shhhhhhhhhh no tears now (legend rank secrets m...
- Last updated Jul 12, 2014 (Live Patch 5506)
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Wild
- 18 Minions
- 12 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 6940
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/6/2014 (Live Patch 4973)
- canadasphere
- Registered User
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- 5
- 42
- 47
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Battle Tag:
edennnnnn#1203
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
23
Yay Secrets Mage.
UPDATED JULY 12, 2014
So the dream is Turn 3 Kirin Tor Mage + Secret into Turn 4 Ethereal Arcanist. The tempo swing is pretty significant since you're getting an Injured Blademaster and a secret into a better Chillwind Yeti
Of course, you don't always get the dream so...
Other notable plays to look for:
Turn 10+: Archmage Antonidas + (Kirin Tor Mage) + Counterspell. You get to draw a Fireball and block their first reply to it. Increases the odds of Antonidas surviving a turn by quite a bit. Even better if you can get it on Turn 9 with the Coin.
Turn 5: Acolyte of Pain + Hero Power. This reads like an overpriced pre-nerf Novice Engineer, but the Acolyte blocks a lot that you don't end up seeing (e.g. Swipe, Whirlwind, Fan of Knives, Paladin's Hero Power, etc.)
Early game, you're looking for Mana Wyrm, Loot Hoarder, and Frostbolt
Midgame is where the deck shines with Kirin Tor Mage, Ethereal Arcanist, and Azure Drake
Your late game threats are Archmage Antonidas and Pyroblast. If you like winning, you could consider Ragnaros the Firelord instead of Antonidas, but if you like winning, you probably shouldn't play mage at all.
As far as which secrets to play when...
Ice Block is used to stay alive, but also sees play on turn 3 if you're holding an Ethereal Arcanist that absolutely needs to be charged. Ideally, Ice Block is played off of Kirin Tor Mage, since you have to pay upfront and receive no benefit until much later.
Spellbender should probably be reserved to protect Archmage Antonidas or a runaway Ethereal Arcanist
This deck does well against the big control decks (Handlock, Ramp Druid, Control Warrior) and does slightly worse against aggro (Zoolock, Aggro Paladin, Token Druid)
I suppose it is worth mentioning that this deck is absolutely awful against Bow Hunter because of Flare and because your secrets charge up their Eaglehorn Bow. It really is just a horrific matchup. That being said, the matchup is so bad you have nothing to lose. So.
All in all, super fun.
EDIT: So, as great as catching the odd legendary with Mirror Entity was, I've found it to be a little inconsistent. I've changed the deck to reflect this.
-2 Mirror Entity
+2 Water Elemental
-2 Acolyte of Pain
+2 Arcane Intellect
It's a little less secret heavy, but more reliable and quicker. It keeps the same ratio of spells to minions, which I like.
EDIT: i waffled again and went back to the acolytes of pain. (and made legend)
EDIT: i found i was running out of gas a bit often for my taste, so i traded the Amani Berserker for Loot Hoarder but I'm not sure if this is strictly correct. I also played around with Nat Pagle (post nerf) and Coldlight Oracle but I think the final call is between Loot Hoarder and the Amani Berserkers.
I think the deck was a lot more fun when I was running just 4 random secrets, but the 4 I have now are a little bit more reliable. Feel free to mix and match, but I would stay with 4 secrets..
malygod makes every deck fun.
Hi Spiritgr!
I updated the decklist with what I'm playing now. Thanks for the interest!
Cheers,
canadasphere
ps if you really want to win, take out the kirin tor mages and the ethereal arcanists and just run otter's list instead. heh.
otter is the name of the player who created a very popular mage deck/archetype.
you can see him play it on his stream at twitch.tv/itsotter
it's the very popular freeze mage with the doomsayers and the frost novas and alextrasza at the end.
it was just a little joke about his deck being much better than mine :c
I have a couple of questions:
1. Why Arcane Missiles instead of Mirror Entity? Mana Wyrm + The Coin + Mirror Entity is one of the strongest starts in the game, and Mirror Entity + Archmage Antonidas is really good turn 8.
2. Why 2xCounterspell instead of 2xSpellbender? Counterspell is much easier to proc (esp. with The Coin), and it is usually worse at defending Ethereal Arcanist or Archmage Antonidas. Plus stealing occasional Mark of the Wild or Blessing of Kings is fun.
P.S. I think Acolyte of Pain instead of Arcane Intellect is the right choice — it can bait silence (good for Ethereal Arcanist / Archmage Antonidas), and can put something on the board vs. Zoo.
P.P.S. While building my own secrets deck, I ended up very close to this exact decklist — it really does work well. Unfortunately, it is not as secret-reliant as I would like it to be.
Thank you a lot!
i only have one each of the epic secrets, but i suspect 2x spellbender and 1x counterspell is the right call, especially now that UTH and animal companion are less common.
i just don't think mirror entity is very good, missiles are okay, occassionaly frustrating, and occassionally super value. i don't know though. i suspect something else entirely could be better in that slot, but i don't know what.
Just if anybody is wondering: yes, Arcane Missiles are better than Mirror Image for this deck. From my testing Arcane Missiles are much better against any aggro, and help you gain/maintain tempo in all matchups (which Mirror Image does not).
Are you still playing/maintaining this deck? I love the idea behind this, though I'm curious why you aren't running Secretkeeper? She's one of the few rares I don't have or I would just try it out. I look at Fireball as basically Polymorph with more options so I usually only run the fireballs now. I was thinking of switching the polymorphs out for Secret Keepers for more early game.
I play self-built secrets deck which is quite similar to this one, so I think I might reply. Secretkeeper is just not good: played on turn 1, it won't get buffed at least until turn 3, and even then it will not pose any significant threat and will be easy to remove. Played later in the game — it is rather useless as well. Mana Wyrm is strictly better.
whoops, sorry about the wait. @flyingmutant covered it.
the secretkeeper overlaps with the mana wyrm and you're already running the ethereal arcanists that rely on secrets.
if you /really/ want to run them, i'd recommend the following:
-2 mana wyrm
+2 secretkeeper
-2 ethereal arcanist
+2 chillwind yeti
thanks for the interest!
as for the polymorph question:
i found that i needed them to keep up with control decks, since your big combo (antonidas + spells) usually happens on turn 10+ and then the kill move after that. pyroblast doesn't happen before turn 10 either.
aggro rogue gets away with cutting the polymorphs by ignoring the lategame entirely. this deck won't be able to without losing its character/flavour. which is fine, if you want to play aggro, but i'd make many other changes along with it.
This deck is an absolute pleasure to play! I was a bit lucky today and looted both mr. Anton and pyro in the same pack, so I decided to try out mage. Haven't had as much fun in quite a while! The only thing I've changed is a spellbender to vaporize.
awesome! glad to hear people are using it.
i actually started with Vaporize instead of Spellbender. i switched to help protect Archmage Antonidas a little bit more, and because druids are running mark of the wild now.
catching a Mark of the Wild (or, gods be willing, a Blessing of Kings) is the best feeling ever.
wonderful deck :D
thanks!
just as the bow hunters are dying out, i've been experimenting with trading one azure drake for harrison jones. this also helps v. gorehowl and v. tempo rogue.
too bad i didn't think of this a month ago :c
thanks!
the highest this deck has ever been was rank 4 on NA last saturday, but it's since dipped to rank 6 after hitting a stretch of bow hunters. I've been experimenting with trading one of the secrets for Big Game Hunter but i don't know if that's any good.
update: this deck has now touched rank 3..
i also made some changes to the deck list.
i think the biggest thing that helped was the move away from secrets hunter to the highmane hunters.
why priest? i've never found it to be a difficult matchup. you're playing secrets, but he's playing priest, so it's about even. why do you think priests are difficult?
besides, the second screenshot is clearly a victory over a priest.