Hearthpwn

Write up coming as I experiment against the current Meta - haven't been tracking stats but I'll start to do so when I get to a relevant rank.

Basis of the deck is the subtle yet significant improvements to the 'Burgle' Rogue archetype, both in the cards Hallucination & Elise the Trailblazer but also due to the Standard card list becoming much more desirable as a Rogue.   Whereas Burgle gave you 2 random cards from the whole set at 1.5 mana per card, Hallucination gives you the choice to adapt to your opponent's deck for 1 mana. The cost synergises well with Rogue cards such as SI:7 Agent, Vilespine Slayer & Edwin VanCleef. Beating a Freeze Mage because you Counterspell their Molten Reflection or Potion of Polymorph their Sorcerer's Apprentice feels good man. 

With so many useless (to Rogue) cards leaving all classes during the Year of the Mammoth, your Hallucination draws are almost guaranteed to be impactful (although if I see Bestial Wrath one more time I'll puke).

Meta Overview

So far seems heavily favoured against:

Freeze Mage
Control Shaman
Quest Shaman
Taunt Warrior [Best Matchup]
Quest Priest
Zoolock
Discolock (got my ass handed to me by a Lakkari variant - I miss Dark Iron Skulker)

You are gonna struggle against Hunters because you'll regularly get unusable beast interaction cards and even with all your removal they'll out tempo you on that basis alone. A variation of this deck with 2x Journey Below and 2x Mimic Pods fared better but at the expense of sustained draw  - I replaced them for Preparation.

 

Similarly, you are unfavored against Quest Rogue for similar reasons albeit less so than against Hunter.

 

 Card Choices/Rationale

I'll include information on my mulligans and rationale behind cards as I go.

Hallucination

The workhorse of the deck and the main card I've been excited to try out. An incredibly versatile card that will give you something of value in the vast majority of cases. It also synergises incredibly well with the rest of the deck by activating combos, in particular, Sherazin and VanCleef. You will regularly be able to revive Sherazin, Corpse Flower from one cast of this alongside a minion resulting in huge tempo swings. A vast improvement over Burgle, I tend to refrain from playing this on turn one unless I have my late game in my hand where it then serves to help you curve out efficiently.

Why Not Include?

Journey Below

I tried for a while to get this to work but you are really only after 3 cards - Sherazin, Corpse Flow, Xaril, Poisoned Mind and Infested Tauren. Given the fact that paying 1 Mana for a 4 Cost 2/3 Taunt is pretty awful, the only other reason to run this efficiently is to have multiple Sherazins on board and reliably combo them out each turn. I think that to do THAT you need to have something more akin to Miracle Rogue, which this deck is not. 

Obsidian Shard

Was using this as a one of for a while. A significantly better Assassin's Blade because Rogues can't afford to be forcing damage on themselves 4 times in a match so AB's cost has never been justifiable. I think Obsidian Shard could be a tech card in a slightly slower meta whereby you can afford to run Earthen Ring Farseers. It's actually pretty disgusting as it's always going to be a better Fiery War Axe. Having said that, it's only a better Fiery War Axe in the mid game at the earliest where you can readily play it for 2 Mana. In the situations where I was able to play it for 0 Mana alongside other combos it wasn't really having the impact I'd need at that stage. I see very few Ooze these days and in a slightly different deck that runs Deadly Poison, this is a pretty terrifying weapon to face down. 3/3 for 3 is fine but the purpose of this is to have bonus damage. I'd like it to see play, I really would.

Win Rates

Still toying with it so these are only estimates- my meta currently looks like this in order of appearance (top 3 are 60-70% of what I see):

1. Quest Rogue (obviously, so many window lickers out there) - 60%
2. Taunt Warrior - 90% [One loss so far, about 9-1 I'd say]
2. Freeze Mage - 70%
3. Midrange Hunter 40% [Had a few wins the past 2 hours, It;s almost auto concede]
4. Quest Shaman - 100%
5. Zoolock - 
6. Quest Priest - 50% [Lost hard because couldn't find Vilespine Slayer forYsera]
7. Discardlock - 50% 
8. People who don't net deck and try to engage their brain