Avalon's 12 Wins Battlecry Rogue

Hearthstone Duels Choices

Hero

Hero Power

Treasure

First ever 12 wins run with Rogue, which I am pretty proud about: now I'm halfway through the achievement of getting 12ers with each class.

To be honest, the run started pretty damn bad: I lost the first match against a Miracle Priest, then won one and then lost another one against Bomb Warrior. However, things turned in my favor and I was able to sweep the competition, winning 11 (!) games in a row.

Passive Treasures Chosen

First pool - All Together Now

Second pool - Rally the Troops

Deck Overview

As you might see from the starting deck, my goal was getting Meek Mastery: I was tired of getting smacked by that completely overpowered Passive Treasure and you know... If you can't beat them... Join them! However, luck wasn't on my side for multiple runs, and I am yet to have a run with it.

In order to increase the odds of getting offered Meek Mastery, I created a starting deck composed mainly of cheap Neutral Battlecry minions: in the end, All Together Now was a nice backup plan. The general plan is jamming these generally good units and swarm your opponent down.

While this strategy may appear not unfair enough for Duels, there are a few things that improved it:

• Rally the Troops - If you run units with little to no synergy between themselves, you'll run out of gas pretty fast; however, Rally is what keeps you (and kept me) going.
• Bouncers - Zola the Gorgon, but also Shadowstep, Shadowcaster and occasionally Youthful Brewmaster allow you to replicate the same Battlecry effect across multiple turns, and that can be very beneficial for you. For more details, see below in the "Playstyle Tips" section.
• Quel'Delar - I assembled it shortly after losing my second match and, I have to be honest, it hard carried me throughout every single game from that point: every one of them was decided by that Weapon. Bless it.

Mulligan Tips

Always Keep - Swashburglar, Cult Neophyte (good against several popular decks).

Possible Keeps - Wand Thief (Connections saves you the trouble to find a cheap card to trigger the Combo effect), Wandmaker, Green Tortollan Shell (keep an eye on your opponent: if you're paired against Hunter, Warlock, Paladin or Harvest Time! Druid, you will want to keep it).

One nice thing about this deck is that Connections will eventually fill up the holes you have in your early curve, so that you won't have to rely solely on your draws in order to maintain the control of the board.

Playstyle Tips

Tempo - Play for tempo: play your units on curve, spend all your mana, make favorable trades and go face when you feel like lethal is in the air. This deck succeeds by controlling the board, so if you if you irreparably lose the board... well, that may be troublesome for you.

Bouncers - As I mentioned before, bounce effects play a key role in this deck. Since you have lots of Battlecries, you can replicate the most convenient ones, depending on the situation. While getting multiple Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred is great if you're on the offensive, I won more than one game by locking my opponents out of the game with a chain of Loathebs. However, if you're against board-based strategies, don't be greedy and replicate something immediately impactful like Wriggling Horror, Hog Rancher or Glacial Shard.

Flightmaster Dungar - Definitely not the best card, but I wanted to try it out. If you happen to be able to play it on turn 3 or turn 2 with The Coin, then go for Eastern Plaguelands, otherwise both Ironforge and Westfall are acceptable. 12 damage randomly split followed by a Quel'Delar swing are more than enough to put any opponent in a rather difficult position. Definitely one of the unsung heroes of this run.

Hero Power, Signature Treasures and Passives

While Roguish Maneuvers gives you more aggression, I preferred connections for two reasons:

• Since I was looking for Meek Mastery, any Neutral 1-drop from Connections would've become a 0 mana unit with +1/+1, which is insane tempo.
• As I already mentioned, Connections fills up your curve and gives you something to play when you're low on resources or your hand is a bit tricky.

Even though I didn't end up pressing the button that much, I still feel happy about having picked it.

You're not running spells (just one, in fact), so Ace in the Hole is way less impactful, and you're not running/you cannot generate Weapons, so Deadly Weapons 101 is out of question. That leaves us with Green Tortollan Shell, but don't be fooled: a one-sided Vanish for 1 mana that comes with a Wicked Knife is too good for a minion-based deck to be considered fall-back plan.

Green Tortollan Shell shines in multiple matchups, giving you a remarkable edge against:

• From Golden Light Paladin, so that you can Sap all the cheap Taunts with Divine Shield that separate you from your opponent's face.
• Deathrattle Hunter, since you invalidate their entire game plan.
• Token Druid, because there's no way they can win if they cannot stick tokens on the board.
• Control Warlock, since Soulcial Studies generates those pesky Imps.

Beware: Shadow Word: Void's Voidfiends are 0 mana units, so if you Sap them your opponent will not struggle to play again the following turn, and you will waste your Signature Treasure.

Pretty much half Meek Mastery, but still good enough to bring home some Ws. Having literally all your deck discounted by 1 mana is relevant, trust me.

A steady flow of resources is what this deck needs in order to not fall back and die on board: make sure to play one Battlecry per turn and keep cycling through your deck. Definitely the best Tier 2 Treasure you can hope for.

All hail the mighty Quel'Delar, destroyer of opponents and savior of runs! Things were looking pretty grim before I was able to find the Blade of Quel'Delar I was missing, but after assembling it I felt much more confident in my deck. Long story short, my general approach to the game changed: now all I had to do was stalling my opponents or engaging them in a race and then finish them off with Quel'Delar.

However, some games required more than 4 swings: that's where a Doomerang I found in a crappy bucket turned out to be a life saver. What I mean to say is that, when your Quel'Delar has 1 Durability left, you can Doomerang it back into your hand: this way, it will regain all its Durability hits lost and you'll be able to replay it and keep pressuring your opponent!

I never drew Bag of Coins but it was supposed to give me more mana for my bounce effects and to equip Quel'Delar ahead of time. In the end, I still don't regret picking it, but I wish I could've played it here and there.

In a minion-based and board-focused deck, buffs are beneficial for you: I was able to find Old Militia Horn, but Sow the Seeds and Blood Moon (great when you're being raced by spell decks) are fine too.

Final Observations

Spells hate - I feel like every deck that can afford minions should run both Cult Neophyte and Loatheb: there are way too many decks that heavily rely on broken spell synergy ([Hearthstone Card (Ooops, all spells!) Not Found] was a huge mistake), and those cards punish them.

Bomb Warrior and Miracle Priest - The more I get matched against them, the more I feel like they should be hit by a balance patch, even though for different reasons: while Bomb Warrior is just there to ruin your early matches and then falls off pretty hard, Miracle Priest is almost unbeatable in the early run, and Shadow Word: Void at 3 mana wins games by itself. Team 5, if you're reading this guide consider looking at the current Duels balance. Please <3