I just finished a 7-win run as a Mage! That’s well above my average of about 4.3 wins per run. And this with a mediocre, even below-average, deck. (Image at the bottom of the post.) I had no Fireballs, no Polymorphs, no Frostbolt; just one Flamestrike and one Flamecannon, along with stuff like Mirror Image and Summon Portal.
The run started miserably: I lost two early games to Warlocks, and I was 1-2 before I knew it. In one of the two games, I made an early misplay that cost me. In the other, I had a firm grip on the board, with three huge minions and my opponent at 10 life – and he played Twisting Nether. I had saved one or two middling minions, but he had bigger things ready to go, and he took control of the board and won. A very disappointing loss.
But then I went on a six-game win streak. I beat a Hunter, two Mages, two Rogues, and a Warlock. In these games I was pretty proud of my play. I’ve gotten better at comparing which play produces the best board state. I’m not quite so obsessed with clearing the opposing board, although I prefer to do so if I can efficiently. I did take a couple of risks, including a Goblin Blastmage that luckily did hit both its one-health targets. (The safe play would have been to use my hero power to ping one, but I didn’t have a convenient minion to play along with that move.)
In my final loss, to a Rogue, I built the early lead, but he got three, count em three, Shado-Pan Combo-things out in the midgame, and I couldn’t contest them. Interestingly, he had none of the traditional early game: no backstabs, no SI:7, no Barber, no Eviscerate, at least not that I saw.
Here’s the deck. MVPs included Mukla’s Champion, which provided timely buffs several times; Zombie Chow, which showed up in my early hand far more often than I deserved; Flamecannon; MCT, which flat-out won me game 4 by seizing an enemy Blastmage; and Blizzard. I used Flamestrike only twice, and I lost both games. Interesting, that.
