So I have been playing a ton of mage lately as I'm really close to the gold hero portrait.
One of my viewers recommended this deck:
It seems like it shouldn't work at all, but it does. Currently 6 and 1 with it at Rank 2. Amazing deck vs hunter. They simply don't know what to do against it, and end up trying to set up for lethal only to be denied while you get ready to burst them down.
I got rekt by Tiddler himself with this deck a few nights ago at Rank 5. I saw Tidder as the opponent name, was like "welp, if this is him I'm ****ed." Went all in for lethal, leaving a minion alive (maybe Thalnos.) Of course he goes PING, Fireball, Frost Bolt, Ice Lance, Ice Lance for 22 dmg and I feel like an idiot.
I was playing either Hunter or Zoo, I forget. The game felt completely winnable if I didn't act like an idiot, but I did. So the deck does exactly what it's advertised as doing.
I've played it a fair bit this weekend and I got it to rank 8 (from mid-teens), but mostly because of a big heater. Obviously a huge dog to control warrior, but otherwise felt like it was competitive against most things I saw. A wisely played lock deck might also be a problem, but they often tapped down too much.
Outside of the randomness of the mulligans, the deck really only runs into huge problems when you face a 2x healbot or similar (various control warrior cards). You can usually handle 1 ok, it's when that 2nd one happens that you start to hit a wall. I rarely had any problems getting my defense up, so could count on getting to turns 7/8/9/10 for the burn part of the deck. Although, I probably start using fireballs to the face earlier more often than not.
Card I hated most to see for my opponent: Healbot and/or K. Mystic
Card I really wanted: A silence (or another pyro believe it or not)
Card I never seemed to use well: Arcane Golem
Card I kicked around adding: Alexstraza (beyond since/pyrox2)
Obviously with limited burn, tons of healing screws you up. The Mystic can be brutal if played at an unexpected time. But since nobody seems to run 2 of them, I generally found that didn't swing the games too often.
It's pretty common for one taunt to be up at a time, so can't count how many times I just wanted to get through 2/3/4/5 damage with my board, but only able to sac it into the taunt. I'd probably sub out the A. Golem for a silence if pressed to choose. Or I'd swap it for another pyro or an alex (to turn 9 undo all the bonus healing folks do). Plus it's an extra body on the board to deal with. Both would be pretty dead cards in early hands when you can't afford that, but I almost never seem to play the golem in a way that tangibly impacts the game.
Karak: I feel like the times I have to play around using them are far less than when they are valuable against rush decks (or pally's army of 1/1s)
Heres my tempo mage deck. I fell from rank 2 to rank 5 with my pally deck. Then switched to this mage deck now im back to rank 2. Its close to alot of other tempo decks i run 2 polys which seems great. Face hunter is the one matchup that has been owning me.
I've been considering dropping the flamestrike for a kezan mystic but i dont know. Alot of times flamestrike is dead in my hand but then theres the pally matchup where i need it badly.
After playing some more with this deck im pretty much teetering rank 2-4. Which is my normal spot when i master a deck prolly says something about my play not being good enough for higher.
Anyways it loses to zoolock, shaman, and face hunter. Seems to do well vs everything else after playing alot of games.
Been running this control mage deck for a while to try to climb up the ranks. I only have access to basic cards as I've spent $0 on the game so my deck is obviously subpar, but it's been working for me. Thoughts?
I ended up cutting the loot hoarder, poly, flame cannon, Jeeves for another chugger, another drake, a blood mage, and a kezan mystic because it's the start of the season and I've played 4 face hunters in a row. Flamewalker confirmed ridiculous.
one of the things I like about playing freeze mage is being able to drop a doomsayer or explosive sheep against mirror entity and use their own card against them
I'd take out counterspell and put a 2nd flamecannon in to make it more consistent. Whenever I play vs mage I try my best to bait counterspell with coin.
I'm also not that fond of Kezan right now. Maybe put something stickier in that 4 slot like Violet Teacher or Water elemental. Violet teacher has decent synergy in the spell heavy deck. Either VT or WE allows your opponent to spazz their removal before your big dudes roll out.
water elementals are great value since they can almost always 2-for-1
I assume the single counterspell is largely so your opponent doesn't necessarily know what secret is in play but it's pretty standard for those decks and like wombat said, not hard to play around