Aggro/Tempo Mage Deck

Aim of Aggro/Tempo Mage Deck

The idea of this deck is to get minions onto the board early, and then protect them for long enough that they do significant damage to your opponent. After the board has been lost, you will be looking to use your burn, fuelled by card draw, to deliver lethal damage.

Aggro/Tempo Mage Deck Mulligan

This deck aims to survive until the late-game in order to powerful combos with spell-synergy minions, like Sorcerer's Apprentice, in combination with cheap spells.

• General Mulligan (keep regardless of what your opponent is playing) — Imprisoned Phoenix, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Elemental Allies, Primordial Studies.
• Mulligan against Aggro (also keep if you think you are playing against an aggressive deck) — Violet Spellwing.
• Mulligan against Control (also keep if you think you are playing against a slow deck) — Cram Session.

Aggro/Tempo Mage Deck Strategy

Tempo Mage is heavily reliant on large combo turns in order to generate huge amount of tempo and value from its minions. During the early game, your main aim is to play, draw, and generate cards to help set you up for powerful combo turns later in the game. This largely involves playing Imprisoned Phoenix onto the board, completing your Elemental Allies Quest if possible, and generating cards with Primordial Studies and Wand Thief. During this time, you should notably avoid playing copies of your Sorcerer's Apprentice, unless you have a second copy in hand, as they are essential later in the game.

Upon entering the mid game, you should look for situations to unleash a combo upon your opponent. In order to do this, you need to at least be able to play a copy of Sorcerer's Apprentice. With Sorcerer's Apprentice all of your 1-Cost spells will become free, opening up powerful synergies with some of the other minions in the deck. In particular, when played with Chenvaala early in the game you can populate your board with 5/5s early in the game. Alternatively, you may opt to use a Mana Cyclone instead to replenish your hand with spells if you are running low on cards or to help find more useful cards for a given situation. Lastly, if you have an Imprisoned Phoenix on the board, you should try to time your combos with it becoming active on the board. The extra spell power it offers allows you to chain larger combo thanks to Cram Session while also boosting the damage of cheap spells like Arcane Missiles. While the aforementioned combos are not the only options in the deck, they are the most common and you can always look for more powerful interactions and synergies between the cards in the deck.

Against Aggro, you should not focus too heavily in killing your opponent. Instead, you should look to use your Sorcerer's Apprentice and combos early to secure and clear the board in the mid game. As Aggro decks do not have good comeback mechanics, clearing the board in this way will most likely set you up to combo again on the following turn using any remaining spells.

Against Control, you should take advantage of any passivity to assemble a stronger combo. You will often have time to play 2 copies of Sorcerer's Apprentice to allow 2-Mana spells, including Evocation, to be played for free. This will significantly increase the amount of damage you can deal and will often result in being able to kill your opponent in one turn.

Aggro/Tempo Mage Deck Key Cards and Swaps

Mozaki, Master Duelist can be used in place of a Lab Partner to open up potential OTK options when combined with Sorcerer's Apprentices and cheap spells.

Changelog