Join me for a blast from the past as we look at deck archetypes that have stood the test of time, starting in Vanilla Hearthstone (before Curse of Naxxramas) and yet are viable even today!

Hello y’all, modded here!

We’ve all seen powerful decks in Hearthstone, be it Mech Mage, Ramp Druid, or Midrange Paladin. These Hearthstone deck are often very strong for a time, but usualy people figure out counters relatively quickly and the decks become largely obsolete. However, there are a few Tier One decks that are so powerful that they keep resurfacing in various ways, surviving meta shifts, card pool expansion and even massive nerfs. Today we’ll looking at such decks, analyzing their strengths, their evolution, and why they keep coming up with massive success whilst other deck archetypes such as MurLock and Tempo Rogue fade into the ashes of Hearthstone history.

Freeze Mage: Overview

The first deck that we will be looking at is the infamous Freeze Mage. This deck has been around since closed beta and is viable even today even after four of its core cards were nerfed and cards that help defeat it being added to the card pool. Before we look at specific decklists, let’s look at the core game plan:

Cycle through the deck. Stall for time (and mana). Throw burn spells at the face for lethal.

This game plan is effective for multiple reasons:

This deck doesn’t rely on board presence at any point in the game, meaning that a variety of popular cards are useless against Freeze Mage (i.e. Hunter Secrets, AoE spells, Taunt Minions).

Only one class (Warrior) can proactively counter a Freeze Mage’s win condition, all other classes are forced to either be the aggressor or respond reactively to a Freeze Mage’s burst.

Freeze Mage’s Combo setup is simply drawing and playing its cards, this makes the combo very difficult to prevent (shy of counterspell counterspell loatheb loatheb trade-prince-gallywix trade-prince-gallywix

Now earlier I mentioned that four core cards had been nerfed, well here they are for reference:

frost-nova frost-nova

cone-of-cold cone-of-cold

blizzard blizzard

pyroblast pyroblast

The end result of these nerfs is the fact that Freeze Mage’s ability to respond to aggressive decks with freeze spells, as well as its ability to burst with massive burn spells was significantly slowed. Decks facing Freeze Mage were given another turn to snowball and attempt to burn Freeze Mage out of the game. In fact, Freeze Mage was virtually non-existent after the nerfs, and wasn’t revived for months until a player by the name of Otter successfully piloted a Freeze Mage to #12 Legend (EU) and RDU sweeped Amaz 3-0 with Freeze Mage at Dreamhack.

With the release of Goblins vs. Gnomes, Freeze Mage’s popularity took a hit with the release of antique-healbot and kezan-mystic as all classes gained access to massive lifegain and secret mitigation. This was especially true on ladder, where the popularity of Midrange Hunter running freezing-trap in conjunction with mad-scientist made Kezan Mystic a very popular tech card, making it easy for opponents to circumvent ice-block.

Recently however, Freeze Mage has received a bit of a boost in the form of emperor-thaurissan from Blackrock Mountain. The mana cost reduction properties of this card has given Freeze Mage the ability to deal more burst damage in a single turn (turning a typical three turn kill into a two turn kill), in addition to increasing its consistency by making alexstrasza unnecessary to win some games. Making cards cost less means that one can get more fireballs out of archmage-antonidas than previously possible, providing enough damage to make Alexstrasza unnecessary to bring your opponent into lethal range (optimally, one will play Emperor Thaurissan, it’ll survive a turn, and then chain at least three spells on Archmage Antonidas, leaving three mana Fireballs in hand for 18 damage out of thin air) .

Freeze Mage: Decklists

To start things off, let’s look at a pre-nerf Freeze Mage list:

First thing to notice is that this deck is running almost no non-burn removal. With the exception of the doomsayers, everything is burn or freeze. The deck runs a lot of draw, running every two drop that can draw a card to help thin the deck. Also note the double pyroblast and leeroy-jenkins which adds more standalone reach than modern iterations are capable of. This deck was more than capable of stalling the opponent until they succumb to the sheer amount of burn the deck provides. At this pre-nerf state, the deck archetype was massively overpowered. The combination of Ice Block plus six cheap freezes meant that slow decks had no way of dealing enough damage to kill the Freeze Mage, and aggro decks had a hard time as well as they would have a hard time maintaining tempo after a Doomsayer turn. Additionally, the deck has a total amount of fourty-six damage points of direct damage NOT including Spell Damage +1, Alexstrasza, or Leeroy Jenkins. Factoring in the latter two of those cards puts the deck at a whopping sixty-seven points of damage. Remember, at this point in the game things like shieldmaiden and antique-healbot didn’t exist, so decks lacked efficient ways to mitigate the damage from the overwhelming amount of burn this deck packed. It took a massive number of nerfs to dethrone this deck as the best deck in the game. Aside from the four core cards that were nerfed, novice-engineer, nat-pagle and Leeroy Jenkins have also since been nerfed, bringing the total number of cards nerfed from this decklist to seven.

Next we’ll be looking at a list that Otter piloted to #12 Legend:

After the nerfs hit, Freeze Mage entered hibernation until Otter revived it by using it to great effect in high legend. Now you’ll notice quite a few cards have gone by the wayside in this iteration, due in part to the nerfs and meta shifts. Here are the differences:

-2 arcane-missiles arcane-missiles

-1 nat-pagle nat-pagle

-2 loot-hoarder loot-hoarder novice-engineer novice-engineer

-2 cone-of-cold cone-of-cold

-1 leeroy-jenkins leeroy-jenkins fireball fireball

-1 pyroblast pyroblast emperor-thaurissan emperor-thaurissan

+2 mirror-image mirror-image alexstrasza alexstrasza

+2 acolyte-of-pain acolyte-of-pain

+2 ice-barrier ice-barrier

+2 azure-drake azure-drake

+1 flamestrike flamestrike doomsayer doomsayer

Since then, Freeze Mage has has its ups ( flare nerf, the addition of emperor-thaurissan) and downs (the additions of kezan-mystic and antique-healbot), leaving us where we are today.

Speaking of today, here’s the decklist Camzee used in Legend in April:

Due to some card pool additions, Freeze Mage was up for some changes. Here they are:

-2 mirror-image mirror-image antique-healbot antique-healbot

-1 novice-engineer novice-engineer

-2 azure-drake azure-drake bloodmage-thalnos bloodmage-thalnos piloted-shredder piloted-shredder doomsayer doomsayer

+1 explosive-sheep explosive-sheep consecration consecration savannah-highmane savannah-highmane

+2 mad-scientist mad-scientist

+1 emperor-thaurissan emperor-thaurissan alexstrasza alexstrasza frostbolt frostbolt ONE in a single turn. Eight mana Alexstrasza (fifteen life), nine mana two Frostbolts (nine life), ten mana two Ice Lances (one life).

in a single turn. Eight mana Alexstrasza (fifteen life), nine mana two Frostbolts (nine life), ten mana two Ice Lances (one life). +1 [card]archmage-antonidas: The addition of Emperor Thaurissan means that the number of spells that one can cast on the same turn Antonidas is greatly increased, making gaining three fireball fireball

This deck packs a bigger punch than Otter’s deck and can more reliably survive the early to mid game, thanks to some new (and powerful!) additions to the card pool.

Freeze Mage: Conclusion

Freeze Mage has been a viable contender as a top-tier deck for month after month, in no small part due to the sheer fact that it can completely ignore so many cards that an opponent is likely to be playing.

Whilst it’s not the most popular ladder deck due to the relative slowness of the deck and the fact that there are a few auto-lose matchups, it still is a very strong deck overall, especially in a tournament setting where the diversity of the decks is somewhat less varied.

Why hasn’t Freeze Mage died?

Freeze Mage’s game-plan will always be viable as long as players have thirty health and tend to use minions to kill their opponents. Freeze Mage preys upon core Hearthstone mechanics, and as long as its toolkit isn’t outclassed by the cards its opponent’s run (remember that only a few cards are super effective vs. Freeze Mage) it will always have a place as its strategy is simple and inherently strong.

Midrange Hunter: Overview

Once upon a time, Hunters simply dominated the Hearthstone ladder, taking out all decks that weren’t built to oppose them. Actually, that happened several times, but I’m getting ahead of myself. At one point, Beast synergy was considered so good that cards like river-crocolisk, oasis-snapjaw and sometimes even bloodfen-raptor would see play in top-tier decks! Hunter has come a long way since then, a little worse for wear but still quite viable. Every expansion and adventure has always managed to include the tools that Hunter needs to transform and adapt to new metas.

Original lists relied on the strengths of a Beast into houndmaster plays for tempo, and unleash-the-hounds combos with starving-buzzard and/or scavenging-hyena, usually with a hunters-mark (often drawn after playing the combo) and occasionally a timber-wolf. These combos often resulted in absurd amounts of burst damage ( leeroy-jenkins + Unleash the Hounds), insane card draw (four cards for four mana PLUS a 2/1 and four 1/1s with Charge) and bewildering board clear capabilities. Over the months, Hunter got slapped with some ugly nerfs, destroying its ability to combo and completely spin the game around on turn four. The most notable nerfs have been:

flare flare

unleash-the-hounds unleash-the-hounds

eaglehorn-bow eaglehorn-bow

starving-buzzard starving-buzzard

These nerfs razed Hunter’s draw engine, making the originally four mana Buzzard + Unleash combo an unplayable eight mana. Hunters could not even run two Flares as cantrips all willy-nilly since it is now a significant tempo loss if it doesn’t do anything aside from drawing card. Hunters were forced to find ways to stretch their meager card supply, which meant ditching all low-impact/card inefficient tech cards, leading to the scarcity of if not complete disappearance of cards such as bestial-wrath, hunters-mark, timber-wolf and tracking. Modern Hunters look to maintain pressure on their opponent with tempo generators, hard-to-remove minions and their hero power.

Midrange Hunter: Decklists

Let’s start by taking a look at Lifecoach’s Hunter from back in the day:

If you think Mech Tribal synergy is insane now, the Beast tribal synergies that Hunter could abuse were figuratively game-breaking. In addition to powerful (yet balanced) cards like timber-wolf, scavenging-hyena and houndmaster, Hunter had access to two mana starving-buzzards and unleash-the-hounds. These last two cards in particular pushed Hunter over the top in power level.

Many decks in Hearthstone like to swarm minions, meaning that rarely will one have two or less minions in play (unless facing a Tempo deck). This led to Unleash the Hounds usually spawning three or more Hounds, which led to several major complications. Here is a semi-typical turn seven with this deck: Opponent has four minions in play. The Hunter plays Starving Buzzard into Unleash the Hounds. Four Hounds spawn, and four cards are drawn. Thanks to that massive draw, the Hunter now has Timber Wolf and Scavenging Hyena in hand. Both are played, drawing and additional two cards, one of which is a hunters-mark. The Hunter’s Mark + a Hound is used to remove the biggest minion, with the other three used to clear another minion or two (remember they have two attack each thanks to Timber Wolf). Let’s not forget the Scavenging Hyena, which just got proc’ed four times, resulting in a 10/6.

What does the above scenario boil down to? On turn seven, the Hunter drew six cards (alone worth eleven mana if extrapolated from arcane-intellect, nourish and sprint), dealt 2+2+2+infinite damage to minions on board, summoned a 1/1, 2/1, and a 10/6. That is simply an absurd amount of tempo! Needless to say, Blizzard stepped in with the nerf bat and brought the most offensive cards into line with the aforementioned mana cost increases.

Note: There is a HUGE time gap between the aforementioned Hunter list and the next one, but I feel that it’s best to list the most popular “Midrange Hunter” list between these two chronologically in a separate section as the deck wasn’t called Midrange Hunter at the time.

Let’s look at a modern list, one that ErA ran up to #1 Legend:

Time for a comparison between these decks!

-1 hunters-mark hunters-mark

-1 flare flare

-2 tracking tracking

-2 stonetusk-boar stonetusk-boar

-2 timber-wolf timber-wolf

-1 explosive-trap explosive-trap

-2 scavenging-hyena scavenging-hyena

-1 king-mukla king-mukla

-1 leeroy-jenkins leeroy-jenkins sludge-belcher sludge-belcher

+2 webspinner webspinner

+1 freezing-trap freezing-trap

+2 quick-shot quick-shot

+1 eaglehorn-bow eaglehorn-bow

+2 haunted-creeper haunted-creeper

+2 knife-juggler knife-juggler

+1 kezan-mystic kezan-mystic

+1 loatheb loatheb

+1 dr-boom dr-boom

This deck is a bit slower than older lists due to not having a ton of draw and other broken combos, but as proven by being piloted to Rank #1 Legend, it is still quite strong.

Midrange Hunter: Conclusion

A strong and popular ladder archetype, Midrange Hunter decks are usually cheaper than similarly effective decks from other classes. Combined with its simple effectiveness against many popular deck archetypes and the pure value of many of its cards (queue animal-companion and savannah-highmane), Midrange Hunter is a force to be reckoned with and will most likely continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Why hasn’t Midrange Hunter died?

savannah-highmane savannah-highmane mad-scientist mad-scientist

Hunter simply has access to some super-powerful and value packed cards, especially the two listed above. Savannah Highmane embodies the brute strength of Hunter, being an extremely difficult minion to remove outside of hex or polymorph, and one that procs other high value cards such as kill-command and Houndmaster. Mad Scientist on the other hand completes a secret-synergy trio consisting of good secrets (usually freezing-trap or explosive-trap, and sometimes snake-trap), Mad Scientist and eaglehorn-bow. It turns out that a two mana 2/2 that tutors and plays a two mana secret that in turn enables you to have a three mana 3/3 weapon is actually really, really good. It doesn’t help either that only two cards in the game can deal with secrets (one of them being class-exclusive), and only three cards in the game can deal with weapons ( water-elemental and snowchugger don’t count, as they only prevent the use of the weapon, they don’t actually deal with the weapon itself). Value and tempo plays win games, and Midrange Hunter has been as good as if not better than most Midrange decks at those things with its plethora of removal and threats.

Deathrattle Hunter: Overview

For a time after the release of the Curse of Naxxramas, the sheer power of a little card called undertaker rocked the meta, so much so that every deck either ran Undertaker or or was designed to deal with one. Here’s what the card’s effect was pre-nerf and now is post-nerf:

With the coin, it was possible to attack with a 3/4 on turn two, and it would continue to snowball from there. Whilst Undertaker was in its original state, virtually every Hunter ran a “HunterTaker” list, focusing on loading the deck with deathrattles to get the most value possible out of Undertaker. These decks varied in speed (some ran sludge-belchers, others ran savannah-highmanes), but they all revolved around the same OP card, pushing all other Hunter lists to the wayside. This allowed Hunters to play both the board control game due to Undertaker’s “life gain” and the damage race game as an Undertaker could easily deal nine damage in a game, which is an absurd amount for a one drop!

Hunter was considered the best class to run an Undertaker-centric deck as due the fact that it has an one drop with a Deathrattle ( webspinner), the prominent two drop of choice ( haunted-creeper) is a Beast (for kill-command and sometimes houndmaster synergy) and that the powerhouse Savannah Highmane also has a Deathrattle.

Deathrattle Hunter: Decklist

Using Undertaker as it’s power play, Deathrattle Hunter would play the Aggro game, trying to keep buffing up Undertaker once drawn and played. This is why a non-aggressive card like sludge-belcher saw play in a Hunter deck, because it both buffed and protected Undertaker.

Deathrattle Hunter: Conclusion

After the Undertaker nerf hit, Deathrattle Hunter was absorbed back into the Midrange Hunter archetype. The core of the deck was very strong, but without the ability to rely on the brute strength of a 4/5 Undertaker the deck underwent some optimizations, no longer running every possible Deathrattle minion for the sake of having more Deathrattles to fuel Undertaker.

Why hasn’t Deathrattle Hunter died?

After the Undertaker nerf, the deck morphed into today’s modern Midrange Hunter lists. So whilst the deck itself and its primary synergy is no longer top-tier, many of the things that made Deathrattle Hunter strong make up the backbone of today’s lists. As it turns out, most of the Deathrattle cards Huntertakers ran are just good in Hunter decks even without the presence of undertaker. So in a sense, Deathrattle Hunter hasn’t died, it has just been reborn.

Miracle Rogue: Overview

Long long ago, on a server far far away, headcrack was used in top-tier decks. Welcome to the age of Miracles! Miracle Rogue decks abused Rogue’s plethora of cantrips and cheap spells with conjunction with gadgetzan-auctioneer to draw almost their entire deck most games. This massive draw engine along with the pseudo-mana cost reduction that the Combo keyword gave Miracle Rogue the ability to deal massive amounts of damage to the enemy hero over the course of one or two turns. During Miracle Rogue’s prime, a non-Miracle Rogue deck’s viability was decided by if it could either kill an opponent by turn eight or if it could kill a stealthed 4/4.

Rogue was one of the most heavily nerfed classes in the game during early beta. From nerfing the hero power (it at one point it would buff your weapon’s attack if your hero power weapon was equipped) to nerfing a myriad of cards, Rogue has managed to endure having its back broken multiple times. Notable nerfs (to both the class and neutrals often used by the class) include:

backstab backstab

conceal conceal

headcrack headcrack

mana-addict mana-addict

edwin-vancleef edwin-vancleef

leeroy-jenkins leeroy-jenkins

gadgetzan-auctioneer gadgetzan-auctioneer

The general gameplan of a Miracle Rogue is as follows:

Control the board in the early game.

Draw a ton of cards.

Set up lethal and burst down the opponent.

Different decks put the draw engine of Miracle Rogue to work with different win conditions. Some decks would seek to directly exploit the ludicrous spending of cards the deck would do. Others simply used it to draw into a high-damage combo, and yet others simply wanted to pile burn on their opponent’s face. Whichever win condition a Miracle Rogue chose to include, it could consistently get to it and unleash the pain.

Miracle Rogue: Decklists

Let’s start off with a questing-adventurer plus mana-addict variant:

The goal with this deck was to cycle though your deck and lay down and Gadgetzan Auctioneer with Questing Adventurers and/or Mana Addicts. Then on the next turn, cycle through your deck with a plethora of spells dealing damage to the face and triggering your minions, then swinging in with massive attack minions. Dropping a huge Edwin was also a fun thing to do if you drew it. If they didn’t get big enough to kill in one turn, you could just conceal them and pick up where you left off.

Whilst slamming huge Questing Adventurers into your opponent’s face is all fine and dandy, it takes a few turns to set up and can be vulnerable to big sweepers like shadowflame. This became especially apparent after some nerfs hit and weakened the deck. Enter a Miracle variant that doesn’t care about sweepers:

This variant decides to rely on the Spell Damage buff of malygos to consistently kill your opponent in the late game with huge burn spells, even through taunts. The deck drops a lot of cheap cards in order to last until the late game where one can then pull off their Malygos + sinister-strike/ preparation + burn spell combo. This particular list includes the maximum possible number of spells that could hit the opponent’s face (with the exception of the second Headcrack as it’s pretty bad without Malygos), even running two copies of blade-flurry (since when combined with the hero power and Malygos, it would deal six damage to all enemy characters), something no other Rogue deck would do at the time.

As strong as the above two decks were, they were not the strongest Miracle decks out there. That title goes to the leeroy-jenkins variant of Miracle Rogue:

Before I compare this list with the Malygos one, I feel that it’s best to first compare its win condition with the Malygos Miracle deck. First of all, since Malygos costs nine mana, this deck can not start it’s burst until turn nine at the earliest. Additionally, to get a decent amount of burst in a single turn, one would need four cards. For example, one could play on turn ten malygos into sinister-strike into preparation into eviscerate. This would provide seventeen damage through taunts, which whilst good was simply not as good as what the Leeroy list has to offer. The list relies on the leeroy-jenkins + two shadowsteps combo, which deals eighteen damage for only eight mana and three cards. Whilst Leeroy can be stopped cold by taunts, one can still use sap or Preparation + Sap to get around that for one more card and two more mana (or two more cards and no additional mana). Even then eighteen damage with four cards on ten mana (that can come out earlier) > seventeen damage with four cards on ten mana and cannot be used any earlier. Simply put, the bigger damage combo that uses the least mount of cards and mana is most consistent and effective than the other. Now lets compare the decks!

-2 sinister-strike sinister-strike

-1 blade-flurry blade-flurry deadly-poison deadly-poison

-1 ironbeak-owl ironbeak-owl sylvanas-windrunner sylvanas-windrunner

-1 headcrack headcrack

-1 earthen-ring-farseer earthen-ring-farseer

-1 malygos malygos

+2 shadowstep shadowstep fireball fireball

+1 cold-blood cold-blood

+1 sap sap gadgetzan-auctioneer gadgetzan-auctioneer

leeroy-jenkins leeroy-jenkins

Miracle Rogue: Conclusion

After the Leeroy Jenkins nerf hit, Miracle Rogue started to struggle a bit as people were divided on whether or not to completely ditch the Leeroy Jenkins + shadowstep combo for Malygos combos. In the end, the Gadgetzan Auctioneer nerf made the deck too slow to be competitively viable as both its draw engine and combo were inefficiently expensive. Since the designation “Miracle Rogue” applied to Combo Rogues utilizing the Gadgetzan draw engine, this final nerf spelled the end of Miracle Rogue’s reign. Whilst some have tried to revive the deck through the inclusion of emperor-thaurissan, most Rogue players have settled on a different draw engine and combo. Though Miracle Rogue can be considered “dead”, its spirit lives on in our next deck archetype.

Flurry Rogue: Overview

Now before you ask me why I’m calling this deck “Flurry Rogue” instead of “Oil Rogue”, let me explain. Many people ascribe the success of Flurry Rogue to the addition of tinkers-sharpsword-oil in the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion. They’re not entirely wrong as it does add a decent amount of damage potential to the deck, but it’s not directly responsible for the power of the deck. In fact, it’s not even a very efficient card compared to deadly-poison and cold-blood. Additionally, some lists only run ONE copy of Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil! The MVP of Flurry Rogue decklists is none other than blade-flurry. This card is a pseudo- windfury for your weapon AND an AoE that is affected by Spell Damage boosts! The only reason we hadn’t seen double Blade Flurry lists pre-GvG was fact that there was only one weapon buff card that Rogues could consistently run ( spiteful-smith doesn’t count) With the ability to run four total buff cards, double Blade Flurry decks are actually consistent enough for competitive play.

Flurry Rogue plays very much like Miracle Rogue did back in its day. It goes for board control in the early game, goes for massive card draw in the mid-game (most Flurry Rogues run two Sprints, though some variants run one Sprint and one Gadgetzan Auctioneer) and then looks to finish off the opponent with a huge burst of damage. Without preparation, if a Flurry Rogue has a 1/2 dagger up and an empty board they can deal thirteen damage to the opponent’s face and four damage to all their minions for only seven mana with three cards ( southsea-deckhand, Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil and Blade Flurry. For one more mana an one more card (Deadly Poison), that combo goes up to seventeen damage to the face and a six damage AoE. Throw in a Preparation and that combo only costs five mana, meaning you can pull it off on turn seven even if you don’t have a weapon equipped!

In addition to playing much like Miracle Rogue, many of Flurry Rogue’s matchups are similar as well (though most midrange matchups are a bit better due to Flurry Rogue’s superior AoE capabilities), such as being weak to Control Warrior (due to the overheal that Armor provides) and strong against classic ZooLock (due to removal spells keeping the board clear and the burst being aided by Warlock’s hero power). Whilst a lot about the actual decklist changed from Miracle Rogue to Flurry Rogue, the spirit is almost exactly the same, hence the inclusion of both in this article.

Flurry Rogue: Decklist

The gameplan of a Flurry Rogue is very similar to a Miracle Rogue:

Control the board early on. Draw a bunch of cards OR establish your own board. Burst your opponent down.

Flurry Rogue uses mostly the same tools that Miracle had access to for board control, using cards like backstab, deadly-poison, blade-flurry, fan-of-knives and si7-agent to keep minions off the board. In the midgame, one can cycle through a lot of the deck using a preparation + sprint combo, or one can play some minions of their own. violet-teacher is definitely an all-star here, often generating three or more violet-apprentices if left unchecked for even a turn or two. This is necessitated by the fact that Rogue can no longer endlessly chain spells off of Gadgetzan Auctioneer and draw six or more cards in a single turn, so minions give the player some sustenance whilst they keep chugging through the deck. In the late game, the Rogue combos tinkers-sharpsword-oil onto their weapon and a minion to hit for usually at least nine damage (eleven with Deadly Poison), then follow up with a four (or six) damage Blade Flurry, dealing at the very least fifteen damage, but often more depending on the attack of the minion(s) used and the weapon buffs currently applied. Did I mention that the opponent’s board is also most likely empty right now?

Compared to Miracle Rogues of days past, Flurry Rogue doesn’t have access to as mana/card efficient combos, but it makes up for it with the ability to maintain control of the board with an iron fist a poisoned dagger. It’s still a Combo Rogue at heart, and still great at what it does best: bringing down the opponent from fifteen to zero (or less) in a single turn.

Flurry Rogue: Conclusion

Whilst not the most popular deck on ladder, Flurry Rogue is a very viable contender at all levels of play. It’s very hard to directly counter its win condition unless you’re a Warrior (let’s be honest, who runs arcane-nullifier-x-21?), it has more AoE than most combo decks (second only to Freeze Mage) and capable of massive tempo swings thanks to sap, preparation, Blade Flurry and Emperor Thaurissan.

To Be Continued…

That’s all for this article, but look forward to learning more about the following decks in the next installment:

Control Warrior

Combo Druid

ZooLock

HandLock

Until then, I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past and learned about your most (or maybe least!) favorite decks, how they’ve evolved and survived both nerfs and additions to the card pool.

See you next time!

I want to give a special thanks to Newton (read his articles here) for helping proofread this article. He’s a great writer and it’s the direct result of his help that this article has proper formatting. Check his stuff out!