Hearthstone - Rogue Legendary Quest

I opened three packs of the new hearthstone expansion, and happened to open the rogue legendary quest, which seemed quite powerful to me.

The way the quests work is very interesting. 

You always start with them pre-mulligan (though I assume you can mulligan them away, not sure why you'd do this).

They all cost 1 to play, and they all trigger on some semi-hard thing to accomplish.
You can't (likely) counter the first ability, but you could in theory set up a counter for the second spell (since it costs 5, you could in theory have a mage secret up or whatever)

The rogue secret reward is pretty strange, the in play minions, the minions in your hand, your bounced minions, etc, etc, are 5/5.  Now, once they take damage post-this, they can go down from 5/5, but it is still a phenomenally powerful ability.

Triggering the quest:

Hearthstone has a limit of the cards you can have in your deck of 2 of any particular card name, so at first glance it seems impossible to play four of one thing, since you'll only have two in your deck.

But it's not, clearly, and here's how we go about it:

What these cards do is let you return your own cards to your hand, so you can play them again, and trigger the quest one more time.

It's important to have a good number of these in the early game, because you cannot trigger your quest normally without these cards, and the quest is what turns your otherwise junk minions into real threats.

Shadowstep is actually probably the most powerful version of this, because despite doing nothing on it's own, it is the cheapest.  It enables combo well, and it makes the minion replay cheaper.  Mana is tight if you want to go off early, so shadowstep is really 4 mana less than these other options.  It also makes it a lot easier to charge people to death in one turn.

The Payoffs.

The payoffs are these crazy charge minions, because you can play them for one or two mana post-quest, hit something for five right away, or just hit face, and then use your other bounce-self spells to bounce your guy, replay it, and hit them for five again, and again, and again....

Charge is really critical, as is the mana cost.  The version dog used to make rank 1 legend did not use Bluegill Warriors, likely because they cost two and it is harder to combo-kill with them, because as I said earlier, mana is very tight in the final turns.

I like it, but it is the worst charge minion here, so if you were going to cut one, this is the one to cut.

Random Spell Enablers:

Mimic pod is pretty good, because it is a cheap enabler.  It gives you two copies of a random card, which means you need your deck to have a high concentration of enablers, because drawing more random stuff is a relative disaster.

3 is the largest cost so far, which means this is a full turn for the most part in the early game, but if you draw an enabler, you're pretty much good to go.

One note is that this does pay you off a bit for having prep in your deck, more uses for a card is generally good.

Preparation may not look like it does much, because there aren't exactly many expensive cards in the deck, but it critically reduces the cost of the quest reward.  It's much more possible to kill someone when it costs 2, than when it costs 5, it can save you a whole turn.

In addition, it does reduce the cost of some random cards in the deck, like Mimic Pod, Eviscerate, or Thistle Tea (when I was playing a single copy of that)

Cycling:

Fan gives you a bit of interaction, especially with agro decks (which tend to run x/1s), and Novice gives you something to bounce that does something (sortof).

Swashburgler is better because it's cheaper, but worse because it's going to draw you something stupid (a non-enabler, non-copy of a card in your deck, etc).  But it is cheap, so it's an okay thing to cycle.

Options like loot hoarder are terrible, because you don't want your enablers to be deathrattles.  You're going to bounce your stuff, not get it killed.  This is also why I thought the Igneous Elemental (or whatever) was stupid.

It's somewhat important to cycle cards, because you only have so many enablers.  Drawing multiples of the same creature doesn't hurt either. 

Interaction:

 

Interaction is a bit overrated.  You're not going to face for four with Eviscerate, you'd rather have a bluegill for a variety of reasons (it's a 5/5, and you can bounce it, etc), so I'm not super sold on Evisc for this deck.  Backstab is good interaction early, and can enable combos.  I liked it quite a bit when I was running SI:7, and since you dagger quite a bit on turn 2, it can kill a three toughness guy turn 2 or 3.

These do combo somewhat with the spells-matter portions of the deck, if you use those (Violet Teacher, Edwin Van Cleef)

Misc:

Dog played a copy of each of these legendaries.  I don't have Patches, but I did play with Edwin and he can be big, but he seems to be much more of a backup plan than a primary plan, and I'm not sure it's amazing really, but it's fine.  Violet Teacher is another backup-y card, and it is probably good post-quest.

Moroes is another way to generate 5/5s, but doesn't seem a ton better than a bluegill, so I'd probably replace patches and moroes with bluegills.  I do have Moroes, so I could use it if I want.  I probably won't craft patches since having singleton non-combo minions seems like it greatly reduces the likelihood of the quest working in the first place.  I've played a couple dozen games with various versions of the game, and have had a hard time losing when I completed the quest.  I was playing with a single Thistle Tea, against low rank opponents, and some pretty random decks, but things like taunt, healing, and so on didn't do much against what was basically a one-turn kill for n 5/5 hasting creatures.

Other Other:

The problem I ran into was not drawing enough enablers (which is why I liked Thistle Tea), and would kind of like some actively playable creature I could play. 

SI:7 is amazing for general board control/interaction, and it's pretty easy for me to envision playing this instead of Eviscerate, especially with Backstab, and a bunch of 1 cost stuff.  Perhaps it's too slow, but it's the best creature I can think of to play a bunch of times.

Fire fly gives me something I can play with the early two cost bouncers turn three.  I can develop, get more copies of cards to play.  There is really something to be said to just be able to do anything whatsoever to advance your plan, and Firefly doesn't cost you much.  I think this card is probably better than smuggler, since it is a more credible creature (harder to kill), and it gives you another creature (which is likely better than giving you some random spell), but I could easily be wrong here.) 

Thistle Tea sets up the quest, but it is extremely slow.  I do like it a bit more with prep*2 in the deck (something I did not originally have), but it is totally a random inclusion.  I feel like professional players are winning on turn 4-5 with this deck, so the idea of spells that cost 6 is not amazing.

Same story most likely with SI7, which is grindy, but you could just win instead.... 

I really like this deck, it seems super powerful, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was nerfed in some way.