Disclaimer I didn't play 1.23 so I don't hate mages. I went mage because I found it to be the best Hero when I started playing. And after reading about Eladwen. I concluded she was not the problem. It's just that Human Allies rock, Other Heroes sucked and Nishaven was against that but needed for portal. Anyhow that's another thread.
Disclaimer 2: I like building decks and strategies more than "being at the top" and looking for their weakness to then take that on.
The cards
Nishaven (because it's the best ability for a no Ally deck, discussion on this at the bottom)
Direct Damage
4x firewall
4x lighting strike
2x supernova
Continued Damage
3x poison
3x Engulfing fire
Items/delays
4x Rain delay
3x Research
3x bazaar
2x voice of winter
1x retreat (to have 30 cards)
Suggestions welcome. Specially in the numbers. I'm thinking of running 4 retread and cut down on poison/fire. Thoughts?
Why each card?
Fireball and lighting strike are obvious. Sweet damage for few resources
Why only 2x supernova because more will most likely kill you
3x poison and engulfing, to put them early on and discard as resources the extras.
rain delay to save yourself at the start of the game.
voice of winter to do the same later on
research and bazzar to drag resources and damage cards
Why not these?
Freeze and Clinging webs are too weak, they target just one Ally
Arcane Burst is too much spread damage, maybe only good against fast low health Ally decks.
Special Delivery almost always ends up as resources as you always have something better to do with 4 resources.
As you can probably tell this can be played with Human or Shadow so why not other heroes?
In a no ally deck Eladwen is clearly inferior, if she could damage the Hero then maybe it will be a good choice.
Gravebone makes no sense.
Majiya on the other hand is a pretty good alternative but I don't have the shadow cards to try her yet. Her ability gives us 3 free slots from research as well as the Shadow Abilities which solve some of the problems posted below.
Playing style
Get to 4-5 resources as fast as possible.
Discard duplicates of Poison/engulfing/research/bazaar (if you must rain delay/voice of winter)
Play the even and odds. For example
1 resource - pass
2 resource - bazzar
3 resource - fireball
4 resource - research - use research
5 resource - supernova
6 resource - poison - rain delay
7 resource - voice of winter - research
8 resource - lighting strike - lighting strike
9 resource - fireball - lighting strike - card
If you think it right you can play up all your resources on each turn.
Pitfalls
Too slow to start.
Let me explain that with a typical game
Turn 1 Resource - Nothing
Turn 2 Resource + bazaar, research, retreat,rain delay,
Turn 3 Same as Turn 2 or Fireball or draw card
Turn 4 Poison/Fire or lighting strike
Turn 5 ability+weapon or supernova or Turn 4 or Turn 3 (we can start playing!)
Turn 6+ Play either one of Damage (Nishaven/Supernova/Lighting strike) or slowdown (Voice of Winter/Rain Delay/Retreat) or stall (Poison/fire + card)
So you are basically screwed and can lose up to half your (very little HP) in the first 5 turns. It's even worst if you play a bazaar as the opponent also has card advantage on you, but it's a must in order to survive.
Dies against resource destruction
This is directly related to the above and you could stall them a little but 3x Sandra is probably a total lost for you. However it ain't that bad with human.
Can't heal/block damage
I think this is a balance problem.
First of all there is nothing but to pass with human, on the first turn.
Second playing an ally with this deck makes no sense as he will certainly be death by turn 5 (attacked,Nishaven or Supernova)
I seriously think there is a need for either a blocking card. I suggest a "Wall" Ally. For example costs 2 resources and it's a 0/4 Protector
or some way for a Mage to heal, not something that will replace a Priest, but at least a hard to heal spell. For example an item that will gain a counter for each spell you cast and when destroyed you gain that many lives (note you can't destroy it yourself with human but there is a loophole with shadow) the point is having something that will heal Mage Because being the weakest and not having any healing at all is just lame. Or just give us Enrage and I'll be happy
Moving on ...
Can't stop hero's attacking
This is bad, too bad. The old cards where not balanced to Weapons (no human mage card can kill an item/freeze or slowdown a hero), coupled with the Insane human female double damage ability there is just no way to win against that deck.
The main problem here is that there is no item destruction for a human mage, please read that again. A mage can't destroy an item. That's just wrong.
Other decks
Surprisingly enough extra heal decks are not that bad, I tested it against the wolven and cleric AI and they barely win. A human player will deck me a lot, but with Wolven it happened just one time, and it was because I discarded a firewall instead of casting it DoH! and noone plays those
Also interesting enough DeathBone+Gravebone won't kill you fast enough. Mainly because having allies in his deck decreases the total damage they can inflict on you.
Same thing happens for other mages with Allies decks.
My guess is that this deck vs this deck is just a matter of luck to see who drags the most damage first.
Ally heavy decks are awesome as he can *almost attack you* but you will run them over with Nishave/Supernova/Lighting strike or slow them with Voice of Winter/Rain Delay/Retreat. It is almost guaranteed that after turn 5-6 you will be able to not let him/her attack.
Other than that this deck as been pretty cool. It's a bit unpredictable but it's great mid-end game. You can do a lot of damage and turn the game around.
Sorry for the long post I'm just really exited about this game and it's potential.
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