Hearthpwn

So seeing that secrets mage is pretty much the op of the meta right now. I decided to take a crack at making my own list. thanks to whoever invented secrets mage, I legitimately don't know who invented it, and am far to lazy to find out.

So what's the point of this dumb fucking deck everyone has their own super special build for. Well in general it's to just fuck with your opponents tempo until they fucking die of a rage induced stroke. And my list takes that concept to the ultimate insanity level. so the first thing you will notice when browsing this list is that it is super secret heavy, and includes the addition of kabal lackey's (a choice I have noticed is not made as often as it should be). Kabal lackey while being a shit tier minion is just great tempo swings. You can literally turn 1, do 4 mana worth of plays. It's a massive swing in tempo, and if you have a turn three Kirin tor with another secret...omg fucking forget it, you 6 mana ahead of your opponent on plays. So obviously Kirin tor, kabal and secrets are really good to keep in an opening hand, cause free tempo.

Now one thing you wanna know going into playing this deck is hearthstones stupid, totally not ripped off First in First out system. Now this is the way the game processes redundant triggers, such as spellbender and counterspell. If you play spell bender first, then play counter spell, when your opponent plays a targeted spell, spell bender will trigger first, then counterspell will trigger. So if you do this combo on a spiked steed play, you kinda fucked yourself. So try to not overlap your secrets if you can help it.

+50 upvotes I will do a mulligan guide

+100 stupid green fucking plus signs will get a general guide going to.

Go fourth and shut down all the other peasant tier decks, cause secret mage is queen. all hail jaina, may she reign for 1000 years.

Mulligan Guide

Awesome up to 50 already! never ceases to surprise me how quickly I gotta do these things. So I am gonna go ahead and do this a lot like my shaman mulligan guide, where I will go ahead and break down every card you may wanna keep.

Babbling Book There's really no good reason to not keep this card against any matchup (except maybe priest because northshire). I would almost always keep unless i needed to dig for a secret to justify a lackey keep.

Kabal Lackey Shit tier one drop, but generates 3 free mana, if you can pair it with a complementary secret for your matchup, I would keep this almost everytime.

Mana Wyrm On the coin or against aggro match ups, this little bugger can really be a life saver when you pair its weak ass with well placed frostbolts and such, Does die to pretty much everything in the fucking game though, so...Idk depends on the match up really and if you can really do anything with it. Overall though, if nothing better comes to hand, it's a keeper.

Arcanalogist I feel like I shouldn't have to tell you this is a keep, but just incase you are the type of person that likes to be in an echo chamber THIS IS A FUCKING KEEP

Frostbolt Definitely a keep against most aggro decks, try to save it for frothing beserkers against pirate warriors, cause fuck that card, like seriously just fuck that card. Can we get that card moved to wild?

Medivh's Vallet If you can get this guy paired with a kabal lackey, and a good secret for your match up as a starting hand, well that is an amazing starting hand. you basically go 3 free mana turn one and a free frost bolt the next turn, huge swings are obviously good.

Arcane IntellectDesperation keep, or something to pair with a mana wyrm when you are on the coin, it has its times and places where it is a great keep, and other times where it is just taking up space that could be better used. Keep at your own risk.

Kirin Tor MageAnother semi decent desperation keep, and it's a better keep against control decks, especially when paired with a counter spell.

Counter spell good to keep when paired with a lackey or a kirin tor, when facing hunter, priest, and paladin

Mana Bind good keeper against mirror match (free counter spells, or iceblocks or infinite mana bind dead lock), try to not play into the coin with it

Mirror Entity good keeper with lackey or kirin tor, when facing aggro, better for capturing late game minions though when facing control

Spellbender Really only here to increase the winrate against control and paladin so...probably don't keep it. I mean you can, it's probably the worst keep though.

Please feel free to ask follow up questions about mulligans below, and I will try to get around to them.

Faq section

So before I get into this, I have not forgotten about the general guide. I also normally do my FAQ section at the end of a write up, just as a way to let off steam. There have been so many questions in the starting days of this deck though, I have to just kinda dive in, not unlike assisting a cow during birth (too be fair though, some of the dumb questions here smell worse than cow birth).

Q. Why are you not playing Primordial glyph, it's the best card in the entirety of mage?

A. Primordial Glyph is absolutely an amazing options generator, in almost the same way that kabal courier is a fucking "amazing" options generator. here's my point. When you play primordial glyph you are making a two mana play, to get another play at -2 mana, usually at a later turn. This is awesome when you get a 4 mana blizzard, other good removal, or just useful options in your discovery pile. There can be no doubting that the card has literally infinite potential and value. Now pay attention to that word infinite. Along with that infinite potential comes the potential for absolutely nothing of value. If you play that card and have a choice between forbidden flame, freezing potion, and mirror image, that card didnt really do a lot of good for you now did it? How many time have you played this card, and taken another glyph to try and get a better roll? like legitamately how many times? If you have done this more than lets say 5 times in your hearthstone career, you know this card is like richard pryor on fire, it might boost your career or it might just make you a laughing stock for the next 2 decades.

Q. Why are you not running firelands portal? it's the best tempo card in secrets mage.

A. Well for one I think well timed secrets are actually the best tempo cards in secrets mage, but hey what the fuck do i know. That being said here is my thing with firelands portal. You could reasonably remove the two ethreals, to go ahead and put in firelands portals, and in this deck they would more or less serve similar purposes, guaranteed 5 damage and a body to boot. When I am given a choice between two cards that do roughly the same thing in my opinion, I will always chose the cheaper one. In my build I like the arcanists and do not like relying on a firelands, so that was really the logic there. Feel free to do your own thing, that's one you

Q. This deck sucks, I can't beat (insert a class)

A. There is a reason secret mage is one of the most successful deck at legend ranks. It is because the deck requires an insane amount of thought and energy put into each play. Trying to anticipate what your opponent is gonna do, and finding a way to out race them either on the board or in the damage department. That being said, playing secret mage is not as easy as picking up disco warlock, where you can just throw out minions and expect to get traction 50 percent of the time. You will be required to use some finesse. That being said here are a few examples. Turn three against a hunter play a counter spell to fuck their companion, if it doesnt work there it will still eat an unleash the hounds or kill command later. Against token druid an even earlier counter spell will prevent their early game buff, then just removing their threats rapidly should do the rest. Against the mirror match if you are on the coin, keep the coin as long as possible to eat a counter spell, and play your weaker mininos first to eat the mirror entities. Against pirate warrior its relatively safe to ignore counter spells for mirror entities, and a mirror entity on turn three might just get you a frothing beserker they gotta deal with or die.

General Guide

As a change of pace for me, we are gonna do the general guide in parts. Since secrets mage is a very complex deck (yes you can play it with no skill, but not half as well as even a mediocre player), we're gonna be delving into more playstyle philosophy.

Active and Passive Threats

In hearthstone, as in any game of strategy (yes luck is involved too, shut the fuck up!); you have two types of threats. The first type of threat we need to discuss is passive threats. Northshire cleric, is one of my favorite examples of a passive threat. Northshire cleric has the potential to generate insane amounts of card draw, and can go completely unanswered for quite awhile. This may make her seem like an active threat; but she is in fact a passive threat. Here's why. When playing this deck, you have a lot of minion that you can play that are low atk, and this would present a northshire cleric with the ability to become an active threat. The reason she is only a passive threat though, is because no one is forcing you to play that babbling book turn one, or that mana wyrm. Without something to bang her head on, she can kill you in 30 turns, beyond that, fuck her she is nothing. And wasting resources on her, that should be reserved for active threats can be the undoing of any player.

Active threats are a little different, active threats are cards that will end a game for you if they are not dealt with in 2-3 turns. Frothing berserker is a good example of a card that can be mistaken as a passive threat, when it is in fact an active threat. Frothing is obnoxious because it follows a similar concept as northshire, where you will think you are safe if it can't bang it's head or watch other minions bang their heads. This would be infinitely true if it didn't come in the warrior class, which gives you a lot of ways to bang your head against the wall. meaning that a frothing is almost always going to at some point be a very active threat. If playing against a control warrior they have at least 4 cards in the deck to get him hyped, and when playing against pirate you don't have the luxury of not playing minions.

So why am I berating you, my beautiful readers, with all this seemingly useless information? Well for one it's not fucking useless! maybe lose that judgmental streak and you might learn something. Two because it's going to be a core concept of the following guide. There is also the component where this information is very useful no matter what deck you are playing. Have you ever found yourself ignoring something your opponent did, because you were sure you could just end the game on auto pilot? Yeah I bet you found yourself caught in a fucking nexus of pain and frustration when you first got one shot by a humongous razorleaf, because you didn't ask yourself whether or not that play was an active or passive fucking threat. Then you stopped playing hearthstone for 2 days, cried into a pillow and masturbated to unspeakably perverse porn, before showing up late to your job 3 days later, only to spend three hours in the bathroom at work, playing hearthstone, not making the same fucking dumb mistake twice. If you apply this concept to every game, you can prevent yourself from making that peasant grade mistake, even the first time you see a new combo.

Special thanks

Special thanks to all the community support for my original guides to come back. After seeing an immense out pouring of support from the community, my followers, and just people who seemed concerned the old guides are coming back and new guides will be coming sooner or later. To all the people who are not fans of mine, my best advice is to ignore me. If my content is so low quality, then why are you even here commenting? Anyways thanks again for the support

Ramps, lamps, and camps

Recently discovered I could kick this decks ass with ramp druid, check it out if ramp druid is something you miss!

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/845650-69-wr-butthurt-druid