Hearthpwn

Does your deck look like this?

Why bother with that old thing, when your deck could look like this.

Preamble

    I've uploaded this after the first few successful runs of what I believe to be a fairly unique decklist, the only similar afaik being a Kripparian list that's moderately different. Please let me know if I'm unintentionally ripping someone off card for card so I can change one and look unique. 

   Either way, given that I only have about 20 games of data with it so far I will probably be making little changes and optimisations so don't assume this is finalised. I will upload some gameplay videos after I've gotten to my usual rank 3+ stomping grounds so you can see it in action against an adequate opponent. (I lost about 70% of my match ups until I removed southsea squidfaces for Finley and the sunfury; out of the 20 I've lost 3 games, at rank 17 to 8 all in one long streak)

   Any questions, comments or suggestions are more than welcome and should be addressed promptly unless by some freak accident I become popular overnight. (yes, even the trolls--go ahead take a swing I'd appreciate the page traffic)

Playstyle

   It's a combo-control deck by nature and has what seems to be the worst removal of any current rogue deck. There's a great reason for this; if you have infinite defenders of Argus against any control deck, other than freeze mage, they are generally incapable of hitting you in the face, whether or not they have the black knight. It is extremely hard for most of these decks to survive a couple of N'zoths let alone the theoretically infinite amount of them. (in a vacuum where turn limits and fatigue damage are abolished) Although the games that have gone to fatigue were still won, there is not a lot of card draw to screw you up if you avoid Xaril and bloodmage.

    It is absolutely 100%, non-negotiably required for you to be the most defensive player you can be until you are sure it is either a really slow control deck or you have some serious board tempo. The Finley is a vital part of that--swapping your dagger for literally any other hero power saves massive amounts of face damage late game and most decks are more than capable of some serious burst. Keep in mind that you can duplicate the Finley effect through whatever means you deem necessary in a given match; being able to swap out your hero power multiple times can be very useful and it is technically possible to emulate anything the opponent does if you have given yourself enough board tempo to set up combos to steal their justicar or <insert card here>. Try to avoid late game situations where you have few units on the board, unless you are sure you're playing against a deck that never floods. Even using 1/1s can be quite good if you harvest Xaril toxins to buff up their attack.

Think,

really think,

about why there are only really 3 spells in the deck. All of the synergies are through minion combat, and use; try to avoid situations where you have nothing on board when you end turn.

    Once you are on the offensive, try to set up a relentless attack that doesn't allow the opponent to develop any threat on their side of the board, brawl, twisting nether, flamestrike and equality can all be played around by various means but make sure that there is very little or no chance for them to swing back at you. Sometimes this means you have to do sub-optimal trades; waste cards to dump hand for future combos; et cetera. 

    Since equality is the trickiest, (due to it's mana cost) I'll point it out the strategies that tend to work for me here: hit face a lot so the opponent has to heal with their mana after the board clear; try to keep your cairne until you're able to duplicate it's effects. Feed minions into their weapons if it means you keep ANYTHING on board; save sap until it's a game changer, we're talking ragnaros the lightlord isn't (generally) good enough if you can kill it with minions on the board.

    Finally: NEVER EVER CONCEDE; this deck has surprised me on four occasions where I managed to find a win condition. (Unfortunately I did not manage to get a screenshot of the pivotal moment that I used the opponents N'Zoth'd chillmaws to destroy their board, steal their N'zoth and shadowcast it later. IIRC it was about 2 coins, n'zoth, backstab, sap on their ysera and the tomb pillager/cairne I had up that went into it) 

    Don't sweat the entombs, your misplays, the opponents god draw or your lack of an answer, just think really hard about the options your deck offers--it's not always obvious. Besides it took me like 15 games to even figure out how to play this revision of the deck.

Win Conditions Against Aggro

    Priest hero power is a great start--definitely want to snag a single dagger in most cases before you drop the base hero power. Other than that you are pretty much looking to shadowstep, cast or otherwise an argus; eventually with enough taunts they'll go down, especially if you hit it on anything huge. Don't be afraid to "waste" your cards--a large portion of what you have in the deck is either cycle, discovery or persistence on board. If you're playing against zoo: pogchamp their ass, slam your hand on the table and stare them in the eye as they shrivel in fear at your quasi-infinite amount of taunt minions. (yeah right; I win about 1/2 of those matchups on the regs, pray for fan of knives, argus and sunfury, don't fuck it up using them too early or too late) Or you can try to get lucky with the undercity hucksters and get a heal. (not super likely against zoo but it's not the worst against warriors, shamans and paladins)

Win Conditions against Control Decks

There are very few situations you can get yourself into that will make you lose as long as you do one of two things: 

• play more than one N'Zoth
• get infinte shadowcasters; see list of combos at the bottom if you're new to this concept

Just keep in mind that if you are playing against another control deck with something to the effect of N'Zoth/C'Thun/a large burst you need to maintain a level of board pressure that demands their attention rather than pittering by with nothing on board then bursting into action; you have no AoE, no heal, and few ways to deal with anything reactively unless you are very lucky with your hucksters.

Mulligans:

General Keeps: 

• backstab
• journey below
• Finley
• undercity huckster
• SI:7 Agent (with coin/backstab/journey below if you have turns 1 and 2 sorted out)
• Sunfury (often is better to have something to play early on; don't get fooled into dropping this one against a dragon priest because you thought it was control)
• Bloodmage Thalnos with backstab or fan of knives (alone against control)
• Unearthed Raptor (don't be afraid to waste the battlecry against high pressure situations)

 Generally speaking, a varied hand will do better than a static one; if you have three 3 drops on the coin consider vetoing one.  Yes, sunfury is generally B team but it's a surprisingly useful card.

Situational Keeps:

• Fan of Knives:

Exceptional against warlock zoo, tempo mage, aggro paladin, most hunter lists and a reasonable amount of shamans. Sometimes works against pirate warrior; often fails against tempo warrior so I'd opt out of that one unless you have to pick from a 9 drop, a 10 drop and fan.

• Brann Bronzebeard

Almost any aggro deck will over commit on this card and it's great as a 4 health taunt! Absolutely terrible against every control deck ever in the early game unless you are somehow able to get by without it dying and get off a shadowcast or three. There are occsasional games where you can set up that combo by shadowstepping the two cards separately on different turns, assuming board presence permits.

• Sap 

Druid, due to innervate shenanigans, and sometimes shaman if they're not on the coin and you have some other decent stuff in hand; 4 mana 7/7s can't be replayed the next turn if sapped. by no means is this a necessity, however, it's generally much better late game against anything without a battlecry.

 Substitutions:

I get the distinctive feeling this deck isn't for you if you can't handle the 8 legendary entrance fee. However feel free to inquire about a particular card and I will attempt to make a suggestion or choose between your particular preferences. Anub'arak isn't wholly necessary but I like to treat the journey below as an emergency low mana minion fetch card for argus combos or against aggro. Additionally, I don't like to rely on RNG for win conditions.

Gameplay Videos: Coming Soon

Notable combos include:

• shadowcaster on brann, shadowcaster on shadowcaster into an infinite chain of shadowcasted cairnes sylvani anubaraks or defenders of argus (defenders of argi?)
• N'zoth shadowstep
• shadowstep shadowcaster; shadowstep n'zoth; shadowcast n'zoth with a coin from tomb pillager 
• shadowcast sylvanas then backstab her if that pesky Tirion Fordring is around (Fireblast from Finley makes this an annoying, AND repeatable option)
• journey below into any card that is placed back into your deck in a fatigue match; proceed with the shadowcasting 
• Unearthed Raptor on cairne, sylvanas or surprisingly, undercity huckster include a brann for extra fun
• shadowcaster into shadowcaster into [...]
• Use sylvanas to steal the opponents combos; grommash can be great with xaril toxins and the like