The Return of the Mage
Author - RoyalLanceE: Twitter | Website
In the Hearthstone finals at Dreamhack Summer, RDU took his Freeze Mage deck as swept Amaz, even defeating Arnaz’z Priest deck, a class that is supposed to beat Mage. This comes in a time when Mage has been all but forgotten in both ranked and tournaments. This proves that Mage, despite all the nerfs on cards like Pyroblast, is still viable in competition. For this article I will break down RDU’s Freeze Mage and study what makes this deck so damn good.
A Mage? In Dreamhack? But Why?: Why not a Mage in Dreamhack? The metagame at the time (or at leastthe meta reports) have declared Mage a near-dead class, virtually nobody would be too focused on beating Mage. The competition would be more focused on countering decks like Miracle Rogue (which RDU, himself had for the tournament). So Freeze Mage had a possibility of getting a few surprise wins here and there.
How The Deck Works
RDU’s Freeze Mage is not an insta-win by any means. In the first few turns he playssomewhat of turtle style, playing freeze cards, draw cards, and board clearing cards. His goal is to survive the first turns so he can do a play Alexstrasza to bring his opponent to 15 health, then use burn cards to bring him the rest of the way..
Arcane Intellect, Loot Hoarder, Acolyte of Pain, Bloodmage Talnos, and Azure Drake: These draw cards are vital to cycle through your deck to get to your win cards. Azure Drake and Bloodmage Talnos get extra points for their spell damage bonuses, powering up your Blizzard and Flamestrike as well as your burn cards.
Frost Nova: This card tends to go underused by Mage players because this offers no damage at all. But freezingall enemies minions comes in handy if you are need to draw a card or to play crucial cards such as Doomsayer (your best combo with Frost Nova) or Mirror Image.
Blizzard: Well they made a good card game. But seriously, Blizzard doubles as a freeze-all-minions card and damage-all-minions card. This can clear the board, allowing your minions to do whatever the hell they want. Those who do survive the damage are frozen, giving you similar benefits Frost Nova. Minions with Divine Shield will be frozen AND lose their shield, making them easier to deal with.
Frostbolt and Ice Lance: These cards can reek so much havoc when used together. When you have both copies of each card you can throw down 3+3+4+4 damage, even more if Azure Drake and/or Bloodmage Thalnos are on the field! Plus, these can be used as life gain, like how RDU had to do a few times in the tournament.
Ice Barrier: Ice Barrier is gives you 8 armor to supplement your health, and armor stays the same if your opponent plays their own Alexstrasza. Not every class can get armor so be thankful this card exists for Mage.
Ice Block: Ice Block is the ultimate life gain card. With immunity to fatal damage, giving you a free turn. This card is one of the most valued card for Freeze Mage since it can turn a losing game into a winning game. This card kept RDU alive long enough to to kill Amaz in all three games, beat decks that the freeze deck freeze deck is “supposed” to lose to.
Vaporize: This keeps some damage away by killing an attacking minion, extending one’s own life.
Flamestrike: Obviously not a freeze card but it serves as a powerful board clear. It’s hard to use in a combo but if you already have minions in play this leads to damage to the face. Mirrior Image is a good card to follow up with in this case.
Doomsayer: Don’t let the 0 Attack fool you. This is card costs only two many and can destroy all everyone on the field. Pair it with Frost Nova to get a 5-mana board clear! This and Loothoarder is also good.
Fireball: This is your go-to burst card. Hopefully you can hold on to this card as a finisher, but it can take out an annoying minion if need be.
Pyroblast: The card that created the Turn 8 phenomenon is back. It’s a 10-mana card now, but it’s a great follow up to finish off an opponent an Ice Block.
Alexstrasza: As if being 8 Attack/8 Health is not scary enough, this dragon can take an opponent from full health to burst range. When you play Alexstrasza and you have Pyroblast or double Fireball, you have a nice chance of winning.
This deck is quite an eye opener for those who considered Mage a “dead class”. Hopefully RDU’s victory in the finals will inspire player to take up the class again.
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This article is shitty and makes ihearthu.com look bad. The person who wrote this is not sufficiently knowledgeable about the English language or Hearthstone. Ranked play and tournament play are completely different worlds and having a deck that you can switch into vice playing double blind allows you to make viable counter options. I challenge you to find anyone who plays this game at a high level that would take the bet on this mage deck vs Amaz’s deck pool in a best of 7. RDU won, that’s great, he is skilled and so is Amaz, that doesn’t mean Mage was the favorite to win.
TL;DR - Mage was the underdog and the underdog won. Cool story bro. This “article” would have been better off as a decklist.
I think you’re being a little harsh. This deck and its variations do pretty well. Trump was climbing the ladder rather successfully on his stream with a variant of this deck. That having been said, I’m surprised that the article overlooked a key component of this deck, which is the massive card draw that it is required to fish out the Alexstrasza and burn cards. The deck is essentially a race between drawing the required burn and being overwhelmed. Note all the card draw in this deck: Thalanos, Loot Hoarder, Arcane Intellect, Acolyte of Pain, and Azure Drake. That’s over a quarter of the deck dedciated to card draw. I’m surprised that the article completely failed to mention such a key aspect of this deck.
Trump’s version improves the matchup against miracle by replacing Ice Barrier, Vaporize, an Acolyte, and the Drake with Molten and Mountain Giants. That way he could throw up cheap distractions in the early game with the potential to reduce the need for burn and/or Alexstraza later. Also, since 90% of the time your mage is down to single digit health by the end of the game, those Molten Giants are often free.
He also replaced the Loot Hoarders with Novice Engineers for guaranteed draws.
I think Trump was trying to break into the top 16 with this deck. I’m not sure if it ever did, but I know I saw him get into the 20s with it.
Upon rereading the article, I see that they mentioned the card draw but I overlooked it because the cards for that section were not in bold letters. Sorry for the unwarranted criticism. You might want to make them bold for consistency’s sake, however.
What exactly do you mean with using Frostbolt and Ice Lance for “life gain”? Didn’t get it…
he means you can feeze a minion with either (ie you don’t get attacked for that damage that turn, hence its effective life gain).
Please at least do a quick scan for mistakes next time. This is embarrassing.
While i agree someone from the site should probably give posts a once over before going live, English is a tough language and most likely not the authors native language. The article can easily be understood therefore it really is a non issue.
Lol, Royal Lance is from New York.
It’s not a non issue if ihearthu is really trying to posture themselves as the premiere site for hearthstone content like they seem to want to be. English is a hard language but you wouldn’t see mistakes of grammar and phrasing like this on any site that really takes themselves seriously. And that’s not even going into the content of the article itself. There just isn’t much. It’s only a breakdown on the deck at the most superficial level. Why not go over some games and highlight some interesting choices in detail? Or at least give a broad overview of the win conditions and general flows of different matchups? Or, going away from RDU’s deck in particular, talk about some of the different variations on the archetype that exist right now. Right now articles like this take away from the actually top tier content that I know ihearthu can put out. Which is disappointing because it feels more and more like a flip of the coin when I click on an article about whether it’ll be worth my time or not.
Couldn’t agree with you more
Unfortunately this week we’re a bit short handed and so the regular looking over of stuff was overlooked. Definitely not our proudest moment and never too proud to admit when we’re wrong!
this article is like someone walking through an art gallery and saying things like “that painting is blue! blue is great! hopefully this painting makes blue more popular! thanks for listening.”
This article also would have barely been relevant a month ago and at this point it isn’t contributing anything interesting or new =/
OMG, the english. wtf iheartu
Sometimes when you are trying to get things up ASAP, it’s hard to catch your own mistakes. It pains me to see mistakes in my own material. I apologize for the mistakes in the article and I will strive to make my less mistakes next time around.
Wow. First of all there are mistakes in your reply. Second, the problem was not mistakes it was lack of insightful material. In my opinion that was the real shame . The grammar and spelling just made the article harder to read.
Is this a bad build overall? Can it be something a casual player strive for? I am a relatively new player and I like freeze builds.