and Shiv helps finding Gadgetzan Auctioneer earlier and also improves the combo turn.

Closing

I hope you liked the series, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments!

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