Hearthpwn

This one is easy. For the mulligan, I only look for 3 cards: Frost Lich Jaina, Dragon's Fury, and Skulking Geist. An early Geist is crucial for shutting down the infinite jades. Frost Lich Jaina is generally required for ending the game vs Jade, and while not always necessary against spiteful druid is generally very strong. Spiteful druid in my experience tends to struggle in the late game against control mage, as it has no answer to fight Alanna and it tends to run out of meaningful plays much faster than spiteful priest. Jade Druid can't kill Alanna either, but spreading plague can slow it down fairly well. Dragon's fury is great against Druid because it shuts down their mid-game super effectively, especially when fury always rolls above 3 damage. Usually the only way for Jades to get enough damage to kill mage is with branching paths attack, so be very scared when druid has 3-4 minions. If you keep the board clear Jade druid will run out of stuff and fatigue without infinite idols long before mage runs low on answers, so don't be greedy with aoe. Aggro druid is unheard of now, but it loses once you aoe it twice. 

Usually this is spell hunter, but sometimes it is an aggressive minions build. Always keep polymorph, if Ysharaj connects once it's almost certainly game over. Be very wary of animal companions, because the threat of chip damage is real. Dragons Fury is worth keeping because spellstone is the most likely way hunter will try to kill you. Dragons fury is also great against aggro hunter. Try to save coin to play before an aoe clear turn to clear cat trick before it gets to attack. Raven familiar is worth keeping because unlike against druids, it will almost always cycle vs hunter. I don't like keeping doomsayer, as finding the right time to use it against spell hunter is hard, and hunters mark just kills it. I'm not a fan of trying to rat barnes. Definitely don't keep dirty rat. The match up is generally good, but pulling a 10/10 is a really good way to throw the game. I only use rat if I've already seen barnes. Jaina is worth keeping too for the potential death knight battles. Taking hunter to fatigue is usually possible even against build a beast, but sometimes they try to stack up a whole bunch of stealth beasts. Usually aoe, medivh, or alanna shuts this plan down. The most common ways of losing to hunter are failing to answer an early push from ysharaj or spellstone, or not having Frost lich online within a few turns of build a beast action. If they start building beasts and Jaina isn't in hand, you probably need to go for tempo with medivh or alanna to have a chance. They can build more animals than mage has removal, so sometimes by the time you find Jaina you will have no tools to make water elementals.

There are 3 common types of mage, and I'll try to address each one of them separately. Against an unknown mage, I would keep doomsayer, raven, dragon's fury, and Jaina. Tar creeper, dirty rat, and and ooze can really shine, but I wouldn't keep them if I didn't have doomsayer or fury + coin. Against secret mage, the biggest priority is to stop any minion damage from getting through. Chip damage is not ok. Secret mage you have to be always be thinking about the next 3 turns together, and have a plan against the secrets. Generally I try to use the expensive clears like flamestrike when they work, because poly or fury can proc a counterspell and allow you to play a clear on the same turn. Runes is super annoying too. Use Alex to proc runes and heal, then the artificer can survive to heal after with a spell. Keep in mind that if you know a secret is counterspell, you can play a spell with artificer for the healing and secret proc. Make sure that if you have the coin it hits a counterspell. Secret Mages will be sneaky and play other secrets first so you will burn coin testing the secret, then play counterspell after you used it. Test for runes first whenever possible. Play to your outs. Recognize that the match up is bad, and take risks when you need to in order to have a chance. Exodia Mage is pretty rare in the lower ranks, but usually fairly common at Legend. You won't be able to pressure the mage enough to kill them first, but Medivh and Alanna can force them to play defensively instead of working on their own gameplan. I actually found that having ice block made little difference in the match up, as mage can usually generate extra fireballs to kill you on the extra turn even if you play something like artificer+meteor+second block after. Hand tracking is the most important part of the match up in my experience. Keep track of potential combo pieces and other minions used so that dirty rat is likely to ruin the combo. The best time to rat is after simulacrum or doomsayer if you lose track of the cards they are holding, since doomsayer is usually held longer than other minions and simulacrum increases the odds of hitting apprentice. Big Spell wins if it pulls out either 2 apprentices or Antonidas, Exodia wins if this does not happen. This is easier than it sounds, as exodia will play coldlights to help you find your dirty rats. Make sure to keep hand size small. Healing out of range of the 3 apprentice combo (27 if no taunt) is easy for big spell mage. Now for the mirror. This is my favorite match up to play, and the better player almost always wins. People say first to Jaina wins, but I haven't found this to be true in every game. Yes Jaina first is nice, but the other player can respond by just not doing anything. If you don't play minions, the other player can't make water elementals, and Big Spell Mage doesn't usually apply much pressure. One of the most common mistakes I see is people trying to go for tempo when the other player uses Jaina and they don't, this never works. It just makes the player without Jaina have less value and lose in fatigue. Another common mistake is using card draw. In the mirror, one should never draw any cards ever. This means not playing any ravens, arcanologists, or anything else. Additionally, Dirty Rat plays a huge role in the mirror. It can pull out key value cards like Alanna, Medivh, and n'Zoth, so hand tracking is important here. Therefore, holding on to small minions can help make dirty rats less problematic. Swamp ooze should be saved for Atiesh if the opponent has not been using deathrattles. If the opponent is using a deathrattle n'Zoth list, try to polymorph Pyros. If you are playing Pyros, chuck it into a Dragon's Fury so the opponent can't sheep it. You'll at least get a 2/2 back with n'Zoth. The n'Zoth build has an advantage in the mirrors, but the advantage is far from insurmountable. Usually dirty rat use and removal management can more than equalize the threat advantage. Once the opponent has Jaina active, try to keep minions at 2 health or 7+. Only twilight flamecaller can set up pings on 2 hp minions, and most people don't run him. Polymorph is needed for 7+hp minions. Blizzard makes water elementals from 3hp, Meteor can set up pings on 4 hp minions, flamestrike sets up pings on 5hp, and firelands works for 6hp. Medivh's Valet and Volcanic potion also set up pings, but I don't play around them unless I know they are in my opponent's deck, as they are both unusual to encounter on ladder. Alanna gets destroyed by AOE in the mirror pretty easily, but holding her until the endgame can be very strong. Blizzard and Dragon's Fury are the main answers, so wait for blizzard if possible before using her. Dragon's Fury is a dead card once mage is out of spells, so it should be used before the last spell is drawn. This means that Fury can't answer an Alanna when both players are out of cards. 

Paladin is the reason to play Big Spell Mage. All of the archtypes are more than 60% for my list. Since the match up is so easy, I recommend not being too greedy on the mulligan. Doomsayer, Raven Familiar, Tar Creeper, Twilight Flamecaller, Dragons Fury, and Frost Lich Jaina are all great cards. Doomsayer into tar creeper pretty much wins the game on its own. You can keep Geddon, but I wouldn't do so without already having good early cards. Control Paladin, even the OTK version, isn't as bad as people think. Dirty rat use is crucial to knocking out the end game win condition and winning with Jaina. Hand tracking is really important in this match up, keep track of potential auction masters beardos. Try and answer burgle bullies with minions like Medivh or Alanna. These can prevent OTK paladin from getting the coins they need. Murloc Paladin is pretty easy. They usually just concede after you wipe the board 3 times. Keep an eye on your hand size against aggressive paladins so they don't get too great of a divine favor. Even though paladin have lots of small dudes, don't jam dirty rats when you can't deal with the outcome. Usually dude paladins hold onto minions like Crystal Lion and Steward of Darkshire, which you don't want to give them for free. Murloc paladins usually hang on to warleader and megasaur, so playing rat before an aoe is usually really good against murlocs. If against dude, save the ooze for vinecleaver. It can be really frustrating to control all the guys that trickle out of the weapon. Twilight flamecaller and Geddon are insane against dude, use them instead of spells to wipe out the dude flood before buffs come down, as the spells can deal with the thicker guys and buffs. My loses to paladin were usually due to aoe being in the bottom of the deck, a strong purifier's maul, or a steward + stand against darkness when I didn't have flamecaller or blizzard. Divine shields are the best way for paladin to protect itself from mage aoe, so keep control of even small murloc boards to prevent too much value from the maul.

I always keep a raven familiar against priest not because it shines in any of the match ups, but because it lets me figure out what I'm up against. Even the 3 different dragon decks have totally different plans of attack that need different responses. Mulligans change a lot when you know the archtype of the opponent, but generally I would keep Geist, Jaina, Polymorph, and Dragon's Fury. Big Priest is the only bad priest match up in my experience, but it's pretty terrible. The n'Zoth build isn't so bad against it, but big priest just has too many big threats to fight with spells alone. It's not always possible, but try to save polymorph for card generator minions like Ysera or the Lich King. People have been cutting shadowreaper, so if you've managed to play geist you can Alanna and make dragons that can only be answered with scream. Spiteful Priest is tricky sometimes but I would say slightly favoured. Alanna usually wins the game if the priest hasn't been able to operative into blizzard or dragons fury. Blizzard + Doomsayer actually works pretty often as most people only run 1 songstealer as an answer. You can bait the opponent into overextending into aoe because spiteful has no burst so getting a little low on hp is fine. The value from Jaina is usually too much for spiteful, even though the deck has a ton of late game, so try and get it down as fast as possible. Control Priest and Combo Priest are super easy match ups to win. Playing Geist is really game ending against both of them. Combo Priest usually has a crazed alchemist, so keeping their board clear is a good idea even after geist. But Combo can't use your own minions against you without potion of madness. Control priest has so many 1 cost spells that is loses badly in fatigue to geist. However, 3 ungoro packs is a lot of stuff to do. Sometimes both players will be taking fatigue damage and priest can win because it has more stuff to do from packs, so don't waste removal when you don't need to. If you ration removal and Jaina isn't bottom 5 the match up is pretty much impossible to lose. Usually there is a standoff between Alanna and Shadowreaper Anduin. If pint sized is lost to geist, priest needs shadowreaper or 2 duskbreakers (which is hard to save) in order to answer instant lethal setup from Alanna. Holding onto Alanna is good for mage in this standoff because it keeps priest on a weaker hero power. Dirty rat can be used against control best on turn 4 in my experience, as it breaks the dragon chain for operative, can deny an operative card, or can even prevent Elise packs.

So there are 3 types of rogues floating around right now, quest, kingsbane, and miracle. Big Spell Mage doesn't ever beat quest rogue in my experience. Dirty rat can slow quest rogue down a lot, but eventually any competent quest rogue will put together enough damage to end the game with vanish, and big spell mage really struggles to kill them before that. Luckily for us big spell mages, the other 2 varieties are a lot more common. In the mulligan I usually keep dirty rat, raven familiar, ooze, dragon's fury, geist, and Frost Lich Jaina. Raven familiar can help figure out what type of rogue it is early on. Dragons fury is very good at cleaning up the 4 health minions rogue likes to make. Dirty rat lines up really well against minstrel and can deny other important battlecries from both miracle and kingsbane. However, don't use it against miracle rogue unless you can deal with a potential gadgetzan. Against miracle rogue you just need to keep the board clear and watch out for crazy leeroy burst until Jaina is up. Usually rogues can't do more than 20 in one turn. Against kingsbane, the endgame goal is to stick a water elemental that freezes the rogue every turn, preventing them from attacking. Geist is actually pretty crucial for taking away deadly poison and doomerang. This helps keep the rogue from pushing enough damage before mage can stick an elemental. Keep hand size under control to minimize potential burn from coldlight oracle. Ooze can delay kingsbane pressure a long time if rogue doesn't have shinyfinder, but it is also useful for answering squidface without triggering its death rattle if polymorph isn't an option. Generally squidface is the best polymorph target in kingsbane rogue.

Shaman just doesn't line up well against all the aoe mage has access to. I always keep raven familiar, dragon's fury, dirty rat, and Jaina against the class. Doomsayer and Tar creeper are strong early but weak to devolve, so don't rely on them to fix the board state. They can be kept with fury however. Evolve shaman is very easy for mage to deal with. Shaman doesn't have much card draw in general and its death knight hero power is really terrible in fatigue scenarios, so feel free to use removal liberally against evolve. Aya is the best polymorph target. Don't give the shaman a chance to play a good bloodlust. Jade is trickier than evolve but still very manageable. It also tends to run out of steam due to a lack of card draw. Prioritize removing Jade generators so grumble doesn't give them another activation. Meteor and Polymorph should be saved for the larger men (or aya in the case of polymorph). The coldlight oracle builds can be scary, but they usually don't have much aoe so Dragoncaller Alanna may just kill them.

There are 3 warlock builds out there: Cube, Control, and Zoo. Zoo is really rare right now, but I would keep dragons fury anyway just to be ready for it. I would also keep geist, Frost Lich, Raven Familiar, and Polymorph. Swamp ooze is a key card against cubelock but useless vs control, so keeping it is a call I make based on what I've been seeing more of at my current rank. All the Zoos I played against have pretty different builds, so finding the right time to use certain removal can be tricky against it. Doomsayer is best used early since nearly all Zoos right now run double spellbreaker. Doomguard should be polymorphed even if meteor is a better clear if you suspect the zoo could be running Guldan. Doomguard coming back is really painful. Saving an aoe like fury or blizzard is wise if Guldan seems possible. Generally though Zoo struggles after its first attack is shut down, as the deck is usually low on life and and dies quickly to mage late game. Cubelock is a much harder match up because its threats are usually too strong for aoe to remove. The biggest mistake I've seen from mages in this match up is using polymorph on a voidlord or a giant. Polymorph is so key in the match up for dealing with cubes and doomguards, you can't afford to use it on anything else. Let the giant hit you once and wait until next turn for coin+meteor. Geist will shut down dark pact, making cubes vulnerable to polymorph. Leaving voidlords up isn't even too bad as cubes on them make more 1/3s to dilute Guldan. Ooze is great and can shut down doomguard plays if they have been drawn. Since cubelock doesn't have twisting nether, Alanna can be game ending and Medivh can do a lot. Having bodies makes dealing with voidlords way easier since polymorph is needed elsewhere. Sometimes the match up requires risky uses of Dragons fury to clear boards that are unmanageable, and having no 3 mana spells helps a lot here. I've been able to win this match up about 1/2 the time, but I think a large part of this is due to warlocks keeping dark pact, hellfire, defile, and doomsayers for secret mage. All of these cards are quite weak against control mage. A prepared cubelock should be beating mage about 60% of the time I think. Control Rin warlock is a lot more manageable than cubes, as they can't apply pressure really at all. Be very careful to stay about 5 cards ahead in fatigue. This means holding ravens sometimes, as warlock's hero power is 6x better when both players have nothing else to do. Unlike in the cube match up, polymorphing voidlord is pretty good since it prevents it from coming back, and control doesn't have any cubes or doomguards. However, don't play a polymorph until rin has been used unless you have a second copy in hand. Rin is the warlock's win condition, so the game is usually decided by how well mage can respond to it. Against cubelock, rats should be used after demons and other minions have been played in an attempt to catch n'Zoth. However, against control warlock rats need to be saved for Azari unless rin was polymorphed. Geist can ruin dark pact to make rin a possible polymorph target, but rin can also be killed off intentionally with an upgraded spellstone or defile so don't use rats just because pacts are gone. Warlock can get rin back from n'Zoth if it wasn't transformed, but usually it won't have time to destroy the mage's deck when this happens, as the seals will take a long time to finish twice. If you haven't found both rats yet, try to pressure the warlock with Medivh and Alanna in order to slow down the seals. Warlock can't ignore pressure completely, especially if it lost its dark pacts and can't heal. This can give mage time to draw rats. Control Warlock has a really hard time winning if it loses Rin, but sometimes it can still win if Guldan is active a lot earlier than Frost Lich. Gnomeferatu can be a nuisance, but as long as it doesn't hit Jaina, polymorph, skulking geist, or rat it doesn't matter. None of the other cards are very important in the match up. My final piece of advice is to hold on to the little anti-aggro minions if your hand isn't full. Sometimes warlock runs dirty rats, and these other minions will make hitting Alanna or Medivh less likely. The little minions rarely help anyway as warlock can deal with them so easily.

This class is super rare right now so I don't have much advice. Dead man's hand is just a terrible match up, and I honestly recommend conceding if you run into one while trying to climb. Trying to force a tie is something I've never managed to pull off, with my record being turn 37 when I managed to rat both coldlights. Maybe the pressure plan can just get there if the warrior is inexperienced and doesn't deal with Medivh, but I doubt this can work against a warrior who's played the deck more than 10 times. I won once when I played the n'Zoth package by dirty ratting out the second oracle after he played one. The n'Zoth package has enough threat density to annoy the warrior if it can't cycle executes quickly. At least the other warriors are pretty manageable. For mulligans I would keep ooze, raven familiar, tar creeper, Dragon's Fury, and Frost Lich Jaina. Quest warrior is super rare and just a really bad deck, I've only played it twice in K+C and won both times because they just folded to pressure from Medivh, Alanna, and Jaina. Big recruit warrior can run mage over sometimes, but is usually slow to do anything, Meteor and polymorph is often enough to deal with the super serious threats like Ysera, Ysharaj and Deathwings. If they run a ton of other guys like charging devilsaur a high-roll fury may be necessary. However, the most common warrior right now is actually pirate warrior in my experience, which seems to have made a resurgence this month. Since Dead Man's Hand is so bad, I would just mulligan with pirates in mind. Luckily, pirates is super good for big spell mage. If mage plays Jaina, it just can freeze the warrior every turn to end the weapon burn. Ooze in my list makes this easier too. I don't really like keeping doomsayer as it usually gets spellbreakered and pirates don't really play minions (besides maybe 2 1/1s) turns 1-2 for it to kill. Be very careful with dirty rat, bitttertide hydra will ruin your day if you pull him out. Often playing artificer with a board wipe soaks up an arcanite reaper swing and wins the game. I've won games even without Jaina by just clearing everything and connecting with Alex and Medivh once Warrior is out of cards. Raven familiar will help identify if pirates is running spiteful. If it is a spiteful list pressure can be a bit harder to outlast, but hanging on to a dragon's fury should usually get the job done. You can be a bit more conservative with removal against spiteful as it has less burn, but don't let health drop as pirate warrior will murder you.