Blizzard released the full core set and we're in for a very different new year of Hearthstone! Today we're going to be taking a look at the Rogue class in the Year of the Gryphon by looking at their new set of core cards and giving the new ones a full review.
- If you want to see the full core set, you can check out our Core 2021 Guide.
- Want to see only the new cards? We have a dedicated article for that.
- You can build decks with all these cards in our deckbuilder - just select Year of the Gryphon as the format!
Let's get to it!
New Card: Vanessa VanCleef
The whole fresh addition of one that we knew about ahead of time, nonetheless carries a very important legacy. To fill the oversized boots of daddy Edwin VanCleef is no small feat to ask of anyone (that is Edwin as he was and will be in his prime at 3 mana, once the rotation hits). The comparisons are inevitable, and poor Vanessa might be living in his nefarious shadow for a while.
Vanessa VanCleef herself has been one of the long-awaited fan favorites (you can find many custom card creations dating back years), but somehow took this long to arrive - we suspect the blame lies squarely with Edwin VanCleef always managing to bribe his way out of Hall of Fame jail just so he could win one more World Championship. His daughter has her own storied Warcraft background, as one with great proficiency in various poisons and toxins. You can even see that reflected in the card art (the daggers), which has its own tale to tell. That is why some people were disappointed she wouldn't bring this kind of flavor to Hearthstone, as a more powerful version of Xaril, Poisoned Mind. Instead, we will be heading down the Burgle archetype path.
Burgle and its offsprings have never done particularly well in Rogue, be it due to the awkward designs and costs or inherent randomness. Or because Priest was simply always better at this whole stealing thing (now we at least know why), as healing helps greatly when going for card advantage. Can Vanessa VanCleef finally turn the tide?
For one, the card does come with a unique twist: no particular RNG. Everything is under your control; you can always choose what you would like to get based on the state of a match and the actions of your opponent (insert your favorite "high skill cap" meme here). It does force players to at least consider in which order they might wish to play their cards, to avoid their most impactful being copied if possible. The combo effect is cheap enough for easy activation (Foxy Fraud is often a staple anyway), the flexibility seemingly endless.
I don't believe we know for sure whether we might be getting the exact copy of a card or just the base one, which matters greatly when it comes to the likes of Corrupt mechanic. Hopefully, you can enable some stylish backward Tickatus revenge. Sadly this can't work nearly as well against Mindrender Illucia. You could peek at enemy Secret cards so they are not so secret anymore (although if it's one activated through minion play or if you would have to use a spell to enable the combo, you might find out anyway). And there is the potential to bank a taunt, heal, board clear or a big minion (dream big, go C'Thun, the Shattered if you somehow survive) or direct spell for a special finish.
Of course, your opponent will always know what you got, making for some interesting tension. In the end, Vanessa VanCleef couldn't be nearly as powerful as the pre-nerf Edwin VanCleef it's indirectly replacing, it's also far more versatile than just "dump a big pile of stats on the board as early as possible and hope opponent has no answer or stall". Personally, I am very much a fan of this type of design, here is hoping it finds its rightful place.
Buffed and Changed Cards
There isn't a whole lot here to be excited about, but then the Basic/Classic sets for Rogue were never terribly underpowered. We have 4 cards that received a bit of love and 1 with a particular change:
Swashburglar returns to us from Karazhan, except now it can give cards from any class (previously it was just your opponent's class). It used to be a very popular 1-mana drop back in the day, and will most likely be again. Cheap combo activator, a bit of tempo, and whatever you get might be either absolutely useless or ultimately game-winning. Not something your opponents can ever dream to play around. On average it should work out in your favor.
Patient Assassin is a weird inclusion, with 1 extra health now. Stubborn Gastropod was big in Arena in its time and so was Giant Wasp, but Constructed formats won't care much for it. Too many board clears, too few huge minions. Assassinate goes down 1 mana, as seemingly usable hard removal for any new players on a budget. But currently even Coerce doesn't see much use.
Sprint at 6 mana will still be mercilessly laughed at by Secret Passage and Swindle. The way things have been lately you can't ever just spend so much mana on drawing cards and expect to win. Feels clunky even with Preparation. Buffed Assassin's Blade (one less mana, 2/5 instead of 3/4) could actually hope to see some play if Self-Sharpening Sword and weapon tech didn't exist, given the power of Nitroboost Poison and Deadly Poison still in here. Maybe somebody attempts to run both, but there is a danger of a hand clogged with weapons.
The Core Zero Triplets
What's far more entertaining is to see the wonderful (or terrible, depending on your perspective) trio of 0-mana cost cards still remain in the core set:
It's a bit of a surprise, as many were betting on Shadowstep to go away, with Preparation to follow (at least as long as the class retains its heavy draw engines). You know them, and you hate or love them. Unless upcoming expansions provide better alternatives, all of these will continue seeing regular play.
Returning...
Besides the Swashburglar mentioned above, we have got two more old acquaintances making a return as they always were:
Tomb Pillager from The League of Explorers saw its fair share of popularity, so understandably some are excited to see its return. Rogue can always find a combo-y use for Coin, even if it's not the Gadgetzan Auctioneer shenanigans of the past (but this one surprisingly remains as well, so you never know!). Currently, many decks would punish you for dropping a mere 5/4 that does nothing when it hits the board, but maybe the future metas won't be as volatile.
Bladed Cultist is most unexpected. The card never made much impact during the time when Whispers of the Old Gods stayed with us, but we have also never had Foxy Fraud before. Now it wouldn't be wasteful to coin this on turn 1. Admittedly a 2/3 that does nothing else and is a terrible 1/2 without its combo effect is not something you would ever want on later turns.
...and Rotating
Moving onto Wild, we will be saying our goodbyes to the following:
- Shiv
- Sap
- Fan of Knives
- Plaguebringer
- Pilfer
- Defias Ringleader
- Eviscerate
- Betrayal
- Headcrack
- Perdition's Blade
- Master of Disguise
- Blade Flurry
- Kidnapper
- Edwin VanCleef
A fair amount, but also a lot of junk that saw very little to no play. We knew about Edwin VanCleef for a while, and we also knew he would be returning back to 3 mana come to the set rotation. Since then we've also found out that more cards might return to their former glory. Could there be Blade Flurry going face again? That's a scary thought.
Besides Edwin, notables here include Eviscerate and Sap. The latter wasn't seen much this year, but it's still hard not to think about whenever you think Rogue thoughts. If correct positioning was never your strong suit, at least you won't have to worry about Betrayal anymore. Not that it was being included in the decks, but with spell generation being as prevalent as it was always a small consideration. Shiv and Fan of Knives fell out of favor over time and won't be particularly missed. You might shed a veteran's tear for the good memories.
A Neutral Made for Rogue
So yes, technically Vanessa VanCleef might the only brand new core card that the class is getting, but there is something to be said for this guy as well:
Several classes will be able to use it, but in the end, there is only one that can guarantee to have a weapon equipped on almost any turn of their choosing. 2 damage that you can direct anywhere, 2 mana, 2/2 body, a tribal tag; not too shabby. Maybe it will sneak into some decks. Pirate Rogue a thing again in Standard? Now you can sport a matching Cap’n Valeera skin to boot!
That's a Wrap
It looks like Rogue will be more than fine. The class tends to find a way to become a top contender in most metas, often with more than just one archetype. What's already been previewed here seems fairly promising, and the recent expansions added a few staples. To be honest it won't be very surprising if Foxy Fraud, Nitroboost Poison and Secret Passage (yes, again) get hit with a nerf hammer in the foreseeable future.
The 4 other Classic cards that weren't specifically mentioned but are also going to be a part of the Core set include: SI:7 Agent, Plague Scientist, Sinister Strike, and Cold Blood. Face damage has been beloved by Weapon/Stealth Rogue, which may still hold. The rest is mostly there to take up space, but we should never count out a grand return for SI:7 Agent. Cold Blood perhaps if Nitro ever goes down in power level.
I'd be very happy to see some form of a card advantage archetype emerge (burgling and pillaging, arrr), but as long as the class remains so delicate without any survival tools, it probably can't hope to last against anything that isn't Priest or Control. And even then using your weapon to remove anything does hurt your precious face.
How do you feel about the upcoming changes? Sad to see anything go, happy with what's staying? Share your thoughts with us below!
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Comments
And now we have rogue, whos classic set have been nerfed so many times I couldn't keep up. Well, now most of the cards are gone, the most significant of which is Eviscerate. I'll be honest that I wasn't at all happy to see eviscerate gone, but now thinking about it, if there was going to be a card to get HoF, it was always going to be either edwin, Shadowstep, or eviscerate. Happy to know that at least one of those survived to the core set.
So where do we go from here? I'm afraid that for the most part rogue decks are going to have a mountain to climb. Because their cards are no longer efficient at removal, there's no place for a generic 'midrange' deck coming out from rogue but instead we look towards familiar archetypes. Secret rogue would likely be at the forefront of things, due to the very powerful Shadowjeweler Hanar, and with most of the secrets being removed from classic, its going to be shorter list of getting what you want. No more Redemption though, so that's annoying, but not necessarily bad as for every discover of redemption there's also Eye for an Eye. Aggro stealth rogue will likely make it, most of their core is still here, but losing eviscerate and Southsea Deckhand means they have to start looking for more burst damage elsewhere. A good chance we start seeing new Alex in this deck with shadowstep.
Here's a slight, but not impossible, possibility. The return of token rogue. There's no longer any Questing Adventurer or edwin, and without burst damage miracle rogue is a cutlass short from returning, but with many cheap spells still at its disposal as well as Violet Teacher, we may be seeing something from the past make a comeback.
Vanessa is so disappointing. Rogue needs more poison/toxic cards. Xaril is one of my favorite cards and would be a much better fix for rogue. If priest is always going to be better at burgle then rogue needs to not get burgle cards and go in a different direction. Give rogue stealth, poison cards IMO
The Burgle archetype became quite respectable with Bazaar Burglary, so there's no reason it can't be good again.
I wish, but it was never quite *the* deck. Only briefly making its presence known, and then the quest became forgotten with the more recent expansions (despite the fact we got Dual Class cards).
Part of that may be that it's a high-skill archetype with more RNG than most decks. That combination doesn't get traction because bad players don't know how to use it, and good players shy away from anything random. I had a fantastic win rate with it during Darkmoon (before Races). I haven't bothered since Races came out because Nitroboost OP.
To author: You could use the new version of Assassin's Blade in the text. It seems you referenced to older, current version. We'll all get used to cards having two versions :)
Hmm, at which point? I thought the links were correct, but maybe I was missing something. The two versions thing will only be confusing if we end up playing Classic format a lot. ;)
If you wanted to link to the current version, I guess that was fine.
Classic format will be messier, since they unnerf all the cards lol. 4 mana Leeroy, baby!
That's very strange. For me in the text article the link and everything displays correctly (new version, so it's blue to fit rarity), but for you it's showing as white/the old version? We would have to look into it.
Wait, now it's the new one. I could've sworn it was the old one. Never mind, sorry I took your time.
No worries, there really might've been something off that have since corrected with the database. I was positive I used the right version from the get go, but this transition to new cards can be a confusing one.
Valeera can finally say goodbye to class AoE forever, but I'm looking forward to Blademaster Samuro + Plague Scientist* for a surprise 1-sided full board clear.
* Note for the author: plague scientist was actually brought back from the Frozen Throne, replacing his slightly more expensive brother Plaguebringer.
Oh, good catch. Thank you. I will see about fixing that for further clarity and credit you for the mention. Must've been too sleepy when finalizing for these cards to read as one and the same to me. Not that they exactly saw play, but I should remember Scientist from the Arena times.
I'd like to think that a 7 mana board clear is okay for a class like rogue, but its probably too slow. But then again with the loss of so many cards, you could just slot Plague Scientist in anyway, and samuro still works with Cold Blood on 6, or 4 with prep.
Yeah, now that I think about it, token miracle rogue could actually be a good tier 1/2 deck.
It does feel too slow and unreliable for the current meta, and Rogues are usually forced to develop tempo and push for swifter finish when you have no heals and ways to survive longer. Hoping to control the board only delays the inevitable, unless it's against no burn decks.
Plague Scientist on its own is often pointless when you have Coerce and don't need to waste another minion. But that's a nifty poisonous combo, at least on paper. Maybe if things truly slow down and become board focused again.
It really depends. Coerce doesn't develop any board, while Plague Scientist is a 2/3 at least. That means if you're trading a minion smaller than the scientist, its essentially buffing your board while removing a minion. Of course, that is if you have a board to begin with, which I predict token rogue (if at all viable) would not be lacking.
There's also another factor. Your chosen subject might survive the trade and now you have a poisonous minion on board. Coerce doesn't get a free pass simply because it requires no board to work, it would really depend on how the deck work to decide on the two cards.
That said, Im not entirely sold on the Samuro combo with poison, because I do think its too slow. But since it also works decently with Cold Blood, it at very least wont be a one trick pony in your deck.
I'm mad that I didn't think of this first
I do love some of the returning cards (Pillager and Swashburglar top spots) but a shame we didn't see Shadowstep and Prep move on. Those two alone would've opened up some design space for standard.
To be fair the use of Prep is so much meta dependent while Shadowstep is in every Rogue deck. Also in a year where Rogue secrets are still around you'd like to have Prep - probably...