Reno C’thun Rogue Theorycraft

    With the coming of standard and the death of flurry rogue is in desperate need of a new identity. C’thun, our one eyed overlord seems the perfect fit for the rogues high tempo followed by massive burst playstyle. This deck exists over a more midrangey cultist style because vanilla, at best dudes on curve suck and rogue without flurry have a hard time coming back when the board starts swinging against the vanilla dude army.

    Control rogue has always suffered from a lack of sustain but Reno the superhero always puts in his best effort to do that. He can’t do it alone, however and with him I have placed the new cult apothecary in alongside refreshment vendor for a bare bones but oddly effective cadre of healing dudes.

    The next major hurdle is aggro, the healing we have along with the general high tempo rogue things like shadow strike, backstab, si7 and such will do good work but AOE is very much in short supply now that flurry is no longer among the living. With the meta expected to become more control heavy big dudes could be very susceptible to betrayal, fan of knives is a small AOE but the draw as well as the ability to easily deal with tokens/divine shields is invaluable. The big AOE comes with the underestimated and very much overshadowed dark iron skulker as well as the much maligned corrupted seer. Both of these cards effectively have consecration attached to them vs the aggro menace and with the loss of deathrattles like egg and creeper their lethality is much higher than previously.

As a side note, the Naga Sea Witch is primarily for this matchup, the ability to tempo out a blade or C’thun himself or a rag or multiple things of that nature.

    This wouldn’t be much of a C’thun deck without the big guy himself but he is the obvious point in a bigger question, that question being “how many average to below average dudes am I going to gimp myself with?” The Answer to this question, in this deck is only 7,  Blade of C’thun (from now on referred to as Ekop) is such a powerful card that this small number of cultists will suffice to very often get C’thun to massive size. Beckoner, elder and chosen are all curve filler and as vanilla dudes they get the job done in this regard admirably. The most important cards vs aggressive among the cultists is the crazed and the disciple, both posses initiative granting effects via taunt and damage respectively and are without a doubt high quality for the health the save in the early to mid game.

With the problem of aggro solved to the best of my abilities the next issue is one of value, the deck requires things to battle in the control matchup. 2 copies of Ekop goes a long way to ensuring survival against giant dudes and C’thun is obviously the win condition but in order to fight the coming meta as I see it I added Ragnaros for the (admittedly rng heavy) potential for card advantage and African American Knight for the significant amount of taunt I expect to exist in the meta. The next card for this is thistle tea, doesn’t draw you deeper into the late game, gives you more options by duping your Ekops, your renos, your rags, your cthuns. Your cultists are the worse dupes but even they aren’t awful.

Cards I didn’t include

Twin emperor – running 1 of cultists makes getting to 10 attack kinda finicky, most of your C’thun damage comes from Ekops and he’s a 9 drop, worth subbing for crazed if you like risk but I prefer something that’s always there on t5 as opposed to a really strong t7 half the time.

Bran- maybe in another C’thun variant but not this one, no shadowcaster, no conceal, no shadowstep. Getting the bran dream never happens and I would prefer twilight elder for the on curve good stats.

Shadowstep- too low impact, C’thun buffs arent worth it and the big guy himself should be a kill shot all his own

Shadowcaster- copying Ekop, Reno, C’thun or rag is awesome but it never happens in reality, too comboish for me.