Hello everyone, I've been playing the Otterpop Freeze Mage deck for a couple of days and have gotten some decent wins in ranked and casual matches. I haven't mastered the deck yet by any means, and am still learning how to consistently win with it, however, after watching Trump's brief series on this deck, I thought of the question he and Otter brought up, is Archmage Antonidas more viable in this deck for the extra fireballs over Pyroblast?
Just wanted to hear the opinions of forumers here regarding those two cards.
I think Pyroblast is better on average in Otter's deck list. Archmage is a potential substitute against the impossibly hard control warrior matchup, but IMO the inclusion of Archmage doesn't even push that matchup to 50% win rate for mage - so why make every other matchup worse by not playing Pyroblast.
When you have Pyroblast you sometimes get the opportunity to play 3 "burn" turns like:
(you already have Ice Block)
T9 -> Alexstrazsa
Opp T9 -> Deals with Alexstrazsa, fails to pop your Ice Block
If the opponent can not pop your Ice Block on their turn 9, they can't avoid the rest of the sequence, taking 10 + 6 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 3 + 4 = 36 damage *after* being set to 15 by Alexstrazsa. Needless to say it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to heal their way through that.
Without Pyroblast your damage spells do 26 damage, so if your opponent heals 12 life (over 2 turns) after Alex is played you lose. Archmage is not very consistent - he is a prime removal target for your opponent which means you really need to play low cost spells the same turn you play him in order to guarantee getting some Fireballs out of him. You usually don't get such an opportunity before playing Alexstrazsa since you'll be busy dealing with your opponent's board with stalls and trying to draw into Alex. After the Alex play you will usually die in 1-2 turns unless you kill the opponent first, and Archmage is just too slow at that point.
Hello everyone, I've been playing the Otterpop Freeze Mage deck for a couple of days and have gotten some decent wins in ranked and casual matches. I haven't mastered the deck yet by any means, and am still learning how to consistently win with it, however, after watching Trump's brief series on this deck, I thought of the question he and Otter brought up, is Archmage Antonidas more viable in this deck for the extra fireballs over Pyroblast?
Just wanted to hear the opinions of forumers here regarding those two cards.
I think Pyroblast is better on average in Otter's deck list. Archmage is a potential substitute against the impossibly hard control warrior matchup, but IMO the inclusion of Archmage doesn't even push that matchup to 50% win rate for mage - so why make every other matchup worse by not playing Pyroblast.
When you have Pyroblast you sometimes get the opportunity to play 3 "burn" turns like:
(you already have Ice Block)
T9 -> Alexstrazsa
Opp T9 -> Deals with Alexstrazsa, fails to pop your Ice Block
T10 -> Pyroblast
Opp T10 -> Pops your Ice Block
T11 -> Ice Block + Fireball + Frostbolt + Ice Lance
Opp T11 -> Pops your Ice Block
T12 -> Fireball + Frostbolt + Ice Lance
If the opponent can not pop your Ice Block on their turn 9, they can't avoid the rest of the sequence, taking 10 + 6 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 3 + 4 = 36 damage *after* being set to 15 by Alexstrazsa. Needless to say it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to heal their way through that.
Without Pyroblast your damage spells do 26 damage, so if your opponent heals 12 life (over 2 turns) after Alex is played you lose. Archmage is not very consistent - he is a prime removal target for your opponent which means you really need to play low cost spells the same turn you play him in order to guarantee getting some Fireballs out of him. You usually don't get such an opportunity before playing Alexstrazsa since you'll be busy dealing with your opponent's board with stalls and trying to draw into Alex. After the Alex play you will usually die in 1-2 turns unless you kill the opponent first, and Archmage is just too slow at that point.