Hi there, welcome to my beauty channel! Today we'll be looking at this wonderful new rouge... sorry? Oh, this is embarrassing...
These reviews have been peer reviewed to ensure that they are of the highest quality. Unfortunately, due to how exceptionally talented we are as reviewers the only people who could be considered our peers are each other, but we made sure we checked over what we wrote a whole bunch of times, so it's basically the same thing.
He never tricks Tortollans, their shell game is too good.
Quote From Avalon 1 mana Edwin anyone? As long as Rogue will be able to slot in cards like Eviscerate, Edwin, Wand Thief, the new Swindle or Coerce, I see Foxy Fraud being played in a wide variety of decks.
The card is just very good and synergyzes perfectly with one of the best and strongest Rogue mechanics.
His eyes are too big for his stomach sometimes.
Quote From Noxious Overall, a solid card. With its corruption, it gains the stats of Burrowing Scorpid, minus the 2 damage effect, but with the bonus of… being playable a turn sooner, if you coin on turn 2 and play something that costs 3 mana?
On curve, it's not too crazy. Late-game (and, assumingly, corrupted after all that time), it can be a cheap and and effective minion at generating some threat to hopefully force the opponent to spend some removal on it. Uncorrupted, unfortunately, the card is not that exciting.
They keep the prize from prying eyes.
Quote From Avalon Very reminiscent of Elven Minstrel, with the difference that it costs half and, even without the Combo effect, it still draws a minion. 2 mana draw 2 cannot possibly be bad, even more in a class like Rogue that loves fast cycling and closing the games as quickly as possible.
On a side, note, Swindle covers an important role in assembling C'Thun, the Shattered's part in the upcoming C'thun Rogue, which is probably going to be a thing in the very first weeks of the Darkmoon Faire meta.
Is it really piracy if the stalls are trying to steal from you too?
Quote From Avalon I don't really see a home for this card: the Pirate tag looks pretty much irrelevant; it doesn't target face but just minions, and Rogue has very cheap and efficient removals. It looks like a cheaper but even more useless Spectral Pillager.
Maybe we're just missing some synergy that will come in the next expansions, but right now I wouldn't want to replace any of the existing Rogue cards with this one.
What I wouldn't give for one of these...
Quote From ShadowsOfSense This can be really powerful in the right match-up. The fact that it only triggers upon minions attacking is both vital in making it not complete garbage, and something we've seen before on other good Secrets like Flame Ward. If your opponent can't waste the Secret on a small minion, they're going to be faced with a big problem - especially since they can't easily rid themselves of the Stealthed copy before you get to make use of it.
Now, that's not to say that this is amazing or anything. The infrequent use of cards like Mirror Entity (at least outside of random generation) shows us that it really takes the right kind of meta, one without a lot of small minions, for these cards to be truly powerful. That Stealth is still really enticing, however; a Mage can always follow up their minion with some sort of destruction, but it's much harder to cleanly kill something in Stealth. There are options, certainly, but are they good ones?
I think this will see a good amount of play, and while it will often be played around effectively the fact that the minion will likely stick around for you to decide what to do with it is what pushes it into relevance for me.
I suppose that's one way of getting the tickets.
Quote From Avalon Early enabler for the new Shuffle Rogue archetype: you play this on turn 3, kill it as soon as possible and then start getting value off of it. It is a Fal'dorei Strider (one of the best cards ever printed for Rogue, that sometimes sees play even in the Wild hell) that comes down a turn earlier at the cost of being slower. And that, in my opinion, is Ticket Master's greatest problem: the fact that the card has a Deathrattle instead of a Battlecry means that, as long as you're not able to bump it into an opponent's minion, you won't be able to reduce the cost of Malevolent Strike and possible exploit Stowaway.
Again, if Shuffle Rogue will be a thing, Ticket Master will be a 2-of, but the fact that it doesn't immediately give you what you want makes me uncertain about its overall viability.
You'd think more people would be suspicious of large clouds of red smoke.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense Oh, that's where I left it.
Cloak of Shadows is a long time fan-favourite design idea - if a fan creator hasn't designed it themselves, it's because they already saw someone else design it and didn't want to be derivative. This is weaker and less versatile than both the original protection card, Ice Block, and Paladin's take on the idea, Time Out!, though this makes sense since Rogue shouldn't have strong healing options (which this essentially is).
Where Ice Block was a set-and-forget safety net and Time Out! allowed you to do cute things like attacking after playing it for a free hit on a minion, Cloak of Shadows is more strict - you can't attack after playing it or you'll break your Stealth, and even then if the opponent has any sort of untargeted damage - Arcane Missiles and its ilk, or something like Consecration or Mind Blast - then they will still be able to damage you.
I think this is still a useful tool for the Rogue - Valeera the Hollow saw a moderate amount of play, and while her Battlecry was rarely something that swung the game in her favour it was kind of annoying to have to waste a turn doing nothing. Sometimes one extra turn is all you need to be able to close out a game, and this gives Rogue that option at a fairly cheap cost.
Strike team, move out!
Quote From Avalon Just as Vendetta is a tempo reward card for playing Burgle, Malevolent Strike is one of the cards meant to reward you for shuffling stuff in your deck. In its base form it is a plain copy of Assassinate, which is not great but not terrible either. However, with just 2 (or 3, since most cards shuffle at least 3 copies of cards in you deck: see Lab Recruiter, Ticket Master, Fal'dorei Strider and so on) shuffled cards, it becomes an additional and charged Coerce, with the potential of becoming even better.
To be honest, this card rises and falls based on the success that all the "shuffle" package will be able to bring home, so I think we should try to judge it together with all the other cards Malevolent Strike synergyzes with.
Red Dead Deception
Quote From ShadowsOfSense I want to start by clearing up a common misconception with this card - you aren't using this to pull off Malygos shenanigans. The cost reduction only lasts for a turn, which means you'd be pulling Malygos off the board only to replay it, essentially wasting 3 mana. There are no applications for this card in that combo.
What Tenwu of the Red Smoke does excel at is replaying powerful Battlecry cards. The two that immediately come to mind are Grand Empress Shek'zara and Kronx Dragonhoof, both of which can be played with this on turn 9. It may even be worth playing earlier to help enable some good tempo turns - comboing this with Ticket Master, for example, will double your Plush Bear output; even Combo cards work with it, so a well-timed SI:7 Agent could help clear up a board.
That isn't even to mention all the interesting cards Rogue has in Wild to combo with this. This is a really solid card, one I would expect to see pop up in many lists. I haven't worked out an incredibly powerful combo with it myself (beyond Kronx Dragonhoof value), but just the sheer value it can provide when combined with any number of Rogue's good Battlecry and Combo cards is worth it for midrange and tempo decks.
Everyone needs a vacation, even warriors set on taking over Pandaria.
Quote From Avalon A very interesting card: while is provides support for the new Shuffle Rogue archetype (if, for example, you discover Tickets, [Hearthstone Card (Grand Empress Shek'zara,) Not Found] will fill your board with [Hearthstone Card (Plus Bear) Not Found] while also drawing a bunch of cards) is it also a very good card by itself, granting you to fish specific cards from your deck: imagine missing the last piece you need to assemble C'Thun, the Shattered or C'thun itself, or even just Galakrond, the Nightmare to be played on curve - while its 6 mana cost is not an irrelevant investment, I think that most people are underestimating this kind of effect. After all, Rogue received a lot of late game support this expansion, so there are decent chances to see a Valeera archetype that is not centered about going face.
Comments
Flik would be another nice combo with Tenwu.
Swindle draws a spell (not a minion) without its combo effect. A small mistake but still, the card is very different from Elven Minstrel and I would argue that it's better in most situations.
Also, I don't see how Tenwu of the Red Smoke can duplicate Ticket Master's plush bears since its effect is a deathrattle ?
What do you mean? I definitely didn't confuse Ticket Master with Fal'dorei Strider, that would be silly of me!
You're right of course, my mistake XD I should've caught that when I was writing the joke for it, too.
Honestly I didn't even realize Ticket Master's effect was a Deathrattle until you pointed out.
Understandable mistake to make considering Fal'dorei Strider.
I agree, it's an understandable mistake that I'm sure everyone made upon first seeing the card, I know I did :D . Too bad Necrium Blade isn't in standard anymore.