Bird Rogue

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wednesday, the Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off meta deck each week with an in depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

The Rogue quest Find the Imposter and Spymaster Scabbs add Spy Gizmos to your hand. One such Gizmo is Spy-o-matic, which has the Battlecry to discover a card from your opponent's deck and put one at the top. Whichever card he chooses will be the one that your opponent draws on their turn. This is how Bird Rogue was born: the idea is to use Spy-o-matics to keep choosing Albatrosses that you shuffled into your opponent's deck from Bad Luck Albatrosses. Due to all of Rogue's copy effects, you can have multiple copies of both Bad Luck Albatrosses, Scabbs, and Spy-o-matics to keep doing this for a while. You will guarantee that your opponent keeps drawing Albatrosses, and thus have a very high level of disruption. Overall, Bird Rogue is a fun deck that has the unique ability to directly mess with your opponent's draws.

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

First of all, you have to get your quest complete by playing SI:7 cards. You can also start shuffling Albatrosses into your opponents deck. Then, after the quest is complete, you will be able to play Spymaster Scabbs and get copies of him into your deck and hand. You will continue to shuffle Albatrosses using copies of Bad Luck Albatross while using Spy-o-matics to make the opponent draw them. While doing so, use your SI:7 minions and Spy Gizmos to gain tempo and win over time as your opponent draws birds.

Quest Completion - To finish the Find the Imposter quest, play the SI:7 cards you draw, use your card draw to draw more, and use bounce and copy effects to add more into your hand. You will get 2 Gizmos before the final quest reward of Spymaster Scabbs.

Tempo - For tempo, you will use big SI:7 Informants and cheap SI:7 Assassins in addition to all the 1 mana Spy Gizmos. 

Disruption - You have Sketchy Informations to tutor out Bad Luck Albatrosses and trigger their Deathrattles. You can use your copy effects to get more copies of Bad Luck Albatross and shuffle more Albatrosses into your opponent's deck. After that, you use the Spy-o-matics you get from the quest and Spymaster Scabbs and copies of him to put the birds on top of their deck.

Bird Rogue is inherently weak to aggressive decks, as most of the SI:7 cards are understatted. However, it can do really well against slower decks, and that is the matchup where you may really enjoy this deck's bird disruption gameplay.

Mulligans

• Always keep Find the Imposter.
• Keep an SI:7 Skulker, and if you have it a Greyheart Sage.
• Keep one Swindle.
• Keep an SI:7 Extortion if you have a source of card draw in hand.
• Keep both copies of Sketchy Information.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is timing your copy effects like Togwaggle's Scheme and Potion of Illusion to maximize their value while not falling too behind on tempo.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Greyheart Sage Stealth Synergies

There are multiple ways to activate Greyheart Sage. You have SI:7 Skulker that is a guaranteed Stealth minion and SI:7 Operative that can become a Stealth minion after it attacks. In addition to this, the Spy Gizmo Noggen-Fog Generator can give any minion Stealth while Undercover Mole is a Stealth minion itself.

Albatross Synergies

Sketchy Information will draw a Bad Luck Albatross from your deck and trigger its Deathrattle. If you have no Bad Luck Albatross in your deck, you can use a Togwaggle's Scheme on one before playing Sketchy Information.

Spy Gizmos

There are 5 Spy Gizmos.

Fizzflash Distractor is useful to use on a big enemy minion as a better version of Sap.

Hidden Gyroblade is a decent weapon for board control.

Noggen-Fog Generator is very useful as it can give a minion Stealth and make it safe from removal spells and minion trades until you want it to attack. It also acts as an activator for Greyheart Sage. Finally, it's great to keep a minion safe for a turn and use a copy effect like Potion of Illusion on it the following one.

Spy-o-matic is the most important Gizmo in the deck as you can use it to discover Albatrosses from the opponent deck and put them on top of it. Even if you don't discover an Albatross, you can put the least useful card for them out of the 3 you discover on top.

Undercover Mole is a Stealth card with good stats for the cost that also generates value each time it attacks.

Bounces and Copying

You can use your bounce cards Shadowstep and Tenwu of the Red Smoke to replay key minions. You can use them on SI:7 minions to speed up quest completion, SI:7 Assassins for removal, and on Greyheart Sages for card draw. You can also use them on Spymaster Scabbs to get his Battlecry again.

Potion of Illusion is useful to get extra copies of all minions including Bad Luck Albatross.

Togwaggle's Scheme should generally be used on Bad Luck Albatross or Spymaster Scabbs for more disruption and value. Sometimes it may be worth using it on an SI:7 Informant or SI:7 Smuggler, either of which can generate a lot of stats in the lategame.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Quest Package

These cards let you complete the Find the Imposter quest. You need the quest reward to get Spy-o-matics which are key to the bird disruption strategy.

Bird Package

This package allows you to shuffle Albatrosses into your opponent's deck.

Minion Bounces and Copy Effects

These cards let you play key minions from your other packages more than 2 times per game. This includes the quest reward, Spymaster Scabbs.

Card Draw

Card draw is good for getting to cards from the other packages consistently.

Bird Rogue is a deck with a unique kind of disruption, while also having the ability to generate both value and tempo. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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