Miracle Rogue

Miracle Rogue is a Rogue combo deck, aiming to control the board in the early game with spells and the rogue Hero Power Dagger Mastery, and in the mid-game take advantage of the cheap cards like Backstab and Preparation to power up cards like Questing Adventurer or draw cards from Gadgetzan Auctioneer to find sufficient damage to destroy the opponent.

Deck type
Miracle Rogue takes advantage of Rogue's ability to chain many low cost cards in quick succession with cards like Preparation, Shadowstep, and Backstab. These cheap cards are used to benefit other cards with payoff like Edwin VanCleef, Questing Adventurer, Whirlkick Master, Gadgetzan Auctioneer, and more.

Miracle Rogue has historically revolved around drawing cards from Gadgetzan Auctioneer in order to gain significant card advantage, and draw into win conditions such as Leeroy Jenkins. With Leeroy Jenkins rotated to Wild and newer card draw options like Swindle and Secret Passage, the Gadgetzan Auctioneer is not currently played in Standard iterations of the deck. The Coin is especially useful in this deck, as it gives Rogue mana, activates Combos and can draw a card for free with Gadgetzan Auctioneer. In order to increase the odds of drawing Gadgetzan Auctioneer or damage, as well as providing benefits such as Spell Damage, alternative card draw options such as Shiv and Bloodmage Thalnos are commonly used.

Miracle Rogue aims to survive the early game by efficiently removing the opponent's minions with their Hero Power, Dagger Mastery, spells such as Backstab, Fan of Knives and Eviscerate, and minions such as 7 Agent and Vilespine Slayer. Miracle Rogue is also capable of buffing cards such as Edwin VanCleef and Questing Adventurer to massive stats as early as turn 1, but typically on turn 3, in order to race aggro decks or defeat control decks before they have a chance to draw removal. SI:7 Agent is often the deck's key to victory against aggro decks, as it can sufficiently slow them down by killing at least one minion, and oftentimes killing two.

Descent of Dragons have also provided Miracle Rogue with some new cards such as Big Ol' Whelp for a decent body with cards draw and Flik Skyshiv for removal.

In the mid-game, Miracle Rogue begins to play minions to begin pressuring the opponent. The Miracle Rogue will then play Gadgetzan Auctioneer and begin casting cheap spells such as Preparation, Sap and Deadly Poison in order to draw into game-winning damage while simultaneously dealing with the opponent's minions. With the Gadgetzan Auctioneer on the board, Miracle Rogue can chain together many spells such as Cold Blood to begin killing the opponent and generate a high-stat Edwin VanCleef, or drawing towards Arcane Giant to generate a huge board presence potentially for free.

Miracle Rogue struggles in the late-game due to its combo pieces at this time being used or destroyed already. This means that Miracle Rogue should strive to end the game in early-mid game.

Common cards
The following cards are usually in the deck.

Core cards
The following cards are played in most or all versions of the deck:

Optional cards
The following cards are played more than occasionally, but not always:

Wild cards
Wild cards that fit well into this deck type:

History
Miracle Rogue is one of, if not the oldest surviving deck in Hearthstone, dating back to the beta and earlier. It was initially modeled after the Magic: the Gathering deck "Miracle Gro", hence its name, which featured a card extremely similar to Questing Adventurer called "Quirion Dryad". In beta Miracle Rogue was deemed too powerful and was the target of several nerfs, such as Edwin VanCleef losing Stealth, decreased Attack gain on Mana Addict and the mana costs of Shiv, Conceal and Headcrack increasing by one, causing the deck to not see play for months. In early 2014 it rose again with cards such as Questing Adventurer and Mana Addict replaced with Leeroy Jenkins and 7 Agent, arguably being the best deck in the game until the release of Loatheb. It was later hit by the increase in mana cost to Leeroy Jenkins and Gadgetzan Auctioneer (the former change being made to prevent the then-popular 26-damage OTK combo involving Leeroy, Cold Blood and Shadowstep) causing the deck to die off again.

During the "Classic cards nerf" of spring 2016, Miracle Rogue saw another drawback with the loss of Blade Flurry's ability to also damage the enemy hero, and soon after with the loss of core cards like Tinker's Sharpsword Oil due to the introduction of Standard format. However, it gained new popular cards like Shadow Strike and Xaril, Poisoned Mind, and even Yogg-Saron, Hope's End sees play in the newest versions of this deck. Later expansions over the Year of the Kraken gave Miracle Rogue decks new additions like Counterfeit Coin and Arcane Giant and continued to remain as one of the most played Rogue decks.

Miracle Rogue decks were substantially nerfed with the Year of the Mammoth standard year, with Azure Drake and Conceal moving to the Hall of Fame set, but new Un'Goro cards like Razorpetal Lasher, Hallucination, and Vilespine Slayer kept the deck going strong. Knights of the Frozen Throne introduced a few new toys for Miracle Rogue, with boosts in survivability from Prince Valanar and Valeera the Hollow, as well as Lilian Voss, allowing the deck to potentially replace a dead hand whilst still maintaining tempo and pressure. Kobolds and Catacombs added new cards like Elven Minstrel and Fal'dorei Strider to improve the deck, as well as a variant that also utilizes Kingsbane.

Many cards that have been used in Miracle Rogue historically have been nerfed or rotated to the Hall of Fame, including Cold Blood, Leeroy Jenkins, Conceal, and Preparation, and replaced with newer expansion cards, making current iterations play much differently than they have previously, with current lists not even running the staple Gadgetzan Auctioneer, though similar cards like Field Contact are played. In 2021 the Classic format launched, and the famous combo-centric Miracle Rogue once established itself as the strongest deck in the format.

Trivia

 * In Valeera's appearance in Heroes of the Storm, one of her gag quotes is "I'm an excellent rogue, but I can't perform miracles. Not after that nerf at least.", referencing Miracle Rogue and its infamous nerfs.