Hearthpwn

Hello everyone, in this guide I will cover odd rogue, and everything that you need to know about the deck.

 For more of my decks and updates please follow me on twitter:

https://twitter.com/GoudhoutHS

To start of, I do not and will not anywhere claim that I am the inventor or creator of this deck/archetype. I also do not and will not claim the credits for it. I will refer to the decklist as “my decklist”, this is because this is the decklist that I use. I hope you guys can respect that and not criticize me for it in the comments.

 

in this guide I will cover:

1. Why you should listen to me
2. Introduction
3. Why we run this list
4. Per cards explanation of why we run it
5. Synergies between cards
6. Techs
7. Matchups
8. Mulligans
9. Strategies
10. Afterword

 

Now first of all why you should listen to me. Let me start by introducing myself, my name is Goudhout and I am a dutch player that has played since TGT so that is about 3 years I believe. I hit legend every month, and I usually end high in legend every month. I predominantly play aggro, because control is just too boring and it has worked for me in every meta.

I have spend a lot of time grinding the ladder and tournaments with this odd rogue list and therefore I have great insight. I have reached top 300 legend (and finished there) with this list. proof:

https://imgur.com/eNhkoG2

An introduction to odd rogue

Odd rogue is a fairly aggressive deck, the deck revolves around Baku the Mooneater giving you the ability to get a good 2/2 weapon from your hero power. Unfortunately the payoff for this is that we can only run odd costed cards which presents a challenge in the deck building department. Because of this 2/2 weapon we can easily clear the board in the early turns, but the bigger minions that come later are hard to remove for the odd rogue. Therefore they need to be fairly aggressive. The biggest challenge that the deck represents is that you need to balance out trading and going face. If you go too much to the face, you will probably lose the board and if you trade too much the games goes on for too long.

 

Why we run this list

Here is where I would like to compare my decklist, to the “standard” odd rogue list. To do this we first need to pick a list that serves as the standard list. We will use the deck that fenoHs posted on his twitter as the standard list in this case, because I feel that the deck is pretty solid.

Once again this is Feno’s list and not mine I do not take credit for this list, I am just comparing it to my own

 https://imgur.com/GBmWo6m

First off all I have to discuss myra’s unstable element, and this is an interesting card for the odd rogue because as someone pointed out to me. It is Aluneth on steroids. And now I will give a few reason why I do not like myra’s unstable element in odd rogue. One of these reason is that it puts you in fatigue, now that is not a problem at first but it does mean that you have limited turns to still fight back, because if they pressure you hard than you fill soon die. Now secondly the card costs 5 mana, this means that usually either you are skipping an entire turn or you have already lost the game because you are already in the late game. If you are skipping an entire turn drawing the cards then you give your opponent the board, because they will have a full turn of development. Both of these scenarios are just bad. Now the reason that Aluneth works better than myra’s unstable element is that it is played in tempo mage, which has a lot of burn. So you spend 6 mana for the weapon and probably give up the board, but you do not need the board anymore, because you will get your burn eventually. myra’s unstable element has the chance to give you all of your burn, in which case it is great if you opponent doesn't have a taunt. But it also has the option to not give you any burn at all, at which point you just lost.

myra’s unstable element helps you to sometimes still have a chance in a game which you would have lost otherwise, but most of the time the effect just fills your and still loses you the game.

 

Now the second card that is different, Giggling Inventor vs Cobalt Scalebane. They both fill the 5 drop slot. Now Giggling Inventor is very good against other aggro decks like zoo and odd paladin. My problem with the card is that against zoo you are already quite favored and you probably do not need it a lot of times to win. Not saying that it will not win you games against zoo, because the card is able to carry the matchup on its own, but you could do without. Secondly odd paladin is already your worst matchup, so I think it is better to just concede that matchup that teching into it, because that makes all your other matchups way worse.Cobalt Scalebane might be a worse card on its own, but you just need 1 minion on board, that is not a hard requirement. Cobalt Scalebane posts 2 threats at the same time, the Cobalt Scalebane and the buffed minion, and a lot of times you can get at least one of them to survive. This card is really powerful against control in general because it usually creates a difficult turn for them.

 

Then the vicious fledgeling. This card is really bad in general in my opinion, I you get it to attack face, well, you just win. So the snowball potential of the card is insane, and it will carry games on its own. But then on the other side it is just a 3 mana 3/3, which is really bad in matchups like zoolock and odd pally. The upside of the card is great but it will only happen in a few games so I do not think it is consistent enough to make the cut. In my list I run a Tar Creeper in its place because this card is really good at protecting your snowball minions, like Hench-Clan Thug.

 

Also my deck list uses double Void Ripper which I think is really good because it can remove a lot of taunts. It is great vs cards like Spreading Plague, and druid is fairly popular. But even if your opponent doesn't run Spreading Plague or any taunts this card is always good for the value trades. It offers really good utility which can help you in a lot of situations, it is really versatile and that is why I really like the card in my deck.

 

Per card explanation of why we run it

 

Argent Squire - This is just a good 1 drop, the divine shield gives it good survivability and therefore it is pretty strong to play just on turn 1, I dont think this card really needs that much explanation. Its a 1-drop in an aggro deck.

 

Cold Blood - This is one of the most essential cards in the deck, you can play this as removal, if your opponent has a very important minion on their side of the board, also you can play this just to make 1 of your 1-drops more threatening. This is really good vs control decks because you just need the damage in there. Then its last use it the most obvious, it can be used with leeroy and deckhand for a good burst combo to kill your opponent.

 

Deadly Poison - This card in the deck has 2 uses, 1 is for early game board control to remove some 3 drops from your opponent. This is its main use in the mirror. But secondly you can also use it as a burst card for 2 free burst damage or 4 damage over 2 turns.

 

Dire Mole - Just a good 1-drop and this is an aggro deck, it doesn’t really need the explanation.

 

Fire Fly - also just a good 1-drop in an aggro deck but this card also provides us with a combo activator for vilespine. So this has some extra utility.

 

Southsea Deckhand - Even though this card only costs 1 mana, it's not really a turn 1 play. But this card is still good for burst damage or removal. This card will almost always have charge and that makes it just a good card for this deck.

 

Blink Fox - Now at first I didn’t really like this card until one of my friends told me to paly it, and the potential of this card is crazy. It can create insane game winning cards, it can create cheap cards that we can combine with a combo. Also it can just give us some fuel so we can keep going longer. The card you get will rarely be completely dead.

 

Blood Knight - this card we just run as a counter to giggling inventor which is really common in a lot of decks nowadays.

 

Hench-Clan Thug - This card needs no explanation, but it is a 3 mana 4/4 and if your opponent doesn’t remove it is will quickly win you the game.

 

SI:7 Agent -  This card is just a really good rogue card, a 3/3 for 3 that deals 2 damage is really great. It can help you keep tempo versus aggro decks and it can be a bit of burst versus control decks.

 

Tar Creeper - This card is a really good card vs aggro, because it completely shuts down their board. But on the other hand this card is not really dead vs control if you have a big or good minion to protect. This card has carried games in a lot of matchups.

 

Void Ripper - This card I have already explained and all that I can say about this card is already mentioned above, so here we will just skip over it.

 

Cobalt Scalebane - This card is crazy vs control creating 2 big minions. You will almost always have a minion on board to buff, even if that is a 1-drop it will get 4 attack after the scale bane. It is also a 5 mana play that is not too bad to play on its own where the 5-drops on their own do nothing.

 

Fungalmancer - this card doesnt really need any explanation, its just really good for making a big board.

 

Giggling Inventor - This card just helps vs aggro, I am not sure about this card still being in the list, it serves the same role as the tar creeper but the tar creeper doesn’t get countered by a 3 mana 9/9. So it is really risky to play this card some times.

 

Leeroy Jenkins - This card just provides insane burst potentials. It is a big charging minion in an aggro deck, there shouldn’t really be any explanation here.

 

Vilespine Slayer - This card is broken

 

Baku the Mooneater - This card almost makes the name of the deck.

 

Synergies

 

Now there are a few synergies in the deck.

1. 1-drop + Vilespine Slayer
2. charging minion + Cold Blood
3. Argent Squire+ Blood Knight
4. snowball minion + taunt

 

Now that was quite quick but this mostly speaks for itself, I just wanted to include it for the sake of completeness.

 

Techs

 

Now there are a few cards that you can still put in this deck. If you want to put in myra’s unstable element its fine, but I am personally not a fan of the card, that is just my opinion. If you think the card is great then go for it, I do not think it is the worst card to put in the deck. if you were to put this in I would prolly get out the Cobalt Scalebane or the Giggling Inventor, depending on if you face more aggro or more control.

 

Vicious Fledgling is also good if you like the card, but it is just not really me preference because its a 3 mana 3/3 that doesn't do anything immediately. But yeah this card can carry a lot of games.

 

Other than that my deck is fairly teched so getting in another specific counter card won’t help the deck in my opinion. If you put in more techs than you spread the deck too thin, where this deck is already really spread. As far as budget inclusions go I don’t think there are that many, this deck is not too expensive tho. But cutting a Leeroy Jenkins is really not a good idea. Cutting Vilespine Slayer is also not great. You can cut Blood Knight and Void Ripper for just some other 3-drops.

 

Matchups

 https://imgur.com/ryflakT

Mulligans and strategies

Druid

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox

 

Togwaggle and malygos druid:

This is almost the same matchup. In this matchup you just have to be really aggressive in the early games and try to get as much damage in as possible. You need to hope that your hench-clan thug sticks. But it doesn’t really often. If you getting to the mid stages of the game then you need to play around spreading plague, unless you have void ripper in your hand then you can go all in. But most of the times its just attack and pray. Also you mostly need to save your blood knight for a giggling inventor

 

Token druid:

Token druid works mostly the same as malygos and togwaggle. But there is a little difference, they have a lot of small minion with which they spam the board. If they go wide then you usually take as many free trades on their 1/1’s as you can and let as little of the survive. For the rest it is almost the same as the earlier matchup, and that means attack, pray and play around plague and giggling inventor.

 

Big druid:

This matchup relies on 2 basic concepts mostly, attack and pray. Now it sounds like I just use this strat for everything, but the druid is just a bad matchup a lot of the time, with not really a lot to explain because they do not really do anything except for ramp and clear. But against big druid it is really easy, if they have the ramp and the taunts, you lose, if they do not, you win. So just play around the plague, attack and pray.

 

Hunter:

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox, Tar Creeper

 

Deathrattle hunter:

This is a fairly easy matchup. There are a few simple things that you need to know about. 1 of those things is that you need to try and kill the egg if you can. Because 1 5/5 is bad, giving them the option to summon 2 or 3 is just stupid. If you do not kill the egg and they do have an activator than you just put yourself in a really bad spot for not reason, so you just kill the egg and you should get through the early game. In the mid stages of the game you need to play around rexxar and mossy horror. If you do not your opponent might just clear your whole board all of a sudden. Once they play rexxar it's usually your cue to go really aggro, because his zombeast can just carry the whole game for him with heals, taunts and rush. You can’t really sustain and aggressive stance long against the DK. So you need to maximize damage in those turns.

 

Spell Hunter:

This matchup is a lot worse then the deathrattle matchup. They will usually play a lot of secrets and then play the spellstone and then you are screwed. To win this matchup you just have to properly play around the secrets. They just have 3 secrets and you will most of the time get a good idea of what secret it will be. If you play around the secrets properly then you have a really good chance to win, as long as you can deal with their spellstone. There is just not a lot to say here, if you do not play around the secrets then you can just easily lose, if you play around them properly then you have a chance. This is a difficult matchup.

 

Mage:

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox, SI:7 Agent

 

Aggro mage:

This is a hard matchup to play perfectly, you need to balance out removing minions with your face and with the board. If you remove minions with your face too much then you die by burn, If you just use the board then you don’t kill him fast enough and you die by burn again. As long as you can find a good balance between that you should be fine. You do need to play around the secrets but sometimes there is just not that much counterplay and you need to accept that. Also make sure that you position correctly so that you can play around cosmic anomaly + shooting star.

 

Paladin

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox, Tar Creeper, Giggling Inventor

 

Odd paladin:

This is just a really hard matchup because they spam the board so much, you should focus on getting some good 1 drops on the board and trying to keep his board clean for a long time, but at a certain point you need to accept that face is the place, because they will outvalue you over time. It is good to play round his turn 5 buffs like fungalmancer and level up. Getting a Turn 1 dire more and then a turn 3 snowball minion is just your best chance. Maybe they get a bad curve and you can still try and win the matchup, but it is just really hard. If you get till turn 5 and you can drop down giggling inventor then you are probably in a good spot. Even though blood knight screws you, but you are kinda screwed anyway so you will just have to accept that.

 

Rogue:

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox, Deadly Poison

 

Quest rogue and kingsbane:

The strategy against these decks is mostly the same, you just SMOrc them and hope you are in time before they do stupid stuff. Against quest rogue you should clear their quest minion if they give you the option, also you want to keep blood knight for the giggling inventor, and play around vanish. That is mostly it as far as tips go.

 

Odd rogue:

This matchup is just a bit weird. You basically always play for board until you can get a quick lethal. Deadly poison is key in this matchup allowing you to remove 2 of their 3 drops and that can win you the board on its own. For the rest you just play for tempo, make value trades, deny fungalmancer, and hope the don't have some leeroy combo to kill you.

 

Shaman

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox

 

Combo shudderwock:

You need to really aggressively push face in this matchup, then you hope to get enough damage early enough so that they need both clear and heal. This is a quite consistent plan but if you do not have the tools in your hand then you need to play for a longer game and play around their AOE’s to the best of your ability.

 

Tempo shudderwock:

This matchup you play a lot more for tempo because he can get some really bad evolves, now I must say that I do not have a lot of experience on this matchup, so I cant really give that much good tips other than the usual that you play around the AOE and SMOrc if you can.

 

Warlock

Keeps: Argent Squire, Dire Mole, Fire Fly, Hench-Clan Thug, Blink Fox

 

Even warlock and control warlock:

These are almost the same matchup strategy wise. You get the early board and SMOrc and try to keep the board by playing around AOE as long as you can. There is not really a lot to say here other than that you just go face a bunch and pray a bunch. Against the even warlock however you might consider skipping a few attacks if that means he doesn’t get his 4 mana 7/7 online. Unless you have a way to deal with it, you usually try to delay it for at least 1 turn. Now if you are going into your opponent's turn 5 there is no use of skipping 1 attack and leaving him at 16 or 17 because the opponent will just tap and still play the 7/7, in that case it is probably better to just go face and not miss the damage. Vs control warlock, if the get voidlord, there is just not much that you can still do, so just accept the loss unless you can punch through it really fast.

 

Zoo warlock:

This is another tempo based matchup, and it is one where you are going to use your weapon a lot to clear his minions. In this matchup you just need to have the biggest board advantage you can get and not really care that much about your life total for a long time. Now at a certain point you just need to play around your opponents burst and it will be really risky to still try and clear with you weapon then. So just don't risk it unless you really have to.

 

Afterword

Well shiit, that took long to make, but I still hope all of you appreciate the effort that I put into this guide. I really hope that this helps you. But you do have to remember that Hearthstone doesn’t really have rules that you need to oblige to, because every situation is different and asks for something else.

 

If you liked the guide then please gimme a +1 on the top here, I would really appreciate that. Now if you don’t mind lemme just thank some people and put down some links.

 

First of all I want to thank Kratos for the help with the matchups part, helping with the druid and the warlock mainly, link to his twitter:

https://twitter.com/Kratos1314_HS

 And then I will finish of with a link to my own twitter where I tweet out some great decks from time to time, I would really appreciate if you guys could drop a follow on twitter:

 

https://twitter.com/GoudhoutHS

 Video's

Lemme start this off with a video by a guy you all prolly know, kiwiinbacon, he has made a great video on the deck, I really recommend watchin it so you can also see the deck work. Which is a way better way of learning for some people:

And then I have a great video by tommy wave, with some more good gameplay. Once again watching this will help you a lot.

Got another really good video by Kadakhs, I highly recommend watching it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S5-RtDuT4w