Hearthpwn

Since not drawing the two Simulacrum and relying solely on praying for drawing the second one kinda gives you free loose when you're pressured down, here's a good trick I hadn't heard about before that is mostly useful against Highlander Priest, Cubelocks, and other non-aggro decks against which you could be okay with not using your 2 Primordial Glyph just for value :

This manipulation is only really necessary when you still haven't drawn the second Simulacrum and deals a minimum of 30 damage in one turn; could be more if you get to pick burn spells off of Primordial Glyph and the opponent doesn't heal;

You need to have in hand : Archmage Antonidas, 2 Leyline Manipulator, 2 Primordial Glyph (or the spells they created, we'll come back to it later), 1 Simulacrum, 1 Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1 Molten Reflection and either the second Sorcerer's Apprentice or the second Molten Reflection.

• Step 1 : Play your lone Simulacrum to get a copied Sorcerer's Apprentice and play the first Leyline Manipulator to make it cost 0.
• Step 2 : New turn; play Archmage Antonidas and the 0- mana Sorcerer's Apprentice, then use your 3 mana left to play a Molten Reflection on Archmage Antonidas. The Molten Reflection will give you 1 Fireball. Then, play 2 spells created by Primordial Glyph that now cost 0 thanks to the discount from Sorcerer's Apprentice (you'll ideally pick 3 or less mana spells when playing your 2 Primordial Glyph, but take note that you can have picked up to 5 mana spells if they got discounted by Leyline Manipulator during Step 1 ;). The two Archmage Antonidas will create 4 more Fireball, which means you now have 30 damage in hand. You can finish the turn with 10 cards in hand, it doesn't matter anymore at this point.
• Step 3 : New turn; play the "real" Sorcerer's Apprentice, then play either a Molten Reflection on it or simply play the second Sorcerer's Apprentice if you have it; then play the second Leyline Manipulator, and enjoy your 30 face damage ;-)

Of course there are other manipulations that you'll figure out while playing the deck (mainly at Step 2 when you can for example use the Molten Reflection on the 0 mana Sorcerer's Apprentice instead and play the two Primordial Glyph at that moment, hoping to have 4 or less mana spells to pick and play them right away, which you might end up needing if you've drawn your Primordial Glyph late and already played the first Leyline Manipulator). I think the archetype's low winrate is considerably due to players relying only on the full combo to win their games and even worse, using their Freeze effect too soon. That said, I hope my small tip will help some of you winning more game you didn't even realize you had already won ;-)

Quote from Reinan23 >>

Meme? He is by far the most favorite for this tournament in my opinion. Wtf...

 Fenom's gotta be my favorite for this tournament. How can one person handle so much memes ? :-D

Quite dissapointed on the Cubelock list though. A true memer uses Carnivorous Cube on nothing but Weasel Tunneler !

I can't predict what will happen after the Year of the Kraken's expansions cycle out since the format will change a lot and there will be new cards from next expansion to consider, but in any case Thalnos and Edwin have always been two very safe crafts in every meta, so craft them whenever you have the dusts and want to invest into playing Rogue more seriously.

As I said, replacing them with weaker lookalike cards is worse in my opinion than just skipping them for now and replacing them with some of the situational but effective cards I mentioned. Since you're still at the building stage, you'd better start with something like 2 Shiv, play 10-15 games and note the match-ups where you had some trouble, and then switch them with other situational cards more focused on the decks you had trouble fighting against.

Bloodmage Thalnos and Edwin VanCleef are just two very strong and versatile cards. In the end trying to replace them with something that mimics their effect simply makes you play weaker cards overall, so replace them with some of the many powerful but situational cards that are available depending to what you already have in your deck and which match-up you'd want to enhance.

Shiv for more cheap cycle, a second Sprint/Gadgetzan Auctioneer if you're struggling to consistently cycle through the deck against Cube Lock and Control decks; Blade Flurry if you don't have one already and want to aim for board oriented decks (Mostly Paladins and Spiteful Priest), SI:7 Agent for board oriented aggro decks or Tar Creeper if you want to straight up focus on countering those aggro decks more, a second Leeching Poison if you face a lot of Tempo Mage, Mistress of Mixtures if you want to counter Tempo Mage even more; Vilespine Slayer for big creatures.

Fire Fly is a very solid replacement to the Pirate package (Swashburglar and Patches the Pirate) as it trades against the majority of the other one drops and generates a handful of 1 mana cards to activate combo. Adding a second Elven Minstrel is a good idea to increase the consistency and make use of those combo activators, and adding 1/2 SI:7 Agent in exchange for some cycle cards (mainly Shiv of Mimic Pod) will make up for that weaker early game due to Patches's nerf.

Southsea Squidface is clearly worse than Tinker's Sharpsword Oil as a buff tool (takes silence effects, doesn't bring you the buff the turn you play it, weaker buff and you can't use Preparation with it, so I would'nt think it's a good replacement by any means, although just adding him as a fifth weapon buff could be considered.

In a way, Tar Creeper already helps proactively creating a somewhat solid board presence that you could gain the ATK buff, although I don't know if it will keep being the best early game card in the long term (since I'm playing Standard for now, Kohai knows best about that ;-)

Anyway, I think having the draw mechanic work perfectly and consistently is the most important thing in term of playing/mulliganing well and in term of future changes if needed. Cause if you can efficiently cycle through the deck every game, you'll both draw enough Leyline Spider to have something to buff, or have enough ways to redraw Kingsbane to make your "Tinker's Sharpsword Oil with no board" plays more affordable in term of tempo and pressure throughout the game.

I used to play 1 Azure Drake before the nerfs. Maybe it's worth considering and swapping with, say, the second copy of Leeching Poison or the Vanish. That would make the deck more proactive for sure, which is more my style of gameplay (although I assume Kohai designed his post-nerf list to have better outs against Cube and Giant Warlocks which is popular at high rank :)

I think the best start for the post-nerf build is the Miracle Variant shown on this page and see what refinements are needed :)

Except for Tempo Mage, much fewer people are playing aggro decks right now so we can't really tell how important it is to have more defense, but playing a list with more consistency through draw tools (Elven Minstrel in this case) works better against the greedier decks we're seeing for now, because focusing on establishing the game plan (getting Kingsbane and buffing it + summoning 4/4s) is so strong and important against them (although these are excellent threats, we can't really beat a Control Mage in the very long run if we have a few empty turns, so we need enough consistency to be sure to out-tempo them pretty much everytime ;-)

From now on, I'll try and see which draw package is the most efficient and other small details like the perfect number of Leeching Poison for the future updates =)

Going up to rank 5 won't be much of a problem after having practiced enough games. After that it will depend on what you face. The archetype is typically weak versus aggro and Spiteful Priest but remarkable versus Combo-Control decks such as Highlander Priest and Cubelock. Hopefully at that rank you're more likely to encounter those defensive decks because more people are try-harding to try and secure their Legend rank :p

Considering the future nerfs that have been announced reducing aggro's pushing power and the fact that this archetype will loose very few cards after rotation (even if Gadgetzan Auctioneer gets somehow Hall of Fame'd you can still play the Sprint variant which I'm more comfortable and successful with), I'd really recommand crafting the cards you need to play the deck as I think it will have good chances to see success in the upcoming year :)

I'd replace Bloodmage Thalnos with a second Shiv, or 1 SI:7 Agent in the Tempo variant :)

Bonemare : M'kay. I think Bonemare was much less a problem itself and was rather simply frustrating to get wrecked by it for a bunch of players; although the real solution to Bonemare being frustrating to play against was simply to nerf early game and strong board presence cards (which they did), I guess the very strong Spiteful Summoner -> Bonemare plays from Spiteful Priest helped leading them to make that kind of "double-check" nerf for proactive decks.

That said the Arena argument is completely legit.

Corridor Creeper : Well that's harsh ! I was more into highering the mana cost or eventually reducing its health if they really wanted to change its stats (to make it more similar to that 6/4 for 6 Dragon with a similar mana cost reduction effect; Creeper's mana manipulation is better of course, but considering the Dragon was really not a problem, could have worked out I guess) . But okay, sure, burning it at the stake also works. In the end the card wasn't interesting and fair to use, even more so in aggro mirrors where the first to draw 1-2 Creeper was immediately favorite, in a very uninteresting way.

Raza : Oh yeah ! I was claiming that would be the good way to nerf it a few weeks ago (... I mean it's pretty obvious so okay, I'm not special at all :p). All in all it simply shuts down the "cycle everything, play a few board clears, then OTK. Easy peasy." playstlye, which is much more interesting gameplay-wise because it makes Highlander Priests win by attrition through playing real value cards instead of cycling into a few combo pieces. In the end, the deck will most likely be even better against aggro but simply much less oppressive for heavy control decks that will finally be able to revive, hard-countering aggro decks at last.

Most importantly, it shows Blizzard starts actually paying attention to the Wild format's health in the long term. Like, finally !

Patches : Cool for Standard. But mostly cool for Wild just like with the Raza nerf. Not much else to say.

Overall some really good nerfs. Gonna make Spellbreaker much more playable against Cubelock; time will tell if Cubelock really needs a nerf (10 mana 25 damage combo on top of an already good deck you say ?... :p)

Was slightly interested in your opinion of what I really want until you just told me what you really want.  Then you lost me at the asterisk microphone drop.  Sadly, you are no Chris Rock.

End of the month? Couldn't they do it next week and make the playoff not just Odd/Even Paladin, Cube Lock and spiteful? 

None of what you said makes sense

Quote from CheeseEtc >>

• Carnivorous Cube will become a 5/6 but only summon 1 copy of the minion as a Deathrattle.
• Call to Arms will cost 5 (this would actually buff odd paladin)
• Naga Sea Witch's functioning will return to its pre-undocumented change functioning.
• Doomguard might be nerfed too, though it's better suited for a HOF instead. The Cube is more dangerous.

I personally think making it recruit 2 minions is a better long term solution. Otherwise non even decks will still have massive swing turns just a turn later and it can still be a powerful draw engine at the least. Making it only pull 2 minions lowers its power level to the point that it isn't oppressive but still effective in most pally decks since at the very least you improve your draws.

Yeah, no. Stonehill Defender is far from the main offender right now... It's a good card but that's it.

As long as Naga Sea Witch, and Call to Arms is nerfed, I'm gonna be a happy camper.

I don't think changing Call to Arms to 5 mana would buff odd paladin, since in odd paladin all it would do is summon three 1 mana minions for 5 mana.

Quote from One_Man_Army >>

Why would literally millions of players have to wait for another month for changes (that are crucial, the game is in an awful shape) to come because of few ‘pro players’ ? Huh, pro players in RNG based game.. If they are so ‘pro’ how come they wouldn’t be able to adapt to few changes in the next few days? They would have plenty of  time to adapt if the tournament is somewhere in the second half of May, especially considering they are ‘pro’.

If nothing else i hope to see Call to Arms cost 5.