OurHearthstone Tempo Rogue Deck List Guidetakes a look at this new iteration of this archetype for the Rise of Shadows expansion! We’ll walk you through mulligans, play strategy, card choices, and potential substitutions if you’re lacking some of the cards to create this deck.
Tempo Rogueis a longstanding deck that has come and go in the Hearthstone meta over the years. It had a long bout of success whenPrince Kelesethwas around, and eventually required some nerfs. It kind of floated around the meta after that and hasn’t had a real resurgence. Rise of Shadows has dropped the power level of the game significantly, and that means Rogue can excel due to some of its powerful tempo cards. Is this the beginning of another run for this archetype? Well, early on it’s looking good, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if it’s here to stay.
Tempo Rogue Rise of Shadows Deck List
This is an early look at the currently most popular version of Tempo Rogue for the Rise of Shadows meta. This deck is likely to be improved in the coming days, so don’t go all in creating it just yet!
Tempo Rogue Gameplay
Tempo Rogue Mulligan Guide
We’re looking for cheap spells to deal with our opponent’s board, as well as some of our early drops to start chipping in some damage onto our opponent.
Situational Keeps
Tempo Rogue Play Strategy
The general strategy of Tempo Rogue is that we’re hoping to use some of our spells to take down our enemy’s minons while developing our own. We can also maintain the board with our dagger, and in later turns we can useWaggle Pickto remove bigger minions. Once we get to the end game, we can start attacking to the face and if we run out of gas we’ll be able to useMyra’s Unstable Elementto draw out our deck. Doing this also enables the new addition to the game inChef Nomi!
Our early game goals are to keep our opponent from overrunning the board with too many minions. We accomplish this by using cards likeBackstab,Eviscerate, andVendettato keep them at bay. Vendetta in particular is great for this, because a lot of time we’ll be able to grab a card from our opponent’s deck fromBlink FoxandHench-Clan Burglar. We should very regularly have this card available at 0-mana, and that means we can take out many of the popular 3 and 4 mana drops.
These early cheap spells can also potentially get us a good sizedEdwin VanCleefin the early game. Pair enough of them together and throw in aPreparation, and we have a minion that most decks won’t be able to remove for a turn or two.
Waggle Pick is the new weapon Rogue got in the Rise of Shadows expansion. It can be very strong if you are able to use it correctly, because we can get double value out of a minion. This might not always work in our favor at times, but when it does it can be spectacular. Remember your good friendLeeroy Jenkins? Have this weapon out, play Leeroy on an empty board for 6 damage to the face, attack with the weapon for 4 damage and bring back Leeroy, play Leeroy again but this time for 3-mana and hit again for 6! That’s a 16 damage combo, and you might still have some more mana to cast anEviscerate!
Once we get into the late game we might be lacking cards, so this is where we’re hoping to have Myra’s Unstable Element. We can draw the rest of our deck, and we will hopefully either already have Chef Nomi in our hand or draw it from the deck. Now that our deck is empty, we can play Chef Nomi and get a board full of 6/6 Elementals that are going to be real tough for your opponent to deal with.
