Theo’s Top 50 Legend N’zoth Mage Guide
- Last updated Feb 25, 2018 (Patches Nerf)
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Wild
- 17 Minions
- 12 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: N'Zoth Mage
- Crafting Cost: 16040
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 2/21/2018 (Patches Nerf)
- Theo
- Pro Player
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Country:
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Tournament Decks:
8
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Ladder Decks:
30
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Submitted By:
Hey all, I’m Theo and you might remember me from my previous guides such as my Tempo Warrior or Big Priest guide, or from HGG where I got top 8 with The Netherlands. I also finish top 100 almost every season, so with my experience I hope I can help you climb!
With this deck I managed to reach top 50 Legend on the EU server and had a consistently good winrate during the climb. N’zoth mage is a very strong version of control mage right now as it has still most of the defensive tools of standard control mage, but has more value lategame to win the control matchups. It is a very fun deck to play and often requires you to plan ahead to win matchups, especially the control mirrors. Also the deck can be really good in tournament lineups. In the two HCT Tour Stops this month the winning lineup used N’zoth Mage and I won a big LAN as well this weekend using this deck in my lineup.
If you want to see this deck in play, you can watch my stream on twitch. I stream daily at twitch.tv/theohs_
Vod of this stream where I reached Legend: VOD
At 10000 upvotes I’ll post a guide… Just kidding, full guide below!
Mulligan
The mulligan is an important part of the game and here you always want to keep in mind that your mulligan can change depending on the other cards in your hand. For example: if you find Doomsayer, you can keep some greedier cards as you already have an early game tool. This mulligan guide is based on ladder where you don’t know what your opponent is playing. If you do know what your opponent is playing you should of course alter your mulligan.
Warlock: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Raven Familiar, Polymorph, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Mage: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Plated Beetle, Raven Familiar, Tar Creeper, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Priest: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Raven Familiar, Dragon’s Fury, Skulking Geist, Frost Lich Jaina
Druid: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Raven Familiar, Dragon’s Fury, Skulking Geist, Frost Lich Jaina
Rogue: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Raven Familiar, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Shaman: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Plated Beetle, Raven Familiar, Tar Creeper, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Hunter: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Plated Beetle, Raven Familiar, Tar Creeper, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Paladin: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Plated Beetle, Raven Familiar, Tar Creeper, Dragon’s Fury
Warrior: Arcanologist, Doomsayer, Plated Beetle, Raven Familiar , Tar Creeper, Dragon’s Fury, Frost Lich Jaina
Cards
Arcanologist: Strong card, I'm only playing one because with two it’s very likely the second Arcanologist won’t draw anything.
Dirty Rat: Tech card mainly to disrupt opponent’s combo and also it is sometimes pretty good versus aggressive decks to stall for a turn.
Doomsayer: Best early game anti-aggro card, allows you to survive until your removals. Generally better to use it early to disrupt your opponent's curve than to save it for a blizzard/doomsayer combo.
Plated Beetle: Extra early tool and armor to survive, synergy with N’zoth and also disarms Explosive Runes.
Pyros: Extra minions for the midgame, synergy with N’zoth to get multiple 10/10’s in the control/value matchups.
Raven Familiar: 2/2 that often draws a removal card is pretty good and it gives some information about the opponent’s deck.
Ice Block: Buys you an extra turn and allows you setup the board without worrying about dying. Just don't rely on it too much vs hunter cause most of them run Flare.
Tar Creeper: Strong early taunt to get through the early turns.
Zola the Gorgon: Flexible (value) tool. Can be used to get a lot of extra value lategame or can be used early on your 2-drops or something like a silenced doomsayer.
Polymorph: Best single target removal, mainly good versus warlocks to deny their Rin or demons for Bloodreaver Gul’dan.
Dragon’s Fury: Insane board clear, average 5-6 damage and even worst case it is still basically a hellfire.
Blizzard: Extra stall to buy some time, clear the board or set up for more removal like Flamestrike the next turn.
Meteor: Very flexible clear, can be used as single target clear or clear 3 minions at once.
Skulking Geist: Used to be only good versus Jade Druid, but now also makes it very easy to beat Combo Priest and helps in other matchups such as Cube/Control Warlocks.
Flamestrike: We didn’t have enough removal yet, so why not have more AoE.
The Curator: Some draw that gives you a 2-drop as well as a big dragon and sometimes the taunt is useful as well.
Sindragosa: A ton of value in this card and with N’zoth you get in total 4 random legendaries and 4 0/1’s which also let you easily get Water Elementals with Frost Lich Jaina. Just make sure you don't overdraw with this in the Control matchups, so only play it if you end up with 7 cards in hand then.
Alexstrasza: Mostly used as a defensive tool because you almost never kill your opponent unless you have a much stronger board. Often secures the game versus aggro when they are trying to push those last points of damage.
Frost Lich Jaina: The card that allows you to grind out almost any deck and stabilizes versus aggro. Almost always correct to play as early as possible to start generating those Water Elementals.
N’zoth the Corruptor: Another lategame value tool that makes it so that lategame almost no deck will ever beat you in the value department.
Replacements and Tech Cards
If you don’t have or like every card, you can try some of these instead depending on the decks you are facing and what you want to tech against:
Arcane Artificer: Cheap armor in in the midgame to get to the lategame, can often be very easy to fit in a turn with one of the removal spells.
2nd Arcanologist: Play this if you want to have almost always an iceblock and it’s a decent minion early versus aggro.
Acolyte of Pain: Draw, but can be risky with overdrawing and sometimes unplayable in control matchups.
Coldlight Oracle: Instant draw and can burn important cards versus slow decks or allow you to find your important cards faster. Also doesn’t fatigue you faster in control matchups, but pretty bad in aggro matchups.
Dragonslayer: Only if you are facing a ton of dragons and want to easily deal with an Drakonid Operative/Cobalt Scalebane.
Gluttonous Ooze: Best anti weapon card because you already have quite a few 2-drops and don’t need or want the draw of Harrison Jones.
2nd Tar Creeper: If you want to bolster your early game.
Kabal Courier: Greedy card if you face a lot of control matchups and you also want to get in some interesting situations.
Tinkmaster Overspark: If you really don’t like warlocks and want to make their voidlords a cute Squirrel.
Twilight Flamecaller: If decks with a lot of 1 hp minions such as Dude Paladin are a big part of ladder, this adds an early aoe to deal with them.
Eater of Secrets: If you keep facing Secret Mage/Hunter this might be an option.
Saronite Chain Gang: 4-drop to go into your AoE’s to soften up the board and gain some health.
Arcane Tyrant: Decent card and best when played turn 5 with Dragon’s Fury, but pretty average card besides that.
Cairne Bloodhoof: Only if you really want to play this deck but don’t want to craft Sindragosa.
Medivh, the Guardian: Only if you really, really hate other control decks.
Dragoncaller Alanna: Only if you really, really want to win control matchups hard.
General Strategy
This deck usually wins by just not letting your opponent win as you outvalue almost any deck. Also you don’t really have any aggressive tools so it’s quite hard to kill your opponent, even if you wanted to. I’ll go over the aggressive and the control matchups as well as Control Warlock specifically as that matchup is very interesting and of course very common on the ladder right now. If you want some more specific tips for matchups you can always ask me in the comments.
Against aggressive decks the early game is all about surviving and getting to your 9-drops. Until turn 5 you only have your minions, so having some 2-drops early is key. You want to keep the board small so you can keep your clears as long as possible. However, you only want to do this against board focused decks such as Murloc Paladin. Against decks like Secret Mage and Spell Hunter you really want to prevent taking as much damage as possible because they have a lot of ways to deal damage directly to you. In these matchups you often have to plan to survive until turn 9 when you can play either Alexstrasza or Frost Lich Jaina to stabilize. Especially playing Frost Lich Jaina turn 9 with an iceblock up almost always wins the game due to all the healing with the water elementals that aggro decks can’t deal with well.
In control matchups you often don’t want to play any draw cards early like Raven Familiar and even Arcanologist, if you expect the matchup to go to fatigue. If you opponent does draw himself, feel free to draw if you need to because you’ll still be even in the fatigue battle. This means these cards and also The Curator often just get stuck in your hand, although sometimes it’s quite nice if your opponent tries to rat your N’zoth and pulls The Curator instead. Generally you also do not want to waste cards in this matchup, so frequently you’ll have Sindragosa in your hand and it’s unplayable because it generates 2 cards and you don’t want to overdraw. Additionally in these matchups you want to be really patient with N’zoth to get full value until you have Pyros twice and the Frozen Champions from Sindragosa in the resurrect pool and you won’t overdraw a card. Sometimes it’s fine though to overdraw if you don’t have any good cards left and you need to pressure. Waiting until fatigue with N’zoth is fine because you’ll get so many times Pyros which has lifesteal that even if you take 7 fatigue you’re still likely to be at full health.
The Control Warlock matchup can be quite an interesting one. Cubelock often is very hard to beat as they have too many threats, but Control Warlock is fine as a matchup. Key to this matchup is to polymorph their Voidlords. While ideally you want to polymorph Rin, good players will save it for the combo with Dark Pact so you won’t get the chance. If you have a polymorph in hand feel free to proc their lackeys to instantly polymorph the voidlord and not give them a chance to kill it. If you have played geist already it can sometimes be fine to save a polymorph for Rin over a voidlord because they can otherwise only kill it with a Greater Amethyst Spellstone. If they do get their Rin killed early though, you have to pressure them to not allow them to cast the runes, or at least not play Azari. Keep in mind they play Twisting Nether twice, so don’t overextend into that. In this matchup you want to hold on to your Dirty Rat until the lategame when they have played both Voidlords and you feel like they are going to play N’zoth soon. In fatigue they will run out of resources generally and you play a Pyros every turn so going into fatigue is fine and it is not necessary to win before that.
Closing Thoughts
This deck is quite hard to play but very rewarding. If you love interesting control matchups, this is definitely a great deck to choose. It works well both on the ladder and in tournaments and has a chance to win every matchup.
If you want to learn more about this deck or other (control) decks, I stream daily at twitch.tv/theohs_. You can also follow me on my Twitter where I often share decks. Thanks for reading and hope to see you at my stream or the next guide!
Videos
VOD of me getting top 50:
Kiwiinbacon deck showcase:
If you also want you video here, I would appreciate linking this guide in the description.
Nice! Great to hear that.
Baron Geddon can indeed be great after Jaina to heal a lot and nobody expects it.
Great to see someone take a decent deck and just elevate it to the nect level, great job!
Hi Theo,
Thanks for taking the time to post this for the benefit of the community, I've enjoyed this a fair bit since you posted it. I'm curious as to which cards you'd consider tech slots. I'm rather wishing to give Tinkmaster Overspark a run.
I'd say Tar Creeper and Zola are the first two cards i would consider changing.
I've climbed to rank 5 with this (from 8). Really fun deck - but I've made a few changes : Dirty rat isn't great in current meta since there's almost no combo decks.
Bettle is junk. it's not strong enough to contest early boards, and it's really garbage as an nzoth summon. I've removed 1 battle and 2 rats and inserted Ooz (3 mana one, since it's mainly against paladin for me) and 2x Artificer for a very significant late game aoe+healing stabilisation effect.
### Nzoth mage
# Class: Mage
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 2x (1) Arcane Artificer
# 1x (2) Arcanologist
# 2x (2) Doomsayer
# 1x (2) Plated Beetle
# 1x (2) Pyros
# 2x (2) Raven Familiar
# 1x (3) Gluttonous Ooze
# 2x (3) Ice Block
# 1x (3) Tar Creeper
# 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon
# 2x (4) Polymorph
# 2x (5) Dragon's Fury
# 2x (6) Blizzard
# 2x (6) Meteor
# 1x (6) Skulking Geist
# 2x (7) Flamestrike
# 1x (7) The Curator
# 1x (8) Sindragosa
# 1x (9) Alexstrasza
# 1x (9) Frost Lich Jaina
# 1x (10) N'Zoth, the Corruptor
#
AAECAc2xAgzFBOCsArmyAsHBAsrBAsrDAtPFAqDOApvTAvLTAurmAsPqAglNigHAAckD7AeWxwLV4QLX4QKW5AIA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
I can see your reasoning for cutting rats and a beetle, but I believe they are still needed in the deck.
The Dirty Rats aren't just there to counter combo decks, it also has won plenty of games due to pulling Azari, N'zoth and even cards like Gentle Megasaur or Drakonid Operative are often good pulls.
The reason for 2 Beetles is that against aggro you often want to have a play turn 2 to contest the board until you can get to your AoE cards and on top of that the armor is nice. Also I wouldn't say it's a trash summon from N'zoth. Obviously it's not a voidlord you get back, but N'zoth really isn't in this deck as a pressure card but as a value card. Getting Beetles back helps you survive longer by having a slightly better board and a bit more health to help with the tempo loss of playing N'zoth.
Hello, So i've been playing this deck for quite a while now at arround rank 12-10. My bigger concern is Big Priests and secret mages. I really cannot remember a single fight vs Big Priest that i got to win.
VS secret mage i get to lose arround turn 9-10 because i get alot of damage untill turn 5-6 so after that i'm pretty much cheating death with my iceblocks and Alextrazsa. I think i've only won once or twice vs Secret mage but only because he got bad draw + i got to use Zola on my Alextrazsa so i bought 1 more turn with my iceblock active.
Does any of you have any advice on how to deal with Big Priest (mainly) and Secret Mage?
Big Priest is an incredibly difficult matchup. All the AoE does very little against them, so you rely on meteor/polymorph to clear their big minions, but that's obviously not enough. In this matchup you have to save polymorph for Lich King or Ysera because those cards generate more value, while Y'shaarj/statue don't (sometimes you have to poly Y'shaarj though if you can't clear it in another way). Make sure you don't overextend too much into their AoE (which they have a lot of) and you kind of have to draw Frost Lich Jaina to keep up with them.
Against Secret Mage you want to take as little damage as possible and deny their minions early. That means dropping doomsayer on 2 versus just an arcanologist is fine, and often killing a minion with a ping is better than developing one, especially when they have a secret up. Also hope you have coin and only use it when you can play another spell with it (like at 5 mana you can coin dragon's fury).
against secret mage you are highly unfavoured. Counterspell wrecks any big spell mage deck currently. Still as theo said, try to control as much as possible, and save coin/sheep for counter spell and hope you have time to case it. Against big priest - try to get sheep (and other junk such as bettle, if they madness it)into their resurrect pull asap. And remember that obsidian statues aren't very threatening, so save sheep for lich/Ysharj etc. Also - it's a highroll deck. In a small sample size, you'll see great variance in results.
I'm missing Zola, N'Zoth, 1x Doomsayer, 1x Meteor, 1x Geist, 2x Dragon's Fury. It's a total of 5200 dust and i have 2660, which cards should I craft with what I have?
Everyone of those cards besides Zola is kind of core in the deck, so I'd probably recommend not playing it.
You need N'zoth in this deck or otherwise you rather play the normal control mage, but N'zoth goes to wild in a month, so can't recommend crafting it. The other cards besides Zola are pretty much necessary for this deck to succeed, and if you want to craft any of these cards, Doomsayer and Geist are probably the best ones due to them being played in multiple decks.
Hey Theo, have you started thinking about the year of the Raven for Mage yet?
Usually don't think a lot about the next expansion, especially without any cards revealed. If you look at the cards the deck loses, it's only 4 but it includes N'zoth so all the deathrattle synergy is gone. Depends on what new cards get released for mage, but probably the normal control mage will be the deck to go with, but then again it also depends on what the new meta will be.
dude I don't have Zola neither alexstrasa, what should I put instead?
There aren't really any good replacements for them, so you probably want to pick 2 cards from the replacements section. I might go with the Ooze + Arcane Artificer as replacements, but you'll have to see how they work out.
Oldboy recently also got top 50 with the deck, so I'd say it's still ladder viable. Probably just some bad luck, I've also had 10+ loss streaks which just came down to bad luck, not the deck.
I dunno, took this list from rank 3 to rank 5, meh?
Great deck, fun to play and working pretty well. Swapped Zola for Harrison, works out for me, never had problems with it drawing too much.
Also thinking of dropping secret package for artificers, since sometimes ice blocks mess you up.
Seems all control deck can be killed by Rin...
I can definitely see it working without Iceblocks. I used to play a Control Mage deck without blocks and with artificer and never felt like I needed them, so might try it out!