C’Thun Rogue

Valeera Sanguinar by Paul Kwon

Another HS post!  C’Thun Rogue was the very first deck that I built when Whispers of the Old Gods released, mainly because I opened most of the cultists in the initial ~25 packs that I had gold for.  It was a super greedy deck, utilizing most of the cultists, Brann, Shadowsteps, and Doomcaller for the potential to play a 20+ C’Thun multiple times throughout a game.  Looking back now, it was a bad deck, but still allowed me to complete the WotOG initial quests easily because everyone else was experimenting in that unstable meta.

Nowadays outside of Druid and Warrior, C’Thun decks are largely considered to be not viable for competitive play.  They are more considered to be beginner decks, as they are very cheap and easy to build since most of the cultists are common/rare and C’Thun is given away for free.

However, I do think that certain C’Thun decks are viable and certainly good enough to get Rank 5 consistently each season.  The key is to not be too greedy.  People quickly figured out that stuffing a C’Thun deck full of cultists gave it extremely polarizing matchups against the decks you would see on ladder.  It would lose horribly to aggro because a)you would often be dead before Turn 10 and b)other than Disciple, the C’Thun cultists were slow, value oriented cards.  It would also lose to Tempo decks because you would never get the board.

Clearly, the answer is to minimize the amount of C’Thun cultists.  One of the main reasons to play a C’Thun deck is the 7 mana legendary Twin Emperor Vek’lor.  Two 4/6 taunts for 7 mana is no joke. It is insane value if played on curve as long as you can get the battlecry off.  Thus, the amount of cultists in a deck needs to be just enough to consistently get the Twin Emperor battlecry, but not too much that it bogs down the deck.  In my experience, that amounts to about 4-5 cultists.  Thus, the most successful C’Thun decks are hybrids or modified versions of existing decks.  C’Thun Warrior is just Control Warrior with certain of the classic key cards replaced(like Ancient Shieldbearer for Shieldmaiden) and C’Thun Druid is just Ramp Druid.  You can also see that it is very important for C’Thun decks to have multiple win conditions.  Having C’Thun be the sole win condition is terrible because there is no guarantee that you will ever draw it in a game.  So your deck needs to be fully capable of winning without drawing C’Thun.  He is really there as an alternate win condition or a late game bomb.

There is not as much support for C’Thun in the Rogue class compared to Druid/Warrior/Priest, but I think the Rogue variants can be just as strong.  The class has some unique ways to make C’Thun more effective, like Shadowstep or using the coin from Tomb Pillager to play C’Thun earlier than Turn 10.  One big issue with a lot of C’Thun decks is a lack of card draw, and it is a truly terrible feeling to have your C’Thun buffed up to a reasonable level but never end up drawing your Twin Emperors or C’Thun.  Rogue can mitigate this problem since the class has so many ways to cycle using Gadgetzan Auctioneer.

Thus, I think the strongest C’Thun Rogue variant is the Miracle hybrid.  The core cards are:
2 Backstab
2 Preparation
1 Bloodmage Thalnos
2 Eviscerate
2 Sap
1 Edwin VanCleef
2 Fan of Knives
1 Shadow Strike
2 SI:7 Agent
2 Tomb Pillager
2 Azure Drake
2 Gadgetzan Auctioneer
1 Twin Emperor Vek’lor
1 C’Thun

That leaves a whopping total of 7 flex spots.  Of course, a good portion of these will be dedicated to C’Thun cultists.  Deciding on how many and which cultists to use is pretty tough.  Generally, the best ones to use are Disciple(you can almost think of him as another SI Agent) and C’Thun’s Chosen(divine shield is great and 4 attack trades with a lot of important minions).

Blade of C’Thun is a card that deserves special attention, since it is the Rogue specific C’Thun card. Its effect is super strong and allows Rogue to actually deal with big minions.  Generally, the best way that Rogue can answer something like Ysera or Grommash is to temporarily get rid of them with Sap, and proceed to out tempo the opponent.  So it’s never a permanent answer.  There IS Assassinate, but that card is incredibly mana inefficient.  Blade of C’Thun is also mana inefficient, but it does at least leave behind a 4/4 body and the C’Thun buff can be incredibly threatening.  The problem is that the card is completely dead against aggro, so I think running 2 is a mistake.  1 is the sweet spot if you decide to use this card.

The other spots are pretty standard.  They can be filled in with a lot of cards you would expect from a standard Miracle deck, like Earthen Ring Farseer, a 2nd Shadow Strike, Violet Teacher, or Xaril.  There should also be at least one extra cheap spell for the Auctioneer synergy, like a Deadly Poison or Journey Below.  Or even a Shadowstep if you want to get greedy with the C’Thun battlecry.

In my variant of the deck, I have 1 Deadly Poison, 2 Beckoner of Evil, 1 Disciple of C’Thun, 2 C’Thun’s Chosen, and 1 Blade of C’Thun.  The deck plays pretty much like a standard Miracle Rogue.  You can make big tempo plays and flip the board state in an instant.  And C’Thun just ends up being an alternate win condition.  One important difference is that the deck can actually play proactively as early as Turn 2, since there are 2 Beckoner of Evils.

Ryzen had a lot of success in the May ranked season with his version of the Miracle C’Thun hybrid deck.  I’m not entirely sure why he does not run Edwin, but he was able to get Top 10 Legend, so I really can’t criticize.

Iksar, the associate game designer of Hearthstone, has an interesting version of C’Thun Rogue which runs 2 Blade of C’Thuns and no cultists!

There are also a number of Reno variants of the deck that people have found success with, and sometimes they also have both C’Thun and N’Zoth!  With these decks, a big difference is that the Rogue’s card draw power suffers, and since you are running 1 ofs consistency can be an issue.  But your individual card quality is much higher on average.  I personally don’t find these decks to be very strong, but they are super fun.  With Brann, Shadowsteps, Sylvanas, and Shadowcaster there are all sorts of shenanigans that are possible.  It is not at all uncommon to play multiple Renos, C’Thuns, and N’Zoths in games with this kind of toolset.

Miracle N’Zoth Rogue

Valeera Sanguinar by 21yc

So when the full Whispers of the Old Gods set got revealed, I was immediately drawn to the Rogue card Journey Below.  I already liked Museum Curator quite a bit in Priest, and it seemed like it could be even stronger in Rogue since the class has more specific deathrattles.

The card at first was mostly dismissed by people.  The most common reasoning was that if you were using this card to get a good deathrattle minion, you might as well just include that minion in your deck.  And it does makes sense, but I really wanted to make this card work since I’m such a big fan of the Discover mechanic.  It’s one of the few instances of RNG done right in Hearthstone.  I also cannot stand the Control Warrior deck, and this card can single handedly make its life miserable(if you discover an Anub’arak).

So first things first.  If you were making a full deathrattle N’Zoth Rogue deck, then this argument against the card is correct.  It is generally better to include a card that does something right away than provide an effect that you won’t see until later turns.  However, Journey Below is a cheap spell, and spells have special significance in the Rogue class because a)they are combo activators and b)they are fuel for Gadgetzan Auctioneer!  So clearly, the answer was to not go full deathrattle and instead add in some of the standard Miracle Rogue cards like Preparations, Auctioneers, and Edwin.  Thus, the hybrid Miracle N’Zoth Rogue idea was born.  After this, it was really tough to decide on which of the deathrattle cards to cut to make room for the Miracle cards.  I felt sad at cutting Unearthed Raptor, as it is such a potentially strong card, but too often it has no target minion to copy.  And these kinds of situational cards are not what we want.

At the time, nobody was playing it.  People either went full Miracle or full Deathrattle.  I really wanted to test out my idea, but I did not have all the required cards.  At the end of last month, Sjow was able to pilot this deck to Legend and other popular streamers like Ryzen and Forsen picked it up and had great success with it.  I never really talked about this deck with anyone, so it was very interesting to watch these famous players develop the same deck concepts.  I am not much of a deckbuilder but it is really nice to see that my ideas are sound.

The core cards of the deck are:
2 Backstab
2 Preparation
1 Bloodmage Thalnos
2 Eviscerate
1 Journey Below
2 Sap
2 Undercity Huckster
1 Edwin Vancleef
2 Fan of Knives
1 Shadow Strike
2 SI:7 Agent
2 Tomb Pillager
2 Azure Drake
2 Gadgetzan Auctioneer
1 N’Zoth, the Corruptor

So that leaves a total of 5 flex spots.  The decision to have 1 or 2 Journey Belows/Shadow Strikes is up to personal preference, and the rest of the spots are usually more minions like Earthen Ring Farseer, Violet Teacher, and Xaril, or another cheap spell like Deadly Poison.  In my version of the deck, I have 2 Journey Belows(because I love that card so much for its potential to wreck Control Warrior), 1 Farseer, 1 Teacher, 1 Shadowcaster, and 1 Sylvanas.  I would probably replace the teacher with Xaril if I had him.  I also admit that Shadowcaster is not the best fit for this deck but I love that card too much to not include her.

So how does this compare to the other big Rogue decks, Miracle and Malygos?  One of the big differences is that this hybrid Miracle N’Zoth has a better matchup against fast decks like Zoo Warlock and both Midrange and Aggro Shaman.  Since there are more minions and less spells, you actually have proactive plays as early as Turn 2.  Compare this to the Miracle style decks, where you generally play reactive for the first 3-4 turns.  For the same reasons, there are also less dead cards since you are not waiting on the big Cold Blood into Conceal turns.  The flexibility of Journey Below cannot be understated.  There were so many games I won against aggro because I discovered a taunt minion in a clutch situation.  Journey Below gives a better matchup against Control Warrior purely because of the high chance of discovering an Anub’arak.  It unfortunately has worse matchups against Midrange and other control decks(like N’Zoth Paladin) because a lot of those games are traditionally won by bursting them down, and this hybrid variant has no burst.

I now have all the cards needed for this deck, as I unpacked a N’Zoth recently.  As expected it is a lot of fun but one thing that really surprised me was how great Undercity Huckster was.  I initially did not think much of the deathrattle, and was more thinking of it as a minion to help contest the board early that could be brought back later with N’Zoth.  But very rarely is the stolen card a dud, and sometimes it can be game winning.  One of my most memorable games was against a Ramp Druid who Innervated a Deathwing on Turn 8 against my dominating board, and one of the minions who died was a Huckster…  who gave me a Mulch.  I’m pretty sure that was the only time in HS where I felt sorry for my opponent.