Hearthpwn

So where are all the people who thought this card was good? Hit legend yet? LOL.

I'm playing around with this deck in a Fatigue Rogue and, just as I suspected, the main issue with Fatigue Rogue is that it typically doesn't have enough heal and AoE to handle literally every card in your opponent's deck. Unless your opponent's hand has 10 cards, Sap and Vanish are NOT hard removal. Sap is a tempo card, and tempo is absolutely pointless when you're intentionally trying to fatigue your opponent. Fatigue decks absolutely require hard removal because you're intentionally drawing out the game. That's why fatigue mage and fatigue druid are half-decent sometimes: they have enough heals and removal to get to the bottom of your opponent's deck. Rogue... not so much.

Another issue that I also predicted with fatigue decks in general post-BRM (but especially fatigue rogue as it has a more aggressive fatigue style) is that Emperor Thaurissan makes flooding control decks' hands soooo much harder. Soo... yeah.

I also have played against a few face hunters and, sadly, I have not won a single game. To be honest, I was actually a little surprised. I definitely wasn't optimistic about Fatigue Rogue's prospects in general, but I did think it would be at least a LITTLE better versus aggro. I think RNG might have more to do with it because theoretically the match-ups shouldn't be LITERALLY impossible with Shadowstep and Brewmaster and Gang Up on both Deathlords and Antique Healbots. But it's SOOOOooo unreliable. Like sure, theoretically you can spam Deathlord and Healbot, but sadly that's not how any of my aggro match-ups actually ended up playing out. I really love fatiguing out face hunters, it's such a huge fuck you and it's probably the most glorious way to beat hunters. But it's incredibly difficult because you're relying on multi-card combos like Healbot+Shadowstep, or Deathlord+Gang Up. Early-mid game combos are generally not the best way to build a deck.... *cough* that's why Priest is such a bad class *cough*

One game I played Gang Up on a Coldlight Oracle with 11 cards left in my deck. Guess what? I didn't draw any more coldlights until I had 4 cards left in my deck! It was incredibly stressful, and I almost lost the game. Also, I was playing against a priest who was able to thoughtsteal a Gang Up, and he used it on a Sludge Belcher. I did win that game, but I was way too dependent on drawing a specific card. It was a little stressful and I was cursing the RNG gods.

So... overall in my experience, Gang Up doesn't make fatigue a viable strategy for rogue decks. I never had the feeling that there was any specific match-up that this deck excelled at that Fatigue Druid couldn't do better. I creamed priests and a couple other slow decks, but I feel like a Fatigue Druid list would have done the same thing, albeit slightly more reliably. I'm not surprised that fatigue druid is better at slow match-ups, but what really surprised and disappointed me is that my fatigue rogue was even less consistent against aggro than I had originally suspected it would be. This might be due to some of my tech choices (I run a BGH and Sabotage and an Assassinate) but I feel like it ultimately comes down to the deck's high reliance on combos.

With that said, the very few wins I did end up getting were prettttttty glorious and fun. But my win rate with fatigue rogue is a solid <40%, and I dropped from rank 13 to rank 17 over the last two days. In comparison, last season I was playing a "mill rogue" deck that had Assassin's Blade and Arcane Golem and Cold Blood and Tinker's Sharpsword Oil as win conditions instead of a fatigue win condition and I had a solid 50% win rate around rank 4. So... just for comparison: <40% win rate between ranks 13-17 with a fatigue win condition, and 50% win rate at rank 4 with a burst win condition.

But hey, at least by playing this deck I was able to finally get level 60 rogue. Double golden Sen'jin Shieldmasta for the win ^_^

If higher ranks tend to be more control oriented while lower ranks tend to be more aggro, then it would make sense that your mill deck did better at rank 4 than it did at rank 15.  It doesn't necessarily mean your old mill deck was better than the new one with gang up.

Thanks to gang up, I finally feel like I can include card draw in my mill decks.  I'm not completely reliant on drawing my two coldlight oracles early.  I can sprint twice and still sometimes run out of cards after my opponent thanks to the six bonus cards that gang up adds.  

Quote from archwaykitten »

If higher ranks tend to be more control oriented while lower ranks tend to be more aggro, then it would make sense that your mill deck did better at rank 4 than it did at rank 15.  It doesn't necessarily mean your old mill deck was better than the new one with gang up.

Control and aggro doesn't really matter because this deck is strictly worse in both general match-ups. I've been facing pretty much the exact same ladder composition that I did last season around ranks 3-5; I'm not facing more aggro. That's an assumption that you made and you are completely wrong.

My old mill deck didn't use a fatigue win condition. That's the kicker. It used milling as a technique to asymmetrically benefit from coldlight oracle draw as well as to make Vanish more powerful. But matches very rarely went to fatigue.

Why is that such an important distinction? Because as I've already stated, Rogue does not have enough tempo-efficient and card-efficient AoE, hard removal, and heal to handle the majority of shit in people's decks. It's that simple. That's why fatigue rogue will not work except against like classic control priest.

I'm messing around with Gang Up in a murloc deck. Seems to be doing alright so far.

One Gang Up as a tech card in the slower Oil Rogue (w/ Belcher, Dr. Boom, etc) is doing work (26/34) but I'm facing a lot of Priest. Mill Rogue, on the other hand, failed me pretty hard (0 out 7 games). Fast cycle, then Gang Up legendary (Dr. Boom) idea didn't work. Win rate wasn't bad but very few games were won because of Gang Up. 

It's going to take some time to figure this out, I guess.

P.S. LOL at people thinking it's plausible to make into legend 4 days into the season. Majority of progamers who play 10-12 hours per day become legend at 7-10 days mark.  What a clear sign of never made into legend ;).

I'm trying out a weird sort of control build with my rogue.  Lots of card draw.  I threw in a few gang ups.  First note, 2 is too many.  :P

Second, it's won me a few games before.  I was against a priest who had the Thaddius twins.  I killed the first, silenced the second and ganged up it before killing it.  That was probably the smoothest move with it I did.  A few other times I just hit my Dr. Boom.  Once I was against an aggro deck and I hit my heal bot with the gang for lots of life game throughout our match.

A few times I found it's a dead card.  Definately late game.

Quote from Zukuu »

8 Azure Drakes. 8 Belcher, 8 Dr. Boom.

You may want to retake basic arithmetic.

It's a tricky card to use right... Even in Mill Rogue. I've found that the best play for a gang up is later in the game, or in conjunction with Shadowstep/Preparation. You have to play the Coldlight Oracle then Gang Up followed by the bounce to the hand for replay. Otherwise unless you have other draw you won't see the copies.

Overall, even then my Rogue Mill is lacking. Even tried it out in a toolbox style deck. Not all that effective. 

Will keep working on it though. :)

Gang Bang is such a fun card to play with. I see a lot of people doing really clever things with it.