Rogue’s quest is an interesting case compared to the others, looking specifically for SI:7 cards and luckily, almost all of them are decent on their own to not be much of a burden to play. Combine that with Rogue’s ability to cycle through their deck relatively quickly with the help of Field Contact and cards like Shadowstep to replay some of our SI:7s or even the final reward itself. Is Rogue’s powerful draw enough to speed through the quest? Let’s jump into the math and see!
Parameters for the Statistics
Before jumping into the breakdown, I would first like to give the conditions behind a lot of the calculations you will see in this article and almost all the future ones. In every scenario, I assume the player goes first and hard mulligans everything but the questline to find the key cards to accomplish the quest, and then prioritizes completing the questline with the hypothetical opponent not applying much pressure. In addition to that, unless a percentage is stated, assume that the given scenario will happen 50% of the time. With this out of the way, let us dive into this questline!
Decklist
Quest Completion Breakdown
Before going into the breakdown, let us first establish some rules around Field Contact. While the number of cards drawn from him varies between games, we are going to assume that he draws between 3-5 cards on his own as more. Something else to note is that Rogue’s card draw can snowball out of control, meaning that in games where you find one piece of draw, you are significantly more likely to find others and just churn through the deck, leading to some hilarious high rolls once in a while.
For the first step, we need to find 2 SI:7 cards. Fortunately, by the time turn 1 rolls around, there is a 52% chance we have seen 2 of the cheaper SI:7 cards, meaning that we can complete the first step by around turn 3-4, depending on which ones we drew into. Drawing any cards will not speed up this process at all since the main factor is the limited mana.
The second step is where we need to start relying on additional draw to stay on track for the quest, as otherwise we expect to be done with this step by turn 7, which is not the best look. Swindle speeds up the quest by a decent margin, bringing the expected turn to have the required SI:7 cards down to turn 5, once again resulting in the limiting factor being mana and not drawing the card. Any card that draws more than 2 cards will also bring us to the same conclusion. As for Shadowstep, we can expect the step to be done on turn 3. It should be noted that the reason why the chances for this step to be the same as the last one is the inclusion of SI:7 Assassin, which is unreasonable to be one of the first two SI:7 cards cast. Either way, drawing any amount of cards or having Shadowstep will mean that you usually will be done with the quest by turns 5-6, depending on how mana efficient you are being.
This brings us to the last step of the quest. Without any help, this step will be done by turn 12 on average, but this will almost never happen due to Rogue’s access to a considerable amount of draw. Swindle once again speeds up the clock by 2 turns, leaving it to be done by around turn 9-10 depending on whether we draw an SI:7 card. Secret Passage also speeds things up quite a bit, lowering the turns needed to be around 8-9 turns. Finally, including Field Contact, we can expect to have drawn enough SI:7 cards by turn 7-10. The more of these affects you combine, the faster we can expect to draw all the needed cards, and at this point we have enough mana to also cast a good majority of them quickly, meaning we can finish the questline by turns 8-9, depending on which pieces of draw were used.
Reward
The reward for this quest is a bit harder to evaluate by the numbers like I have with the others just due to the nature of them. The two questlines leading up to Spymaster Scabbs both reward a single Spy Gizmo, which range in value in a given moment. Stuff like Noggen-Fog Generator for example is much better when you have something valuable to protect, such as a Field Contact when one is trying to still draw most of their deck while something like Hidden Gyroblade can crush aggro, but sometimes that is not important in the matchup. That being said, the fact one can reasonably replay Spymaster Scabbs does serve as a win condition in itself, letting one force their opponent to draw worthless cards while you slowly get value out of Undercover Mole. The only one I am not a fan of is Spy-o-matic which is still a very decent card against control decks, letting you tuck away their board clears for a bit. The biggest strength that this quest has is just being able to slot in most of the other cards rather easily. While some are not my first choice of cards to include in the deck, all of them are playable and even strong in specific scenarios, which results in this questline being much more of a package deal than a whole deck dedicated to completing it.
What are your thoughts on Rogue Questline? I think it has a lot of potential just off the strength of the SI:7 cards themselves and I'm excited to see how the Spy Gizmos play out in a match. It would not surprise me if we see a lot more of this questline down the road just due to how relatively tame each of the steps are, especially compared to some of the other questlines.
Learn More About Stormwind's Other Questlines
We have a whole series of articles planned for the questlines. Here's everything published so far:
- Demon Hunter's Final Showdown Legendary Questline
- Druid's Lost in the Park Legendary Questline
- Hunter's Defend the Dwarven District Legendary Questline
- Mage's Sorcerer's Gambit Legendary Questline
- Paladin's Rise to the Occasion Legendary Questline
- Priest's Seek Guidance Legendary Questline
- Rogue's Find the Imposter Legendary Questline
- Shaman's Command the Elements Legendary Questline
- Warlock's The Demon Seed Legendary Questline
- Warrior's Raid the Docks Legendary Questline
Comments
With the final reward of the questline needing 4 spaces in your hand. I feel that just aiming to draw as quick as you can isn't the most effective way to play. I would use minions that draw and cast cards to get the most out of the final rewards just my 2 cents. Great write up also
While hand size issues can become a bit of an issue, especially when Field Contact is still on the board, I think that Rogue is still able to dump their hand on the board fast enough to make this not much of an issue.
As for running minions that draw like Loot Hoarder, thats a good idea, but then the issue becomes it does not really synergize that well with the rest of the deck. We'll just have to see how the quest turns out ultimately as with this one, theres lots of room to try different things out.
I really like the story on most of the questlines. It is very understandable from the images
Yeah questlines are probably the best flavor legendaries they've done in a long time. It makes me wish that Blizzard would try doing more story telling on the cards instead of just saying stuff like "oh yeah and this thing was here as well".
Personally I was waiting for a bit more finisher type questline for Rogue. As flavorful as it is, it's not what I was hyping for.
stupid question ...what is the meaning of SI:7 ?
Plays off of MI:6 or whatever that James bond thing is.
Adding a bit of detail: MI5 and MI6 are the UK's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies respectively. Put into layman terms, they're the UK's official spy organisations. James Bond is active all over the world, hence works for MI6.
Fun fact, it looks like MI7 did once exist, but no longer does. However, it has been used in media as a fictional version of MI5 and MI6, akin to Warcraft's SI:7. A notable example is Johnny English, which is a spoof of James Bond.
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