Infinite Mage "Shudderwork" is back!

I don’t know who found this combo / exploit, but a few on Standard “ladder” are playing it.

You can go infinite with
"Tortollan Pilgrim" + "Potion of illusion"
Bascially it’s a better version of “Grumble, Worldshaker” and “Shudderwork” that also allows you to “Freeze” the board whole every turn.

“Sphere og Sapience” also helps a lot because you can postpone spells in the deck.

I couldn’t do anything because my board was frozen all the time and the mage kept making copies… playing the combo and combo over again.

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STILL 40% winrate crap.

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well the deck is rather new and the meta is fresh :slight_smile:
this could ruined control decks

It’s definitely a strong interaction, but it has a lot of flaws that keep it from doing too much damage to the meta.

First, if they draw both potions of illusion, they lose on the spot as their deck lacks enough damage to typically win a standard game of hearthstone.

Secondly, as they rely heavily on freezing you, a living dragonflame tech can prevent that as an option for them and allow you to continue hitting their face.

Thirdly, they tend to use sphere to skip over draws and keep them in the pilgrim pool. Ooze prevents them from doing this and increases the odds that they draw both ptions.

If they use polkelt, effects that shuffle into your opponent’s deck, like albatross or bombs, will undo their draw order fixing, making them more vulnerable to drawing stuff they don’t want to.

If you can shuffle spells into their deck (like bombs), they might not even be offered a potion from the pilgrim.

If you are playing rogue, Flikk destroys all pilgrims everywhere, eliminating their win condition.

Illucia in priest has a similar impact if timed well.

Going hyper aggressive and killing them before turn 9, when it can first start to go infinite, is also a good option.

It is definitely a strong combo when it works, and it can be incredibly frustrating to deal with, but even just a well timed ooze can prevent this deck from having too much consistency, and there are a good number of ways that it can be disrupted that aren’t tied to a single class.

Too slow and too many things have to go exactly right.
Other classes destroy this deck. All we can play is stupid Puzzle Box. Yet again.
They gave mage garbage and called it macaroni.

  • sure they could draw both potions of illusion before “Sphere og Sapience” :joy:

  • Living Dragonbreath could work, but can only be used for burst dmg, since it’s likely to die the turn after.

  • Bombs would work, but only 1 class has them.

  • Flikk could work for rouge

  • Illucia… the setup difficult & double edge sword

how about Shaman & Druid?

well…totem shaman is in a trouble though I have seen few very similar shaman decks today based on burst with spells. Freeze doesnt work here and mage survivability against non minion dmg is crap.

Druid can still highroll though perma freeze leaves only malygos as a counter. And maly druid isnt played.

So against minion dmg its great. Depends on the meta. There is high probability IF (I doubt it would happen) this deck would see a lot play, meta would target it by more weapon+spell burst thus pushing to t4

Frost mage in standard definitely needs to be nerfed. Getting hit in the face by 17 points of arcane missile damage and then 18 points of frost bolt damage in the same turn is a bit out of order to be honest. Before that not even given a chance to attack or do anything on account of being completely frozen out of the game.

Well, druids can get large stat guardian animals online super early and draw a ton, so they would benefit most from ooze and living dragonflame.

Shaman can build fairly effective direct damage face decks, or go for totem aggro with the dragonflame / ooze if needed.

They would only need to do those techs if they lost the vast majority of the time to tortollan mage though, and only if there were a ton of them around, and there don’t seem to be.

It’s the crappiest mage deck in existence. if you are getting beat then you need to learn how to play against it.

You don’t even know what mage deck it is. They use different ones all the time but the end result is always the same - constantly frozen minions until they win the game.

Sooo many techs for them I don’t even know what to say. 5% winrate for me I only won when I played a noob with basic cards, other decks burned me before I even get to touch them with my freeze spells.

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And you don’t know how to play.

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Yogg Saron loves him. Let him pray again in front of the box.

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More than 50% as long as you don’t meet many rogues.

one Ooze and the deck is dead in the water.

Doesn’t need sphere to pop off, though. Once you have one mana nightblade and one torto your combo is max finished in 3 tuns. You don’t need polkelt either. I run with 2 Nightblades since soemtimes you don’t get Polkelt.
Illucia isn’t always a free win either, since it’s possible that the Priest has 7 minions on board.