Dark Rift is one of the best cards of the deck, really strong against aggro like battlemage and archer cause you hit your opponent for 5 and summon a 7-5 ward on turn 5/6 just for 2 mana, not so good against crusader cause it’s too fast you often need a night shadow or contest quickly his board . It’s even really strong against control decks like mage and spellsword , against scout it’s good if there is no shadowfen priest, same for the Mirror match up.

You can replace iliac by evermore steward but in this case you lose a lot of your aggro potential and improve your match ups only against typical aggros like crusader. If we compare the 2 cards, i find iliac better the most of the time, it’s just 1 mana and it can destroy easily a 2 mana card while evermore steward will rarely achieve that except against low health aggro cards. On the top of that, iliac synergize with 7 cards of the deck (3 daggerfall mage, 3 haunting spirit and 1 mentor’s ring) where evermore steward doesn’t synergize. Finally, yes it’s wick against murkwater witch and curse but the deck has been created to be strong against everydeck except monk decks and assassin decks (2 classes who disappeared this season ^^) even if you can beat them with a good start.

The fact is that when you play a Khajiit’s character you almost never have this in your starting hand and even if it’s the case, it’s a 4-4 for 4 mana which can totally aggro your opponenent or doing good trades and from turn 7, this is a 6-6 taunt who can stop your opponent. This is actually a really polyvalent card even for Aggro-Midrange decks like mine. I tried versions of the deck without it and i found the deck was less good (by replacing it by 2 breton conjurers in metà aggro or 2 angry grahls in metà control) but you can totally do it if you find the metà is too aggro or too control for you, I’ve already done it and this can be better when metà isn’t diversified, just find the good moment to operate the changes and do not forget to choose cleverly your character according to what you want the most in your early game, most of the players don’t take this thing in consideration.

Each character has specificities on what he ‘ll has the most chance to draw in his early game, you should check it out.

What, are you serious?
Do you have any sort of proof for this, like devs commenting about it?
Where can I find more information about which influence each race has?

After seeing many people contest this theory, i think I am probably wrong about it. I really thought the text wrote under the different characters was talking about what happen in game and not about the progression.

Lucien Lachance is a bad card against control match ups. They don’t put many creatures on board and it’s just 1/5, this card can’t aggro at all. I tested it but i haven’t find the results convincing. Yes, the card improve maybe some match ups who need board control like against warrior, archer or against most of the sorcerers but we are already good against them the most of the time. I find cursed spectre, midnight sweep and preserver of the root really better in this deck.

Update:
Went 6-2 from rank 2 (and 2 stars i think) to rank 1 with minor changes (-1 Daggerfall Mage, -1 Dark Rift, -1 Royal Sage // +1 Firebolt, +1 Young Mammoth, +1 Slaughterfish Spawning). Didn’t have 3rd Daggerfall Mage & Dark Rift, so I subbed to Mammoth & Fish (the Sage -> Firebolt change was done in error, which I only noticed when I looked up my deck list to write the changes here xD) Anyways, not a bad list at all, I’m more used to playing controlish ward sorcerer decks, but this has proven reliable. The only thing I noticed is that sometimes a 2nd Dark Rift can be a bad early draw, hence I guess that running 2 instead of 3 might actually be a good choice.
Regarding Lucien: While I didn’t have time to test it with this list (honestly I barely had enough spare time this month to do daily quests and get to rank 1 to get the rewards), I had the feeling at times that he could have been a nice addition to the list since sometimes you have to trade (and having a lot of wards make many trades basically free). Ill try to sub him in instead of one Firebolt to see how the deck behaves (so basically he would replace one Royal Sage in your original list, which I guess can be a tech spot anyway).

If you have already played Hearthstone you can see that 2 copies of a card in a deck is often enough and totally good, 3 is usually too much. You must put 3 copies of a card only if it’s strong in every case or in 80% of the time. That’s the reason why i like to put just 2 copies of a card and not 3.

Thanks, i think battlereeve will be more a card for combo battlemage with all the 1-1 charges the class can create. I don’t see this card in a midrange sorcerer like mine.