Hey there ! Pretty long thread in sight ! I've made my best to stuff the longest parts inside spoilers and write some TL; DR to make it easier for those who don't wanna spend too long reading, but I'd recommend you make yourself a coffee carafe and take the time to read those if you're interested in playing Kingsbane decks or if you're already a Kingsbane afficionado ;-D
So Kobolds and Catacombs is now two month old and most of those new cards mechanics seem to be pretty mastered by the majority of players by now. That said, I'm still very confused about the way most players build around one of those cards ; you guessed it, it's Kingsbane, and the fact that it's generally used with Coldlight Oracle with the intend to play a Mill-like type of deck. And I'd like to use this thread to both throw in "a few" reflexions and read a bit of your own experiences to kinda take those different points of view into account.
But most importantly, with the number of (very reasonable) nerfs Tempo Rogue has taken alongside the other board-oriented proactive decks, it has become quite less popular and is now being challenged by Miracle Rogue with both decks seeing decent results right now (50-55%). Therefore I think it's a good moment to put Kingsbane Rogue in perspective to try and refine the archetype more to make it comparable to its two counterparts in term of results. Although I do respect the players and personalities with a lot of influence (but mostly skill and in-game creativity ! =) like Kolento for example, I feel like this archetype hasn't been refined seriously enough for the ladder and has been popularized in some very one-dimentional variants (obviously anti-Priest and anti-Warlock) that make it kind of a meme-deck on the ladder right now, which is perfectly fine : even Reno/Highlander or Aggro Pirate decks used to be some jokes before they got refined.
First of all, let's clear out that I have been playing enough Coldlight Oracle, especially in Wild's Gang UpMill Rogue before K&C was even announced, to know well enough the strenghts of Coldlight Oracle, which I'll cite here as a way to unwrap the card a little bit and consider the upsides and downsides of playing it in a deck :
The most satisfying use of Coldlight Oracle is obviously using it to mill cards from opposing slow and greedy decks. This is very feasible in Rogue thanks to Sap and Vanish, creating a somewhat tempo and value dynamic where you're clogging the opponent's hand with cards and forcing him to dump them in a generally sub-optimal way to avoid getting milled again, to then have the option to play some bounce effects, replay Oracle and mill them again (or do it the other way to hard-remove some minions on the board), allowing you to take multiple tempo advantages over the game.
Continuing with the mill dynamic, milling also sometimes means you can destroy some key cards from your opponent, which can make them straight-up loose the game if the card is a win condition or a strong card like a board clear. It's not something you have complete control over though, and you can actually do the opposite and accelerate your opponent's win condition by either making them draw their key cards before the milling even starts, or mill irrelevant cards stacked on top of their important ones. It's basically as much as a dice roll as Gnomeferatu is, except the Mill strategy is a bit more serious in that discard aspect since you'll generally destroy much more cards, increasing your odds to mill important cards.
The most obvious downside of the mill dynamic and Coldlight Oracle, which I think is good clarifying early, is the fact that it's terrible against fast decks ! :-D They are purposely playing cheap exchangeable cards because their objective is to have good proactive opening hands regularly and kill you before they naturally run out of steam. They will never have enough cards in hand for you to mill anything, which would'nt matter anyway, and by playing Coldlight Oracle you're actually kindly giving them free gas.
Obviously, Coldlight Oracle is pretty good at refilling your hand ! You have the complete control over when you're playing it so you'll obviously never mill yourself except maybe if you're new to Mill Rogue; and you have Shadowstep / Vanish / Valeera the Hollow to get more draws/mill. Oracle is even played in combo or burns decks that don't care about the mill mechanic and just want to goldfish and draw their win condition as fast as possible (we mostly see it today in Exodia Mage, but Tempo Mage used to play it before thanks to Ice Block negating Oracle's positive impact for the opponent).
A small note here : although self-bounce effects are really good with Coldlight Oracle, this synergy sometimes puts you in problematic situations where if you don't have those self-bounce and want to draw into more options, you might be forced to play Oracle anyway, not find Shadowstep/Preparation+Vanish, and loose one of your Oracles on the opponent's turn. You can only afford to let this happen once during a game if you don't want to screw up your main draw/mill tool for the rest of the game :-p Same clunkyness problem if you don't draw those Oracles in the first place.
In case of TL;DR
Coldlight Oracle is THE Mill card and Rogue has a lot of cards that are good in a mill playstyle
Discarding key card through mill can win some games by itself but you can't control what gets milled and you can actually do the opposite and accelerate your opponent
Mill and Coldlight Oracle in general are terrible against fast proactive decks
That said, counting solely on Coldlight Oracle to refill your hand creates clunky situations where you either don't have a self-bounce effect in hand or you don't even draw Oracle
Now let's talk a bit about Kingsbane. This card is definitely the one that got me the most excited about K&C; as a Rogue afficionado, to me it's one of the best designed Hearthstone cards in a very long time, and probably the best designed card overall if we focus on its impact during a game and during the deckbuilding. As you can guess, I've played a lot of Kingsbane decks after K&C's release; more than any other deck actually, and I know my lot about it.
First off : Kingsbane has a tremendous impact during a game as long as you can connect it with some weapon buffs, and making it work or not will most likely dictate the game's outcome. A buffed Kingsbane is extremely effective in term of tempo and value, especially when you get to redraw it, and allows you to ignore fatigue, meaning you can completely afford to play a deck that cycles itself very quickly, just like in Jade Druid. Moreover, the card is, quite literally, out of control since there is no consistent and reliable way to destroy it.
The weapon buff cards are pretty good overall, and you can afford to use some of them pretty effectively before you even get to draw Kingsbane if you have no other options and the situation requires it (mainly against aggro), just like Oil Rogue used to play weapon buff : Deadly Poison is very cheap and tempo efficient; Naga Corsair and Southsea Squidface (although this one a complete Silence-magnet in the present metagame which should make you think twice before adding him to the deck) are well stated 4-drops; Captain Greenskin is slightly weak on paper in term of tempo, but the extra weapon stack is extremely valuable (especially in the worst case scenarios where you didn't draw Kingsbane against aggro and had to use some weapon buffs on your Hero Power to control the board); and Leeching Poison, although it's basically not worth a card in term of value, is extremely impactful on a buffed Kingsbane as it outlasts nearly every burst potential that isn't an OTK, and is generally one of your only ways out of some match-ups (obviously Face Hunter and Tempo Mage).
Althouth Kingsbane is quite impactful to say the least, and basically generates some form of infinite value if it has Lifesteal (since your HPs aren't infinite at first :p), it's not possible to completely outlast the most greedy decks. Frost Lich Jaina's Water Elementals will freeze you to death if you run off of "hard removals" (generally Doomerang or Blade Flurry) before you kill her; Jade Idol will always outpace you at some point, so you have to go for their face, and even Control Warlock can stop your infinite Kingsbane redraw with Azari, the Devourer (or eventually Gnomemeferatu), given they've stalled enough damage not to be pressured down.
All that said, Kingsbane's biggest problem is its potential inconsistency. Just like with Coldlight Oracle with self-bounce, you can get pretty screwed up if you don't draw enough weapon buffs or if you don't draw Kingsbane in the first place.
Another one of Kingsbane flaws, although it's pretty manageable and more a matter of deckbuilding, is the fact that the card requires ressources and deck slots (between 5 to 12 depending on the number of buffs you want -and please don't even think about mentioning Envenom Weapon ;-) -, and up to 3-4 more if you want to play weapon-synergistic cards like Doomerang or Blade Flurry) . This basically means you need to have some good draw tools in order to draw Kingsbane regularly and feed it with your weapon synergy cards. That said, playing some powerful draw tools isn't a new matter at all for Rogues, except if you've discovered the class with pre-nerf Tempo Rogue \0/
In case of TL;DR
A well buffed Kingsbane generates a lot of tempo and value, allows you to deck yourself and cannot be hard-teched against
The weapon buff cards are quite decent cards by themselves, and can be much less clunky and dependent to Kingsbane than they would seem with good understanding of the game and decision-making
Although the card is extremely powerful in late game, the most greedy decks have ways to outlast you, so you should out-tempo and kill them before they get to the "puzzle" state of the game where you both have very predictable options and they can play their way out of it.
Kingsbane still creates some inconsistencies if you're pressured down and not drawing your synergistic cards in the right order
Kingsbane demands a good bunch of deck slots and ressources during the game that you have to back up with some draw tools
What is wrong with Kingsbane Mill on ladder
Allright so now we're on the same page, here's my opinion about the Coldlight Oracle / Mill shell the majority of the Kingsbane players are using : although it's quite seriously effective against Priests and defensive Warlock decks, making it a valuable choice for some pro players (when I say pro, it is to be taken literally : a decent bunch of pro players are also streamers, who have to entertain their public ;-) when they want to hard counter some predictable high legend rank decks and eventually get some good youtube highlights against the perfect match-ups, I think it's way too marginal and clunky to actually be a serious choice in ladder. Here are the recent HSReplay numbers to give you an idea about what I'm talking about :
Kingsbane needs to be played in a deck with some draw mechanics to work correctly; that's the starting point of building a Kingsbane deck. Sure. And Coldlight Oracle + Shadowstep (leading you to the Mill archetype including Vanish, Valeera the Hollow and so on) is a respectable idea : after all, it punishes slow decks, and since a high attack LifestealKingsbane allows you to not only survive during those long Mill games, but also cancel fatigue damage, those two mechanics seem to work well enough together. Sure.
But there's a problem with this game plan. Quite a huge problem actually : slow decks aren't the most popular ladder decks. As much as Control Warlock is a hard counter to Aggressive Paladin decks, Paladins are still the most favored decks on the ladder and are therefore very popular; Secret Mage is even more popular right now as a matter of fact. And since those strong proactive decks are so popular on the ladder, that slow Coldlight Oracle / Mill game plan the majority of Kingsbane players are using is dooming them to have poor results in ladder.
As I said before, using Coldlight Oracle as your main drawing tool is kinda suicidal against proactive decks, but it's not the main problem : Coldlight Oracle and the Mill game plan in general are adding some consistency issues and some early game inactivity to your deck, because the cards that work with them have some very specific effects that need to be used in the right situation and demand you to have the right number of cards and mana to be used in the first place, which puts you at the mercy of those proactive decks in the early game. And the early game means the world to them.
Although you might argue that the Kingsbane-related cards help you fill those early game turns with something relevant before you get to put your schemes into motion, the problem is that those Kingsbane-related cards create inconsistencies themselves in the first place. To put it simply, you're adding inconsistency on top of something that's already inconsistent, and thus you're dooming yourself to have a horrendous early game, and although it's perfectly affordable against slow control decks who are basing their own early game on few good defensive cards and board clears, it's bonkers against the proactive decks that swarm the ladder.
To make things clearer in case of TL; DR and to developp my point a bit more with some tangible datas, here are two different Kingsbane decks with about 50% WR to picture out what I'm saying.
The first is a pretty classic Mill-oriented Kingsbane deck playing Vanish, Doomerang and Valeera the Hollow. You can see its very strong results against Priests and Warriors (slow Warriors like Recruit and Control being the most popular Warrior decks right now) and slightly positive results against Warlocks and Shamans (which is justified by the fact that those two classes are divided between slow Midrange/Control decks and Aggro/Zoo decks), while every other class match-ups are terrible. I chose this list because of its better winrate than the most popular Kingsbane Mill list (likely due to the fact that the most popular lists are played more by inexperienced Mill players), but the match-ups are absolutely similar same.
The second list is a different variant of Kingsbane Rogue, still playing Coldlight Oracle as its main draw tool, but dropping its Mill aspect for some more early game and tempo-oriented cards like Fire Fly, Swashburglar + Patches the Pirate (how about that !) and Vilespine Slayer. Although its average WR isn't much more impressive than the previous deck, what's interesting with this deck is the fact that its match-ups are much more balanced, with a Priest match-up about 15% weaker but still favored in exchange for some better Hunter and Mage match-ups (about 5-10%) and some tremendously better Paladin and Rogue (keep in mind the majority of Rogue decks is made of Miracle Rogues and some less successful Kingsbane Mill Rogues ;-3 ) match-ups with a 20% upgrade.
Changing the playstyle
With the example of our last non-Mill deck, we can see that a deck that uses Kingsbane in a tempo/aggressive way and sets aside the Mill game plan not only works, but also works better against the overall field. And for good reasons : not only removing the Mill cards makes your Kingsbane package the only inconsistent things in your deck, meaning you have some space to support the package instead of relying on it, but it also just turns out playing the tempo game is more adapted to the many aggro/midrange decks you'll encounter on the ladder. How are you winning those Control Warlock games then ? Well it turns out putting pressure and playing Sap on your opponent's Voidlord is also a pretty good way to do it, especially when you have a powerful recursive weapon to kill their mid-sized minions and later go face ! :)
Another intersting thing with this playstlye is the fact that, just like in the old Oil Rogue archetype, you are much more free to use your weapon buff cards on your hero power, since you're not relying on going for the extremely long game and not dependant on cards like Doomerang, Blade Flurry or even Leeching Poison that require you to keep your buffs for Kingsbane. That means you're less dependant on something irregular (drawing Kingsbane early), and can just play out your games correctly everytime without having to try stalling multiple turns before you finally get to draw Cavern Shinyfinder, Elven Minstrel or Coldlight Oracle to start doing something relevant. Something typically important versus the aggro decks against which drawing your premium buffed Kingsbane multiple times isn't as important as succeeding in the attrition game as soon as possible to not get overrun by their board and burst tools.
All right, so playing Kingsbane in a proactive deck is cool and stuff, and apparently more relevant in the ladder. Sure. But how do we get to make the deck more successful than a "measly" 50% WR ? Well from my expercience of about 200-250 games playing multiple variants of Kingsbane decks on the ladder, it's by learning from the old school and playing a different draw mechanic than Coldlight Oracle + Shadowstep. We don't want to help out our proactive opponents finding ressources at all. Instead, we want to focus our ressources on tempo and board control, to pressure the opponent or at least mitigate their pressure, before refilling our hand with more threats, weapon buffs, removals and burst and use them to finish the game. Just like Secret Mages (Aluneth) and Aggressive Paladins (Divine Favor) right now, and just like Oil Rogue in the past and in today's Wild.
And what draw tool do we have to do that ? Well Preparation and Sprint of course !
You almost emptied you hand to deal with all of those Secret Mage's early threats and took 16-18 damage in the process ? Well refill your hand with Sprint and use those ressources to not give them the time to topdeck those nasty burn spells !
You're cornered down with a buffed weapon and a few minions against a pitched Voidlord/Obsidian Statue separating you from the victory ? Preparation+Sprint, finally draw that Sap, and gg wp !
Going even on the board with a smaller and smaller hand against Spiteful Priest, except he just highrolled a nice Deathwing, Dragonlord off of his Spiteful Summoner ? Preparation+Sprint+Sap and start out-tempoing him down with a new aggressive and tempo-efficient hand !
You might very rightfully say that Sprint has the downside of not being fetchable by Elven Minstrel compared to Coldlight Oracle. It is true, but put it into perspective : you just played an Elven Minstrel, which is in the weak side in term of tempo; would you rather draw another tempo-inefficient minon that's going to give you and your opponent new ressources, worsening your bad tempo situation, or would you rather secure the draw of more powerful and threatening minions to come back on the board, and rely on your future topdecks to either finally draw that Sprint and play it from a good board situation or at worse eventually just draw some more removals and threats to keep fighting the attrition game ?
Some samples for the reorientation
Now I've made all my points on how I think (of course those thoughts are backed up by experience and testing :) ) the Kingsbane ladder decks should evolve to be more consistent, proactive, and adapted to the meta-game, I'd like to share with you a few lists of my own that I've played and had some very satisfying success with, not as a way to promote my builds or something (they're unlisted anyway :p ), but to share with you some general directions to try and play Kingsbane proactively yourself :-)
The best start to get rid of those painfully weak early game turns and start mastering your new proactive playstlye.
Fan of Knives has become mandatory to deal with Silver Hand Paladin against which you would otherwise have very few outs.
The deck is really good at surprising Secret Mages and other aggro decks with its board control potential, although keep in mind even a 50-55% match-up implies that you will loose some games because of the RNG. But you definitely won't have totally unplayable hands anymore with this deck.
The match-ups against defensive decks are slightly more complex though, as you will need to have some good openers, pressure them enough, and generally squeeze in a good Preparation + Sprint to have enough ressources (especially Sap) to close out the game before they can stabilize.
A build I favor a bit more because it's better against midrange and control decks. It's slightly more difficult to play as you have 2 less one-drops against aggro, and your turns 4-5 will be more clogged, meaning you have to make more decisions and consider your future lines of play more.
Exchanging the 2 Swashburglar + Patches the Pirate with the removed 2 Fire Fly is also a good option if you're pouting Patches and want to make your combo cards easier to play. In this case, add Bloodmage Thalnos to make your board-control spells more efficient and cycle a bit more to support Fal'dorei Strider.
When a bunch of Leyline Spider are in your deck, try balancing your usage of draw tools with your board state against defensive decks. You don't want to have more than 3 mid-sized bodies on the board if they are quite obviously all going to die to a board clear. Instead, try spreading your mana between your board presence, your weapon buffs to not offer some optimal plays to your opponent.
As the title says, it's the "okay, I want to focus on slow match-ups but still be decent against aggro" list. It will require you to mulligan really well and not be in never-lucky mode against aggro, but at least you'll have a really good time fighting slow decks and overrun them with your Lifesteal Kingsbane, Fal'dorei Strider and your 3 big draw tools making it almost impossible to lack ressources in the late game.
Mistress of Mixtures isn't crazy against control, but you're planning on winning the game later with Leyline Spider, your buffed Kingsbane and your huge hands anyway. It's a really good card against aggro (considering we want the maximum defensive impact without using slots for cards like SI:7 Agent) and allows you to not play a second Leeching Poison. Play it carefully not to waste its potential against aggro though : if you play second and they played a 1-drop that can kill it, it's better to play her on turn 3 after having used your Hero Power to chip through the board rather than letting her die when you're at 30HP. She's also pretty good later for secret-checking against Secret Mage (she completely negates Explosive Runes for 1 mana), but if you're low on health and already dominating the board and most likely going to kill your opponent soon, checking with a 4 drop before playing her will be better against Potion of Polymorph, since you can either trade next turn or Backstab her right away to make sure you'll put yourself out of burn range.
Although going all-in into trying to draw your Leeching Poison can sometimes be your only way out of some games against Hunter or Mages, don't do it mindlessly. Loosing the board control will most likely make you loose anyway, and depending on your number of HP and their burst potential, your likelyhood of killing the opponent in the next 2 turns if you pressure them down can be a more secure way out of this. It's ambiguous though, so if you end up loosing, try analysing what else you could have tried and rewatch the game if possible (with Hearthstone Deck Tracker, for example ;-).
Don't expect to draw 5 cards off of Gadgetzan Auctioneer every game. You're not playing Miracle and will have to use a lot of your spells before turn 6. He's mostly there to ensure you can draw in the later stages of the game or use your Preparation in the mid game if you don't draw Sprint and not let it stick to your hand, then absorb a removal while you already have threats in hand for the next turn. If you have the choice between playing Sprint and Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Sprint should be preferred, especially with Preparation, as some of the 4 cards drawn will feed your Auctioneer later.
Don't waste too much weapon buffs on your hero power (ideally against control you wouldn't want to waste any, but don't let it prevent you from playing a turn 4 Naga Corsair if you know it's gonna make your opponent make some hard choices (like letting it live and loose HP or wasting a 5-dmg Amethyst Spellstone immediatly), as you're more relying on Kingsbane to win the game than with the other Tempo Kingsbane decks.
To conclude, I'm not pretending to be an absolute expert with some form of exact insights on how Kingsbane will see more success in the future. I have played my bunch of games and I'm only sharing my thoughts, comparisons and advices. But I do feel like the Mill playstyle is seeing too much popularity for its actual potential in ladder, and that the Tempo playstyle hasn't seen enough play and tests after the recent nerfs while it used to already have some satisfying success before nerf when Corridor Creeper and Tempo Rogues were running rampant (~50% WR with the Tempo Kingsbane variants, while the Kingsbane Mill variants were at ~45% WR).
Anyway thank you a lot for taking the time to read; I hope I conviced some people to play Kingsbane differently, but I'd mostly be glad to receive some feedbacks and discuss (constructively) with you guys about that topic ! :-D
As you said and because of my own experience, Mill Rogue is really strong against most control decks, those are very favorable games, but in ladder aggro decks are much more popular, and so, I consider that more tempo-oriented variants are better to rank-up.
Tempo oriented variants are like in the middle, can still suffer from aggressive decks but have much more chances on dealing with them, and although they're less "devastating" against control decks, matchups against controlock, cubelock, many priest controlish decks and control mage are still very favourable.
Apart from that, I hadn't thought about Mistress of Mixtures instead of a second Leeching Poison and as you talk about it it really seems to have important benefits for many situations and to not carry an useless Leeching Poison. Definetly going to try it!
Tempo oriented variants are like in the middle, can still suffer from aggressive decks but have much more chances on dealing with them, and although they're less "devastating" against control decks, matchups against controlock, cubelock, many priest controlish decks and control mage are still very favourable.
Yup. I actually find the Cubelock match-up to be better with Tempo Kingsbane. You win the well curved games pretty easily thanks to the board/weapon pressure, generally forcing them to defend themselves with a sub-optimal Voidlord and pray not to eat Sap. The Mill deck being much more passive, they have more time to build up a better defense and burst you down with multiple Doomguard combos :-p
Hey there ! Pretty long thread in sight ! I've made my best to stuff the longest parts inside spoilers and write some TL; DR to make it easier for those who don't wanna spend too long reading, but I'd recommend you make yourself a coffee carafe and take the time to read those if you're interested in playing Kingsbane decks or if you're already a Kingsbane afficionado ;-D
So Kobolds and Catacombs is now two month old and most of those new cards mechanics seem to be pretty mastered by the majority of players by now. That said, I'm still very confused about the way most players build around one of those cards ; you guessed it, it's Kingsbane, and the fact that it's generally used with Coldlight Oracle with the intend to play a Mill-like type of deck. And I'd like to use this thread to both throw in "a few" reflexions and read a bit of your own experiences to kinda take those different points of view into account.
But most importantly, with the number of (very reasonable) nerfs Tempo Rogue has taken alongside the other board-oriented proactive decks, it has become quite less popular and is now being challenged by Miracle Rogue with both decks seeing decent results right now (50-55%). Therefore I think it's a good moment to put Kingsbane Rogue in perspective to try and refine the archetype more to make it comparable to its two counterparts in term of results. Although I do respect the players and personalities with a lot of influence (but mostly skill and in-game creativity ! =) like Kolento for example, I feel like this archetype hasn't been refined seriously enough for the ladder and has been popularized in some very one-dimentional variants (obviously anti-Priest and anti-Warlock) that make it kind of a meme-deck on the ladder right now, which is perfectly fine : even Reno/Highlander or Aggro Pirate decks used to be some jokes before they got refined.
About Kingsbane and Coldlight Oracle
First of all, let's clear out that I have been playing enough Coldlight Oracle, especially in Wild's Gang Up Mill Rogue before K&C was even announced, to know well enough the strenghts of Coldlight Oracle, which I'll cite here as a way to unwrap the card a little bit and consider the upsides and downsides of playing it in a deck :
In case of TL;DR
Now let's talk a bit about Kingsbane. This card is definitely the one that got me the most excited about K&C; as a Rogue afficionado, to me it's one of the best designed Hearthstone cards in a very long time, and probably the best designed card overall if we focus on its impact during a game and during the deckbuilding. As you can guess, I've played a lot of Kingsbane decks after K&C's release; more than any other deck actually, and I know my lot about it.
In case of TL;DR
What is wrong with Kingsbane Mill on ladder
Allright so now we're on the same page, here's my opinion about the Coldlight Oracle / Mill shell the majority of the Kingsbane players are using : although it's quite seriously effective against Priests and defensive Warlock decks, making it a valuable choice for some pro players (when I say pro, it is to be taken literally : a decent bunch of pro players are also streamers, who have to entertain their public ;-) when they want to hard counter some predictable high legend rank decks and eventually get some good youtube highlights against the perfect match-ups, I think it's way too marginal and clunky to actually be a serious choice in ladder. Here are the recent HSReplay numbers to give you an idea about what I'm talking about :
https://hsreplay.net/archetypes/184/kingsbane-rogue#tab=matchups
To detail my point a bit more :
Kingsbane needs to be played in a deck with some draw mechanics to work correctly; that's the starting point of building a Kingsbane deck. Sure. And Coldlight Oracle + Shadowstep (leading you to the Mill archetype including Vanish, Valeera the Hollow and so on) is a respectable idea : after all, it punishes slow decks, and since a high attack Lifesteal Kingsbane allows you to not only survive during those long Mill games, but also cancel fatigue damage, those two mechanics seem to work well enough together. Sure.
But there's a problem with this game plan. Quite a huge problem actually : slow decks aren't the most popular ladder decks. As much as Control Warlock is a hard counter to Aggressive Paladin decks, Paladins are still the most favored decks on the ladder and are therefore very popular; Secret Mage is even more popular right now as a matter of fact. And since those strong proactive decks are so popular on the ladder, that slow Coldlight Oracle / Mill game plan the majority of Kingsbane players are using is dooming them to have poor results in ladder.
As I said before, using Coldlight Oracle as your main drawing tool is kinda suicidal against proactive decks, but it's not the main problem : Coldlight Oracle and the Mill game plan in general are adding some consistency issues and some early game inactivity to your deck, because the cards that work with them have some very specific effects that need to be used in the right situation and demand you to have the right number of cards and mana to be used in the first place, which puts you at the mercy of those proactive decks in the early game. And the early game means the world to them.
Although you might argue that the Kingsbane-related cards help you fill those early game turns with something relevant before you get to put your schemes into motion, the problem is that those Kingsbane-related cards create inconsistencies themselves in the first place. To put it simply, you're adding inconsistency on top of something that's already inconsistent, and thus you're dooming yourself to have a horrendous early game, and although it's perfectly affordable against slow control decks who are basing their own early game on few good defensive cards and board clears, it's bonkers against the proactive decks that swarm the ladder.
To make things clearer in case of TL; DR and to developp my point a bit more with some tangible datas, here are two different Kingsbane decks with about 50% WR to picture out what I'm saying.
https://hsreplay.net/decks/vxx30OGt3tASrT4cFsiXEb/#tab=overview
The first is a pretty classic Mill-oriented Kingsbane deck playing Vanish, Doomerang and Valeera the Hollow. You can see its very strong results against Priests and Warriors (slow Warriors like Recruit and Control being the most popular Warrior decks right now) and slightly positive results against Warlocks and Shamans (which is justified by the fact that those two classes are divided between slow Midrange/Control decks and Aggro/Zoo decks), while every other class match-ups are terrible. I chose this list because of its better winrate than the most popular Kingsbane Mill list (likely due to the fact that the most popular lists are played more by inexperienced Mill players), but the match-ups are absolutely similar same.
https://hsreplay.net/decks/FeBGJIuvJ2ZFgqK6s3gQhf/#tab=overview
The second list is a different variant of Kingsbane Rogue, still playing Coldlight Oracle as its main draw tool, but dropping its Mill aspect for some more early game and tempo-oriented cards like Fire Fly, Swashburglar + Patches the Pirate (how about that !) and Vilespine Slayer. Although its average WR isn't much more impressive than the previous deck, what's interesting with this deck is the fact that its match-ups are much more balanced, with a Priest match-up about 15% weaker but still favored in exchange for some better Hunter and Mage match-ups (about 5-10%) and some tremendously better Paladin and Rogue (keep in mind the majority of Rogue decks is made of Miracle Rogues and some less successful Kingsbane Mill Rogues ;-3 ) match-ups with a 20% upgrade.
Changing the playstyle
With the example of our last non-Mill deck, we can see that a deck that uses Kingsbane in a tempo/aggressive way and sets aside the Mill game plan not only works, but also works better against the overall field. And for good reasons : not only removing the Mill cards makes your Kingsbane package the only inconsistent things in your deck, meaning you have some space to support the package instead of relying on it, but it also just turns out playing the tempo game is more adapted to the many aggro/midrange decks you'll encounter on the ladder. How are you winning those Control Warlock games then ? Well it turns out putting pressure and playing Sap on your opponent's Voidlord is also a pretty good way to do it, especially when you have a powerful recursive weapon to kill their mid-sized minions and later go face ! :)
Another intersting thing with this playstlye is the fact that, just like in the old Oil Rogue archetype, you are much more free to use your weapon buff cards on your hero power, since you're not relying on going for the extremely long game and not dependant on cards like Doomerang, Blade Flurry or even Leeching Poison that require you to keep your buffs for Kingsbane. That means you're less dependant on something irregular (drawing Kingsbane early), and can just play out your games correctly everytime without having to try stalling multiple turns before you finally get to draw Cavern Shinyfinder, Elven Minstrel or Coldlight Oracle to start doing something relevant. Something typically important versus the aggro decks against which drawing your premium buffed Kingsbane multiple times isn't as important as succeeding in the attrition game as soon as possible to not get overrun by their board and burst tools.
All right, so playing Kingsbane in a proactive deck is cool and stuff, and apparently more relevant in the ladder. Sure. But how do we get to make the deck more successful than a "measly" 50% WR ? Well from my expercience of about 200-250 games playing multiple variants of Kingsbane decks on the ladder, it's by learning from the old school and playing a different draw mechanic than Coldlight Oracle + Shadowstep. We don't want to help out our proactive opponents finding ressources at all. Instead, we want to focus our ressources on tempo and board control, to pressure the opponent or at least mitigate their pressure, before refilling our hand with more threats, weapon buffs, removals and burst and use them to finish the game. Just like Secret Mages (Aluneth) and Aggressive Paladins (Divine Favor) right now, and just like Oil Rogue in the past and in today's Wild.
And what draw tool do we have to do that ? Well Preparation and Sprint of course !
You might very rightfully say that Sprint has the downside of not being fetchable by Elven Minstrel compared to Coldlight Oracle. It is true, but put it into perspective : you just played an Elven Minstrel, which is in the weak side in term of tempo; would you rather draw another tempo-inefficient minon that's going to give you and your opponent new ressources, worsening your bad tempo situation, or would you rather secure the draw of more powerful and threatening minions to come back on the board, and rely on your future topdecks to either finally draw that Sprint and play it from a good board situation or at worse eventually just draw some more removals and threats to keep fighting the attrition game ?
Some samples for the reorientation
Now I've made all my points on how I think (of course those thoughts are backed up by experience and testing :) ) the Kingsbane ladder decks should evolve to be more consistent, proactive, and adapted to the meta-game, I'd like to share with you a few lists of my own that I've played and had some very satisfying success with, not as a way to promote my builds or something (they're unlisted anyway :p ), but to share with you some general directions to try and play Kingsbane proactively yourself :-)
The best start to get rid of those painfully weak early game turns and start mastering your new proactive playstlye.
A build I favor a bit more because it's better against midrange and control decks. It's slightly more difficult to play as you have 2 less one-drops against aggro, and your turns 4-5 will be more clogged, meaning you have to make more decisions and consider your future lines of play more.
As the title says, it's the "okay, I want to focus on slow match-ups but still be decent against aggro" list. It will require you to mulligan really well and not be in never-lucky mode against aggro, but at least you'll have a really good time fighting slow decks and overrun them with your Lifesteal Kingsbane, Fal'dorei Strider and your 3 big draw tools making it almost impossible to lack ressources in the late game.
To conclude, I'm not pretending to be an absolute expert with some form of exact insights on how Kingsbane will see more success in the future. I have played my bunch of games and I'm only sharing my thoughts, comparisons and advices. But I do feel like the Mill playstyle is seeing too much popularity for its actual potential in ladder, and that the Tempo playstyle hasn't seen enough play and tests after the recent nerfs while it used to already have some satisfying success before nerf when Corridor Creeper and Tempo Rogues were running rampant (~50% WR with the Tempo Kingsbane variants, while the Kingsbane Mill variants were at ~45% WR).
Anyway thank you a lot for taking the time to read; I hope I conviced some people to play Kingsbane differently, but I'd mostly be glad to receive some feedbacks and discuss (constructively) with you guys about that topic ! :-D
Cya !
As you said and because of my own experience, Mill Rogue is really strong against most control decks, those are very favorable games, but in ladder aggro decks are much more popular, and so, I consider that more tempo-oriented variants are better to rank-up.
Tempo oriented variants are like in the middle, can still suffer from aggressive decks but have much more chances on dealing with them, and although they're less "devastating" against control decks, matchups against controlock, cubelock, many priest controlish decks and control mage are still very favourable.
Apart from that, I hadn't thought about Mistress of Mixtures instead of a second Leeching Poison and as you talk about it it really seems to have important benefits for many situations and to not carry an useless Leeching Poison. Definetly going to try it!