The Comprehensive Fractured in Alterac Valley Preview

 

Shivering Sorceress

Remember the days when a vanilla 2/2 with no text was a meta defining 1-drop? We’re now getting 2/2’s with further upside, and what an upside it is! Sorceress pays for her cost by discounting the highest cost spell in your hand (which tends to be the worst spell in your hand). We can’t see a Mage deck that runs a reasonable number of spells and passes on Sorceress, even with Refreshing Spring Water in the frame. It’s just way too good.

Score: 4

Amplified Snowflurry

This is a superb defensive 2-drop which reasonably scales into the late game. It’s essentially a freeze spell with a body, which you can store over multiple turns. Extremely flexible and likely to see play in any Mage deck that isn’t all about Incanter’s Flow. Has synergy with Wildfire, which is currently a cornerstone card of a trash deck. Tour Guide happens to be a good card in that trash deck.

Score: 4

Siphon Mana

This card is unbelievably strong when it activates. Some classes will be better at landing honorable kills than others, and we think Mage should be one of the stronger classes at activating this ability. Therefore, Siphon Mana should be extremely powerful in the Spell Mage shell. This card is so good that it probably instantly becomes a cornerstone card in Wild format as well.

Score: 4

Build a Snowman

Pyros in spell form. The bodies carry the freeze ability, so they’re much stronger than the forgotten legendary, but this is still not good enough to see constructed play. We’re not interested in this card in Quest Mage because even though it’s a frost spell that doesn’t require a minion on the board, it’s still a bad spell. The higher cost versions just seem unplayable.

Score: 1

Arcane Brilliance

Mage gets its version of Juicy Psychmelon. This card is stronger in long, drawn out matchups since you’re getting additional copies of the card. To make the best use of Arcane Brilliance, you ought to run a greedy deck full of expensive spells. We’re not sure this is worth running to copy just 1 or 2 spells, for example. Interesting, but probably fringe in its usage because Mage cannot ramp in the way Druid can.

Score: 2

Iceblood Tower

This is one hell of a card, for better or for worse. In the right deckbuilding environment, Iceblood Tower can decide games shortly after it’s played by utterly overwhelming the opponent. We wouldn’t consider running this card if not for Clumsy Courier, which finally gets a spell worth cheating out on turn 7. The problem, of course, is the kind of greedy deckbuilding that’s required to make Iceblood Tower worthwhile, since it greatly discourages us from running low-cost spells. Can we do it without dying to most aggressive decks in the format? Guess we’ll find out in a few days.

Score: 2

Mass Polymorph

We don’t think you ever run Mass Polymorph as a core card in a deck, but looking back throughout Hearthstone’s history, there are plenty of strategies that would get destroyed by this card. We’re just not sure they’d see much play in Alterac Valley. We would consider this a situational tech card that can be oppressive in those optimal situations.

Score: 2

Rune of the Archmage

Oh boy. Do we dare say that this is better than Puzzle Box? We think so because it is much more consistent. The fact it’s only targeting enemies makes this closer in power to Solarian Prime and being restricted to Mage spells increases the quality of the average random spell. The fact we can consistently cheat this out with Clumsy Courier on turn 7 makes this obscene. We believe in the RNG Gods and think this card will just straight up flip games when it’s cast. 20 mana is a lot.

Score: 4

Balinda Stonehearth

This card is painfully slow. Not only does it require us to restrict our deck to high-cost spells, but the payoff also isn’t even worthwhile. We’re getting some mana discounts that are only relevant on turn 7, and whatever size Balina grows into, she doesn’t have an immediate impact on the board and doesn’t protect us from dying. We’d very much rather draw our expensive spells with Deepwater Evokers. A truly confusing legendary that probably should have an additional keyword to be worth considering.

Score: 1

Magister Dawngrasp

Dawngrasp wins the reward for slowest hero card and the weakest one standalone. It requires you to invest a lot of mana to juice up, which means it’s unlikely to be a particularly powerful play on-curve, and considering it already costs 8 mana, that gives us some reservations about it. Add the somewhat subtle deck building restriction it enforces, and you’ve got a hero card we’re very unsure about. What saves the card is the hero power and the late game scaling. The hero power should be able to ramp up and become a late game closer, and if given enough time, Dawngrasp should become a powerful and impactful play. To its credit, it doesn’t need that many spells to be played to do so, but the question is whether we will have the time.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts

Fractured in Alterac Valley Set Rank: 5^th

Overall Power Ranking: 9^th

Mage is currently deeply behind other classes in the format. The nerf to Quest Mage was crippling, and while Mozaki Mage offers an alternative, it is still a very fragile and meta-dependent one. Minions in Mage haven’t been a thing for a long while and the class has been stuck as a one-trick pony for 8 months.

The class did get help with some very, very strong cards. Siphon Mana is an amazing boost to spell Mage decks. Shivering Sorceress seems like it belongs almost everywhere. Snowflurry is a massive survivability upgrade.

The question mark is the strategies themselves. Was this set enough? Can Quest Mage overcome the destruction of its win condition? A third of its late game power? We’re very unsure. We think Mozaki Mage has a better chance to abuse Siphon Mana and do some work, but it is a very vulnerable strategy that can blow away with the wind.

And then we have the main theme of the set: Big-Spell Mage. This deck looks fun. A lot of fun. But whether it can win games by being so greedy is a different story. Can it really fit so many high-cost cards in the deck and still live to tell the tale? Spell Mage tops the curve at 5 mana and struggles to live, so what’s going to become of a Mage deck without early game removal spells? Could we skip all the greed, focus on Wildfire and pray for Rune of the Archmage to just carry us through? Is Rune of the Archmage good or are we just assuming that “Random bulls***, go!” is always going to work in this game? Because it’s funny? Because we like to be funny?

And then there’s Magister Dawngrasp. It’s still a hero card, so it’s unlikely to be bad, but it does feel like the worst one. Worst on-curve for sure. Not guaranteed to help you survive and feels more like a late-game cannon that needs a lot of time to ramp up. Doesn’t have great synergy with Iceblood Tower or Clumsy Courier either.

We do love and rate some of the Mage cards very highly. We’re just a bit worried this class is going to get rolled over by efficiency and full throttled aggression.