(Hearthstone) NEW CARDS! Theorycrafting Big Spell Mage in Alterac Valley 

Yeah an outer border would be preferable

@@unfortunateTimetables nah, just wrapped with the game board better would be preferred

16:30

There is definitely justification, but doing that messes up your hero card so it's understandable why you might not

@@drewpeacock9087 Nah there's really not much to worry about there. It's flexibility and you should hopefully be casting spells from 3-5 schools, plus you won't discover a different shadow card most likely so Mask of C'thun still goes off. The arcane and fire options are not great for big spells anyway so if you have to draw something cheap to stay alive and remove a minion it's worth it, otherwise you're making a pure greed deck and you will lose all the time.

@@DirEnGay yeah I agree it's better, just I get why you wouldn't, especially as people go greedier/more memey in the prerelease thing

also, you need to combo the wand thief and there is only like 6 cards in the deck which you can combo it with

@@lelm0127 If you make a bad version of the deck like pretty much every streamer made. The goal here is to cut the bullshit and backfire potential out of the deck even if that's less "fun" but it's also less fun losing all the time. I'm looking to have 15 cards 1-4 mana and I may even only include 9 spells in the package with a maximum of up to 13 spells. I think realistically one Iceblood Tower should be fine as long as you only have beneficial spells that can't backfire and most of the high cost spells target either enemy board or enemy face. Even if one turn it plays a Flamestrike from your deck and opponent has no board, to get it used and loaded for Magister Dawngrasp play later should be fine. I'm beginning to think Rune of the Archmage is too gimmicky to include too even though it might be fun it will probably be annoying more often than useful. Wand Thief should have combo potential with at least half the deck the way I plan to build it with multiple 1-4 drop minions, the other spell discover cards such as Scorpid and maybe Pandaren Importer will be there too and I'm not worried about diluting Magister Dawngrasp activation with a couple cheap generated spells provided they allowed me to survive to that turn, and if Wand Thief proves to be inconsistent then it will be dropped, simple. There will at least be several other 1-2 drop options for easy combo such as Shivering Sorceress, Armor Vendor, Amplified Snowflurry, Solarian, Celestial Ink Set, Bloodmage Thalnos, Cult Neophyte, Far Watch Post, Pandaren Importer, SI:7 Skulker, to name a few. Cheap cards with good effects can still see play even into the late game to curve out your mana. Would feel bad on 10 mana playing a 7 drop and pass for example, but a 7 drop and a 3 drop on 10 mana is more efficient. It seems the main win condition of the deck is multiple Mask of C'thun though, even with only 2 copies you can potentially play it 5 times. The refined version of the deck that cuts most of the RNG might not be fun but it may be consistent enough to work. It's kind of a shame though that even before the expansion launches I'm setting my sights on the most boring version of the deck, but at the end of the day I don't want to play a deck with 35% win rating. The spells that I think should work with this are Arcane Overflow, Flamestrike, Mask of C'thun, Mass Polymorph (depending on meta a lot of deathrattle decks etc), Deep Freeze, Grand Finale (depending on your minion package), and Iceblood Tower (one copy), so potentially that's a minimum of 9 spells or 13 max if you include 1-2 copies of Mass Poly and Grand Finale also. They all have good effects that can't backfire and that's a spread of Arcane, Frost, Fire and Shadow for Magister Dawngrasp. Even if you only include 9 spells you still have Magister Dawngrasp, 2x Clumsy Courier and 2x Grey Sage Parrot and that in total is 15 cards 5 mana and above, and that allows the other half of your deck to work towards surviving to turn 5 and above. I'd maybe include Solarian too just as a backup and he can be the wild card for RNG shenannigans (he may also play Rune of the Archmage). Every streamer I saw playing this deck was passing turns and had a hand full of 7-10 mana cards that they can only play maximum of one per turn and they made the deck look awful lol.

@Eidolon hopefully others will leave their feedback as well if they feel the same!

How very wholesome, or creepy, I’m not sure.

It's closer to Solarian since it has the enemy targeting clause, which means an empty board is actually ideal if you're hoping to just burn them out, but yeah I don't know if the standard mage pool has enough burn spells right now to justify that.

@@TheSquareOnes there's so many burn spells in mage rn. He just got really unlucky.

@@Aldrius There will be 36 mage spells in standard (not counting the quest and rune, which I assume can't cast itself after the universal Alex nerf), only 6 of them deal damage to heroes. That's enough that it isn't lucky to get a little burn damage but definitely isn't unlucky to get zero considering how few spells this casts on average (not going to run the math but I'd assume it's around 5-6 on the high end, since most cost 3+ and there are a lot of 7+ spells now). Constructed decks having access to a lot of burn is not the same thing as burn making up a large percentage of the total pool and humans are really bad at intuiting probabilities in general, it's a good habit to always check the actual numbers for these things.

@@TheSquareOnes Well, if you think about spells the damage things, very few deal damage exclusively to minions (I think it's just Brain Freeze, Cone of Cold, Shooting Star and First Flame isn't it?). So the odds are you will get a card that can go face (or does SOMETHING) before you get a card that does nothing because it needs minions on the board.

@@Aldrius What? I'm saying there are only 6 of the 36 spells that can go face, as in there are 30 spells that are not burn. Just go look at what the cards actually are, I think you're forgetting most of them so getting an inaccurate idea of what the odds might be.

The only other portrait i could see compare to the Celesta is N'zoth

Same, not preordering this time but I'm probably going to get the battlepass just for the skins and mostly for that one in particular. It's a shame mage wasn't a Galakrond class, starting the game as a dragon that then invokes and summons an even bigger dragon could've been a neat deck aesthetic.

Yeah, Iceblood Tower is funnily enough often the worst card in the deck, since a lot of the new Big Smell mage cards revolve around drawing spells from the deck and discounting them, while Iceblood Tower wants you to never draw your spells and also loses you all control over when you cast certain cards, Like Mass Polymorph or Flamestrike on an empty board or playing your Rune of the Archmage at the wrong time which is already a very niche card. i think the deck will end up being way better without Tower in and just focusing on discounting and drawing your Big Spells.

Better call it Ruin of archmage

It used to, but it got nerffed some time back since having Frost Lich Janina’s hero power starting at 3 damage/ or more likely Major Domo giving you a 2 mana Piroblast is kinda broken.

@@user-dy6dv5dr5l I doubt anything majordomo does is broken, probably a 12 DMG majordomo will still be bad, and no one's use Janina anymore, so I really don't get it

Jandice is way too late.

@@juttyism if you're not on coin, turn 6 you might struggle

@@yurisargsyan2968 Coin is needed for a spell. This deck just needs an early minion package similar to what his Mage opponent played. Rely on end-game spells but rely on early game board presence, removals, etc. Jandice doesn't seem like a good include, but plenty of good cheap minions to play to survive and trade.

@@DirEnGay yeah maybe it's a bit too expensive ( What about sunwell initiate? The card seems pretty solid to me, but nobody plays it

@@yurisargsyan2968 I don't know, I think for value there are better options, but you should try it for science. Scorpid seems like an auto include, the armour gainers should be an auto-include and I think people need to drop the notion that low cost spells (generated of course) are bad for Magister Dawngrasp because he's likely to get good value regardless even if you may have had to generate and play a brain freeze or something messing with his RNG. Sunwell Initiate seems okay but I think for its mana cost people won't have much issue dealing with it, especially with no stat buffing combo that Paladin or Druid can get. If you get the dream and manage to get 3 trades against a low board with him that would be awesome but more likely he gets removed in one hit or an enemy buffs their minion to reach 4 damage. Realistically only around 10-15 cards in your deck want to be above 5 mana allowing for consistent early minion/weapon plays, anything you can do to survive against pesky face/aggro players, but I get the feeling unless the meta completely shifts slow decks will always lose to face/combo/OTK. There are methods of drawing your higher cost cards or cheating them out so it looks terrible to have a hand with several 7-10 mana cards in it that you can only play once per turn without inkwell. I hope people can find a way to refine this and make it consistent against a variety of decks.

It's consistent with all of those things, First Flame can only target minions so it would always hit the courier there just like Solarian would always shoot itself in a similar situation. You're right that it isn't literally "only spells that can target your opponent specifically and the things they happen to control at the moment you play this" but HS card text has never been that literal and it seems like a really intuitive and clear way to abbreviate the Solarian clause. It's worth noting that if it worked how you think it should it would always cast 20 mana worth of fireballs, ignites and runed orbs on an empty board so would often just be "9-mana: destroy your opponent," which should be another hint that it wouldn't work that way but honestly given the current power level of the game you might get a pass on that aspect.

@@TheSquareOnes Solarian Prime specifically states "if possible" which should open up a lot more possibilities including negative ones but this card is worded differently. I'm not suggesting the card should be OP, only that it should have been worded accurately. There's still a way of doing what the card suggests that wouldn't simply be slamming fireballs on their face, there's many ways in which it doesn't go against the card text but could still have a disappointing outcome which is perfectly fair, like I said AoE like Flamestrike even on empty board should fall into fair card play, or "destroy frozen minion" when none are frozen, even though it would feel like crappy RNG it would still be at least accurate to the card description. Why would it even try to load up a damage minion spell when only his own minion is on the board? Why does it play secrets? Why does it play random utility? It's literally just Solarian Prime spell pool with different card text. Casting a secret isn't "at enemies", card draw isn't "at enemies", neither is Incanter's Flow, Evocation, Deck of Lunacy, Shattering Blast, Primordial Studies", Mana Biscuit, Potion of Illusion, Ring Toss, Mass Polymorph, Grand Finale or Iceblood Tower, and I'm going to assume at the very least it won't be possible for it to cast itself otherwise that would be ridiculous (though I bet Solarian Prime can cast Rune of the Archmage maybe even more than once). "Cast 20 Mana worth of Mage spells (targets enemies if possible)" There I fixed it.

@@DirEnGay Yes, that would be the more accurate text but I think the point is that it's substantially longer, which is relevant in a game where they try to keep the card text as short as possible. They seem to be making the "targets enemies if possible" a standard approach to these effects, so the new "at enemies" wording can be a seen a way to partially keyword it to cut down on text. And again, card text in hearthstone has never literally described what the cards do with perfect accuracy. Nothing in the game even explains the actual rules of the game in terms of phases and such (which affects the ordering of how countless effects trigger, very important for avoiding misplays), the approach has always been "just get it close enough and they'll work out the details within a game or two." I'd never seen the card before this video and understood exactly what it would do after glancing at the effect for two seconds. That seems like a perfectly reasonable standard for wording in a game where the computer handles all of the actual rulings for the players, this isn't Magic where these sorts of ambiguities can turn into an hour long argument mid-match.

@@TheSquareOnes Yeah you're so right "Cast 20 Mana worth of Mage spells (targets enemies if possible)" is substantially longer than "Cast 20 Mana worth of Mage spells at enemies" 2 whole words. Meanwhile we have "Deal 2 damage. Honorable Kill: Reduce the Cost of spells in your hand by (1)." "Summon a 3/3 Snowman that Freezes. Add "Build a Snowbrute" to your hand." "Deal 8 damage to an enemy minion. Summon a Remnant with stats equal to the excess damage." which are also all new cards by the way, but you're right of course. Why bother to have accurate card descriptions when most people that play the game are idiots that can't spell? Your other point may be true, do you have an example of this? I'd love to see one. From the top of my head I don't recall any other card that didn't do exactly what I assumed it would do based on the wording written on the card. The bottom line is that the text on Rune of the Archmage is inaccurate to what it actually does. Solarian Prime is crystal clear in its description, and if Rune of the Archmage copied it then it would only be 2 words longer.

@@DirEnGay The point is that it sets a standard for a shorter wording, so that the next time they print this effect (which is basically guaranteed, we'll probably see at least a couple a year until the game finally dies) they can slap it on a more full text box and the precedent will already be there to make it easier to digest. I'm not saying they needed to do this, I'm just pointing out why it makes sense to do this and that it's a complete non-issue. You know what the card does, so what are you even upset about? Wouldn't it make more sense to be upset that it's a 9-mana Yogg that requires zero setup and has a lower chance of backfiring? The game has enough real problems that you don't really need to make up imaginary concerns in order to have something to be unhappy about.

laugh through the pain

The wildfire was off of the Rune, which doesn’t count as a spell you cast

@@bmkibler ahhh right...

every expansion lots of streamers get the chance to play on a pre release server with all the new cards

If you remove the "damage-dealing" criteria and added Jace's "targets enemies if possible", it might not be too good? But ya it's got downsides as is

I mean, plenty of people still play it?

A lot of people play it, wth are you talking about. I mean, just look at battlegrounds alone ...

half ass bait comment but regardless...its you are in such awe that this game its still being played in a chaneel which 90% content its is HS , why bother even commenting on it then ?