The goal of this deck is to beat your opponent with a fast, unblockable weenie attack that is also (hopefully) forcing specter-style discards. You do however need Oona's Blackguard on the battlefield and counters on your critters. Don't count on discards being your win condition - most opponents will have enough removal to avoid being spectered to death.
The potential win conditions are Earwig Squad landing with prowl and removing a key combo piece your opponent needs, or landing Notorious Throng after a big hit. If you land Notorious Throng for its 6-mana prowl cost, you should win the game.
The 'defense-wins-games' win condition is to resolve AEtherize when your opponent is swinging for their big kill move. It will normally take them 2 turns to rebuild their army and you win in the meantime.
Some combination of Earwig Squad, Notorious Throng and AEtherize is enough to win a surprising number of games with this very fun to play and very cheap to build deck (under 4 tickets!).
Ideal gameflow:
T1 - Play a basic land. Watch your opponent play an expensive fetch land. Be a bit jealous but smile knowingly because you are going to win with a sub 4-ticket deck whereas they are eating tuna out of a can because their deck cost them a month's rent.
T2 - Suspend
Infiltrator il-Kor
or play Oona's Blackguard and hope it's not removed. Hah! Don't count on it. A safer move is play Invisible Stalker but that only turns out well if you also have Earwig Squad, or a
Morsel Theft
in your hand to sneak in more damage, or a Curiosity to draw cards with.
T3 - Play Blackguard or Cloak and Dagger. Your opponent may have an army breathing down your neck already. Don't panic. If you played a critter on turn 2 and swing with it this turn, then your ideal play here is Earwig Squad. Resolve it, go get a cup of coffee and take an obnoxiously long time to study your opponent's entire deck list. Gaze longingly at all the amazing land cards they have. Remove the three most expensive cards, the ones they are eating tuna because of. Exile them. Make a faux-polite comment like 'oh i got lucky' when in fact you want to say 'ha! eat it sucker!'
T4 - Resolve Infiltrator. If Blackguard is still there then you swing for 5 and force one discard. With your 4 mana you will normally play another critter plus
Morsel Theft
. But you can also play Notorious Throng or leave the mana open for an AEtherize.
T5 - If all the above happened, you are set for the win by turn T6 or 7 latest. The cheap casting cost of your critters means that it is possible to lose them all to a sweeper but rebuild and still win. Please play Earwig Squad here if you haven't already. That should be obvious - never save the big guy for later, always resolve it for prowl cost on T3 or ASAP.
Card analysis:
The unblockable guys: Invisible Stalker is great and there are a few ways to grow him in this deck. Even at 1-power the prowl cost comes online often enough to make him a worthwhile addition. Inkfathom Infiltrator and
Infiltrator il-Kor
are responsible for maybe 70% of the damage inflicted to opponents. They are your bread-and-butter guys. Love and respect them.
Oona's Blackguard: A mixed blessing. Weak overall as far as lords go. Potentially awesome when you get some build-your-own specters going. But normally this guy just soaks up removal. Because of that, don't think of it as your win condition. More likely it's the card you play to distract your opponent while you are working on your other win conditions. Having said that, if your opponent can't get rid of this guy after a few turns, you normally win the game.
Earwig Squad: This guy is a house. Tears up combo decks. I find that the effect is worth the 3-mana prowl cost. Even if you never swing or only chump block once, doesn't matter. Still worth it.
Notorious Throng: All kinds of awesome. Play this with Blackguard down and you normally win. Play this for its 6-mana prowl cost and you should always win. An extra turn? How do you not win when you have an extra turn? Of course, hard to do in practice which is why I only run 2 of them.
Morsel Theft
: This card does a ton of work in this deck. I smile every time I draw it. Keeps me in a lot of games I might lose otherwise.
Cloak and Dagger: I don't know about this one. Very good when it connects, but Stinkdrinker Bandit or
Frogtosser Banneret
might be better (see below). I put it in here to protect Blackguard, but a common situation is that your critter is countered or bolted before you can attach this thing. I'm 50-50 on keeping this in the deck. Maybe it should be a sideboard card? I do pull this out sometimes if I need more removal.
Mana Leak, Dispel: Utility cards to protect your Blackguard and other critters. I would love to run more counterspells in this deck but I can't find the space.
Raven's Crime: This is in the deck because of
Dream Salvage
and the overall discard approach of the deck. I waver on this one, it doesn't seem very important and I normally side it out. Maybe Duress or Despise would be better?
Dream Salvage
: I side this out every time and think to myself 'why do i have this in my mainboard?' I've almost never used it to draw cards, it's too conditional and never in my hand when I need it. It looks so good - one mana for 2 or 3 cards!! But it never happens and so I'm down to one in the deck.
Curiosity: This works fairly well. Best played on Invisible Stalker but I'll throw it on anything if I can safely draw one card with it and then hope for more. Results in wins if you play it on Invisible Stalker early and they don't have a sweeper.
Read the Bones,
Foresee
: After experimenting with Dream Salvage and Distant Melody, I went back to these industry-standard, ISO-20,000 classics. I like Read the Bones better because the name is awesome to say, and that double-eyeball lady on Foresee freaks me out. I side out Foresee often just because of the mana cost.
Sideboard:
AEtherize: Ssssh! Don't tell anyone but I side this in almost every game, normally removing Dream Salvage and Raven's Crime. It is slow removal but believe me it works. I have won many games because of this card. It is so good I almost didn't want to mention it in this write-up. It's My Precious and I want to keep it secret. I can hear you saying, 'yeah but there are lots of sweepers in Modern that destroy everything and they cant be regenerated.' Ok fine but those cards are not nearly as fun as giving your opponent back a fistful of cards that they can look at helplessly on their screen while you beat them to death the next turn with some 2-power guys.
Echoing Decay, Murder, Geth's Verdict: Removal is always good.
Undying Evil: This is a new addition to the deck and so far I like it. I may start to side out the counterspells more and play this instead. Obviously, it works well with Oona's Blackguard.
Nihil Spellbomb: Because emptying your opponent's graveyard when they need it is almost as much fun as Aetherizing their attack.
Cards to think about:
Triton Shorestalker: Very cheap to play and it could grow with Undying Evil, Blackguard or Cloak and Dagger. I'm tempted, but without hexproof or 2-3 power, it seems like too often I would be stuck with a 1-power guy doing nothing. Remember Blackguard only grows critters you play after it lands, so a first-turn Shorestalker is stuck as a 1-power guy.
Frogtosser Banneret
: Most rogue tribal lists include this guy. I played it on paper for a while with mixed results. My logic in not running it is that it slows down your attack too much. The creatures I have are cheap to play already, lowering my casting cost does not seem as relevant as playing a creature that will consistently hit for at least 2, like the Infiltrators.
Stinkdrinker Bandit: Same as above. He's awesome but hitting for big numbers is not a problem for this deck. What would you remove to play this guy? The unblockable critters are all needed to make the deck work, the Earwig Squad is way too important to pull out (especially against combo decks). I suppose you could side this guy in against aggro, or swap this guy for Cloak and Dagger? I like giving my Blackguard's shroud, but maybe this is a guy I need in my deck. Very tempted to add Mr Stinkdrinker.
Specter's Shroud
: A card that I tried and liked. But it seemed redundant and I went for card draw instead (Curiosity). I'd like to have this card back but can't seem to make room.
Dream Salvage
: This seems like a very cheap way to draw multiple cards, but in practice you need Oona's Blackguard down, and multiple specters hitting. That happens once per match, if you are lucky, and you rarely have Dream Salvage in your hand when you need it. I went with Read the Bones and Foresee instead because, although expensive, they are consistently awesome.
Distant Melody: See above. Conditional card draw just never seems to work for me. You need at least 3 rogues down to make this worthwhile - and if you have 3 rogues down you should be winning anyway. Living the dream would be to play this the turn after playing Notorious Throng. But again, you're winning by then anyway and the extra cards are probably not needed.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel: I have no idea what he is doing here. An anti-control card like
Quash
would be better.
