You’ve seen the math by u/DrBurritoJr ! Now run the code!

(If you have not seen the math, it’s here: )

I simulated a million games of Quasar Rogue. Since piloting the deck involves like two decisions it wasn’t hard. What turn does Quasar come down?

A plot showing about 65% of Rogue decks playing Quasar by turn 6. Let us take a moment of Schadenfreude for the poor sod who reached turn 22 without seeing a single Quasar

More than 30% of games have Quasar online by turn 4 (with [[Prep]]) when you go first. Almost 70% of games play Quasar by turn 6. About half of those games are able to (try to) pop off the same turn, because they’re also able to draw a card right after Quasaring. (See below for all the assumptions I made for this!)

That’s pretty damn reliable.

But the deck only has a 40% win rate. That means that EITHER enough of y’all are playing aggro fast enough to get under the Rogue before turn six OR the deck frequently fails to launch after Quasar comes down, and spends a turn or two whiffing on shitty draws. By which point any midrange player has hit face very hard.

(A third explanation is that I screwed up the simulation. Yep, very possible. Check my working and tell me not to use while True: here: )

Why are my numbers even higher than the good Doctor Burrito’s? The Doctor said 26% of games hit Quasar on turn 4. This simulation boosts early game card draw with [[Quick Pick]] and [[Knickknack Shack]] giving a higher chance of holding the right cards (other draw engines not included).

I looked at a few other setups too:

Going second

The numbers are sliiiightly higher when you start second. You have the Coin, meaning you can play Quasar on turn 3 if God really hates your opponent. The simulations tell us that God really hates about a third of Hearthstone players. Over 70% of games have Quasar online by turn 5.

Mulligan strategy

I had a look if a different mulligan strategy helped. Instead of a hard mulligan for Prep and Quasar, what happens if a player also keeps one weapon and one location when they show up?

We see across the board an increase of a few percentage points in the number of games where Quasar can be followed by immediate card draw, though the chances of being able to play Quasar on a particular turn are almost unchanged

Therefore: keep some draw in your opening hand.

What would a nerf do?

I made Quasar cost 7.

It comes down a turn later. But with increased reliability when it does. Almost 20% of games can draw another card after playing Quasar on turn 5.

The charts for going second or for different mulligan strategies are very similar to this one, so I won’t show them.

A nerf would hit the deck hard. Aggro will stomps the deck without putting down its cup of tea. Players could respond by trying to increase coin generation to drop Quasar sooner but it’ll officially be meme tier (maybe it’s already meme tier and we’re all coping over here by writing simulations).

Ironically, the deck will feel even worse to lose to after a nerf. With the current 6 mana Quasar the Rogue can’t pop off reliably and you might still have a turn or two to push through damage before they succeed in throwing their entire deck at your face. With a 7 mana Quasar they;re more likely to have draw set up and you’re more likely to be dead next turn.

The assumptions!

Friend, you do not need to read all this. If you’re curious, be my guest, but you have a rich life to live away from here.

Playing Hearthstone is easy
The First Law is that we want to play Quasar
The Second Law is that we want to draw cards, unless it would conflict with the First Law
The deck has 2 x Quasar, 2 x Prep, 2 x Knickknack Shack, 2 x Quick Pick and 22 cards that do nothing. There are not other draw cards and no coin generation
The player mulligans for Quasar and Prep (‘hard mulligan’) or any of the cards named in the previous point (‘soft mulligan’). You don’t keep duplicates
The simulation ends when Quasar comes down, and we check if the weapon or location are active and would let us draw a card before the turn ends
Knickknack Shack always closes for two turns when it is used (…in reality it’ll often reopen and give extra draw, making the deck even more reliable than simulated here)
Each turn the player loops through the following list of things they’d like to do, in order. Whenever they do something on the list, they pay mana, update whatever needs updating, and go back to the start of the list. When there’s nothing left to do, the turn ends.
- Play Quasar
- Attack with a weapon (unless we already know we can play Q next turn)
- Play a weapon if we have enough mana to play Q if we draw it
- Draw with a location (unless we already know we can play Q next turn)
- Play a weapon
- Play a location (the order of these last two is UP FOR DEBATE)

Greetings nerds, I thought y'all were overreacting about how often Quasar Rogue pops off but I simulated it and you're right