Has Tourist access to: Paladin
Cards can be played by: Druid
Seabreeze Chalice
This spell offers three instances of damage in a single card, which is quite important in the context of Sif, as each Drink gets separately boosted by spell damage. While Seabreeze Chalice hits random enemies, it’s guaranteed to hit face if the board is clear. The damage potential is high even if we assume some enemy minions will soak damage in our combo turn. A Sif/copy play turns Seabreeze Chalice into the perfect follow-up.
In Druid, its potential is even higher, as Concierge can discount Chalice to 0-mana, meaning that all the Druid needs to focus on is copying Chalice with Bottomless Toychest and Tidepool Pupil, as well as boosting it with spell damage through Magical Dollhouse, Go with the Flow, and Chia Drake. The damage potential is extremely high even without Owlonius in the picture.
What’s nice about Chalice is that it’s a Frost spell, so we can use a single Drink for cheap in the early game to up our spell school count in Mage and keep other charges for our combo turn. Could be a difference maker that boosts Rainbow Mage, while elevating Boomkin Druid into a serious competitor.
Score: 4
Marooned Archmage
While this 3-drop offers a persistent effect, we can’t expect it to ever survive until the next turn, so it essentially discounts one of our spells by 2 mana, provided we haven’t played one yet. If we take the discount into account, it means we’re paying 1 net mana for a 3/3, which isn’t bad, but doesn’t particularly excite us either.
Our biggest issue with Archmage is that it doesn’t enable a swing turn or allow us to cheat out a spell earlier than we normally can. It’s most suitable for an aggressive deck that plays cheap spells and wants to frontload pressure, but such a deck is hard to find. Slower decks are not going to be interested in it.
Score: 1
Tide Pools
A location that offers a value engine for spell heavy decks. Some players may wonder why this card would ever be better than Infinitize the Maxitude. The big difference is that whatever spell we discover with Tide Pools can be played on the same turn, which allows us to unlock the location and discover another spell. Tide Pools is a much faster value engine compared to Infinitize and can impact the board on the turn it’s played.
Tide Pools seems like an ideal fit in Spell Mage, which should always have a spell to unlock it with, making it quickly provide extra card advantage for the deck. The 3-mana cost is a critical breakpoint for Manufacturing Error. Ramp Druid should also be highly interested, as it can be considered a value payoff for ramping and an activator for Seaside Giants.
Whenever we see a location that’s easy to chain trigger in one turn, we glance over to Seaside Giant. Three durability is probably not enough to be an enabler by itself, but with Hiking Tails also available to Druid, we could have a critical mass of easily triggered locations.
Score: 3
Rising Waves
Considering that Heat Wave is a staple in Spell Mage thanks to its synergy with Manufacturing Error, it’s hard to see the archetype passing on this card. Rising Waves provides a baseline AOE effect that’s reasonable for 3 mana, with major upside if the minions in play are bigger and do not die to 2 damage. Dealing 4 damage to all minions for 3 mana is very powerful. Remember that Spell Mage doesn’t develop a lot of minions, so a symmetrical AOE effect should have relatively little downside.
The ramifications for Druid could be even more profound, as the class normally doesn’t have access to AOE, so will often take what it can get. With Rising Waves, Druid suddenly has an early game board clear that can save its skin in aggressive matchups. That’s big.
Score: 3
Surfalopod
For this minion to get significant value that makes up for its mediocre body, our deck needs to be curated with high value spells that are not reliant on targeting. A good example is Tsunami. But for that to happen, we need to lean completely into a Big-Spell deck, as a cheap spell drawn after Surfalopod would be game losing.
And therein lies the internal contradiction of the card. If our deck is curated with big spells alone, it means that we don’t have a lot of spells in the deck. This means that it could take a long time after playing Surfalopod that we draw a spell that’s cast for free. This makes the card’s swing potential unreliable, as there is no certainty that it will be able to impact the game in time, especially in faster matchups.
Score: 1
Under the Sea
This spell would fit into the same deck that plays Surfalopod, offering a strong target for the 5-drop, but has a more reliable impact on the game. It reminds us of Spiteful Summoner, which comes with a 4/4 body on top of the effect, without drawing the spell.
If we’re solely interested in stats in play, then Spiteful Summoner is the superior card. That doesn’t give us a lot of confidence that the new iteration of Big-Spell Mage can work, when the archetype has enjoyed stronger support in the past to make it competitively viable (Balinda Stonehearth/Barbaric Sorceress were the enablers of the most recent iteration).
It’s possible that with a lower power format, Under the Sea could make some noise, but we wouldn’t bet on it making it in Perils of Paradise. This expansion is strong.
Score: 1
Go with the Flow
A 1-mana spell that freezes is not good enough to be in a constructed deck, so it’s about whether the versatility of Go with the Flow makes up for it. Mage isn’t interested in buffing minions with spell damage, unless they win the game (Sif).
However, Druid is much more attracted to this card, as it’s a spell damage booster that can cost 0-mana with Concierge. With extra copy effects, we can build our own Malygos on top of a 3-mana Concierge, add Chia Drake and Magical Dollhouse to the mix, and nuke opponents with Seabreeze Chalice.
That’s the beauty of this expansion. This card would be unplayable, possibly one of the worst freeze effects ever, in a normal expansion. But we don’t live in a normal world. We live in Concierge’s world.
Score: 3
Tsunami
A high value spell that can potentially deal a lot of damage if the board is clear. Reminds us of Nagrand Slam, another famous ‘Mage’ card back in the day. There are two obvious applications for Tsunami.
The first is a Big-Spell Mage deck. This is one of the best spells to cheat out as it’s not target reliant and represents a lot of reliable value. We don’t think this card is fast enough for Spell Mage, considering it has struggled to fit in Yogg in the Box and has seen the most success with a low, burn-focused curve.
The second is Ramp Druid utilizing Mistah Vistah, where it can act as a devastating follow-up to the Druid Tourist. The ramping potential in Druid makes expensive cards far more playable in the class. One of those cards that’s better for the Tourist class rather than the original.
Score: 3
King Tide
King Tide is a Big-Spell enabler that has some subtle disruption potential. As a 4 mana 4/4, it’s obviously not a very strong play, but it allows us to play an expensive spell on turn 5. King Tide into Tsunami or Sunset Volley sounds enticing. It can also, under certain circumstances, enable a mid-game blowout with Sea Shanty, as it sets its cost to 5 before taking further discounts into account.
But what’s interesting about the card is that most decks carry cheap spells, so unless you’re running high value, expensive spells yourself, King Tide can significantly slow you down. For a deck like Spell Mage or Excavate Rogue, facing a turn 4 King Tide is akin to a Loatheb.
Of course, King Tide is mostly a Big-Spell enabler. You won’t be running the card unless you can take advantage of its ability yourself. In some matchups, it can backfire too.
Score: 2
Raylla, Sand Sculptor
Raylla is a Violet Teacher that summons extremely powerful tokens. Random 2-cost minions with Divine Shield are sticky threats that should be very difficult to clear. The synergy in the Mage class is obvious, as it is blessed with a plethora of cheap spells that can fuel Raylla, giving Mage a way to execute a powerful swing turn. We think Raylla can serve as a great win condition in faster matchups, as aggressive decks are ill-equipped to deal with the board she can spawn. It is a great standalone card.
When it comes to access to the Paladin set, Raylla has great synergy with Divine Brew and Lifesaving Aura. Together with Concierge, there is an enticing package that could spawn a board-centric Mage deck with Sea Shanty.
Score: 3
Final Thoughts
Perils in Paradise Set Rank: 7th
Tourist Synergy Score: B
Overall Power Ranking: 9th
Mage’s prospects going into Perils in Paradise don’t look too bad. There are multiple paths for Mage to reinvent its existing strategies or create new competitive strategies.
We do have some concerns when it comes to power level and how Mage might line up into the upcoming format. We expect to see a lot of late game lethality and burst damage. Some classes are going to have very short clocks before being able to kill opponents. In comparison, Rainbow Mage is a relatively slower deck that may find itself outpaced by the incoming surge. To keep up the pace, it may have to successfully incorporate a discount engine through Concierge/Service Ace.
Spell Mage does have a decent amount of burn, but it’s not a deck we think can handle such an injection of power. It might be able to deal with aggressive decks better thanks to Rising Waves, but it could be outclassed by over-the-top burst. Furthermore, both Rainbow and Spell Mage struggle facing ramp decks, yet Warrior and Druid might become the two of the most powerful classes in the format.
Big-Spell Mage looks very underwhelming. We would be very surprised to see this deck succeed by having its first power spike in the game on turn 6, in which it will play a weaker version of Spiteful Summoner.
Our greatest hopes for a new strategy in the class are focused on Drunk Mage. This potential new archetype leverages Concierge discounting Divine Brew and Sunscreens, to summon a huge board as early as turn 5 thanks to Sea Shanty. However, this archetype will have little off-board damage in its toolkit, so we’ll have to see whether it can execute its blowout turns consistently and early enough to get under decks with more late game lethality and/or mass removal.
On paper, Mage looks like a lot of fun. We just need to see whether there’s enough power behind the fun.
