Hearthpwn

*Darkmoon faire music intensifies*

OK so I have been messing around with pogo rogue since day one of Boomsday. it was something I wanted to work more than anything. Maybe it was because I missed out on Jades and heard they had been powerful (I mean not jade rogue, but I remember playing against jade druid and it was a monster) 

I wanted Pogo rogue to be something on that level, but I quickly discovered that this was not going to be the case. It was however a fun mechanic and not so terrible that you couldn't win with it, it just wasn't going to be top dog.

So we have the Underdog Pogo, still hasn't found any solid footing, no one can decide what the deck should look like or should be built like. Well I offer my input on the subject here.

At the moment the current meta (in standard) requires a rogue deck to be fast to be successful. Slow decks by definition get trampled. Even the malygos OTK deck for Rogue is built to go as fast as possible, it gets what it needs (kills you) then gets out. (TBH to me this feels like how a rogue would do things, no problems IMO).

So using this information, we want to build the Pogo deck as fast as we can. everything in the deck needs to contribute to the gameplan. and we need some kind of aback up plan that hopefully has some kind of synergy with the overall plan so everything is flowing nicely together.

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless —like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot."

-Bruce Lee (a rogue from a land far away)

So I present my version of Pogo rogue (Shouts to dog for giving me the idea for the Tuskar's with his crazy spell power rogue stuff. nice work)

This version of pogo rogue mostly behaves like a tempo infused miracle deck with a lot of "bounce" going on.  This second generation of Pogo-Hopper decks have utilized the new card Spirit of the Shark to enable what we were trying to do with Augmented Elekk and Lab Recruiter much faster and more efficiently. 

It doesn't save the deck and suddenly make it meta, but it does help us speed up the deck while maintaining some of that great shuffle rogue feel gameplay as the shark is giving you double buffs on the bunnies and if copied by a Lab Recruiter you get 6 copies instead of three.

EDIT: (I don't think you get 2 shadows back when you have shark and sonya up, I need to test this some more. I think I was wrong initially though)

(in short the shark gives double to all battlecries and combos, however battlecries are the best one to take advantage of when building a deck with shark in mind)

the Zola the Gorgon infinite with the Valeera the Hollow hero power will also give you 2 copies if there is  shark on board.
(this infinite is something you should practice and aim to do in every game where applicable. this one combo lends to some of the more complex and broken things you can do with a pogo deck, granted a lot of it is just flare and not at all needed to win. This sort of thing you will work out for yourself and doesn't really have any place in basic guide such as this.. I can add some advanced tactics upon request though)

The shark is what makes this deck really tick and is like the heart of it all. 

Now ideally you want to start games by getting down a Spirit of the Shark ASAP, followed by a Pogo-Hopper and a Lab Recruiter to double buff your bunny and send 6 copies into the deck.

Now this isn't always going to be what happens with your hand, so you can play a Novice Engineer for a double card draw to try and get some tools you need, or combo into a Elven Minstrel which will give you 4 minions from your deck, it's bound to pull a bunny for you and recruiter to get started. 

Once you get the bunnies shuffled into the deck, it's just a matter of keep drawing and playing them, trying to build them up as fast as possible and smorc the opponent down. If you get a good game going it's easy to snowball the rabbits to 50+ easily. 

You will want to tidy up the board as you go, ideally smashing the face is the best option to close thing out as fast as possible, but this doesn't mean you want to ignore the opponents board and let them take the initiative. 

However regarding this I can only really tell you to make smart trades. I imagine if you;re playing this deck you have a handle on the basics, and this info is just surplus to requirements in this instance. (however if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments)

you just have to remember to save 1 Spirit of the Shark because the first one you use to send more bunnies into the deck will get killed fast if you can't protect it.

what you want is to build up the stats a bit and then play another so when you start using the DK hero power and sonya infinite and those aspects, you can get absolutely massive bunnies because it's doing double each time.

obviously double of 25 is way more than double of 5 so you really want to try and save them for later. (this is a dilemma because you definitely want to use one with the bunny+recruiter to get double the amount shuffled, but sometimes this isn't the best play if you already can see a clear way to making more copies, sometimes just using the first recruiter with the bunny is enough to get started. for this the card Witchwood Piper is perfect as she will draw the lowest cost cards. If you want to go this route though you might want to thin the number of 2 cost minions so you don't end up drawing an inventor or something by mistake. 

With the Lab Recruiter you are also strongly advised to try and hold onto one for later, because when you start messing with the hero power and sonya you never know what kind of options you will have and you will have to think on the fly. copying another inventor and another shark is amazing as you can really start to restock and start your combos off again. The deck has the potential for some real crazy scientist stuff, you just have to survive long enough to do it (or don't kill them too quickly as well, ha ha)

The card Zilliax has a ton of synergy in this deck, it's like a make shift reno. you get one of those suckers on a big bunny and you heal right back up. you can also copy it once you infinite the Zola the Gorgon and combo the Spirit of the Shark, Lab Recruiter to send a bunch of Zilliax into your deck.

(This is a total Kripp play, he is the only person I have actually seen do it, but I mean it might be the right play sometimes or you might just want to do it for some reason. This is how you do it anyway)

for this to work you gotta play a vanilla Zill, that means your first one should not be magnetized and it needs to be copied by Zola right away. That means you will get 2 in hand if you have shark on board. you are supposed to then use a lab recruiter to send more copies to your deck so you have infinite heals. It totally works if you have the time for it and you have you infinite going already with DK+Zola and a shark on board, you can really start doing some crazy stuff... Most of the time it won't be needed for you to go this deep into the rabbit hole though. 

I think the last thing we really need to talk abut other than the "finisher" (which tbh is self explanatory I think, make huge bunny and smorc face, ha ha) is the inclusion of 2 x Tuskarr Fisherman which might appear odd at first, but hear me out....

Going back to the premise of the deck being as fast as possible and being able to adapt "move like water"... well maybe we're at a putty consistency now, the deck needs more support and I have high hopes we will see pogo rogue fully blossom during this coming expansion/rotation. 

right now though we have a deck that has a singular goal, and adding other win conditions to that idea, bloat it, send it off balance etc (in my opinion at least) so we want something that ties into the main concept of the deck. 

Right so forget the pogo's for a minute. it's the Spirit of the Shark that is the heart or the glue of the deck in that he makes everything else twice as good as it was before. this card is the star player here, so ideally we want something that plays off it's greatness.

So this is where Tuskarr Fisherman comes in. it has a battlecry that adds 1 spell damage to minion.

(To demonstrate what it can do in a combo for starters. you can play it same turn as shark and get +2 spell damage and buff the shark. The shark has stealth so it is likely not to be taken out if you have to leave it there without doing much. If you also have the DK up you can wing off 2 x Eviscerate for the price of one for 12 damage. This can be enough to close out a game)

You can go for a two turn set up though where you buff the spellpower more with the DK making 1 tuskarr 2 (this will give you +4 spell damage with shark up) the next turn you can throw 2 evis from copying it with the hero power for 16 damage which is more than half of te starting health.

It might not be perfect, but it's something and it's a blast to pull off.

anyway, like I have mentioned we are an under dog deck and we don't have a ton of tools to really make the deck shine right now. It is fun to play though and I feel I'm going in the right direction with it for now. 

I am interested in all of your ideas though and if we all help we can come up with the ultimate rasta mon meta version of jade rogue.. erm I mean Pogo. 

(Ok I don't know what I've written properly so gonna post it and have a look. it will be full of typos and stuff so I need to go back an fix it so bare with me... I will also add or subtract anything as needed)