First of all, I should confess that I’m an absolutely fan of the Secret Mage archetype and for that reason I’m especially concerned about the lack of “potential” of this Mage archetype.
I know that along the last several years there have been many attempts to create a truly full Secret Mage deck, one competitive enough as to reach tier 1 at least.
Despite existing other two classes with which we share the Secret mechanic, is clear that the mages are the ones that should be the masters of that mechanic (in fact we are who have more secrets and synergies with them).
In short, the Secret Mage archetype must become as strong as the archetypes that currently dominate the Meta! But… what we need to be able to do that? There is still something that avoids Secret Mages to shine over other Mage archetypes (and needless to say about other classes). What is the cause of that?
Most people say that the problem is that our secrets are not tempo friendly, is that the real issue? In that case, how to solve that? The true is that we have already many secret synergies (even the last Hearthstone Expansion is giving us new ones). We have enough secret synergies? It doesn’t seem so, because the Secret Mage archetype is not reliable by itself even with the help of all those synergies…
In my view, I have thought of several different ways to improve the Secret Mage archetype and try to make it relevant (some ways more viable than others):
1. - Choosing when our Secrets are triggered
Obviously this “solution” is the less feasible of all (mainly because technical/playability reasons). The idea would consist of allowing the mage to choose whether his secrets are revealed or not when they are triggered by the opponent. For instance, if we have played Mirror Entity, when our opponent plays a minion we might have 5 seconds to decide if we want our Mirror Entity be triggered by that minion or, on the contrary, we maintain that secret active for the next time it gets triggered.
2. - Reducing the price of our Secrets
Mage secrets are more expensive than Paladin and Hunter counterparts, and perhaps cheapening them could be an advance in that regard. For instance, having an epic minion whose text would be something like: “Battlecry: For the rest of the game, your secrets cost (1) less”.
3. - Drawing a card each time we play a Secret
Apart from reducing the cost of our secrets, we also can avoid losing Value when we play them by making that each time we play a secret we draw a card from our deck. For instance, we could put into our deck a legendary minion with the following text: “If this minion is in your deck, each time you play a secret you draw a card from your deck”.
4. - Ending the current turn when a friendly Secret is triggered
This way, at the moment a friendly secret is triggered the opponent’s turn ends immediately, giving the mage automatically extra Tempo. Perhaps this effect could be the reward from a mage quest involved into playing secrets.
According to you, what could be the “magic solution” that would allow the Secret Mage archetype to be moderately competent?
There are three core issues with secrets. 1. Most secrets have poor tempo and value when played early on. Late in the game they're usually pretty good, but not good enough to compensate. The most notable weakness is how bad every single secret is against minion-based aggro decks. 2. Many secrets are unreliable, in more ways than one. If you play a Mirror Entity you count on them playing a minion worth copying. If you play a Counterspell you count on them playing a spell worth countering (or a spell at all). Additionally a big part of the secret power budget lies in your opponent not knowing what the secret is, but that is not usually the case in practice. Finally there are many minions that rely on you having a secret up when they are played, those are generally very unreliable unless combined with exactly Ice Block, and Ice Block is a bad card for a tempo-based Secret Mage. 3. Secret-synergy cards are not good enough to compensate for the price of running the actual secrets. Consider what it took for Paladin secrets to see any play, Mysterious Challenger, one of the most broken cards in the game, and that's with Paladin secrets actually being quite good tempo for their cost. What's the best secret synergy Mage has? Medivh's Valet? That's not enough to carry a deck.
I think that what Secret Mage needs is first of all a secret that's not strictly for control like Ice Block, but that is similar in that you can expect it to stay up until the next turn. Currently there is Effigy, but I think there needs to be at least one more for better consistency, especially since Effigy is weak to Hex, Polymorph, and any aggro deck that just goes face anyway (and it's not particularly good when triggered by a 4-drop). Secondly there needs to be a 4-drop with great secret synergy, to catch up with the tempo you lose from preparing a secret on turn 3.
There are three core issues with secrets. 1. Most secrets have poor tempo and value when played early on. Late in the game they're usually pretty good, but not good enough to compensate. The most notable weakness is how bad every single secret is against minion-based aggro decks. 2. Many secrets are unreliable, in more ways than one. If you play a Mirror Entity you count on them playing a minion worth copying. If you play a Counterspell you count on them playing a spell worth countering (or a spell at all). Additionally a big part of the secret power budget lies in your opponent not knowing what the secret is, but that is not usually the case in practice. Finally there are many minions that rely on you having a secret up when they are played, those are generally very unreliable unless combined with exactly Ice Block, and Ice Block is a bad card for a tempo-based Secret Mage. 3. Secret-synergy cards are not good enough to compensate for the price of running the actual secrets. Consider what it took for Paladin secrets to see any play, Mysterious Challenger, one of the most broken cards in the game, and that's with Paladin secrets actually being quite good tempo for their cost. What's the best secret synergy Mage has? Medivh's Valet? That's not enough to carry a deck.
This is a great explanation as to WHY Secret Mage isn't the most viable archetype. However, I feel, if I had the ability to pick and choose WHEN my secrets went off, I believe that it would make the archetype, as well as secrets in general, overall better.
There are three core issues with secrets. 1. Most secrets have poor tempo and value when played early on. Late in the game they're usually pretty good, but not good enough to compensate. The most notable weakness is how bad every single secret is against minion-based aggro decks. 2. Many secrets are unreliable, in more ways than one. If you play a Mirror Entity you count on them playing a minion worth copying. If you play a Counterspell you count on them playing a spell worth countering (or a spell at all). Additionally a big part of the secret power budget lies in your opponent not knowing what the secret is, but that is not usually the case in practice. Finally there are many minions that rely on you having a secret up when they are played, those are generally very unreliable unless combined with exactly Ice Block, and Ice Block is a bad card for a tempo-based Secret Mage. 3. Secret-synergy cards are not good enough to compensate for the price of running the actual secrets. Consider what it took for Paladin secrets to see any play, Mysterious Challenger, one of the most broken cards in the game, and that's with Paladin secrets actually being quite good tempo for their cost. What's the best secret synergy Mage has? Medivh's Valet? That's not enough to carry a deck.
This is a great explanation as to WHY Secret Mage isn't the most viable archetype. However, I feel, if I had the ability to pick and choose WHEN my secrets went off, I believe that it would make the archetype, as well as secrets in general, overall better.
However, it would also be very overpowered unless you had to pay a mana price when it went off on the next turn. Because now, theres no playing around it, so its kinda insane. I mean; if Counterspell, for example, was choosable on the trigger heres what would happen in, for say, a matchup back in WOTOG meta
Hunter; Cast hunter's mark to check (turn 10). U just ignore it. COTW: Bye COTW. 3x the value made because you get to choose whether or not it triggers then.
Druid: Ramp. turn 10. U have Mirror Entity on. Acolyte of pain: ignore. Ancient of War: Trigger. bam. value.
Secrets at that point make it so u automatically win on any tradeoff above 3. Effigy on that Valet... or save it for lets say, Antonidas. bam, 7 mana minion for 3. that's what would happen, and Secret Mage would literally be Tier S; above any fictional variation of Tier 1 because nothing except decks of 1 and 2 cost creatures and spells would be able to stand, so Zoolock would win unless you got flamestrike, volc potions, arcane explosions, whatever. Aggro pally the same way; or you'd win against everything else. It would be rock paper scissors where the secret mage is rock and scissors, and only occasionally do you see paper beat rock.
I'm aware that my 4 "suggestions" are not feasible (perhaps the suggestion number 2 is the only one that could be doable in my view) and for that reason I wanted to hear your suggestions, ideas or whatever for making the Secret Mage archetype a thing.
If my suggestions/ideas are obviously too op, what are yours?
This morning I was wondering where the problem with the Secret Mage archetype could be… and honestly, there are only two possible reasons:
The Secrets themselves: because they are so predictable (and thus avoidable), too expensive, too much tempo unfriendly or because other reasons… In this case I have no more suggestions/ideas to solve it (aside from my previously four OP ones :S).
Their synergies: because perhaps we need more minions/spells with powerful and innovative synergies with secrets in order to make the Secret Mage archetype viable. In this case, what would be those “innovative synergies”?
In addition, if our opponents are moderately intelligent, they will try to thwart our secrets by playing “rubbish cards” before their good ones. Our opponents surely cannot know what secrets we are playing but they can make suppositions and play according to them.
To try to fight against that and to create more confusion and increase the doubts of our opponents perhaps we should be able to put in play the same secret more than once, or perhaps there is another solution...
I have thought about a new Secret that could allow creating more confusion to our opponents, trying to thwart their attempts to thwart (forgive the redundancy) our active Secrets:
This way, if we have a Mirror Entity or a Counterspell active and then we play also this “Echoing Secret”, the result would be that, in practice, we would have two Mirror Entity or Counterspell secrets active at the same time.
For example, when in the next turn our opponent plays a low value minion/spell in order to disrupt our Mirror Entity/Counterspell (thing he apparently gets) he could think that now he can play safely his REAL minion/spell… however, our “Echoing Secret” will come in our rescue acting as a second Mirror Entity/Counterspell!
Well, you are getting a card that draws a secret from your deck in this expansion for standard. Run that and if you play wild, Mad Scientist and I think you'll be that much more viable with this deck. The problem is with the Secret synergy for Mage is that it tends to draw poorly with either too many cards dependent on playing secrets first but not drawing secrets or drawing duplicates of the same secrets and not drawing minions. It's just not very efficient, but maybe with the new card and Mad Scientist in wild, you should mulligan for those cards (probably Kabal Lackey too) and become more efficient.
If any of you think you'll ever get to choose when your secrets trigger, you should share whatever you're smoking with the rest of us.
The last 18 months of HS show us exactly what a class needs for a "secret" deck to become prominent - a completely overpowered, on-curve card that either plays your secrets for you or makes them cost nothing. Given that Secret Hunter never really maintained traction in ladder play, you can reasonably conclude that a minion that will fetch and play your secrets is what is required. Given the relative value of mage secrets and the MC experience, I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
The other question you need to ask is "what is the win con of a secret mage deck?" Secret Hunter is just a hybrid hunter with extra secret emphasis and Yogg. Secret Pally was a perfect on-curve midrange deck. Aggro obviously won't work - having your deck gummed-up at the 3 mana slot with secrets is not viable. Midrange is probably best; but mage's kit pushes its midrange decks towards tempo and burn, so again, where do the secrets fit in? A control secret mage might work; but is it really going to do control better than a more burn-oriented build?
Overall, I think the mage secrets are too disparate in their uses to ever really be unified in a mainstream ladder deck. They are much better as 2-6 cards supporting a particular strategy than as the bulk of a deck that is built around them. Oh yeah, and Eater of Secrets says hi to any Secret Mage meta.
Mage secrets are just too risky, it's impossible to time them properly without knowing the opponents hand. The good Paladin and Hunter secrets affect things already on the board, so are much easier to make use of.
Uhm, maybe Mages could have a "tool" to know both the opponent's hand as the first card of the opponent's deck in order to play Secrets accordingly to that information...
After being thinking about how improve the Secret Mage archetype, I have found several issues arising when we try to play this archetype.
In order to solve those issues I have come up with some “suggestions”, that obviously only try to give us tools to overcome the weaknesses of the Secret Mage archetype (by the way, all the numbers are merely illustrative and thus my “suggestions” may not be balanced).
Without further ado, the aforementioned issues are:
When we play the Secret Mage archetype we tend to play several cards (the secrets) without receiving any immediate benefit, so we lose Value very soon. Moreover, there are some cards that potentiate this “waste” of cards (like Kabal Lackey or Kirin Tor Mage). In short, sooner or later we will have our hand empty, so we need a way to draw cards depending on our use of secrets:
One popular complain regarding the mage secrets has to do with their cost. Along a game, we are spending a moderate amount of mana (aside from cards) with no clear benefit or advantage, as it's more than possible that all those expenses turn out to be sterile, or at least not as useful as expected given such great price. Maybe we could have a way to soften that price throughout the game:
In theory, the Secret Mage archetype would consist on playing a wide range of different secrets, and despite we have some synergies with them, at the end of the day we are only “annoying” our opponent without creating any clear option to win. To sum up, we need a sort of important Reward for playing secrets: a secret-based Quest. In my view, that quest could require playing 5 different secrets and his reward might be something like the Warlock quest: a 5-cost spell that creates a sort of permanent "Well of Secrets" that at the end of our turns it puts random Mage Secrets into the battlefield until we had at least 3.
And speaking about the win condition, what is the one of the Secret Mage archetype? Exactly, there is none. Perhaps we could have a minion that becomes stronger the more friendly secrets have been revealed during the game… or perhaps a spell? Or a spell that potentiates a minion:
The biggest reason secrets are not a consistently playable style is due to the way the game treats them. If the player had control over when to activate the secrets then secret mage would be extremely powerful, as would all the other secrets in the game. Unfortunately the design of them leaves them up to random results which makes them unreliable to depend upon as an archetype.
First of all, I should confess that I’m an absolutely fan of the Secret Mage archetype and for that reason I’m especially concerned about the lack of “potential” of this Mage archetype.
I know that along the last several years there have been many attempts to create a truly full Secret Mage deck, one competitive enough as to reach tier 1 at least.
Despite existing other two classes with which we share the Secret mechanic, is clear that the mages are the ones that should be the masters of that mechanic (in fact we are who have more secrets and synergies with them).
In short, the Secret Mage archetype must become as strong as the archetypes that currently dominate the Meta! But… what we need to be able to do that? There is still something that avoids Secret Mages to shine over other Mage archetypes (and needless to say about other classes). What is the cause of that?
Most people say that the problem is that our secrets are not tempo friendly, is that the real issue? In that case, how to solve that? The true is that we have already many secret synergies (even the last Hearthstone Expansion is giving us new ones). We have enough secret synergies? It doesn’t seem so, because the Secret Mage archetype is not reliable by itself even with the help of all those synergies…
In my view, I have thought of several different ways to improve the Secret Mage archetype and try to make it relevant (some ways more viable than others):
1. - Choosing when our Secrets are triggered
Obviously this “solution” is the less feasible of all (mainly because technical/playability reasons). The idea would consist of allowing the mage to choose whether his secrets are revealed or not when they are triggered by the opponent. For instance, if we have played Mirror Entity, when our opponent plays a minion we might have 5 seconds to decide if we want our Mirror Entity be triggered by that minion or, on the contrary, we maintain that secret active for the next time it gets triggered.
2. - Reducing the price of our Secrets
Mage secrets are more expensive than Paladin and Hunter counterparts, and perhaps cheapening them could be an advance in that regard. For instance, having an epic minion whose text would be something like: “Battlecry: For the rest of the game, your secrets cost (1) less”.
3. - Drawing a card each time we play a Secret
Apart from reducing the cost of our secrets, we also can avoid losing Value when we play them by making that each time we play a secret we draw a card from our deck. For instance, we could put into our deck a legendary minion with the following text: “If this minion is in your deck, each time you play a secret you draw a card from your deck”.
4. - Ending the current turn when a friendly Secret is triggered
This way, at the moment a friendly secret is triggered the opponent’s turn ends immediately, giving the mage automatically extra Tempo. Perhaps this effect could be the reward from a mage quest involved into playing secrets.
According to you, what could be the “magic solution” that would allow the Secret Mage archetype to be moderately competent?
Hahaha!!!
That is way too op . Nope.
Hunters have similar dreams too.
1) Opponent can´t gain life, ever
2) All hunter minions have charge, and ignore taunt minions
3) Opponent startes the game with 10 life, and can´t cast spells
f2p, playing for fun ^^
There are three core issues with secrets.
1. Most secrets have poor tempo and value when played early on. Late in the game they're usually pretty good, but not good enough to compensate. The most notable weakness is how bad every single secret is against minion-based aggro decks.
2. Many secrets are unreliable, in more ways than one. If you play a Mirror Entity you count on them playing a minion worth copying. If you play a Counterspell you count on them playing a spell worth countering (or a spell at all). Additionally a big part of the secret power budget lies in your opponent not knowing what the secret is, but that is not usually the case in practice. Finally there are many minions that rely on you having a secret up when they are played, those are generally very unreliable unless combined with exactly Ice Block, and Ice Block is a bad card for a tempo-based Secret Mage.
3. Secret-synergy cards are not good enough to compensate for the price of running the actual secrets. Consider what it took for Paladin secrets to see any play, Mysterious Challenger, one of the most broken cards in the game, and that's with Paladin secrets actually being quite good tempo for their cost. What's the best secret synergy Mage has? Medivh's Valet? That's not enough to carry a deck.
I think that what Secret Mage needs is first of all a secret that's not strictly for control like Ice Block, but that is similar in that you can expect it to stay up until the next turn. Currently there is Effigy, but I think there needs to be at least one more for better consistency, especially since Effigy is weak to Hex, Polymorph, and any aggro deck that just goes face anyway (and it's not particularly good when triggered by a 4-drop). Secondly there needs to be a 4-drop with great secret synergy, to catch up with the tempo you lose from preparing a secret on turn 3.
Don't worry next expansion secret magewill be viable with that new op 2 drop lol
The Might of Dalaran has Arrived!
I'm aware that my 4 "suggestions" are not feasible (perhaps the suggestion number 2 is the only one that could be doable in my view) and for that reason I wanted to hear your suggestions, ideas or whatever for making the Secret Mage archetype a thing.
If my suggestions/ideas are obviously too op, what are yours?
This morning I was wondering where the problem with the Secret Mage archetype could be… and honestly, there are only two possible reasons:
In addition, if our opponents are moderately intelligent, they will try to thwart our secrets by playing “rubbish cards” before their good ones. Our opponents surely cannot know what secrets we are playing but they can make suppositions and play according to them.
To try to fight against that and to create more confusion and increase the doubts of our opponents perhaps we should be able to put in play the same secret more than once, or perhaps there is another solution...
I have thought about a new Secret that could allow creating more confusion to our opponents, trying to thwart their attempts to thwart (forgive the redundancy) our active Secrets:
This way, if we have a Mirror Entity or a Counterspell active and then we play also this “Echoing Secret”, the result would be that, in practice, we would have two Mirror Entity or Counterspell secrets active at the same time.
For example, when in the next turn our opponent plays a low value minion/spell in order to disrupt our Mirror Entity/Counterspell (thing he apparently gets) he could think that now he can play safely his REAL minion/spell… however, our “Echoing Secret” will come in our rescue acting as a second Mirror Entity/Counterspell!
I'm thinking a mage legendary, much like Fandral: X Damage / X health: You select when your secrets will trigger.
Make it have stealth or shroud to make it harder to remove.
Actually Stealth is rather secretive. I'm saying stealth.
Something like that could be usefull...
Minion: Battlecry - your secrets trigger twice.
It could solve the "tempo/value" problem.
Well, you are getting a card that draws a secret from your deck in this expansion for standard. Run that and if you play wild, Mad Scientist and I think you'll be that much more viable with this deck. The problem is with the Secret synergy for Mage is that it tends to draw poorly with either too many cards dependent on playing secrets first but not drawing secrets or drawing duplicates of the same secrets and not drawing minions. It's just not very efficient, but maybe with the new card and Mad Scientist in wild, you should mulligan for those cards (probably Kabal Lackey too) and become more efficient.
If any of you think you'll ever get to choose when your secrets trigger, you should share whatever you're smoking with the rest of us.
The last 18 months of HS show us exactly what a class needs for a "secret" deck to become prominent - a completely overpowered, on-curve card that either plays your secrets for you or makes them cost nothing. Given that Secret Hunter never really maintained traction in ladder play, you can reasonably conclude that a minion that will fetch and play your secrets is what is required. Given the relative value of mage secrets and the MC experience, I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
The other question you need to ask is "what is the win con of a secret mage deck?" Secret Hunter is just a hybrid hunter with extra secret emphasis and Yogg. Secret Pally was a perfect on-curve midrange deck. Aggro obviously won't work - having your deck gummed-up at the 3 mana slot with secrets is not viable. Midrange is probably best; but mage's kit pushes its midrange decks towards tempo and burn, so again, where do the secrets fit in? A control secret mage might work; but is it really going to do control better than a more burn-oriented build?
Overall, I think the mage secrets are too disparate in their uses to ever really be unified in a mainstream ladder deck. They are much better as 2-6 cards supporting a particular strategy than as the bulk of a deck that is built around them. Oh yeah, and Eater of Secrets says hi to any Secret Mage meta.
I like that deck, and i think it can replace tempo mage with the rotation, who knows.
After being thinking about how improve the Secret Mage archetype, I have found several issues arising when we try to play this archetype.
In order to solve those issues I have come up with some “suggestions”, that obviously only try to give us tools to overcome the weaknesses of the Secret Mage archetype (by the way, all the numbers are merely illustrative and thus my “suggestions” may not be balanced).
Without further ado, the aforementioned issues are:
The biggest reason secrets are not a consistently playable style is due to the way the game treats them. If the player had control over when to activate the secrets then secret mage would be extremely powerful, as would all the other secrets in the game. Unfortunately the design of them leaves them up to random results which makes them unreliable to depend upon as an archetype.
If it was any good, this board and Reddit would be filled with enough rage threads to drown out the pirate complaints.