Hearthpwn

Hi guys, thanks for looking at my very first deck submission!

TLDR: Stay ahead on the board, buy yourself time to load up on Academic Espionage, get shaman spells, play a lot of non-class cards, play Tess. Play the board vs. fast decks, play the value game vs value decks. It is a ton of fun, they never know how to play around you, and crazy stuff can happen!

I was playing alot of Kibler's Tesspionage deck because every match is different and sometimes you go off into the stratosphere with a full board and 60 armor, but I realized a few dead-ends I would hit in common match-ups:

• You often need to play Tess Greymane on turn 8 for tempo but haven't drawn or played any meaningful amount of stolen cards yet
• You are playing against a rogue and Tess Greymane won't do anything
• Two 6-cost Gadgetzan Auctioneers, two 7-cost Sprints, an 8-cost Tess Greymane, and a 9-cost Valeera the Hollow gives you the potential for bad opening hands, dead cards, and extremely high mana cost to invest gas in your deck so you can go off, but you still have to spend mana to draw that investment and then even more to play it.

Basically, you would either take off like a rocket or fall flat on your face and slapfight until you died. So I wanted to make something a little more proactive, a little more consistent, and a little more meme-y. I know there are some questionable things going on, but I want to explain why it works and why it is worth it.

For Starters

Why no Sap or Eviscerate?

• There is no mid-range threat where Eviscerate really saved the day. In most match-ups, I found myself using it in Hollow mode to double or quadruple up for win pushes over taunts. There's so much armor gain right now that it is often a dead card.
• Sap was really useful against decks that count on something dying (Revive Priest, Deathrattle Rogue/Hunter, Warlocks with Bloodreaver Gul'dan). In other matchups, it was often dead or played for poor value.
• Most importantly, we took out Auctioneer and put in Prince Keleseth so there is less overall spell synergy.
• We are playing more pro-active, and less reactive. I think it was Trump who said "The question is stronger than the answer." Make them react to you. They will often spend a full turn and all their mana just to clear the board, making you free to make value plays and gas up on Fal'dorei Striders and Academic Espionage.

Strange Bedfellows

Feral Gibberer is an odd choice, but it does many things for this deck:

• You will almost always have activators for combos without bloating your deck, and a crazy full board for Cauldron trades. You will also be able to use every single drop of mana on ever turn.
• When buffed to 2/2 by Keleseth, it actually becomes rather hard to kill, and often demands a card to be dealt with, which is a perfectly fine trade, especially if they are doing it early game at the expense of say playing a Mana Wyrm or Sorceror's Apprentice! (Note: When adding a copy to your hand, the buff is lost. I would like to think this is a bug because it would be good to see really fun underdog cards made more powerful, but it is more likely a typo that should have read "add copy of the card"). With this, a buffed Hench-Clan Thug, and a buffed Witch's Cauldron on the board, there are 3 runaway wins building and without a full board clear many people in low ranks will just throw up their hands and quit.
• Speaking of "buffed", a lot of good/great cards become absolutely insane with the +1/+1 from Keleseth. Witchwood Piper,  Vilespine Slayer and Elven Minstrel become immune to many Priest removals. Spiders are unaffected, but it's probably better to keep them 4/4 anyways. Zilliax becomes a guaranteed heal for 4 and most likely 8.

Witchwood Piper has sleeper synergy with Academic Espionage and Southsea Deckhand.

• You can draw yourself outs like Mulchmuncher and King Crush, or just use  your Deckhands as activators for Cauldron. Cauldron can also pull you the heals and board clears that rogue is dying for, just remember that Tess's replayed shaman cards do in fact Overload your mana.
• You can draw your Prince Keleseth if you didn't open with it.

ULTIMATE HOME RUNS

• Sometimes if you Prep Espionage on turn 1 for lack of a better early game, you start drawing BONKERS STUFF in the early game.
• Sometimes you pull a Blazing Invocation from your Cauldron, and then another Tess from it. You can also bounce Tess with Spirit Echo. In both cases, congratulations on being Shudderwock Rogue now! Both of those cards have occurrence bonus for being from the new expansion (for now). Unfortunately... so does Primal Talismans.
• If you become another class with a Death Knight/Hero card, Tess replays all your Rogue cards!

Closing Thoughts

Thanks for reading, and I would love to hear input and improvements! I am currently playing with including The Lich King as Tess replays all of his cards as well. Thus far, results have been mixed, especially the ones that cause you to lose cards. I'm also leaning towards subbing in some Fire Flys for trades with Paladin dudes.