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Joubei's Miracle Rogue In depth Guide - Here We Go

In Depth Guide to Miracle Rogue by Joubei

My name is Joubei and I love playing Rogue, in fact from the moment I've picked up Hearthstone many moons ago I've started the Rogue deck first, and only after a while I went ahead and experimented with Hunter, Priest, Warlock and so on...
This guide will give some insight to my thoughts on why I built it like it is and of course I'd love your feedback!

1. General Info

This Deck is very advanced to play since you basically need a perfect game on every turn you must think 2-3 steps ahead for you and especially for your opponent. One mistake can cost you the match. There are several win conditions and some of them are set to Deal 28-31 damage in one round - i.e. its possible to just "survive" up to the higher rounds where you can execute a perfect lethal! - I'll explain bellow in detail.
The key to get more then 14 damage in R8 is the Emperor Thaurissan and Faceless Munipulator to double our Leeroy Jenkins, so using Emperor Thaurissan on R7 to lower the cost of both Leeroy Jenkins and Faceless Munipulator both of these add a lot more power to our lethal round on R8!!. 

2. Strategy

During Mulligan Drop off any higher then 3-cost cards, (except SI:7 Agent optional) find Eviscerate, Preparation, Backstab, were Bloodmage Thalnos or Mana Addict are key here. But if you happen to have a Conceal and Gadgetzan Auctioneer, or a Tomb Pillager then you may keep them for a very nice 4, and 6 round combos.

Strategy By Rounds:

Round 1: At the first round we can just pass it to the next, unless we go second and we could use Backstab to take out a small minion, but this is generally unnecessary for anything that will not pose threat for later on, for deadlier minions consider waiting for the 2nd round or even 3rd to combo the Backstab with an SI:7 Agent or to pump some attack to the Mana Addict.

Round 2: By now you may have a series of 2s, 3s, or maybe even a nice Tomb Pillager for the 4th round. So be careful and plan ahead, there is nothing wrong with just popping your Dagger-Mastery and if you don't have Deadly Poison you can even go Face with it.
Note: This crucial round may determine the rest of the match. 

R2 Optional 1: You can play Mana Addict but set it as a distraction, something for your opponent to remove, it has natural low attack but 3 health, so it will be a very nice setup for them to waste their 3rd round, but if they don't kill it, on the next round you may pump it with mana with Backstab or just hit face, but your Mana Addict will be able to dish major hurt on the 3rd round, using a combo Preparation  Backstab Eviscerate and then add Cold Blood you can do a 13 Damage to face on turn 3! use this with great care since it will eliminate some of your lethal round power - DO NOT USE Preparation or Cold Blood against Warrior or Priest who can easily heal themselves back to 30 and we need  Preparation and Cold Blood for a high-end lethal on R8. 

R2 Optional 2: You can play Bloodmage Thalnos then use Preparation and Eviscerate combo and hit face, or just drop Bloodmage Thalnos as bait for your opponent to waste mana or an attack on killing him, then get the Draw Card deathrattle. If they don't take the bait, you can execute a nice Backstab (for 3 damage) with SI:7 Agent combo on next turn and a nice presence on the board. Keep in mind that our goal is to reach round 6 to play our Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Conceal so we could maximize our card draw ability to setup for the kill in the next round or two.

Round 3: If we can execute a nice Mana Addict or Bloodmage Thalnos combo now that's great it will make our lethal round much easier to get. but if we didn't we could execute any combo, and drop a small minion if we got it, or use the Backstab with SI:7 Agent or with Eviscerate. If we do have our Dagger-Mastery and used up our 1st attack we could Face again and recharge our Dagger-Mastery. It would be perfectly OK to drop SI:7 Agent even without its special ability, which would be better then to waste a Preparation. The Earthen Ring Farseer is an option here, its good to heal up 3, but even if its less then 3 heal its fine, since we need some type of a distraction for our opponent on the next round. 

Round 4: If we have Tomb Pillager this would be a great place to drop it, if they kill it this round, then we get a The Coin, if not we could do 5 damage to Face, or kill a 5 health minion on round 5 and get The Coin for round 6 we could even open R6 with killing a minion and getting The Coin. If we don't have Tomb Pillager we could drop any other combo, like Shiv and Eviscerate or even Fan of Knives even though it would be better to save Fan of Knives for a nice Azure Drake or Bloodmage Thalnos combo. 
Note: our priority is to get The Coin, but if we already have it, we can go wild with anything now. (don't use The Coin!) 

Round 5: This is a great place to drop Azure Drake, get an extra card, but also extra damage. This is a great magnet for attacks on this round, but if they don't go for it we could attack Face for 4 damage, use any Preparation with Eviscerate for nice added 5 damage! If we do have Bloodmage Thalnos by chance this may even be 6 Damage play!

Round 6: Better known as the Pre-Miracle Round were we setup our card cycling machine we'll drop our Gadgetzan Auctioneer + Conceal if you have the The Coin, but Preparation + Conceal works just as well, only we don't get the full benefit of Preparation - since its a great setup for Eviscerate or Fan of Knives, if you don't have either, then maybe try to use Backstab, but hopefully you've gathered a Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Conceal and The Coin, as they are key components of this deck's success other wise consider postponing to next round - unless you have 2x Preparation and feel like 2x Fan of Knives to get 6 cards - watch out to not go over 10 cards in your hand here!

Round 7: This is the Miracle execution round or Draw Cycle, we try to cycle as many cards as we can using Preparation with any attack spells, like Backstab until we get our win conditions sets ready. If we still have another Azure Drake or Tomb Pillager we can drop them now if we have most of our win condition cards we can even play Emperor Thaurissan now and get a great high end setup in case your opponent has more then 14 health this is a must. Also make sure that in this cycle you get Leeroy Jenkins and Cold Blood, also Faceless Munipulator or Edwin VanCleef but with the latter you'll also need a Conceal. If you have Edwin VanCleef its a great round to drop it just make sure you leave 4 Mana for him and Conceal or use Preparation + Conceal combo.
Note: Be careful not to draw more then 10 cards, its real easy to miscount and get cards burned for lack of space!

Round 8: If you still don't have all the lethal ingredients, you can repeat this with the 2nd Gadgetzan Auctioneer, which by now will probably empty your Deck completely. 

Lethal Conditions:

General: Use Sap to remove any creatures with Taunt so you can hit face

Opponent's health:

Up to 6: Leeroy Jenkins - does excellent work with weak opponents with 6 or under. also any other combo with all your other creatures to remove the board from any Taunt creatures. 

Up to 10: Leeroy Jenkins + Cold Blood

Up to 12:  Leeroy Jenkins + Faceless Munipulator, but watch out naturally both of these cost 5 mana, so either use Emperor Thaurissan or The Coin if needed on R9 or 2x The Coin on R8. 

Up to 20: Leeroy Jenkins + Cold Blood + Faceless Munipulator on R10 this will require The Coin or Preparation for the Cold Blood before using Faceless Munipulator

Up to 28: Leeroy Jenkins + 2x Cold Blood + Faceless Munipulator on R10 this will require 2x The Coin or 2x Preparation for the Cold Blood before using Faceless Munipulator, but an easy solution will be to have Emperor Thaurissan prepare them for you, as 4+0+0+4!! which means this can go down on R8 if you play smart!!

Up to 31: same as above only use a Preparation with Deadly Poison or have Deadly Poison pre-applied to your weapon prior to R8 lethal round (could be a nice 1-cost cycle on R7). 

Final Thoughts:

So our job in the entire match is to survive and drop our opponents health below 31!!!
Preferably under 14, which will make for much easier Lethal!. (i.e. don't let warriors gain so much armor, use Eviscerate or minions to remove it). Also don't worry too much on your own health unless it gets under 15, in which case just watch out that your opponent doesn't have lethal for the next few rounds.

3. General Edwin VanCleef Tip:

we could setup a powerful Edwin VanCleef and use Faceless Munipulator to clone it, but remember to use Conceal prior to attacking or it will be either silenced or destroyed. 

Its very easy to get a 12/12 Edwin VanCleef but it will blow through all your spells, so make sure to do it on the Miracle rounds (R7) where you cycle through all of these cards anyway. - and I can't stress this enough keep 1 Mana or 1x The Coin or 1x Preparation for Conceal.

4. Mulligan

I would always keep Tomb Pillager, or Preparation and Mana Addict or Bloodmage Thalnos. Keep in mind that this deck is build to cycle through everything, so our goal is to first get our Miracle round ready I.e. Gadgetzan Auctioneer + Conceal + The Coin (or Preparation) for R6 our pre-Miracle round.

If we get Eviscerate its fine, but don't use Preparation, unless somehow this will get you off lethal from your opponent. 

If we get Gadgetzan Auctioneer or Emperor Thaurissan its extremely tempting to keep them, but they are 6-cost cards, and even though they are a must, our goal at the start is to just survive until R6 and to get ready for a lethal on R8!. 

IF you get Edwin VanCleef and Conceal you may have a very interesting R3 (in case you have The Coin or R4 if you don't!! make sure to pump him up to at least 6/6 or better yet 8/8 with Backstab and The Coin!!! but only those, we really need the rest of the cards for the later rounds, but in this case you may be able to Face the opponent at R4 for 6 or 8, and most definitely throw off his attack plan to a spin off, allowing us to continue our preparations for R6!.  - Don't be tempted to pump Edwin VanCleef with Preparation since it will use up our cycle fuel and we'll end up dry on R7!. 

Even though I got lucky many times with using  Edwin VanCleef with 8/8 twice since they had no way to take him out, deciding the match's outcome on R4. 

5. Tips & Tricks

- DO NOT USE YOUR SPELLS!! UNTIL R6
(Unless absolutely necessary), Don't use Preparation and Eviscerate face without a concealed Gadgetzan Auctioneer on board! When there is absolutely no way he can remove it. 

- Use Fan of Knives, Bloodmage Thalnos or Shiv if your hand is really bad, even when they don't damage anything.

6. Replacements:

• Journey Below: I used this one for a while, but generally I did not find it very helpful, but it can go instead of one of your SI:7 Agent or Shiv since most of the cards you find are 4-cost and its better to use Tomb Pillage. 
• Violet Teacher: This can go instead of the Mana Addict, for the same effect, only keep in mind that this is a 4-cost card so it will block progress toward lethal, but it will be very effective on R7 when we explode with tons of spells. Also its a great match up with the Miracle round.
• Xaril, Poisoned Mind. This is great for R4 and will eventually give you 2 1-cost spells, but the trade off with Tomb Pillager is so so, this card is a great enabler for the miracle engine on R7.
• Dark Iron Skulker: Interesting card to play against Zoo, you can trade an SI:7 Agent, Shiv or Mana Addict. Keep in mind that this is a 5-cost card so it will play instead of the Azure Drake, so make sure you don't really need the extra spell power or draw card.

That's is it for this guide, I will add more updates and notes as I'll learn them in the future. 

Please give me feedback on what you think. 

and of course press the + Rate button to Rate this deck up :)