I actually love these in terms of card design. I feel like mage has had either the most degenerate or boring card design over the last several years and these remind me of some old school mage identity.
If Blizzard focused more on this kind of stuff I would play mage more. This package looks fun
Yeah, the wording imo would have to be summon a 4/5 vortex, it gains a different effect for each spell school youāve cast this game. The reading of the text suggest you would summon a 4/5 vortex with a different effect, for each spell school played this game.
They would have needed to separate part of the wording for it to sound like a combined effect on a single minion and like you were saying, a single 4/5 would be garbage for 7 mana and all that setup.
Iām predicting otk mage via face burn to get nerfed shortly after release. Weāre all about to take arcane bolts to the face.
So we heard you guys donāt like getting OTKād by Sif spell damage combos, so we nerfed Sif from a 4/6 to a 3/6!
I can see it now.
Oh no, it will be āSo we heard you didnāt like getting hit in the face with arcane bolts for double damage from a cheap Vex, so we made Vex 3/4ā
And then when Sif is the problem it will be the 3/6 change lol
So sif is Moakziās Twin siter?
If you donāt whiff on Taunt, you still shouldnāt be sold. Unless itās a corner Taunt or something. Do you really want to be summoning three or more 4/5s minions late game in the world of Lorāthemar Theron, Hollow Hound, and Always a Bigger Jormungar?
I mean, it might work against the meta generally, but itās just a straight up liability against the new Hunter on steroids.
I really appreciate your work Schyla.
Iām gonna go on the other tangent and point out that just on mage having a somewhat cohesive strategy the whole set is better than most things mage had ultimately.
I can do with an expansion of BS mage.
Seems legit.
Hereās the best version. The tutor all the singletons version.
2 Arcane Bolt
2 Arcane Wyrm
2 Costumed Singer
2 Discovery of Magic
2 Anonymous Informant
2 Audio Splitter
2 Magisterās Apprentice
2 Trench Surveyor
2 Arcsplitter
1 Explosive Runes (Fire)
1 Ice Barrier (Frost)
1 Reverberations (Shadow)
2 Inquisitive Creation
2 Volume Up
1 Taelan Fordring
2 Wisdom of Norgannon
1 Sif
1 Sunwell (Holy)
Remember, Dirty Rat is in the format, and this is a minion-based combo deck. Minions in hand is a good thing. Also, having a lot of 1s is very strong with Volume Up, especially one that will usually get to copy a zero mana draw 2.
Edit: changed minions a bit.
Sif: 6 mana Malygos or better? What has power creep become.
Nevermind my previous post. 
The below assumes no even crazier Elementals among the Titans neutrals.
2 Arcane Artificer
2 Arcane Bolt
2 Arcane Wyrm
2 Discovery of Magic
2 Flame Geyser
2 Aqua Archivist
2 Flame Revenant
1 Frozen Touch
1 Magisterās Apprentice
2 Prismatic Elemental
1 Reverberations
2 Inquisitive Creation
2 Unchained Gladiator
2 Volume Up
1 Taelan Fordring
2 Wisdom of Norgannon
1 Sif
1 The Sunwell
Good hands have either Volume Up or Unchained Gladiatorā¦ to get Volume Up.
Prismatic Elemental and Discover of Magic
8 non-Mage Arcane spells
13 Mage Arcane spells
15 non-Mage Fire spells
8 Mage Fire spells
13 non-Mage Frost spells (excluding triple rune)
7 Mage Frost spells
56 non-Mage Shadow spells (wow!)
1 Mage Shadow spell
36 non-Neutral Holy spells
1 Neutral Holy spell
44 Nature spells, all non-Mage
14 Fel spells, all non-Mage
156 non-Mage spells without a school
Conclusions:
Prismatic Elemental has a 42.8% chance of giving either Nature or Fel as one of the 3 choices. (Although some of these are pretty bad.)
If youāre going for max Sif spell damage, you at least want to cast Reverberations first before you Discovery of Magic. Probably Sunwell too. Arcane, Fire and Frost arenāt that big of a deal (although if youāve already cast Shadow and Holy you probably already have Arcane down at least).
With the decklist above as a segueā¦ I get that yāall are freaking out about Sif, but the elemental package is also kinda bonkers. Itās not hard for Unchained Gladiator to regularly be a 4 Cost 4/4 Draw 3, and any extra Aqua Archivists can just add to the draw. Gas for days.
I guess the question is will inquisitive creation and the rng spells be enough survival to get to the OTK turn which I would estimate is most likely around turn 9ish.
My guess is some spells like sunwell would need to be sacrificed for more survival cards.
I donāt think additional board clears are needed because of the minion focus. Early game itās an elemental deck that just happens to draw a lot of cards with Gladiator and plays some small cheap removals. That should keep things from getting too out of hand early on.
I donāt know if you remember Questline Mage from about two years ago, but the only board clear it had was 2x Fire Sale plus whatever it could Discover off Runed Orb and its Quest rewards. Until then it just traded individual spells for individual minions. Pretty much the same concept here, but more trading minions for minions.
That said, Arcane Artificer might be a bit greedy. There are some Rush Elemental options at the 1 and 2 cost that I might need to sub in if the aggro is not otherwise controllable. Emerald Skytalon might be better, especially considering that weāre trying to save Elementals until turn 3 and probably wonāt play a spell until turn 5.
The game has a lot more tempo-heavy decks now than it did then, though. You gotta have answers to massive board flood from DK, Shaman, Paladin.
I think all three of these spells and molten core look solid. Getting Sif to like 5 spell damage isnāt going to even be difficult.
Okay.
-2 Arcane Artificer
-2 Prismatic Elemental
+2 Emerald Skytalon
+2 Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone should be a 2 Cost 3/3 Rush almost all of the time, thanks to the many 1-drops. Sometimes 4/4 thanks to Flame Revenant. Similarly, Skytalon will be a 3/2 Rush for 1 sometimes. Prismatic Elemental is just too unpredictable.
Overall though, Iāve got a lot of 1-cost spells that deal 2 ā yeah, I want to save at least three for the OTK, but Iāve got six so throwing out the first one is no biggie. I guess Discovery of Magic will usually be cast Turn 1 against Shaman and Paladin (if I donāt have a Wyrm) but what can ya do.
Overall my long term answer to board flood is still going to be play as many Elementals as I can turn 3 (or 2 with the Coin sometimes) then draw cards. Aggro is going to be bad matchup, I just donāt want it too bad. The control stomping needs to be strong enough to cancel it out.
For control stomping just remember blood DK can get up to 55 hitpoints (renethal + 2 of those add 10 hp spells) and even at +8 spell damage 4 arcane missiles would only be 44 damage. To get past that threshold the combo becomes sif + magistars + 4 arcane missiles and 2 flame geysers which at 8 cards is a bit complicated.
Iām also somewhat dubious of unchained gladiator as a card draw engine as it seems pretty tough to get more than 2 cards from it. If you were really dead set on using it something like synthesize would be a decent card to ensure that it can draw 2 or 3 cards guaranteed. At the same time can a deck that mains synthesize be a viable deck in modern hearthstone.
I think in the end to keep from dying over and over to outcast dh and its token spamming ilk youāll need to include deathborne / solid alibi and most likely cold case or star power in the deck which of course makes the deck start to look a lot like the same deck prior to the expansion.
Uh, I mean getting 2 cards off of a 4 mana 4/4 is actually insanely good.
Butā¦ I doubt youāll reliably even get 2 with the current card pool. Some synethize shenanigans maybe, but thatās it.
I see stalling and a face OTK. Hmmā¦