Hearthpwn

Update: New videos have been added for Season 22. This is an instructional series that will be ongoing so check back often for more uploads.

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 01 (vs Warrior and Warlock)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 02 (vs Priest and Paladin)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 03 (vs Priest Paladin and Warrior)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 04 (vs 2x Mages Warlock and Priest)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 05 (vs 3x Mage)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 06 (vs Warlock Paladin and Hunter)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 07 (vs Paladin Warlock and Shaman)

Firestorm 5.0 - S22 - Instructional Part 08 (vs Priest Rogue and Mage)

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Season 22 - Firestorm 5.0 - FULL PLAYLIST

Most cards should be fairly obvious, so I'm only going over a couple of cards choices that might seem strange.

Arcane Blast - This little spell hasn't been particularly popular with Mage players since it's printing in TGT, but in our deck it's one of the strongest and efficient removals. We run a stacked roster of +spell damage minions so usually this 1mana card is a 4dmg spell or a 6dmg spell with 2 buffers on board. The potential gets pretty insane pretty quickly so if you've never had much success with this card in other decks, prepare to have your mind blown.

Ice Barrier - This is not a card you would expect to see in a midrange control deck, yet here we are. The reason for this is 3 fold, for one we simply needed a 8 heal option other than Antique Healbot (of which we already run 1). Secondly we needed it to be lost cost because this is often a spell that will be used in combination with our other cards to produce a combo tempo (I'll expound on this more). The final reason why this card instead of another healing minion is because against Freeze Mage having 8 armor is a hard counter to their strategy which revolves you not having armor. As an added bonus, most enemies will assume its Mirror Entity and make an inefficient curve play in their attempt to dodge it.

Cone of Cold and Blizzard - Again these are some cards you wouldn't normally see in any kind of tempo or midrange based deck and typically I wouldn't recommend it. However in this particular deck it works because we have so much +spell damage incoming that these spells become less like stall aoe and more like actual damage aoe that can kill the minions instead of just slowing them down. A lot of times it's important just to stop the enemy from attacking for a turn so that we can develop some board without our minions instantly getting trading into. This is how we regain a board tempo if the enemy current has it.

Echo of Medivh - This card is a good choice for card draw because we run minions that are low cost enough to actually play and copy in the same turn. One of the cool things about this card is the way it interacts with Summoning Stone, which will generate a 4mana minion FIRST and THEN copy whatever you have on the board.

Frigid Snobold - This minion is a great 4mana drop for our deck being that that it has the +spell damage that we're looking and also has an abnormally high hp for this mana slot. This slot competes with Dalaran Aspirant (which I tried first), but in testing the Snobold performed better because the Dalaran simply doesn't come with 1+ spell dmg without being inspired first.

Summoning Stone - This is probably our 2nd most MVP minion because of how crazy it gets once you start to actually cast spells with it. It's one of the most extreme snowballing cards I've ever seen but it can tricky to use in most Mage decks. It works in this deck because we so many cards that can keep the enemies board from trading into our Summoning Stone as soon as it's played. If you can get the Stone in play and cast Echo of Medivh, you stand a good chance to win the game just on that one power play. I would say the most surprising thing about Stone is that it wasn't as hard to make use of as I thought it would be. My kneejerk reaction about the card has always been that it wouldn't see much play because it's too fragile, I was wrong.

Archmage - We run Archmage the same reason we run Frigid Snobold, it has not only the +spell damage we are looking for, but has a very solid stat profile. This card was never bad, just overlooked because there's so few decks with enough spell synergy to make the +spell damage mechanic worth going for.

Archmage Antonidas vs Rhonin - We run enough 1 mana spells that we can easily play Antonidas and get 2-3 procs in the same turn if the circumstances are decent.  An important thing I wanted to say is that Rhonin would be a VERY decent alternative here. There's as much reason to go for Rhonin as Antonidas and really it just comes down to style of play. My advice is to try both (if you own both) and see which is doing better for you.

You typically want to mulligan for 2x Mana Wyrm, 1x Arcane Missiles 1x Frostbolt, 1x Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1x Flamewaker and 1x Arcane Blast in that order. We typically want to avoid holding on to anything heavier than 3mana to start. It's important to mull harder for minions if you happen to get the spells but no minion on the first mull. This means, you'd keep 1 spell and try for those minions.

• Against Paladin you'll want to keep 1x Arcane Explosion if you come across it because it's such a good counter to Muster. This is also the only matchup where you would purposely keep 2x Flamewaker in your mulligan hand because Flamewaker is a Paladins worst nightmare.

Firestorm 5.0 is particularly strong against  all Warriors, Oil Rogue, Secret Paladin, Freeze Mage, Renolock, Entomb Priest, Aggro Druid, Aggro Shaman, Hybrid Hunter and Aggro Hunter (in that order).

Firestorm 5.0 is about even vs Tempo Mage, Mech Mage, Dragon Priest, Ramp Druid and Zoolock . For most of those matchups the tempo (and ultimately the game) will be decided by which player was able to draw the better cards early and get a snowball effect going. It's going to be a fast paced game and most likely both players will quickly use up their cards and then be in topdeck mode. It's anyones game at that point.

Firestorm 5.0 is a little weaker against Slow Control Paladin, Egg Druid, Fatigue Mage and basically the decks that are designed to just keep surviving through big heals and drag the game out. The only exceptions to this would be Control Warrior, Entomb Priest and Renolock (which ironically and luckily are the most common control decks right now).

This is a carefully designed deck so I would not recommend changing too many things around, but here are a few things you can do:

Bloodmage Thalnos can be replaced with Kobold Geomancer or if you're running into a lot of weapon classes Acidic Swamp Ooze.

Ice Barrier can be replaced with Earthen Ring Farseer or Deathlord.

1x Azure Drake can be replaced with Loatheb.

Echo of Medivh is a pretty nice card to have but it can be replaced with Piloted Shredder if you want a little more speed and power in the deck.

Archmage Antonidas can easily by replaced with Rhonin. The next best choices would be 2nd copy of Archmage, Dr. Boom and finally Toshley (in that order).