I feel kinda sorry to be the one tellling this but:
Builds people are using with rainbow mage right now are terrible.
They aren’t just bad. They are just a entire different level behind what it can be by insisting in poor card choices and not embracing the new expansion.
No,you not run arcane artificier anymore.
No,you not need infinitize for long matchups anymore. Almost every card in this deck generates something. Therefore this card is redundant.
No,you not play a reactive game anymore.
Yes,Blastmage miner is good enough to be played in non excavate decks when sinergistic. People are missing how powerful this card really is.
No, there isn’t anything wrong with have a dead stargazing in your hand sometimes if it makes your wisdom of norgannon combo consistent.
I not rediscovering the deck here. It’s just that the card choices people are making for this deck are really frustrating to see as a mage player.
They’re that bad in my opnion.
Here is the list i’m used to climb the ladder this month :
I like that you’re willing to run Blastmage without over committing to the entire excavate package. (Though I do find the excavate cards to be quite fun.)
I notice a lot of Mages enjoy that infinitize card. They’ll often always try and chain it at the end of there turns an it feels like a noob trap in that regard.
Infinitize did make sense when it was released because there was far less card generation than now. Nowadays it’s just tempo loss most of the time.
And the blastmage i find amuzing that no one talks about it.
He clears the board, put a premium card in your hand that is better than your average card and has an acceptable body on top of that.
It just don’t fit with the other excavate cards regarding it’s own powerlevel.
It looks like you use it more for extra damage push, as you suspect you’ll control the board fine without that robot that AoE’s everything based on spell schools played.
You can tell who can play Mage well from posts like yours. Do you like any other classes? Or does Mage have your focus?
It’s sort of hard to argue that Arcane Artificer and Infinitize the Magnitude don’t belong in the deck when it’s in the Top1K deck AND that Top1K Rainbow Mage performs better at top legend than it does in lower ranks based on deck rank, meaning it takes a bit more skill to use the deck and be successful.
So, in short, those using Arcane Artificer and Infinitize the Magnitude properly get better payoff. I don’t know how you can argue that it’s not right to run those when the stats show that it is.
It’s fair to argue that infinitize doesn’t belong in the 30 card rainbow build, but it’s an auto include in the 40 card xl Rommath excavate version. However you never cut arcane artificer in any mage deck. Period. Arguing otherwise just makes me question your intent. It’s statistically one of the highest mulligan win rate cards, clocking in at close to 60 percent mulligan win rate. It’s one of the strongest cards in the deck because it allows you to live long enough to go off with Sif. Saying it should be cut is just silly
I find it a little too slow to be an opener and generally not float mana to fit the card as armor gain.
Maybe it’s just a me problem with how i play the deck(basically creating pressure as form of live longer instead of rely on life gain).
If you do not use the card properly, it is not as effective as something else.
To borrow from another sport, a professional golfer will get incredible distance gains based on the flex of the shaft of their club, but the average golfer will lose more distance by using that same club. The difference is swing speed, with the professional generating significantly more leverage in the swing than the typical amateur.
There is value in learning to use those cards right, but there may be additional losses in the process of learning to use them.
Here are the top cards for Rainbow Mage in top 1000 Legend according to drawn winrate, as of writing: https://i.imgur.com/rmYZ915.webp
…and mulligan winrate: https://i.imgur.com/arMvuW3.png
(The triangle means dangerously low sample size)
Arcane Artificer seems to be right at the borderline of playable. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to include it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to not include it either. It’s very close to that 30th best / 31st best card borderline. I consider Minami’s Artificer claim to be a bit of a hot take, but not crazy hot. But what is emphatically NOT a hot take is: Artificer isn’t so good that it’s an automatic include; it is strictly optional.
Infinitize, on the other hand, is just bad. Minami is spot on there. It’s a relic from an outdated mindset.
Also, there’s definitely a lot of experimentation going on at top Legend with Rainbow Mage. Out of 2219 games, the most popular list only has 265 games, so we’re dealing with at least 9 lists, probably more. It’s clear from the data that there have been attempts to hybridize the deck with Excavate Mage and that those hybridization attempts have shown enough promise that we’re really dealing with two separate archetypes here — Rainbow and Rain-Miner. Which means that Minami is indeed onto something regarding Blastmage Miner. (Edit: And if you’re starting to hybridize, Artificer would be among the first on the chopping block, if it wasn’t cut already; it’s tricky to argue against “Blastmage Miner is better than Arcane Artificer.”)
2200 games isn’t a huge sample size, but I think it’s more valid than any one player’s anecdotal experience.
Infinitize is good value, but not tempo. It’s nice when you fight that one control priest, but other wise you better off either killing their threats so you don’t die, or you hit their face so they die.
Artificer doesn’t directly kill or increase tempo on its own, but its effect means that while you play spells that do help with tempo/damage/whatever, you’re also gaining armor so you can better survive against whatever tempo/burn opponent might want to do.
I did have one game where turn 1 artificer was necessary to simply trade. I mean, it was a paladin lol
I kinda interested in study really broken cards and decks when they appear but in general it’s around 9 years playing mostly mage already.
So if you see me playing anything other than mage you can ring the alarm to blizzard because it will be stuff on the level of poison rogue, naga DH and stuff like that.
Basically i play broken stuff to get my understanding of deckbuilding better.
Arcane Artificer may as well be put on auto include, simple because mage has no better openers. It’s a premium stated one drop that comes with a soft taunt. It’s value grows as the game goes on, and it generates a per mana effect. For the minimum cost available (1 mana) every mana you spend on a spell generate 1 armor. It doesn’t really get better than this as far as one drops go unless we are talking about the original Throgg.
Infinitize has more swagger than utility. As far as spell school goes, the vast majority of what you will generate out of it is arcane, fire, or frost. We can already generate that easily. Sure, you’re also choosing spells, but in an ideal world, you’d be choosing spells for future turns. I’d keep it only in the lack of a better 30 card. The best thing here seems to be generating other Wisdowns.
Stargazing is up on the fence. Would like to see more data on that.
How would Stargazing be better than Infinitize though? It only draws Wisdom of Norgannon. I could see one Stargazing and Infinitize together, but two Stargazing seems crazy when it’s light on targets. You’re counting on not hard drawing either Wisdoms before you can efficiently use the combo. The argument for taking out Infinitize would also apply to Stargazing at this point.
Blastmage Miner however is super good. I’ll agree with that. I’ve had so many turn 6s where I dropped it and just ran away with the game and many more turn 6s where I wish I had Blastmage in hand.