Ever since the card’s release, Maestra of the Masquerade has been banned from competitive play. The main reason is that it could be too confusing at times – until the class reveal, you didn’t know whether your opponent was playing Rogue with Maestra or maybe a class that’s not available to them (banned class, class they didn’t submit). In qualifiers where hundreds of people play at the same time, it would slow things down considerably, as people would constantly appeal to admins and so on. So the easy choice was to ban the card completely. It wasn’t a big deal anyway, since it didn’t see any competitive play – so people have moved on.
However, recently the card has started seeing play in one of the strongest decks in the meta – Burgle/Thief Rogue. You can technically play it without Maestra, but she helps tremendously (turning Wildpaw Gnoll into a powerhouse). That’s why Blizzard has decided to unban the card from competitive play – players will now be able to bring her to all sorts of qualifiers and official tournaments.
However, there’s one restriction that’s been placed. If you run a deck with Maestra of the Masquerade, you NEED to use Classic card back for it. Then all of your decks without Maestra have to use a DIFFERENT card back (anything but Classic). Why is that so important? Because this way, you can now clearly tell whether someone actually runs a class he shouldn’t or just picked Rogue. This card back rule only applies to people with Maestra decks in their line-up – if you don’t run a Maestra deck, you don’t need to care about your card back choice at all.
Maestra of the Masquerade is now approved to use in MT #1 Qualifiers.
We’ve updated the official rules in the Player Handbook (7.5) so be sure to check them out before submitting decks! #HSEsports pic.twitter.com/Be9HnWnj8q
— Hearthstone Esports (@HSesports) January 4, 2022
