Welcome to Budget Deck Breakdown, the Hearthstone series where the decks are cheap and the jokes are bad. This week, we're discussing a deck that uses the power of Miracle Rogue to turn our opponent's hand into a fruit salad, then use their extra cards to our advantage. There are a lot of things I want to say about this deck, so let's get to talking about Banana Rogue.
This Deck is Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S
Miracle Rogue is a pretty fun deck to play right now, with the powerful draw capabilities of Field Contact and the cost reduction provided by Efficient Octo-bot letting it do things other decks can only dream of. For this deck, we took the key components of Miracle Rogue (Efficient Octo-bot, Field Contact, cheap Battlecries, prayer) and combined it with what I call the Potassium Package of King Mukla and Banana Vendor. These two minions fill our opponent's hand with Bananas to discount the final piece of the package: a big ol' 8/8 named Clockwork Giant.
Putting Bananas into Miracle Rogue is fairly fitting. Bananas are a Top 5 Miracle Fruit, right up there with dragon fruit and eons better than kiwi. The most miraculous thing about kiwis is that anyone can stand to eat the hairy bastards. That's right; Budget Deck Breakdown is not afraid to stand up to Big Kiwi. Anyway, here's the deck.
We've Got Bananas, How About You?
The Potassium Package is designed to make sure our opponent's hand is full of cards so we can play cheap Clockwork Giants. To turn that dream into a reality, our first step is to play either King Mukla or Banana Vendor to get those extra cards into their hand. Ideally, the next step is to use Cult Neophyte to make those bananas twice as expensive, or Animated Broomstick to Rush into their minions and leave them without bodies to play bananas onto. That sets us up nicely to play a Clockwork Giant, getting an 8/8 body onto the board way earlier than it should be there.
Field Contact is our main draw engine to assemble those pieces, digging deeper into the deck for Clockwork Giant and the banana boys. Swindle can also help us find those pieces.
Once we have most of the pieces in hand, Efficient Octo-bot will give them a permanent discount and further enable the banana shenanigans. The Octo-bot does a lot of work for this deck, and can be used in different ways depending on when we need it. It can even discount the Bananas we get from Banana Vendor.
Banana Synergies and Other Bad Ideas
Most of this deck probably looks to you like a standard Miracle Rogue list with our banana package added in, but most of the cards that kept their place in this list did so because of how well they synergize with our gameplan of using Bananas to control our opponent's hand and board. This deck doesn't have an OTK, but it definitely has a lot of K (that's a potassium joke, for all you periodic table fans out there).
Cult Neophyte and Animated Broomstick are only two of our cheap ways of keeping Bananas in our opponent's hand. To control their board, we also have Prize Plunderer and Brain Freeze. Wicked Stab is useful early game removal that also serves as a way to get extra damage in late.
Guardian Augmerchant, beyond being a great way of triggering Efficient Octo-bot's Frenzy, can also protect our big minions from damage once they're on board. Mankrik synergizes both with heavy card draw and any Bananas we have laying around. Spymistress is an early-game threat or trading tool that can also wear some Bananas if we have them. Vanessa VanCleef is a sold 2-Drop who likes to steal our opponent's cards (sometimes Bananas, sometimes not). Shadowstep is classic Miracle Rogue and can give us extra plays of any minion - whether we desire more Bananas from Banana Vendor or more dead wives from Mankrik (didn't mean to bring her up; it won't happen again, we promise).
Card Replacements for the Rich and Famous
Tenwu of the Red Smoke is a good minion for bouncing and replaying our minions so we can get even more potassium for our opponent (we worry about their health). Southsea Scoundrel is another good body for its cost that can fill our opponent's hand, or burn a card if their hand is already filled with Bananas. Secret Passage is powerful card draw and a cost-effective way to find our Giants when they're at their cheapest.
If you want to change the deck while keeping it cheap, there are still plenty of ways to do that. Prize Vendor is another cheap minion who fills our opponent's hand, while Foxy Fraud is good at creating early tempo swings by discounting our cheap Combo minions. Swashburglar is a cheap minion that replaces itself with fun stuff, and Alexstrasza the Life-Binder gives us another way to end the game or control the board. Crabrider is a powerful early-game control tool, and will play really well with Field Contact just as soon as its Battlecry actually counts as one.
Banana Rogue is a fruity twist on Miracle Rogue, adding in a dash of mill and plenty of potassium. Maybe you want to play cheap Giants, or maybe you want to be nice to your opponent by making sure they take their vitamins for a strong and healthy tomorrow. Well, this deck does both. It's not every day that you get to be nice to your opponent while slamming large minions into their face.
Do you want to help your opponents on ladder lead a healthy and active lifestyle by giving them plenty of potassium? Are you brave enough to take a stand against Big Kiwi? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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Comments
Big Kiwi has been pushing their DANGEROUS hairy fruit and Lord of the Rings flims for too long.
Orcs in WoW/Hearthstone: eat bananas and are good. Except Garrosh.
Orcs in LotR: eat kiwis and are evil. LotR was filmed in New Zealand, and those people are called Kiwis.
Do you see?
Pepe Silvia everywhere.
There are no 4-mana cards in the deck, so another option for the rich and famous would be Kazakus, Golem Shaper. Since you already have battlecry synergy with Shadowstep and Field Contact in the deck, you could go for a 1-mana golem if you have enough value in your hand already and a 5-mana golem if you're running dry.
It's called a knife.
uh oh Big Kiwi found me.
Just a way to solve the "hairy" problem.
I'm really more Big Strawberry tbh.
This article is down right Bananas (Think we need more Bananas🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌)
I'm stunned to see that this deck has an actual win condition other than driving the opponent bananas. Well done
Ahh, Banana Rogue. It's been a while since I put one of those together (I definitely don't have series of theme decks telling the story of Sergeant Sally bringing down Gallywix's banana company stored on this site...).
I agree with @Pezman that there is a definite need for Shenanigans in here. There's no such thing as too much potassium.
For more potassium, you could even put Plagiarize in the deck and then copy your opponent's bananas as they are played. It's not even cheating: bananas are clones anyway. And then add Blackjack Stunner to deny your opponent the benefits of the bananas.
I love everything about this deck, although I do feel its potential for Shenanigans could be increased.
Jokes per minute: high
Potassium per card: higher
Opponent's cramps: low
Opponent's bowel movements: slow
Building around Clockwork Giant: unheard of
All of which combines to make probably my favorite article in the series! Great stuff sule :D
I put Clockwork Giant in a Watch Posts + N'Zoth deck earlier in the expansion and it felt pretty good in the few games I played with it. But then the Watch Posts got nerfed and I disenchanted Kargal Battlescar and the deck fell apart.
so happy someone's finally standing up against Big Kiwi!