This is my theorycraft for Dimir Rogues come rotation time. I attempted to put a significant amount of Rise of Zendikar cards into the deck to make the most of the upcoming new meta (and also I really like them so...). Anyway, onto the cards! Same format as usual.
Creatures
Thieves' Guild Enforcer - Essentially a 3/2 deathtouch for 1, this is an incredibly synergistic and powerful card to run in the 1-slot. I've been playing a bunch of 2021 Dimir Flash, and this card really holds it's own.
Soaring Thought-Thief - A situational banner effect for rogues, the evasion and additional mill everytime you attack is a really nice bonus.
Blackbloom Rogue - A nice backup land and very decent attacker. It will get the +3/+0 quite often (at least I think so based on my previous testing), and the menace makes it a very evasive threat. I'm running multiple spell lands to try and cut down my mana base a bit and run more options.
Glasspool Mimic - The other spell land, this card comes down as a copy of a lot of the other dangerous rogues we have in the list (to be fair, it'll usually be copies 5-8 of Thieves' Guild Enforcer or Nighthawk Scavenger).
Brazen Borrower - One of the best options for rogues currently, the bounce is almost always welcome, and a 3-power evasive flyer with flash will win games if they can't answer it.
Nighthawk Scavenger - Probably one of the more hyped cards of the set, Vampire Goyfhawk is going to see play all over the place, but with a rogues list, he'll have the opportunity to be bigger and scarier thanks to all of the mill going on. Dropping on turn 3 with 4 or 5 power on top of the original Vampire Nighthawk's keywords will be incredibly powerful and scary to deal with.
Zareth San, the Trickster - Ninjutsu by another name is always welcome. The fact that our rogues are evasive and can be bad blocks also set him up to jump into the fight, as well as bounce another rogue for an extra ETB trigger (Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Brazen Borrower will particularly enjoy this). The fact that this deck mills as much as it does will also help his ability, allowing you to play all of your opponents best cards.
Instants / Sorceries
Drown in the Loch - Functionally better in this deck than most other removal / counterspell options. It can start hitting stuff as soon as turn 2 with a t1 Thieves' Guild Enforcer.
Eliminate - Good early removal is looking like it'll be harder to come by for at least this set, so I'm happy to run Eliminate to deal with early creatures if the deck has a slower start.
Maddening Cacophony - 2 mana to mill 8 is pretty good value, especially since a lot of our stuff triggers off of the opponents bin. The kicker seems like it's win-more to me, but good lord does this synergize with Nighthawk Scavenger.
Artifact
Mazemind Tome - I'm not running scry-lands in this list, so this is the next best thing. The scry, draw and lifegain are all really helpful tech choices for keeping this list running efficiently.
Mana Base
I cut to 22 lands for this, and even with our top end hitting 6, I feel pretty comfortable with it thanks to the spell lands giving us a little bit of space to breathe if we don't hit early land drops. Fabled Passage helps us thin our deck, Clearwater Pathway fixes early, and Zagoth Triome gives us slow fixing or late game gas. I feel really good about this lists mana base.
Conclusion
Rogues seem like they're poised to be a very powerful tribal deck in the new meta thanks to all of the new options they picked up. They've been missing a good top end prior to this, so seeing cards like Zareth San really give me hope that they'll be getting a lot of support from WOTC going forward. If this list performs well for you once the new cards come into standard let me know! I'd love to hear if my theorycraft works out well for people.
Edit 1
-1 Island, -1 Blackbloom Rogue, +2 Rankle, Master of Pranks. Due to all of the additional situational lands in this list I decided to cut into the traditional mana base even further as well as cutting back one of the weaker creatures. Rankle acts as a great toolbox for the list, and fills a role that's traditionally held by multiple spells. Having another evasive rogue also works well with Zareth San.
Edit 2
Added 2x Slitherwisp to the maybeboard. Without the ability to properly test the list currently I can't say for sure whether this would be a better option than Rankle since trading flexibility for card advantage is an interesting idea, and with all the flash rogues waiting to come down as tempo plays, it could very well be a better option. For now I'm keeping Rankle mainboard since there just seems to be a lot of power coming from him, as well as being an additional evasive enabler for Zareth San, but I'm not counting out Slitherwisp yet.
Creature (27) | |||
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$0.40€0.420.02 | |||
$4.008.86 | |||
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$3.300.11 | |||
$0.40€0.310.02 | |||
$0.20€0.100.03 | |||
$0.94€1.060.02 | |||
$0.19€0.110.03 | |||
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (13) | |||
$1.03€0.860.03 | |||
$5.97€4.070.02 | |||
$18.243.11 | |||
$0.450.03 | |||
$5.000.03 | |||
Land (20) | |||
$17.49€16.950.57 | |||
5
Swamp
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$0.980.03 | ||
5
Island
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$5.77€4.260.15 | |||
$4.390.59 |
$0.35€0.370.02 |
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