The Comprehensive Across the Timeways Preview

 

Mirror Dimension

A single Shieldbearer is an unacceptable baseline effect, so for Mirror Dimension to see play, we need to run a deck with a sizeable dragon package that can consistently activate it. In its activated form, it is a respectable stalling spell that forces the opponent to sink 8 damage into it for 1 mana.

The Mage set does promote a dragon package, but we are not convinced that a Sindragosa deck wants to run the number of dragons required to make Mirror Dimension work. In fact, there is an incentive for Mage to run a minimal number of dragons and take advantage of copy effects and Azure Oathstone for strict combo purposes.

Considering that we have little faith that Mage can compete through a generic dragon “slop” deck, we think Mirror Dimension is a stalling tool for either a bad deck, or a deck that does not exist.

Score: 1

Arcane Barrage

Barrage can be considered both a board control tool and a potential direct damage nuke. For board control purposes, it is a targeted spell, which makes the random shots more consistent as they cannot hit the primary target. The spell has good synergy with spell damage too.

As a nuke, it is inefficient, as we mostly concern ourselves with hitting the primary target, and spending 3 mana for 3 damage is not a good deal. With some Sindragosa shenanigans, we can discount it to 0 mana, but it requires significant effort.

For an Azure Oathstone combo deck, Stellar Balance is a superior nuke with the greatest damage potential, while Arcane Barrage will likely be included for redundancy purposes. If we want to clear boards, Rising Waves is superior.

Considering it only fits in a very specific deck that has massive question marks surrounding its competitive viability, we do not have much faith.

Score: 1

Algeth’ar Instructor

A 5 mana 4/7 is a horrendous body. The purpose of Instructor is to be resurrected with Azure Oathstone and provide a spell damage boost to a potential OTK combo with Stellar Balance and Sindragosa/Malygos.

But its usefulness before that point is extremely questionable. It is expensive to the point of unplayability when it comes to helping us survive when paired with damage-based removal. If we are planning to use Instructor, we likely need to take the hit and drop it on the board just to have it die. A vanilla 5 mana 4/7, even if it has a soft taunt due to its spell damage, is a big tax to pay for the late game resurrection.

What is important to note is that other spell damage sources exist, most notably Go with the Flow. It may require us to spend more mana on the Azure Oathstone turn, but realistically, this combo is never happening on turn 8 anyway. Go with the Flow is at least remotely useful at other stages of the game as a defensive freeze.

We do not believe extremely bad cards can get carried in constructed decks to this extent. Instructor is too big of a penalty before the OTK turn.

Score: 1

Semi-Stable Portal

A slightly buffed Unstable Portal from Goblins vs. Gnomes. The Rewind keyword makes this spell a bit more consistent than its old version. Unstable Portal was competitive in constructed, but those were different times. It would never see play in any Standard format from the last 7 years, at the very least.

We see no reason for Mage decks to play Portal. Even the restricted Spell Mage has better things to do, with its greatest focus on spending mana to discover and progress its quest rather than trying to highroll a random 6-drop on turn 3. The Arcane tag is likely irrelevant, as it makes no sense to run this spell in a deck with Sindragosa and Malygos.

Waste of space.

Score: 1

Alter Time

This is a doubled discover effect for 4 mana, which pays for itself through a 2-mana discount on each of the discovered spells. Essentially, Alter Time is a doubled Primordial Glyph. The difference is that Alter Time discovers from a different pool, one of old spells.

Note that the size of the discover pool is about the same as Glyph’s, as Alter Time can only discover Arcane spells while Glyph can discover any spell in Standard. There are slightly over 50 spells in each pool.

The main home for this card would be a Mage deck running The Forbidden Sequence. There is a reason to believe that this spell will perform better in a Quest Mage deck compared to Pocket Dimension. Pocket Dimension might be better at progressing the quest, but Alter Time does not cause us to fall behind to such an extreme extent, as the discounts can help us keep up with the opponent. Alter Time’s net mana cost is 0, while Pocket Dimension always sets us back by 4 mana.

We know that Pocket Dimension is an underwhelming performer in Quest Mage archetypes, so we suspect players will explore adding Alter Time and accepting the slightly lower blowout potential of the card post-quest completion. Quest Mage’s main issue is the pre-quest phase, so it should prioritize improving that stage of the game.

So, Alter Time belongs in a weak strategy that we will be surprised to see becoming significantly better because of one addition, while its usage with other cards in this set, such as Sindragosa, is optimistic.

Score: 2

Temporal Construct

This minion is hilariously expensive. A 7 mana 5/5 that deals 5 damage to a minion is worse than a Fireland’s Portal. The card draw effect is dependent on this damage overkilling a minion. 5 damage to a minion would be a bad spell at 3 mana, so a vanilla 5/5 that casts this spell for 7 mana looks completely unplayable.

Let us imagine that we are drawing 4 cards with Construct, which is the maximum value we can get by targeting a 1 health minion. Is a 7 mana 5/5 that draws 4 cards even good? If drawing 2 cards for 2 mana is what we consider to be acceptable, then drawing 4 cards should cost 4 mana. We are paying 3 extra mana for a 5/5 and you cannot even play the card before turn 7.

This is the best-case scenario, where we are still drastically overpaying for a card draw effect. The worst-case scenario is there is no enemy minion in play for this card to even be functional.

Great card for 2014.

Reminder that Ancient of Lore got buffed to a 7/7.

Score: 1

Faceless Enigma

The random secret pool is not big for enigma. The problem is that every secret is useful and it is unlikely that we ever want to give an opponent one of them for the privilege of choosing the better one. A 2 mana 2/2 is weak, so this minion needs to give us a clear advantage that we cannot identify with any consistency. This card makes no sense whether we are playing an aggressive deck or a control deck, and will often not give us a real choice as one of the secrets will likely be too strong for the opponent to have.

Score: 1

Anomalize

There are four issues with this spell that make it unworthy of constructed play.

Random 10-drops, when shrunk into the size of a 1-drop, are usually weak. Over half the possible 10-drops would offer nothing special at a minimized size and can get dealt with easily.

Second, 10-drops are mostly undersized minions with important abilities or keywords, which means those 1-drops would get buffed to an unimpressive size.

Third, turn 7 is when most late-game-oriented decks can deal with large threats at an increased consistency. Remember our rule for big decks (they must cheat on turns 5-6, 7 is too late). This applies here, too. A pile of stats on turn 7 does not make the cut.

Four, Anomalize does not fit any specific game plan. It is just a pile of stats that has no synergy with any of the things Mage may want to do. It is not a big spell worth building around. It is not a top end threat for anything. It just feels like a filler card, there to make up the numbers. We will treat it as such.

Score: 1

Timelooper Toki

Our call for the very worst legendary in the set. If Toki is ever constructed-worthy, it means we have nerfed over 200 cards in Standard. A 4 mana 4/4 that generates 4 random spells with just about the biggest pool possible, with a completely unpredictable set of costs. There are significantly better value generation tools available to the class, including Alter Time in this very set. It is incredible that these two cards were printed in the same set, for the same class.

The amount of mana we need to spend on a 4/4 body, as well as the random garbage we generate, just to get another 4 mana 4/4, is mind boggling. Notice how none of the cards involved are likely to get us ahead. This is just about the worst source of infinite value we have ever seen. How did this thing even get out? We would not even consider Toki to be a good card if it were a 2 mana 2/2. Shockingly bad and a waste of a fun character.

Score: 1

Azure Queen Sindragosa

This fabled legendary possesses some of the worst individual pieces of any fabled card. It is the only fabled legendary in which all three cards are completely useless by themselves.

Sindragosa is a 5 mana 2/8 that does nothing if there is no other dragon in play. This requires us to develop dragons in the early game, which contradicts what we may want to do with Azure Oathstone later, while hoping these dragons stick to the board. Alternatively, we can copy Sindragosa with an Elise location or “Buy One, Get One Freeze” to enable some sort of swing turn through Arcane spells.

Shockingly, Malygos is even worse. It possesses no discount ability but repeats Arcane spells when another dragon is in play. This is even less likely to occur throughout the game because we need another dragon in play and we also need additional mana to spend on spells to double them up.

Azure Oathstone is only useful if we have had multiple dragons die. It is the final piece that makes sense of Sindragosa and Malygos, turning them into late game combo pieces. If we resurrect them together, they activate each other. We get to discount Arcane spells while also doubling them up.

With Stellar Balance, we can generate multiple Moonfires for free and cast them on the Azure Oathstone turn alongside Arcane Barrage or additional spell damage. The issue is that Stellar Balance also generates the expensive Starfires, which are not playable with one Sindragosa in play.

If we copy Sindragosa twice and summon three copies with Azure Oathstone, we can cast Starfire for free. At this point, a single Stellar Balance can deal 32 damage to the opponent with no additional spell damage. Every point of spell damage adds 8 damage to the combo. Considering we have Arcane Barrage, Algeth’ar Instructor and Go with the Flow available, we can increase this damage potential to absurd levels.

This fabled legendary is a win condition with undeniable late game lethality, one that can kill the biggest life/armor stacking decks you can think of, but the execution of this combo is extremely difficult in terms of time and resources.

We need to spend mana on multiple useless dragons. We may need to run a greedy Elise curve. We need to play Watercolor Artist to discount ‘Buy One, Get One Freeze’, which means we cannot play Mage’s best anti-aggro card in Seabreeze Chalice.

This deck screams vulnerability to aggression while its late game clock may not be faster than Protoss Mage. Ultimately, this package was likely balanced to be intentionally bad for play pattern reasons. Because if this deck is ever good, it will step on a red line that Team 5 seems to have defined in recent years.

Score: 1

Final Thoughts

Across the Timeways Set Rank: 11th

Overall Power Ranking: 11th

Mage was already a class struggling for relevance and begging for a well-rounded set, both for the short term and to address potential issues it will face with rotation, when things look particularly bleak.

Instead, Mage got what we believe is the worst set of this expansion, one that deserves some criticism. This criticism does not come just from evaluating its power, but also its play patterns. Mage is ultimately doomed for the next 4 months, regardless of how it performs in the first two weeks of the expansion. We will explain why.

Dragon Mage is an archetype that is built to blow out opponents and OTK them. There is nothing else this deck can realistically accomplish. The individual cards in the fabled legendary are so weak that there is nothing else to do with them.

Mage will try to tutor “Buy One, Get One Freeze” with Watercolor Artist on turn 3, then find Sindragosa and execute a blow-out turn in the mid-game with the hope of stabilizing against aggressive decks that way. The requirements to execute this, when it comes to consistency and deckbuilding sacrifices, are steep.

The most likely outcome is that this deck will be completely unplayable because it will die to minions being played on curve. The fail rate of its only good play will be too high to make up for it. But let’s say we are terribly wrong and this deck becomes competitive, powerful and popular?

This deck will be nuked on sight. We believe Team 5 made this deck intentionally bad because its play patterns are extremely harsh. An OTK deck that can deal 100 damage in the late game, with an APM blow-out turn as early as turn 5-6 is not something that can survive under Team 5’s current philosophy. So even if Dragon Mage ends up being good, it will be deleted shortly after.

And what will Mage have left? Nothing. One new card (Alter Time) for its Quest Mage archetypes and a bunch of disconnected garbage. Nearly half of this set feels like it was thrown in the last second to make up the numbers. We would not be surprised if we heard that this set was completely chopped during development. Frankly, we would be distraught if it were not and this was the plan all along.

What is Mage going to do for 4 months? Play Elementals? We will see you in March, Jaina.