Star Aligner Mech Rogue
- Last updated Oct 20, 2018 (Boomsday)
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Wild
- 22 Minions
- 6 Spells
- 2 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Deathrattle Rogue
- Crafting Cost: 6560
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 10/13/2018 (Boomsday)
- batterystaple
- Registered User
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- 3
- 15
- 48
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
EU
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Total Deck Rating
63
Update 2018-10-20:
Took out Fan of Knives and Sap, because they weren't doing enough versus aggro, in particular Healzoo and Spell Hunter. Put in a second Elven Minstrel to compensate for the card draw, Cavern Shinyfinder to be able to more consistently find the weapon and to have something more to play on turn 2, Rotten Applebaum to buy some time and finally Wargear to make the mech package more worthwhile.
Replaced Gruul with Lab Recruiter, as suggested by seatleson. I feel sorry for poor Gruul, but this does make Vanguard more consistent. And it reduces the dust cost of the deck a lot.
Inspired by Chump's Star Aligner Druid and Warlock decks, I decided to try and make a Star Aligner Rogue deck. With the new Necrium cards from Boomsday, I took a deathrattle approach.
I expected this to be a meme deck, but I played it from rank 19 to 15 in about 15 matches, so it might have more potential than pure meming. Later I first dropped from rank 13 to 14, but then climbed back up to 11. However, performance depends a lot on the meta: in a slow meta it works great, against fast decks you have to struggle to survive until you can strike back.
It does well against control and combo decks, since you can summon huge boards and have big damage spikes: getting a Warrior or Druid from 60 to 0 is not a problem, sometimes you can even do it in two turns. It is unfavored but not hopeless against aggro: I managed to get wins against Healzoo, Burn Mage and Odd Paladin.
Although Star Aligner is the eye catcher, the real star of the deck is Carnivorous Cube. Combined with minions like Mechanical Whelp and Charged Devilsaur plus the deathrattle triggers Necrium Blade and Necrium Vial, it can create huge boards. Once you have a good board, Star Aligner can be a way to break through a taunt wall or deal 7 extra face damage to finish off the opponent.
Game Plan:
Versus aggro, for the first few turns just try to stay alive. You might have to use one of your Necrium cards on Blightnozzle Crawler to keep the board under control. Drawing Zilliax helps a lot: if you can land that on a high health or high attack mech, the healing will give you the time you need to develop a superior board. There is limited healing and removal in the deck, so you are still on a clock: trade into the most dangerous minions and apply counter-pressure on your opponent's face with the rest.
Versus control, spend the first turns drawing extra cards with Elven Minstrel or Cavern Shinyfinder, discounting your mechs with Galvanizer and setting up a Necrium Blade. You can try to set up for Star Aligner on turn 7 or 8, using Mechanical Dragon cloned by Cube and/or a 7-health minion summoned from Silver Vanguard. The stars rarely align on the first try though, because control decks have lots of ways to sabotage your plans, so don't go all-in on this.
I generally Cube Mechanical Dragon versus aggro and Mechanical Whelp versus control, but there is no hard rule: it depends on whether you need power on board now or you can afford to wait for a big swing turn with Star Aligner.
If you have no other good plays, you can just play Star Aligner as a 7/7, especially if you have a Cube in hand.
The Charged Devilsaurs are are only 8-mana minions in the deck, so Silver Vanguard will always draw one of those. You can use Lab Recruiter to shuffle more Devilsaurs into your deck, so Silver Vanguard stays useful.
Mulligan:
In any matchup, the mechs are good keeps, even Mechanical Dragonling if you're on the coin or already found a Galvanizer. Necrium Blade and Cavern Shinyfinder are also a good keep: versus aggro you need the Blade to maintain board control, while versus control you can set it up to trigger a Cube on turn 6 or 7.
Keep Eviscerate versus aggro and mid-range.
Keep Elven Minstrel versus control. Versus aggro, only consider keeping it if you're on the coin, but even then you'd still rather have a mech or Blade to play on turn 3.
While Carnivorous Cube is the strongest card in the deck, keeping it in your opening hand risks having no early game at all. Maybe keep it if you already found Blade/Shineyfinder and Crawler/Whelp.
Relevant Mechanics:
Star Aligner itself counts as one of the three 7-health minions you need, so you need only two on board, but more than two is also fine. Pay attention to the yellow glow in your hand.
When played from hand, Charged Devilsaur has an ability that is essentially rush. However, when summoned from Cube or Vanguard, the battlecry doesn't go off and it can go face immediately.
Magnetized mechs count as minions with enchantments on them. If you Cube them, only the base mech comes back out.
You can use Necrium Blade's deathrattle on the turn you play it by replacing the weapon using your hero power.
Replacements:
If you don't have Zilliax, I suggest a second Rotten Applebaum. Or if you have the dust, just craft it: in my opinion it's the Boomsday equivalent of The Lich King: a neutral legendary that fits into lots of decks.
If you have no Charged Devilsaurs, then it's not worth running Silver Vanguard. If you have one Devilsaur, you could put in another 8-cost minion. You could consider is The Lich King, but then you're not guaranteed to always recruit a 7-health minion. Another option would be Violet Wurm, but I'm worried a board full of Grubs would reduce the yield from Cubes, block you from playing more minions or play into Spreading Plague. Cauldron Elemental has the right stats and cost, but there are no other elementals in the deck, although with Cube you could probably make a board of Cauldron Elementals buffing each other. I thought about Grand Archivist, but that's bad with Preparation and I think that card is too valuable to cut.
Necrium Vial can create big swings, so I would recommend including that if you have it or can afford to craft it, but it's not a must. If you don't include it, maybe also cut a Preparation.
I think you can play the deck just fine with one Star Aligner. Usually when the stars align once, you have already won. A second Necrium Vial is a good replacement.
You absolutely need two Carnivorous Cubes. But if you have any interest in deathrattle decks, you probably have already crafted those.
Preparation is a Rogue staple, so I think most players will have it already. You could cut it, but then you might want to replace Sprint with Fan of Knives to have some cheaper card draw.
brilliant
I like this deck a lot and I've tried to make it more consistant using the deathrattle rogue core.
Here is my take on it :)
Star aligner in standard OMEGALUL
Gruul is here to add a third recruit minion for Silver Vanguard.
Wow, first deck in history of HS to utilize Gruul :D Good job :D
Seems nice as an idea but why Gruul? Couldn't you just use The Lich King for the end of turn effect?
EDIT: Never mind The Lich King is 8 hp. no synergy with Star Aligner
Gruul Didn't work too because, next turn he is 9/9..
It is rare for minions to stay at full health into the next turn. Gruul is at 7 health when recruited by Silver Vanguard or when he pops out of Carnivorous Cube, which is what really matters. Besides, if you have a Gruul who isn't damaged for a whole turn, you're in a very good spot.
Great work with the deck! I also follow Chump as well. May creativity breathe fresh life into this game again.Hopefully more decks like this get spotlighted and upvoted.
Nice idea for sure. I wonder what you think of Spiritsinger Umbra and Edwin VanCleef. I also feel like the mech part is a bit weak, especially the galvanizers and gatekeepers. Maybe more early tempo with Backstab?
Umbra on turn 4 and a coined or discounted Mechanical Whelp would be sweet, but I'm worried that it doesn't happen very often that Umbra sticks on board. The next opportunity to play her would be on turn 9 with a Cube, but the late game is already strong, so I'm not sure it's necessary to include more cards to boost it.
I don't have Edwin, so I can't test him. Theorizing, I think it is a good card in general, but there is not a whole lot of synergy with him in this deck. For example, it's a bad target for a Cube.
The early game is the weak point indeed. I've tried Backstab and SI:7 Agent and other early game options yesterday, but haven't found anything yet that stands out as a real solution. Perhaps the problem is that including half a package doesn't work: Backstab is good when it can act both as removal and as a combo-activator, but I don't have typical combo cards like Vilespine Slayer in the deck at the moment.
Hi ! I tested your deck, and I found it really fun, I don't have a Highwinrate but it's funny, I feel like we can replace a card for a Void Ripper because when you must to trade with the [card]Charged Devilsaur[/card], it give you an opportunity for 10mana to make the combo and maybe clean the board :) Thanks for the deck, you give me desire to play the Druid Star Aligner ! :p
I found that the win rate depends a lot on the meta. Last week I played against a lot of slow decks and got long win streaks, but yesterday I faced a lot of Zoolock and Spell Hunter and it really struggles against that.
Void Ripper is an interesting idea. It would have to be useful early in the game as well though, because I don't think it's worth including only for a turn 10 combo. But sometimes I have trouble getting a Cube killed and Void Ripper might help there too.
Dude this deck is super original, and super fun, Congrats! However, I think Bronze Gatekeeper is a suboptimal pick. ALso, I dont think those Galvanizers are really needed. Also, I would cut Gruul in favor of something like Lab Recruiter.
Thanks! Have you been playing it? If so, what are you experiences?
Galvanizer is pretty useful in allowing Mechanical Whelp to be played one turn earlier, which is typically the first time you can start being aggressive yourself. There aren't enough tools in the deck to neutralize everything an aggro deck can throw at you, so you do need to start your counter push early enough to be able to win the damage race. But in slower matchups one turn may not matter all that much and you may want more value instead of more tempo.
There is also the question of what you do on turn 2: hero power isn't great if you're playing Necrium Blade the next turn, while Eviscerate and Sap usually aren't played on curve. What would you suggest replacing it with? Another 2-drop or something else entirely?
Bronze Gatekeeper isn't great by itself, but as a magnetic buff it worked pretty well for me. Maybe Tar Creeper would be better because it has more stats in defensive mode. Gatekeeper is more flexible though, for example to keep Zilliax around longer, or to buff a mech to or above 7 health as a combo enabler. So it's a weak card by itself, but the synergies are pretty good.
Lab Recruiter is an interesting idea: at 2 mana, it would be possible to play it the same turn as the second copy of Charged Devilsaur. That's the issue I had with Dire Frenzy as a deck refiller: if you can land it, it's great, but because of its cost it only works if your Devilsaur sticks and if that happens, you often have already won. And if you're under pressure with a bad hand, you could just play Lab Recruiter early.
I threw a couple of Backstabs and SI:7 Agents, in expense of Galvanizer
I also included 1Lab Recruiter which as you mentioned, can be played on a Charged Devilsaur If you manage to do that, then it is extremely powerfull to play Necrium Vial over Silver Vanguard.
It is a Win condition by its own.
I would love to see a video of this working. Very interesting concept but I can't afford to make Star Aligners and then find out it doesn't work.
I submitted it for J4ckiechan's Wacky Wednesday, but I don't know if he'll play it. I don't have any experience in making videos myself. Maybe someone like kiwiinbacon would be interested?
You could try crafting one Star Aligner; I'm not sure the deck even needs two. You could even play the deck without Star Aligners at all, since the main strength is in the Cube interactions anyway. Maybe put in Mossy Horror to deal with Spreading Plague. I will say that at least one Star Aligner is strongly recommended for the fun factor.
As for how strong it is: it did very well for me in the rank 15-20 range, but I don't know if that is an accurate prediction of how it does at higher ranks. It also depends on the meta: currently there are a lot of slow decks, so mid-game damage bursts work well. This deck has a lot of similarities to Deathrattle Hunter, both in terms of threats and in terms of strengths and weaknesses.
+1 for originality :D
But I feel that star aligner is a “win more” card here. Nice idea though.
Thanks!
In games where you play both copies, it absolutely feels like "win more". For the first alignment it's harder to say: against aggro it can destroy the last chance the opponent had to sneak in lethal, while against combo it might give you lethal one turn earlier, which can matter. However, if the deck didn't play Star Aligner, there would be a different card in its slot, something like Mossy Horror or Vilespine Slayer probably. I don't know how a less powerful but more reliable card would work out in practice.
I will say though that getting the stars to align isn't as hard as I expected. I didn't keep count, but I think I got it in about 40% of my matches, certainly more than 5 times (which would be 33%).