I’ve very happy to welcome everyone back for my second deck doctor article. Response on the first article was very positive and I received a lot of great ideas to further improve my Shaman Urn deck. Even more important, though, is the fact that I received my first submissions from the faithful readers of Daily Metagame.

My first submission was from Jason, who is tinkering with Poison Rogue. It’s not exactly an archetype that’s been at the forefront of Constructed playability. Heck, the last time I sleeved up a poison was back during the rise of Solo Rogue after Fires of Outland was released. The [Deadly Poison] that was included in that deck was just for some extra cheap damage while the Daggers did their work. I think that’s the difficult point of building a Poison deck; balancing the poisons with weapons with which to inflict combat damage.

Jason’s sent me his list:

Hero: [Vorix Zorbuzz]

Allies: 4
4 [Broderick Langforth]

Abilities: 23
4 [Master Poisoner]
4 [Contagious Poison]
4 [Pernicious Poison]
4 [Perforation Poison]
3 [Carnage]
4 [Sinister Strike]

Equipment: 18
4 [Black Amnesty]
4 [Cover of Silence]
3 [Boundless Agony]
4 [Perditions Blade]
3 [Arm Blade of Augelmir]

Locations: 4
4 [Korkron Vanguard] / [Lost Isles]

Quests: 11
4 [Wanton Warlord]
4 [Darkness Calling]
3 [Overseers Shadow]

Jason stated that he was having some fun with the deck based on the surprise factor but was having some trouble with aggressive decks and Control Mage. He picked his hero to showcase the new Worldbreaker location, [Lost Isles]. I also have a great deal of respect for the new location and really wanted to test out the build. I built his version on MWS and caught a few games against two of the biggest threats in the Metagame; Jumo'zin and Bogmara.

We decided to play the best two out of three for each “match” and I never took down a game but I learned a great deal. [Lost Isles] proved to be much too slow for the type of deck that we’re trying to build. It’s essentially paying 2 to sometimes get Assault 2 (and most likely Assault 1) where as [Kor'kron Vanguard] is always giving me a constant Assault 1 for only one resource. The Bogmara matchup was pitiful. The deck really doesn’t hit its sweet spot until about turn 3 and I typically had around 15 damage on my hero by that point. I could stick Poisons on the opposing hero but I was left with no real way to eliminate the threats Bogmara put down each turn. Those games ended long before Saurfang ever came down.

The [Jumo’zin] match was actually a bit closer than I would have thought. I was able to apply early pressure and the key became getting my [Boundless Agony] to stick around. Sadly, that’s very hard to do when [Jumo’zin] is packing no less than 6 or 7 (depending on which list you look at) ways to kill my blade.

Basically I decided the way to win both matches was increasing my speed. I needed to be able to handle small fast allies and still be able to punch in against a control deck faster than they can get their control game setup. I went back and forth with my list but I finally settled on:

Hero: [Caleb Pavish]

Allies: 4

4 [Mikael the Blunt]

Abilities: 23

2 [Demolish]

3 [Fan of Knives]

3 [Putrefying Poison]

2 [Perforation Poison]

3 [Master Poisoner]

2 [Carnage]

4 [Contagious Poison]

4 [Instant Poison]

Equipment: 20

3 [Cover of Silence]

3 [Pugius, Fist of Defiance]

3 [Boundless Agony]

4 [Sinister Revenge]

4 [Black Amnesty]

3 [Perdition's Blade]

Locations: 4

4 [Fordragon Hold]

Quests: 10

3 [Concerted Efforts]

3 [Darkness Calling]

4 [Wanton Warlord]

Well first you’ll notice that I switched teams. Caleb’s flip isn’t any reason to switch sides by itself (though it’s not horrible). The real reason for the switch was for [Concerted Efforts] and [Mikael the Blunt]. Jason was running [The Overseer’s Shadow] but it only has four allies in his original decks, so he was paying four to draw two cards most of the time, which isn’t horrible but we needed something quicker for a Rogue.

[Concerted Efforts] is cheap and hits 21 cards in the deck. Admittedly, the quest was better in the earlier versions of my build as I had a lot more two drops. It still hits consistently enough that I think it stays in. Going Alliance I had to trade [Korkron Vanguard] for [Fordragon Hold], which is essentially the same effect if you’re not including the corresponding ally. [Darkness Calling] worked fine so that stayed and I can’t argue with Jason’s wisdom of [Wonton Warlord] as you’re rarely ever exhausting anything other than your ongoing abilities.

A personal rule of thumb that I’ve always had for Solo Rogue was that you will need at very least 16 weapons, to insure that you have one when you need it and that you have extra when they blow yours up. I upped the count in the deck to 17. I wanted to give the new [Pugius, Fist of Defiance] a whirl. The number of copies of the card in the deck should be based on your local meta; the more aggressive decks that are out there, the more copies of the card you’ll want to include. It’s pretty useless against other control decks, however, so I decided that 3 copies were probably ideal.

The card played out beautifully; sure it’s expensive at 3 for a weapon that doesn’t even give Dual Wield but the damn thing grows every turn pretty much and combos fantastically with the other weapon I included, [Sinister Revenge]. [Sinister Revenge] was a card I fell for when I first saw it and it’s been in an old Classic Assassination Rogue that I used to played (man, I miss [Mutilate]). [Sinister Revenge], along with [Black Amnesty] provide my only Dual Wield effect in the deck so those became automatic 4-ofs in the deck. I cut the [Cover of Silence] down to three copies because I don’t have a lot of Control Mage in my local meta and I really didn’t fear getting my things interrupted as Core Control Mage doesn’t have the ability to counter every single card like Classic Control Mage does.

To help shore up the aggressive match, I added [Mikael the Blunt] and [Fan of Knives]. With my increased weapon count, it’s very easy to abuse the [Fan of Knives] continually, keeping Bogmara’s board clear. [Fan of Knives] also helps wipe out protectors that may be walling up a copy of [Vuz’din] and that ally is pretty much the bane of a deck that relies on abilities to do damage. [Vuz’din] was a big consideration in my even taking a look at a deck list like this; she completely shuts down the Poison aspect. In playing the deck, however, I’ve found that I can win via my weapons and cards like [Cover of Silence] allow me to swing in and kill [Vuz’din] without too much trouble. I did cut the [Sinister Strike] from the deck simply because of space constraints but it could go back in to give you an even better game against [Vuz’din].

I could not find a solution to the [Jumo’zin] deck. Luckily, most deck builders are advocating cutting [Natural Repossession] for [The Natural Order] simply because it’s cheaper and that’s a great thing for us. I did include [Demolish] simply to be able to deal with a resolved copy of [Netherbreath Spellblade] (as well as the annoying armor that Death Wish Warrior packs). [Boundless Agony] is a clutch card in the [Jumo’zin] match and the longer you can keep it on the board the better. It’s not a favorable matchup for the deck, regardless of my tinkering but it’s not unwinnable.

I also changed the Poisons in the deck completely around. [Pernicious Poison] was great but at the cost of two, I found it to be too expensive for this build. [Putrefying Poison] and [Instant Poison] came into the deck to combat aggressive decks. [Instant Poison] is basically free and can be played as early as turn one via your location. [Putrefying Poison] is cheap but also helps kill off those every annoying one drops such at [Onnerka Bloodfang] and [Broderick Langforth]. I actually cut [Master Poisoner] down to a 3 off simply because there was many games that I opened up with multiple copies of it, but no poisons.

I tested the deck out against Bogmara and Jumo’zin again. I was able to win the roll against Bogmara and handled the deck pretty easily as I drew into both a [Mikael the Blunt] and a [Fan of Knives] (better to be lucky than good, I suppose). I was able to win a game against Jumo’zin where I was able to start very fast, they didn’t find multiple copies of [Natural Repossession] and couldn’t get their [Netherbreath Spellblade] recursion going.

I really wanted to thank Jason for the great deck idea. It’s definitely something to surprise your Battlegrounds with next weekend. I don’t think it’s quite a contender for a Realm Championship but I do believe you’ve take some people by surprise. As always, if you’ve got a deck that you’d like to have me take look at, shoot a deck list and your basic concept over to aquestionofgluttony@gmail.com and I’ll take a look.

-Sean Batt