Hearthpwn

With GvG having come out today, I brewed a deck which tries to abuse one of the new Mage cards -- Echo of Medhiv. The deck is designed to be midrange, and relies heavily on Medhiv to engender its various win conditions. 

Recently, Echo of Medhiv has been included in decks that try to emulate handlock -- waiting until the later parts of the game to dump 2 molten giants, echo, and then another 2 giants, and finally taunt them all up. As some steamers have noted though, it doesn't seem viable because certain decks can burst down from 10 health over taunts (e.g. Miracle Rogue, Shaman with spellpower lighning bolt + crackle, etc). With that in mind, I built the deck to get a strong start and abuse this early game advantage with Medhiv. To my mind, with snowchugger and with sorcerer's apprentice Mage has an obscenely powerful early game, being able to lock down the opponent's board with freezes or possibly free frostbolts. But a free frostbolt isn't enough to win the game, since such a huge mana advantage in the early game becomes irrelevant by turn 4. Moreover, despite being strong minions in themselves, all the 2 drops here are obviously too squishy to do anything beyond turn 4.

This is where Echo of Medhiv comes in. With Medhiv, you can essentially give all your squishy 2 drops something like the harvest golem's deathrattle, since if you dropped a Medhiv before they died, you'd be able to drop them all again and have an essentially unchanged board on your side. This is what opens up various win conditions for the deck. The most prominent possibility I had in mind when I made the deck is to drop have 4 Apprentices, with Antonidas on the board, and throw fireballs for the win. This seemed unlikely to me, but the good thing is that Medhiv allows you to have other win conditions. As with the current aggro mage, another win condition is to burst with the frostbolt + icelance combo, but in this deck it puts the opponent under even more pressure. This is because with a strong board in the early game, it's not unreasonable to assume that your opponent would want to trade to try and equalize, so a well timed medhiv essentially gives you the luxury to push for face and let your opponent make the trades. Ultimately, with a copy of your previous board state in hand you'll come out way ahead on the board, be able to keep pushing and drop the 14 point freeze combo exactly when you need to. Also, with so much deathrattle draw power, it's easy to drop squishy minions and find your combo pieces fast.

Lastly, the secrets are crucial for this deck. As just mentioned, the deck's draw power comes from copied loot hoarders and Thalnoses, but with 4 secrets copied Mad scientists can quickly thin out the deck. Also, the Kirin Tor Mage is a nice touch because Antonidas gives you a fireball for a cheated secret from the hand, if that unfortunately 

Anyway, that's my idea for this new incoming meta. Although it looks tenious, I think it's worth a shot, and obscene combo wins are always fun! Happy card slinging!