Hearthpwn

Freeze Mage Variations : By Ice Be Stalled !

Hello ! As a Freeze Mage player, I wanted to summarize all the versions of this deck (at least the ones I know), for both newcomers and players who want to try something different.  Most of them are well-known lists, but there are also some from my imagination. 

I have gathered them in 4 types : Competitive, Combo, Alternative and Fun.

Before I show you the decks I'll just tell a very few words about what the classic Freeze Mage is made of and how to play it.

Freeze Mage : Deck Autopsy

This little introduction is just here to give you an idea of how the deck is built, for you to understand its spirit. No explanation here (as it will be done in the next part, "Game Strategy"), but just an autopsy of the deck, sorting and counting the cards depending on their role, which allows to understand the way to play it !

I would describe the Freeze mage style as a 3 steps deck : You draw, you hold on... and BOOM, you explode !

1st step : Draw (7 cards)

1x Bloodmage Thalnos
2x Mad Scientist
2x Arcane Intellect
2x Acolyte of Pain

2nd step : Survival & Removal (12 cards)

2x Doomsayer
2x Frost Nova
2x Ice Barrier
2x Ice Block
2x Blizzard
2x Medivh's Valet

3rd step : Burst (9 cards)

2x Ice Lance
2x Frostbolt
2x Fireball
1x Emperor Thaurissan
1x Archmage Antonidas
1x Alexstrasza

Modular (2 cards)

2x Primordial Glyph

This card distribution gives you a clear overview  of the the gameplan. It clearly shows the perfect balance between protecting yourself, having enough recycling cards to be fast and finishing your opponent in 2 turns !

Now, let's see quickly the strategy.

Game Strategy

Mulligan :

Always keep the draw cards as Mad Scientist (both of them), Arcane Intellect (only one) and Acolyte of Pain (only one). You should keep Primordial Glyph and let it give you a solution for your situation. If you have Mad Scientist, you should keep Medivh's Valet. Against aggressive decks, it is fine to keep one Frostbolt to trade early bothering minion. Even Doomsayer played very early in the game is fine.

A typical nice hand to start with :

Early game : 

Here you really want to slow down the game and draw as much as you can. It's generally fine to play The Coin if you have 2 T2 in hand, however, against Warrior, Rogue or Priest you should keep it to play something more interesting later (for instance get a free Fireball from Archmage Antonidas).
The best thing you can do is to take a "board advantage" with Mad Scientist, Loot Hoarder, Acolyte of Pain (Explosive Sheep if you play it) to trade ennemy minions and contest anoying T2 as explained in the mulligan section. You should NEVER go face with your minion if there is enemy presence on board, because your cancerous opponent will always draw a weapon or spell to trade your minion and save theirs. So, always sacrifice your early game minion in order to save your precious Frostbolt. This is where your board advantage stop ! From now on, we talk about board control !
Medivh's Valet and Primordial Glyph will help you maintain board control in early and midgame.

Mid game :

Now, you want to stall the game. Use your combo Frost Nova or Blizzard + Doomsayer and your Flamestrike to get some time untill the late game. If you have a lot of burst spell (Fireballl, Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Pyroblast and even Alexstrasza) in hand, try to find some room to play Emperor Thaurissan, else keep him untill you get great value on your main late-game cards.

Late game :

Once you have stabilized the game and have all the cards in hand, you want to finish your opponent in 2 turns. Basically Alexstrasza on turn 9 and double Fireball + Frostbolt T10. It doesn't work as planned every game of course, so sometimes you will have to find other solutions to win, and use Archmage Antonidas to get the burst needed. One good combo is to use Archmage Antonidas + Frostbolt + Ice Lance. Sometimes it's enough to just convert one Ice Lance (and just use it to block a big minion) into a Fireball if you already have some burst in hand. If you are under pressure and need time and burst, Archmage Antonidas + Frost Nova is really great.

Sometimes Alexstrasza in not even necessary :

But it's not really common ^^

Side note : Against Priest, never use Alexstrasza before you have enought burst to finish your opponent in one or two turns ! Else he will slowly regain health with his hero power and you could be limited in damage to finish him !

/!\ Some tips /!\ :

- About board cleaning : you don't have unlimited ressources to clean the board and sometimes even if you can clean it, it's better to wait a bit to get full value of your combo (Frost Nova + Doomsayer). One feature of this deck is that you sometimes have to accept to take damages. You have 2 Ice Barrier and 2 Ice Block to give you time. So, it's better sometimes to take 6-8 damages on turn 6 while you have your board cleaning in hand and wait for the next turn to destroy another big threat (T7 Dr Balance coming at the right moment for example). 

There are few tricks with the Doomsayer :
- Against tempo mage, their secret are 90% of the time Mirror Entity. So just wait for the right time to have a free Doomsayer without even having to use a Frost Nova or Blizzard.
- Against Zoo, let him fill his board with crap minions, and don't hesitate to ping the Imp Gang Boss to block his side with 7 minions. Then play your combo and he won't be able to deal with it cause he cannot silence it.
- With Sylvanas Windrunner on your opponent's side, and if you're under pressure, it's sometimes fine to put the Doomsayer on board and Fireball on Sylvanas Windrunner who will take it and activate it at the beginning of your opponent's turn.
- Be carefull with the Boom Bot ! The Doomsayer effect will trigger at the beginning of YOUR turn, which means that your Ice Block is uneffective and if you are low PV, you could just kill yourself ! (the same with Leper Gnome)

- Acolyte of Pain is a false T3. You actually want to drop it on T5, to ping his face and draw at least 2 cards thanks to him. Nevertheless, against the most aggressive decks which already have 3 creatures on board on turn 3, don't hesitate to put it to bait a weapon attack and then save 3 or 4 precious HP.

- Antique Healbot can be played on T5. You don't have to wait to be low HP like you would do as a Handlock for example (Handlocks needs to be low HP, you just need time). Furthermore, it's still a small board presence to make some trades.


Depending on what you face the most, you have a lot of tech cards  :
- More draw with 2nd Loot Hoarder or Novice Engineer
- Explosive Sheep, very effective against aggro but totaly useless against control.
- One extra freezing card to stall the game such as Cone of Cold which can give you precious time and which is another combo with Doomsayer in case you don't have Frost Nova.
- Flamestrike is sometimes good, sometimes too slow if you drop it in the mulligan.
- The new Forgotten Torch can be really nice because it gives you a free removal in early game and put a cheap Fireball in your deck, so it's a 2in1 card which is good.

Bonus

The kind of hand you can have when you really controlled the game and played with your opponent ! ^^

 

So, here are the lists !!!

Freeze Mage Variation Lists

[Classic]

In the standard format, Freeze Mages lose only one card, but a very important one : Mad Scientist. Still, this archetype is not dead, far from it. The meta is right now very slow, and the loss of tempo due to the Mad Scientist absence is not so critical. Basically, those mad guys have been replaced by more draw, with the 2x Novice Engineer. The current version favors the Forgotten Torch instead of Archmage Antonidas, because the burst damage should be enough, except against Warriors, but this is not new !

I added a personnal new version : "Northern Exposure". Nothing crazy with this one compared with the "Standard" one, only minor modifications which make it better in my opinion. I replaced both Novice Engineer with Cone of Cold and one Ice Barrier by another Acolyte of Pain.
Why ? Because Novice Engineer is only here to recycle your cards, the 1/1 body is pretty much useless, and I've been in situation where I would have liked to get more time in mid/late-game, which Cone of Cold gives you. Plus, as I already said, this is another activator for the Freeze + Doomsayer combo. Finally, these is our draw cards in this version : 2x Loot Hoarder, 2x Arcane Intellect, 2 Acolyte of Pain, Bloodmage Thalnos, which should be enough !
About Ice Barrier swap, I think that without Mad Scientist, having two of them is just too slow.

Then, the aggro archetype born with Karazhan has apparently given good results ! The objective is the same, but now you only rely on your burst spells and small minions to deal damage quicker, no more Alexstrasza ! I said quicker, because you also have more card draw, with the addition of Coldlight Oracle + 2x Acolyte of Pain + 2x Loot Hoarder. So, hope for Mana Wyrm + Mana Wyrm + The Coin on turn 1, and GG !

[Competitive]

 

These are the different version of the classic Freeze Mage, which, once mastered, are really efficient. Depending on what you face the most you have to make some choice on tech cards.

The Anti-Aggro list includes an Explosive Sheep which works so nice against Pal' and Huntard. Compared to the classic list, there is only one Acolyte of Pain (which is pretty slow), and 2 Loot Hoarder instead. Also, one Blizzard is replaced by one Cone of Cold which can be used earlier if needed to stall the mid-game.

The Torch list uses ... the Forgotten Torch ! This card was very hyped at the release of LoE and now the hype has lowered a bit, but I still think that this card is very nice because of the mid-game trade you can do without losing burst damage in the late game with the Roaring Torch. 

In addition, another list using Forgotten Torch is interesting. Besides being cheaper than the previous one thanks to the absence of Archmage Antonidas, it can be faster with all the direct damage spell (although Archmage Antonidas is a very powerful card, it's sometimes too slow). The board control is a bit less strong, without Flamestrike or Cone of Cold, but you have more chance to get your finisher in hand after Alexstrasza, (double Fireball, double Forgotten Torch or double Roaring Torch and Pyroblast) thanks to the help of 2x Loot Hoarder and 2x Acolyte of Pain. If you have difficulties against board spamming match-up, you can replace an Acolyte of Pain by a Flamestrike.

[Combo]

Malygos can be a very great addition in Freeze Mage decks. Unfortunately right now with the cancerous meta it's a bit too slow, but still I like to play it, and you're opponent never expect it. I chose 2 versions of this one.

The easier one replaces Pyroblast by Malygos. The most important card now is Emperor Thaurissan. You have to really optimize the value of its power to lower Malygos and the combo Frostbolt/Ice Lance.

The second list is the most tricky to play, but also the most satisfying ! It uses Duplicate which should only be activated on Emperor Thaurissan. Once you've managed to get 2 extra Emperor Thaurissan, you can lower the mana cost of your card so much that you can do incredible combos. No needs to say that it's hard to play, but so fun ! Note that the presented list uses two Loot Hoarder and only one Ice Barrier. I made that choice not to have too many secret in the deck, but it can be swapped. Also I think that replacing one Loot Hoarder by an Antique Healbot can be considered (to combine with Duplicate), to deal with aggressive match-ups.

Fibonacci's list uses cards like Novice Engineer and Coldlight Oracle to get the combo as soon as possible. 2 Antique Healbot will help you in combination with the freezing cards to have enough time to develop your combo.

Exodia is the ultimate HS combo ^^ ! Here you have to set four Sorcerer's Apprentice using Duplicate, Echo of Medivh and Emperor Thaurissan. Once it's done, just play Archmage Antonidas + a free spell + unlimited Fireball ! Easy to say, very hard to do !

[Alternative]

These are 3 alternatives of the freeze mage.
The EchoGiant has the exact same philosophy but as a different game style. You shoud use the Duplicate and Echo of Medivh to get the most interesting copy of creature. Depending on your situation, copying creature such as Doomsayer, Antique Healbot, Molten Giant, Emperor Thaurissan or even Explosive Sheep can lead you to unexpected situation and make you win the game !
Fatigue Freeze mage (updated Kolento's version) is imo very hard to play but offers so many possibilities with Duplicate and Echo of Medivh that it's worth a try ! There are a lot of Taunt cards because of the aggressive meta. Dupplicate in the same game a Sludge Belcher and an Antique Healbot, and your Huntard opponent will soon leave the game ! Against strong control deck, duplicate Coldlight Oracle and force your opponent to play card just to empty his hand and not be grinded ! Deathlord also help you grinding your opponent, and with the back up of Polymorph you are fine in case of a big minion coming on the board without having been invited !
Concerning the Reno Jackson deck, well nothing special to say, it's a Reno Jackson deck ! ^^

I added a new version of the Echo Giant, employing the Arcane Giant instead of the Molten Giant which, as you probably know, has been nerfed and is unusable. For those who want fun and real challenge, this deck is nothing but the best for me. The feeling is exactly the same as the old Echo Giant archetype, and for me, the Arcane Giant has even some advantages compare to the Molten Giant, the main one being that you don't have to be very low HP to play it, so it's safer. The main problem is against very aggressive deck they won't save your life. Some minions from the previous Echo Giant list have been replaced by useful spells (to combine quicker with the giants) such as Polymorph or Frostbolt. Every game is a challenge and you have to really adapt yourself to your ennemy. I won 3 game in a row against Hunter only by duplicating Antique Healbot, and even against Control Warrior, you have better chance to win than with a classic Freeze Mage if you play smartly with your Duplicate, Echo of Medivh and Arcane Giant. First they won't expect it, and then they won't have enough ressources to deal with all the giants. So, I'm not playing at high level now because I lack of time, but at least I really enjoy this list and I advise you to give it a try ! 

Some exemple among others of how to exhaust a Priest, run a Huntard out of steam or rekt a Secret Pal :

 Some gameplay of this deck  on this page :

 http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/647522-rebirth-of-the-echo-giant-freeze-mage 

[Fun]

Finally, last but not least, the fun decks !



This one are just here if you lack idea to get some fun and try something different. The Chilling Freeze is one of my creation and was focused on using all the freezing spells and some freezing minion such as Water Elemental and Snowchugger (in place of the classic draw card), to get control of the board, stall the game a bit more, and save some time !
The last one is an aggro version of the Freeze Mage, which is a bit paradoxical but can be very fun.


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So this is it. These are the variations of the Freeze Mage that exist. If you know other version, let me know and I'll update the list !

The description for each deck was very short because the purpose was just to give the list. If you'd like to get complete description, tell me and I'll try to find some time to explain it !

Bye !