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Frost Mage Deck List And Analysis

by - 10 years ago

If you happen to keep up with my weekly ManaGrind Wrap-Up articles, you might recall that I’d predicted that someone would make their mark on the competitive Hearthstone scene by creating a control deck able to deal with the crushing firepower of Warlock aggression. After four weeks atop the North America ManaGrind tournament rankings, Warlock aggro was finally dethroned by a Mage Control deck that apparently originated in Korea. While there’s no individual player to thank for this deck like we’ve had in times past, the deck has definitely left an imprint.

Anti-Aggro Mage 

Class: Mage

Cards sorted by Low Cost

Mage (21)

Neutral (9)

In a refreshing change a pace, there are a number of cards in this deck that are not featured in every other deck on the scene, especially when it comes to neutral minions.

Doomsayer

Why Doomsayer?

In this super aggressive meta, a lot of decks have begun neglecting their silences, and some even forego crowd control altogether in order to run more low cost minions. Doomsayer boasts a beefy seven health, making it difficult to take out under normal circumstances. Against a Mage armed with Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frost Nova, the tasks becomes almost impossible, assuring that an opposing board is wiped clean. While the deck does feature Flamestrike, that requires seven mana. An effective Doomsayer combo can be done with four mana, which makes it incredibly strong against Warlocks.

Why Alexstrasza?

Alexstrasza is a versatile big that can either jack up your health or diminish your opponent’s, depending on the circumstance. There’s interesting potential for a combo wherein, once under ten health, you drop two Molten Giants (featured in this specific deck) for free, before summoning Alexstrasza to bring your health back up to 15.

Why Mountain Giants and Molten Giants?

First of all, they’re large, and they also hit very hard. That much is obvious. They’re perfect finishers, but in the right circumstance can be dropped on the cheap and demand attention.

Control players often have a lot of cards in their hands because their strategy is to be reactive. While aggressive decks throw stuff on the board in a frenzied effort to quickly incinerate their opponents, control decks hang back, watching, waiting. Mountain Giant’s mana cost goes down based on the number of cards in your hand, so there’s an obvious synergy.

In the process of securing board control and waiting out your opponent’s hand, taking a bunch of damage is a real possibility. What better way to punish your handless opponent than by dropping a pair of 8/8’s, potentially for free? Depending on how much punishment you absorb in the early to midgame, this strategy is totally viable. Worst case scenario, you play them at full cost and you’re not in any real danger.

Overall Strategy

This deck’s primary objective at all points it survive until it has enough damage to kill an opponent. This might feel similar to Reckful’s Innkeeper’s Invitational deck, but there are actually a number of core differences. Where as Reckful’s deck froze you over and over until it drew the correct assortment of spells to KO you in one to two turns, this specific Mage deck relies more on minions. It features one Pyroblast, as opposed to two, and a good selection of hard hitting minions, listed above.

Blizzard

Cone of Cold, Frost Nova and Blizzard are all cheap enough to give this deck great odds at containing the horrible hordes featured in the standard Warlock aggro deck. Whatever isn’t dead come turn seven will quite likely perish at the hands of Flamestrike, which this deck features two of.

Ice Barrier and Ice Block give this deck an even greater degree of survivability, giving the Mage more time to stall and draw the necessary board clears and spells.

The name of the game here is containment. Utilizing powerful control spells and stall tactics, this deck can wear down an opposing hand before advancing in for the kill with large minions, or spells such a Pyroblast and Fireball.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Already mentioned earlier, this deck is great at controlling crowded boards, making it naturally strong against some of the common aggro decks floating around. Aggro Rogues, Warlocks and even Paladins will quickly find themselves in trouble if they’re not careful. Where this deck will have problems is against opponents that are more spell oriented, or feature a lot of minions with charge. Frost effects obviously don’t do much if they never have the chance to touch a foe. There will also be a chance to use silence mechanics to exploit the all important frozen status. Spellbreaker, already fairly popular as the go to silence could see even more play, alongside Ironbeak Owl and class specific spells.

The Deck in Action

I recently had the chance to face this deck in a ManaGrind tournament, and it’s rough to deal with, especially once it gets going. As seen below, I approached the first match in the series cautiously, not being sure what I was up against. It did not pan out. Once FireSale obtained the specific cards he needed, I’d basically already lost, despite playing more of a  midrange Paladin setup.

So what do you do against this deck? While powerful, all control decks face one glaring weakness. They require specific cards at specific times. I realized that my best chance at beating FireSale was to turn on the aggression, but with buffed minions instead of a whole bunch of small ones. This specific Mage deck does not feature Polymorph, making it susceptible to larger minions early on. The goal was to take him out before he got the cards he needed. In this specific instance, it was successful. It might not always be, but it’s better to try going fast than to wait for slow, icy doom.

 


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JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “Frost Mage Deck List And Analysis”

  1. TheChiv says:

    Its a solid deck but it is ironically countered hard by hunter control…..Rexxar may not be dead after all

  2. TheChiv says:

    Its a solid deck but it is ironically countered hard by hunter control…..Rexxar may not be dead after all

  3. Sean says:

    Why Ice Block? Is it just so you can’t die to a huge attack?

    • Eldorian says:

      Gives you an extra turn to possibly deal a killing blow. Let’s say you drop ice block turn 3, you know you have an extra turn after they perform lethal, so it gives you that extra turn to possibly get them down enough to nail them with pyroblast or some other form of lethal on them.

      • Sean says:

        Yeah that’s true. Didn’t think about the possibilities. Saved my ass a few times. Glad I crafted it

    • Nightmus says:

      It’s there so you can stop stalling and surviving and go offensive for at least 2 turns no matter the situation on the board.

      • Sean says:

        Yeah I’ve seen that. It’s a strong deck, but turn 10 priests with mind control make me sad 🙁

  4. Sean says:

    Why Ice Block? Is it just so you can’t die to a huge attack?

    • Eldorian says:

      Gives you an extra turn to possibly deal a killing blow. Let’s say you drop ice block turn 3, you know you have an extra turn after they perform lethal, so it gives you that extra turn to possibly get them down enough to nail them with pyroblast or some other form of lethal on them.

      • Sean says:

        Yeah that’s true. Didn’t think about the possibilities. Saved my ass a few times. Glad I crafted it

    • Nightmus says:

      It’s there so you can stop stalling and surviving and go offensive for at least 2 turns no matter the situation on the board.

  5. Sean says:

    The deck you played against is different than what you posted card wise :S

    • Eldorian says:

      there are various versions of the freeze mage deck, the deck list we provided is just an example of one. There are main stay cards and then there are ones that you can swap in and out depending on what you want to do with it.

  6. Sean says:

    The deck you played against is different than what you posted card wise :S

    • Eldorian says:

      there are various versions of the freeze mage deck, the deck list we provided is just an example of one. There are main stay cards and then there are ones that you can swap in and out depending on what you want to do with it.

  7. SkarnSW says:

    A Mage tried the Doomsayer freeze on my Paladin earlier today. Unfortunately for him, I had a Kodo in my hand. o/

  8. SkarnSW says:

    A Mage tried the Doomsayer freeze on my Paladin earlier today. Unfortunately for him, I had a Kodo in my hand. o/