[Legend 65%] Pogo Lackeys
- Last updated Aug 4, 2019 (Saviors of Uldum)
- Edit
- |
Wild
- 22 Minions
- 8 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Shuffle Rogue
- Crafting Cost: 7680
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 6/8/2019 (Rise of the Mech)
- Myu
- Registered User
-
- 10
- 35
- 49
-
Battle Tag:
N/A
-
Region:
US
-
Total Deck Rating
473
In my opinion, the most impactful buff of "Rise of the Mechs" is the Pogo-Hopper mana change. Over the course of a game, pogo hopper is typically played 4-8 times. Thus this buff saves us at least 4-8 mana in a game. In addition, 1-cost pogo hopper can fill the mana curve very well, often utilizing the 1 extra mana that would have gone wasted otherwise. Moreover, the reduced cost makes many combos to be played earlier and more easily.
However, Pogo Rogue is listed as tier 4 on HsReplay with 40% overall winrate. I can think of two main reasons for this. First, players are not running the right cards. The most popular version on HsReplay runs quite a few sub-optimal cards, which I will explain in "card choice" section. Second, Pogo Rogue is difficult to pilot. Pogo Rogue commonly has a handful of low-cost cards so there are many possible plays each turn, which makes it difficult to find the optimal or nearly optimal play.
Since I believe most players have not been playing Pogo Rogue correctly, I will try to write a detailed guide. Feel free to ask questions about things that I did not address in the guide. If you think this deck is helpful, please upvote so more people will see it.
Card Choices
Sap: Extremely powerful against any aggro mech deck. Gains both card and tempo advantage by returning a magnetic buffed minion.
Blink Fox: Good 3-drop that helps mana curve. 3 attack is effective against hunter's Ursatron and warrior's Acolyte of Pain. Getting 1 playable card out of 2 foxes is good enough.
Fan of Knives: Great against all mech decks by killing 1/1s from SN1P-SN4P and Replicating Menace. Also great against lackeys.
Vanish: Removes all magnetic buffs. Playing pogo-hopper after vanish generates very strong tempo.
NO Daring Escape: This card sacrifices tempo to generate resource. It is only good when we are ahead on board. We will have enough resource if we properly play spirit of the shark with our card generations. You can look at the game where Thijs played Pogo Rogue against Kripp's zoo at Mechanical Inn-vitational. Thijs had both Daring Escape stuck in hand because he could not afford sacrificing tempo against zoo.
NO Togwaggle's Scheme: Our victory depends on the number of pogo-hoppers we play, not the number of pogo-hoppers in our deck. 2 lab recruiters allow us to have 8 pogo-hoppers in total, not to mention that we can generate more with barista lynchen and bouncing effects. 8 pogo-hoppers are more than enough unless against warrior. Thus the scheme is simply a waste of card.
NO Myra's Unstable Element: We usually have enough resources if we combine spirit of the shark with card draws and lackey generation. We don't want to burn the precious pogo-hoppers that we shuffled with lab recruiters. What's more, we don't run Togwaggle's scheme to sustain us from fatigue.
NO Tak Nozwhisker: To do the combo, we usually need 10 mana and 3 cards in hand. Tak only gives card advantage the turn he is played, while the pogo-hoppers he generates can only be played next turn. Overall, this card is too slow and difficult to be effective.
Card Replacement
Despite the few legendaries, this deck is not too expensive. If you are missing any cards, here are some cards that you can consider to replace them.
Earthen Ring Farseer: Battlecry healing that can synergize with bouncing effects. Very helpful against mech hunters.
SI:7 Agent: Can replace Edwin VanCleef.
Sprint: Can replace Heistbaron Togwaggle.
Mulligan
Always keep Blink Fox, EVIL Miscreant and Witchwood Piper. For all match-ups except mage and paladin, keep Backstab. For all match-ups except warrior, keep Pogo-Hopper if you have either Shadowstep or Lab Recruiter. Keep Lab Recruiter only if you have Pogo-Hopper. Keep Edwin VanCleef only if you have The Coin, Backstab or Shadowstep.
Druid: Keep Fan of Knives
Hunter (mech by default): Keep Sap, Earthen Ring Farseer and Zilliax
Mage: Keep Barista Lynchen and minions with more than 1 health.
Paladin (mech by default): Keep Sap and Barista Lynchen. Keep Vanish if you don't have Sap
Shaman: Keep Fan of Knives
Rogue: Keep Fan of Knives, Zilliax
Warlock: Keep Fan of Knives
Warrior: Keep Barista Lynchen
Strategy
In general, we want to control the board and build up pogo-hoppers until the opponent cannot answer. Each pogo-hopper after the first one will be beyond the model, generating great tempo. We always want to make sure that we have at least 1 pogo-hopper in our hand or deck. If opponent is not mage, rogue or warrior, playing 1/1 pogo-hopper on turn 1 is fine.
Token Druid
Try to clear his board early on. Leaving 1 minion is fine. Start to push damage and threat lethal around turn 7 or we will be overwhelmed by The Forest's Aid.
Mech Hunter
Try to clear his mechs in the first 4 turns so he cannot magnetic to deal face damage. If you cannot kill all mechs, ignore goblin bombs. Keep in hand an answer for Venomizer Missile Launcher combo.
Cyclone Mage
Try to put as much board pressure as possible early on so opponent is forced to play cards to control the board. With fewer cards in hand, he will have a higher mountain giant cost. Try to kill his 12-cost minions and Sap 10-cost minions. Keep track of the number of cards in his hand and think through the outcome of Vanish.
Mech Paladin
Maximize Sap value and keep track of his resurrect pool. Usually after 1 round of vanish, our pogo-hoppers should be able to eat his mechs.
Tempo Rogue
If we don't have Zilliax in hand, try not to use face to kill his minions after early game. Keep track of the number of Eviscerate and Lifedrinker opponent used and be aware of the amount of burst damage he can do. However, if we are behind on board, don't try to play around lethal because we should take the risk and play to win.
Murloc Shaman
Murloc Shaman is much easier to beat than Overload Shaman. Try to leave as few murlocs on board as possible. Sap Murloc Tastyfin. With the help of hero power, Backstab, Fan of Knives and lackeys, we can usually win the board. Murloc Shaman has no come back method after losing the board since it does not run direct face damage.
Overload Shaman
The biggest threat is Thunderhead. Whatever it takes, kill it (usually with the help of lackeys). If opponent has a full board of small minions and few cards in hand, don't Vanish. Take the bet that he has not Bloodlust but The Storm Bringer. If we can vanish big legendary minions, we win.
Zoo Warlock
This match-up largely rely on luck. If we draw Backstab and Fan of Knives and get kobold lackey or goblin lackey, it is an easy win. No fan of knives, no win.
Control Warrior
Very different game-play compared to other opponents. Warrior has large amount of removals so he can deal with pogo-hoppers for much longer. If we shuffle pogo-hoppers, we would probably run out of cards before we can kill him. The better strategy is to hold pogo-hoppers in hand until we can play Pogo-Hoppers (1 copy is fine), Barista Lynchen and Lab Recruiter in one turn. We want to add pogo-hoppers back to our hand and shuffle barista lynchen. If he does not kill all pogo-hoppers on the board, we can increase the number of pogo-hoppers we are holding each time we play barista. Beware that some control warriors run the Mecha'thun combo so make sure we have lethal before he runs out of card. The warrios with mecha'thun appear to be much less greedy than typical control warriors.
Any replacement for Edwin?
The only version of rogue I play Is the Tess one, so crafting him feels like a waste of dust
Earthen Ring Farseer or SI:7 Agent. Edwin VanCleef is in the classic set and was included in most rogue decks in hearthstone history. So crafting him can never go wrong.
*VanCleef gets nerfed*
Thank you for that passionate, profanity laden diatribe.
Just kidding.
Can I ask why the Farseers instead of Lifedrinkers? Is it for the 1 less mana, or is it the variable healing targets that you can choose with the farseer? I only ask because the Lifedrinkers can offer potential win conditions when they enter play whereas the Farseers cannot. An explanation on this card choice would be awesome.
Earthen Ring Farseer because of its 1 less mana. Tempo rogue run Lifedrinker because they win by dealing face damage. Pogo rogue win by building a board that opponent cannot deal with. So we only need the healing, not the damage. Sparing the 1 mana allows us to play an extra pogo-hopper or lackey on the same turn.
I like this compared to the other pogo decks, the vanish and saps really help and honestly you dont need 50 pogos so removing daring escape or togwaggle's scheme helps a bunch.
I'm stuck mostly at muligan, I just keep the cheap cards and maybe keep vanish or fan vs aggro. Should I keep Pogo in hand? I feel like I should get rid of it as I have draw and stuff like piper to draw it later when I can combo it.
I have updated the mulligan part. Let me know if you have other questions. I will try to write about game play tomorrow. Good luck have fun.
of course it is..duh it adds more cards to your HAND that you need to win....I just shake my head.
the deck is not difficult to pilot at all. Stop trying to make things sound more complicated than they are. Hearthstone is not rocket science. This deck is designed to win with massive pogo hoppers is it not? how do you make pogo hoppers massive, you play a bunch of them. How long does it take to play a bunch of pogo hoppers, a long time thus many turns will be played. This deck runs out of cards very fast and has nothing for card draw except 2 FoK 2 novice and two piper which draw you 6 cards total in the entire deck. So how the fuck can you play tons of pogo hoppers and make them big with only six cards drawing you cards in the deck? You have to make you initial pogo hoppers as big as you can very fast using bounce mechanics and extra battlecry effects hence why the shark is included. and barista. You probably have played at least 5 games with a list that didn't include van cleef and you realized you have a shit ton of low-cost cards and thought van cleef would be great to toss in but sorry he's not very useful especially when warriors can just slam him away. So you add heistbaron and figure it would give you another win condition which isn't bad but its pretty dam slow and random so how consistent is that?
people ask what do you mulligan for. This is pretty easy to figure out. You want to make pogo big really fast so you want pogo and bounce cards in your mulligan. Lets face it this deck gets fucking obliterated by aggro and bomb warriors can beat it pretty easily too. You have no healing and very few ways to draw cards. You don't want to shuffle pogo into the deck and increase the size pool too early or you are basically fucked. You want to delay the addition of hoppers until you can use card draw to pull a bunch of them so you can play them right away. now, what cards can deal with a board of 3x 8 or 10 attack minions that the current meta decks run? Is this so hard to figure out? The reason why this deck is tier 4 is that it has no draw and no way to really survive into the late game to make gigantic pogo hoppers consistently. You have to hope you draw your cards or hit some rng answers off your blink fox or baron to win a lot of matchups.
How you made it legend with this list is that you played a bunch of idiots and had great luck which is what the game is, congrats and welcome to the brownstain cardback club.
Play this deck in wild where you have access to card draw that never runs out and ways to add and draw as many rabbits as you want. Most people I farm with pogo in wild just concede because i mill their fucking deck away with coldlights and destroy their entire mass resurrected big priest board of trash. The deck still loses to aggro and combo decks in wild but its a lot more consistent there. Stats don't lie and this is a tier 4 deck for a reason. I beat warriors with chef nomi in this deck but the list is very different and you won't find it here because I don't post decks I make but once again if you play this deck you can figure out how to make it better very quick.
Stop trying to make the game sound harder than it is. Pogo rogue is fun in wild but I wouldn't waste my time with it in standard trying to climb because it isn't consistent enough and that's what the stats say because that's the way it is. There are much better and faster ways of reaching legend if you still need to get your card-back.
You beat 4 bomb warriors.....they must not know how to play bomb warrior..good god.
nah
Dude. You need to get out more. It's just a game FFS.
What can I put in this deck instead of barista??
I updated the card replacement section. However, I strongly recommend crafting it. In my opinion, Barista Lynchen has the highest single card power level in this deck.
Looking forward to read your guide!
Hello! Can you show Mulligan against each class, please?)