This new meta variant is more aggressive than my list was. It does not care as much about defense, and Spikeridged Steed is also vulnerable to silence effects. Avenging Wrath supports the offensive strategy.

I love the Scalehides too, great for stabilizing and in the early game against other Paladins.

Avenging Wrath is really good, I’d want to run at least one. You could sub one of them and The Glass Knight for Spellbreakers, which seem to be suitable tech cards right now. Perhaps you can sub the other Avenging Wrath for a Primordial Drake, but that only helps vs tokens and does not give you reach.

Even Paladin is too fast to run Geist, I think. Silence effects (Spellbreaker) would be a more universal tech that also affects those matchups.

True, Zola allows some nice plays with Valeera the Hollow. In practice, however, I find that games very rarely require you to play the DK. The slower the meta, the more useful the DK becomes, but Quest Rogue is perfectly capable of a positive win record in any control matchup without the DK as well.

Zola sees play in some decks. Control Mage, Control Paladin, sometimes Control Warlock. Occasionally in stuff like Spiteful Druid too. It has a strong value effect for decks that can combine it with some powerful card to play it twice, Paladin’s Lynessa Sunsorrow being one example.

Ancient Brewmaster. It’s worse in every way, but it maintains the bounce count of the deck without an expensive Legendary minion.

You can play it without Zola and Valeera, but you absolutely need Sonya.

Nice! Good job getting to that rank 5!

Both Genn and Baku open a lot of new archetypes to try, and so far some of them have been pretty good as well, but it is still early. Thing is, they also cut half of your collection from deck-building, so you generally need a fairly decent overall collection to effectively use them.

If you want to play Handlock, yes, you need to craft Genn. Regular Handlock does not have any advantage over Cubelock. Handlock is decent but not a top-tier deck, so performance-wise not a great investment just to play this archetype. Then again, Genn Even Paladin is really good right now, and you can use it in that one too.

With or without Spiteful Summoner? I’ve seen some Even Spiteful lists out there as well, they usually run only Call to Arms and Dinosize for spells. I had not really considered Dinosize without the Summoner, but it can definitely be a surprise!

Thanks!

You can replace the Sea Giants with Crystal Lions. Divine Shield is useful in some matchups, but I like Giants especially against Mind Blast Priest – SW: Death kills them both just the same, but Giant puts the Priest on a shorter clock. I also prefer the Giants against Warlock.

Avenging Wrath provides reach against decks that do not play a lot of minions – Mind Blast Priest again, for example, and is also good against token decks such as Baku Paladin. Two copies makes this deck completely wreck Baku Paladin. I think you want at least one in the current meta. Two may be a bit much unless there is a lot of Paladin and Priest on the ladder, against something like Warlock you could switch one for Spellbreaker.

That’s true. I guess it shows how much I was grasping at straws while trying to come up with any alternatives.

It is not strictly better to run one-drops. Getting all your one-drops from your Hero Power without using any cards for them has value. It also improves your Call to Arms pulls, as you pull no one-drops, and gives you guaranteed buff targets for one mana regardless of your other draws.

I don’t think it is a great fit, but sure, it is possible to use it. For example, cut Silver Sword, The Glass Knight, and one of the Truesilver Champions to include Val’anyr and two copies of Saronite Chain Gang – I think you want that together with the weapon, because they have such great synergy.

Cold Blood – Spellbreaker – Cobalt Scalebane are the cards I’ve been switching around. I’m still not sure. I changed the recommendation for the guide multiple times during writing, too. Depends on the meta too whether you need two Spellbreakers. I’m starting to lean towards just cutting Scalebanes for Hallucinations for Tess.

Forgot to add that while I chose to feature a Lich King list in the guide – as according to all statistics it is somewhat better – I mostly played with a Tess list myself, and did just fine.

We are still early in the meta and it will take time for builds to stabilize. Tess is losing popularity in Tempo Rogue, being replaced by The Lich King or simply a faster build altogether. I still think Tess has a chance to pull through, and I’d expect people to want to play with new cards and accept a small performance hit for that, but Tess’s long-term prospects are uncertain.

Looking at the statistics of Tempo Rogue decks, yes, Cobalt Scalebane is the five-drop of choice of almost all of the top lists.

In the 30 best-performing lists right now, Cobalt Scalebane is in 15 of them, Fungalmancer is in 3, and 12 run no 5-drops other than Vilespine Slayer and Leeroy Jenkins, which are not real 5-drops at all but serve a different purpose. Furthermore, the use of Scalebane is most common near the top.

The buff effect to make your weaker minions major threats is still strong. If anything, the alternative is to skip 5-drops altogether and use faster cards.