The Comprehensive Reign of the Black Empire Preview

 

Coilbearer

It is important to note that this minion does not provide us with card advantage, it replaces drawing a card from our deck with a discounted, discovered card. Even if we take the discount into consideration, a discovered card is significantly worse in quality than a card from our deck, which we intentionally put in our deck to further our game plan.

A 2-mana 3/2 with an ability that can be considered a drawback, looks thoroughly unplayable. It even conflicts with what Mage wants to do, which is reducing the minion count in its deck.

Score: 1

Cosmic Springs

A location that draws 2 cards for 3 mana, which is comparable to Arcane Intellect, with the drawback of not drawing both cards immediately. Thankfully, there is plenty of room for forgiveness on this part.

What makes this location extremely powerful is its refresh effect. If the card we draw is not a minion, we refresh 2 mana. Remember that we can place this location and not click it until the right turn for us. This gives Mage a way to bank future mana for a bigger swing. Across these two location triggers, Cosmic Springs has a net negative mana cost. It gets us ahead.

The condition appears inconsistent at first glance, but Mage’s set highly encourages it to run a minion-light deck due to Discs of Norgannon and Icebelt Magi. In fact, we anticipate that some Mage decks may only run 3-4 minions this expansion. This would make Cosmic Springs remarkably consistent and 100% reliable if we played Discs.

We suspect this location will be a staple for the class going forward and a defining tool for its prospective strategies during Black Empire.

Score: 4

Astral Rain

This is a highly targeted AOE that is flexible enough to also deal with bigger threats. It cannot go face and it is asymmetrical on the opponent’s side of the board. It reminds us of Shaman’s Volcano spells, which had a better overall damage output and cleaner 1-damage shots, but were symmetrical and more expensive. Astral Rain compares well to them as a board clear and might be superior.

This spell should wipe most early-game aggressive boards on turn 4, provided it does not overkill too much. It is versatile enough to deal with a bigger minion if we need it to, while scaling extremely well with spell damage. A single spell damage buff means it deals 15 damage. That is a big upside when compared to Volcano and considering the availability of Archmage Kalec.

Mage will have minion-light decks this expansion and will need to be passive in the early game. Astral Rain offers a strong pressure reliever in faster matchups that remains useful in the late game. It is an incredible enabler of Spellweaver’s Brilliance, potentially fully discounting it by itself. Hard to see a Mage deck passing on this card.

Score: 4

Constellar’s Calling

A reincarnation of Conjurer’s Calling, this spiritual successor is even cheaper than Conjurer’s Calling before it was nerfed. Instead of destroying the minion in play, it summons a random minion with the same cost. In situations where the target minion is oversized, this effect is superior to the destruction effect. For undersized minions or deathrattles, the effect is worse. Conjurer’s Calling did have giants, but Constellar’s Calling has plenty of synergies available to it too.

Mage is not going to bother with undersized minions. Its toolkit is now filled up with cards that work perfectly well to leverage Constellar’s Calling. In this set alone, we have Thaw from Ice, Foreboding Freeze and Isiset. Other notable cards that represent strong Calling targets are Spellweaver’s Brilliance and Code Violet.

This spell makes any large minion Mage has on the board a snowballing threat. Opponents cannot ignore them easily, but sometimes they will have no say on the matter and see Mage play the target alongside Calling with no counterplay. After all, Calling only costs 2 mana and can be unlocked with a single click on Cosmic Springs.

This is a deceptively powerful card that will prove to be crucial in helping Mage turn the corner on its opponents.

Score: 4

Foreboding Freeze

To understand whether this spell produces a mana advantage, we should calculate when the minion we summon can attack. If we play this spell on turn 3, it gets to attack on turn 5, as it needs to miss an attack opportunity before it thaws. If we play a 5-drop on turn 5, it only gets to attack later, so we are spending less mana on a minion that gets to impact the board earlier.

A random 5-drop is weaker than a 5-cost minion of our choice, but there are two more upsides to consider. First, the freeze effect is not nothing. It is useful on curve and becomes progressively more impactful later in the game, when bigger minions are dropped to the board. The other consideration is Constellar’s Calling, which this spell provides a target for as early as turn 4. Summoning a random taunt or rush minion also means the random minion gets to impact the board earlier.

This is not the best card in the Mage set, but it should be a valuable tool due to its synergy with other additions to the class.

Score: 3

Astral Mediator

Random spells are significantly worse than random minions. They have random targets and are more varied in their outcomes, often doing nothing impactful. Mediator does cast two 3-cost spells, which is not a bad overall package for a 5-mana 5/4 at first glance. However, one of these spells is cast on its deathrattle, which is significantly slower to resolve. It is a weak initial body that risks falling us behind if the first 3-cost spell did not do anything special.

The worst thing about Mediator is that it is a minion with no special synergies with the rest of the set. We do not want to draw this card after playing Discs of Norgannon, especially if it blocks us from finding Icebelt Magi. It is just a randomlol filler. Almost no chance of this card seeing play when taking the rest of the set into context.

Score: 1

Thaw From Ice

Mage minions, or class minions in general, are a high-quality pool of cards. The assemble keyword means we can make them even stronger, while the repeating discount can potentially allow us to summon a large threat earlier to blow out the opponent. This discount effect has proven to be powerful in the past and makes Thaw a valued late-game contributor, rather than just an early-game cheese.

Add Constellar’s Calling to the equation and Mage can do some early-to-mid game shenanigans that swing the game against aggressive decks or put a surprising amount of pressure on slower decks. Mage will need all the useful spells it can find to establish strong minion-light shells, so Thaw is an easy inclusion that provides the class with a way to still develop board presence.

Score: 3

Icebelt Magi

This 5-drop is almost too good to be true. In the minion-light shells we have discussed before, where spells are going to be consistently drawn by Magi, this card offers an amazing total package. For 5 mana, we summon a 2/4, two Water Elementals and draw two cards. That is an absurd play that develops a threatening board while gaining us card advantage.

There are not many cards in Hearthstone’s history that were able to both get us ahead on board and help us accumulate resources. Whenever a card provides an advantage in both tension points in a Hearthstone game (Initiative and Resources), they are usually uniquely powerful and influential.

Icebelt Magi is a dominant card that is only restricted in the deckbuilding phase by a condition we want to meet regardless. It does not require a “combo” with another piece. It simply gets cast and makes it far more likely that we win the game. There is no real sacrifice on the Mage’s part.

And even if it somehow rolls low and draws a single minion, it is still above the curve for a constructed level 5-drop. One of the very best cards in this entire expansion and a catalyst for the upcoming revolution in the class.

Score: 4

Discs of Norgannon

The mother of all pseudo-tutors. Discs of Norgannon organizes our deck so that all spells are at the top and non-spells (minions, locations, weapons etc) are at the bottom. On every single turn going forward, we get to choose from which pool of cards we draw.

The reason this card is effectively a tutor is that in decks where there is a large discrepancy between the number of spells and non-spells, we can consistently draw all the cards we want from the smaller group. In a deck with very few minions, we can draw all of them relatively quickly after playing Discs.

This ability would be incredibly powerful for every class with impactful, build-around minions. Mage is blessed with those. Icebelt Magi becomes a more consistent turn 5 play, while Archmage Kalec, Jailhouse Manastorm and Isiset look far more enticing. Note that Cosmic Springs is another card that is grouped with the minions.

A turn 2 Discs of Norgannon means we should have all our win conditions drawn before the late game even starts. And if we are desperate for spells and are in no rush to find these win conditions, we can just… choose to draw spells.

The only two caveats are that Discs can get messed up by opponents shuffling stuff into our deck (which resets the order of all cards) and the spell does not directly provide card advantage. But when it indirectly tutors some of the best card draw engines in the format, that is not a real problem.

Discs of Norgannon is a deck-warping spell of the highest degree.

Score: 4

Isiset

Isiset summons two massive, intimidating minions to the board. The tricky part is that they are frozen and the only way to thaw them is to spend a whopping 15 mana on spells. This sounds like a slow play for a 6-mana 5/5, but there are several factors that make us believe it represents an immediate danger to the opponent, far more than it may initially feel.

This is thanks to two cards. The first is the Arrival of the Titans, the event card we received a couple of weeks ago. It allows us to spend 6 mana and then completely refresh our turn to spend more mana on spells. The other card is Cosmic Springs, which can refresh us 2 mana and can be dropped to the board before we play Isiset.

The other factor is that when the Constructs thaw, they can immediately attack! This is because the frozen debuff is actively removed and cancels the frozen mechanic’s “denial of an attack opportunity” debuff.

This means that if we play Isiset on turn 6, we can spend 15 mana on spells the very next turn by casting Arrival of the Titans, spending mana on other spells while clicking on a Cosmic Springs location to refresh an additional 2 mana. Alternatively, we cast both copies of Arrival of the Titans and do this easily. Both scenarios lead us to attack the opponent with two 10/10’s immediately! These scenarios on turn 7 outright lead to victory.

Another scenario is one where we play Isiset, click on Cosmic Springs and immediately cast Constellar’s Calling on one of the constructs, summoning a random 10-drop that is not frozen and can attack the next turn.

The opponent cannot ignore Isiset and that already makes the legendary incredibly high value. They must clear the Constructs, ideally before turn 7 but absolutely before turn 8, or the game is over.

Isiset is a dangerous and tutorable win condition, thanks to Discs of Norgannon, that can end games on turn 7. At the very least, it forces the opponent to scramble for removal. For a single card, it represents a warped game state that merits respect.

Score: 4

Final Thoughts

Black Empire Set Rank: 1st

Overall Power Ranking: 4th

Mage has received a game-changing, transformative set that drastically increases its chances of competing over the next 16 months. A class that was going through the motions has been injected with new ideas, on top of receiving major incentives to rejuvenate and revisit older ideas.

Mage’s major identity in this set is deck manipulation for the sake of consistency. With the introduced spell-heavy support, Mage will be building new lists that run a small number of minions, with the purpose of soft tutoring them with Discs of Norgannon. Whether it is Archmage Kalec, Isiset or Jailhouse Manastorm, Mage should find these cards far more often. And when decks find their best cards more often, they tend to get better.

Despite the class’ likely spell-heavy shell, a “Summoner Mage” archetype is brewing this expansion with a strong capability of developing board. Most notably, we have the glue card in Icebelt Magi, with the blow-out potential of Isiset and the threat density that can be created by a more consistent Jailhouse Manastorm.

And if you are into burning rather than summoning, we can find our spell-damage sources more often. A consistent Kalec with Geomancers can burst down opponents relatively quickly.

If there is one thing that makes us a bit hesitant on Mage instantly becoming one of the strongest classes, it is that it retains one significant weakness that has stayed with it since the last rotation. It lacks life/armor gain. This makes it vulnerable to being punched in the head and it might be too easy to counter this way.

Ironically, Mage might be the least likely class to utilize an Old God. But if other classes get greedy with Old Gods, it will benefit from a slower format. If it ever solves its weakness to aggression, the skies are the limit for Mage.