First Flame is a great pick up when you lose Seabreeze. Ruined Orb is a contender to help the Dragon combo. Losing Glyph hurts quest Mage but if you need someone to point out “fair” Warlock lost The Soularium which is way more potent for its standard quest deck.
And Khadgar is actually Goated. Plus, Mage now has Deep Freeze as an option to grab from effects. The only remotely Mage dud is Astromancer lol.
Seems like a partial trend away from stallstone.. a lot of board clears lost, a lot of snowbally 1 drops added.. but at the same time underking, paladin cogwhatever, and voidlord make their way back into the game.
Seems like a lot more obnoxious cards entering rather than leaving though. Hopefully they can come up with a fun expansion concept because these core changes are rather blah even if they are sort of slanted to supporting faster deck styles.
You need to stop taking everything Schyla says as gospel. I’ve seen him make statements that have been quite wrong several times.
As for the gamble /lol. I tossed those words out because I have read from you many times about your history with Poker. I dunno what exactly the stakes are being asked here. If it’s about the Core set cards being trash then you’re doomed lol.
Mind you, a core set doesn’t make a deck. So yes, like every other class Mage is going to need decent stuff from expansions. But the new Mage core set is going to have cards used from it for sure in meta decks.