Blizzard has released the full core set and we're in for a very different new year of Hearthstone! Today we're going to be taking a look at the Mage class in the Year of the Gryphon by looking at their new set of core cards and giving the new ones a full review.
- If you want to see the full core set, you can check out our Core 2021 Guide.
- Want to see only the new cards? We have a dedicated article for that.
- You can build decks with all these cards in our deckbuilder - just select Year of the Gryphon as the format!
Let's get to it!
Aegwynn, the Guardian
Mage gets only a single completely new card for their core set, but it's a pretty important one - their Legendary. Gone are the days of trying to figure out how to get infinite Fireballs from Archmage Antonidas. Now it's all about trying to maximize the potential Spell Damage.
Aegwynn presents an interesting deck-building challenge. On the one hand, you want a decent number of minions in your deck, such that when she dies you can cycle in the inheritor fairly quickly to keep that Spell Damage coming. On the other, you need a solid number of damaging spells to make all that effort worth it in the first place. Too much one way and you end up with some useless card text tacked on to some of your minions; too much the other and your spells will forever be waiting for the next boost, either clogging your hand or sadly letting it go to waste.
I think in the end Aegwynn isn't a card you build a deck around. There's a fun idea floating around in my head about letting Murloc Tinyfin take her place as Guardian, but in the end, I don't anticipate there being the right set of spells to make that worth it in Standard (it goes without saying that Wild has far more reliable things Mage can be doing to kill you in one turn).
Most of the time I think you play Aegwynn as one of the last cards you add to a deck. You've gotten down to the final stages, and you notice that you have an opening for a ~5 mana card. You have some damaging spells, and a few minions as well. Might as well slot Aegwynn in and see how she does. There has been explicit Spell Damage synergy before though, and for a deck based around that concept, she'll be a great addition.
Buffed Cards
As I said before, Mage only has one completely new card, but I wanted to highlight the fact that they're also getting several old cards back with new and improved stats.
Flamestrike sees its damage improved from 4 to 5, a very significant increase in power. Flamestrike was already a really good card, one of the best AoEs in the game, and it's interesting that they decided it needed to be even more powerful for Mages in the upcoming year. I know I'll definitely be cataloging any instances where 4 damage wouldn't have done it, just to see if there was a specific deck that might have prompted the change.
Cone of Cold and Snap Freeze both get a mana cost reduction. I'm interested in this pair in particular because they both also gain the new Frost spell school. I wonder if this change was in anticipation of a need for more powerful support for an upcoming Frost archetype - or even a multi-school archetype, given the class also has access to both Fire and Arcane magic at the very least.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that two of their minions also received a mild buff - just an additional +1 Health each. It's the kind of change that speaks of one of two paths; either extensive testing, tweaking cards just so in order to provide the best player experience possible... or somebody on the team just quite liked them, remembered them as a bit weak and decided to bump them up in an inoffensive way that might give them a bit more chance of seeing play.
I'm personally more inclined to think that it's the second one, but hey. I don't mind a bit of a shake-up for old cards coming into the core set, especially such tiny adjustments as these.
Mage in the Year of the Gryphon
I alluded to it before, but one of the most interesting things about Mage in the upcoming year will be how it interacts with spell schools.
The new core set contains two very powerful Fire spells, three Frost and four Arcane. Looking over the last year of cards, I can see an additional Fire spell, two more Frost and probably two or three Arcane (using my best guesses and being as conservative as possible - there may be even more). We haven't seen any Mage cards from Forged in the Barrens yet, or any Neutral cards that might interact with their three spell schools, so it's hard to see how it'll end up playing out on that front.
All that can really be said is that they have a strong base for an Arcane or Frost-focused deck in Standard right now if they choose to have Mage specialize in any of its schools. Of course, they may decide to have them focus more on spells generally than any one school, which I think would make sense for them as one of the most spell-based classes.
Beyond the unknowns of spell schools, Mage has good support for Secret-based decks, with some classic Secrets in their core set along with Arcanologist, plus powerful pieces mainly from Darkmoon Faire. Spell Damage is also a fairly well-supported idea, especially if you factor in Aegywnn as a puzzle piece, and of course, Mage retains a decent amount of random spell generation for those who just want to be surprised.
Worth mentioning are two potential directions for the next year that don't quite have everything they need yet. Hero Power synergy has been added back to the core set in the form of both the buffed Coldarra Drake and the unchanged Fallen Hero. There are no other pieces of this in Standard, but it's something to keep an eye on. Additionally, we saw a splash of Elemental support in Darkmoon Faire, and Water Elemental remains - could be something, could go nowhere.
Those are just my thoughts, but I want to know what do you think of the new cards Mage is getting and their outlook in the Year of the Gryphon. Let me know in the comments below!
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Comments
The fact that this card can be found with Primordial Studies & Jandice Barov is already good enough (plus it's Deathrattle, so it's always activated).
But the fact that some burn spells is rotating out is kinda halt the purpose of spell damage. I can only hope that future expansion provide Mage with more Burn spells.
For Aegwynn, the Guardian, I don't agree that decksize will not let her to be good. All she need is minions that produce spells. Team 5 still wants Mage to be the class that generates random spells. At least Aegwynn says it. How effective will those random spells are another question tho. Especially if they produce no damage dealing spells.
The new Hearthstone is about the board, not face burn, not hard control. In that light, cards like Aegwynn and the hero power cards make sense, as well as the deletion of cards that freeze the entire enemy board or transform key minions.
The Core Mage kit may seem to lack win conditions, but I think that's a good thing. Instead of seeing the same old one-trick pony for the whole year, we get to see Mage strategy evolve and expand with each expansion.
The class strategies don't evolve they just switch around to previous ones.
The hero power cards seem like very dumb choices and the only way to make it viable is probably by making it broken.
That's a ridiculous attitude.
Secret Mage didn't exist as an archetype at all for the first few years of the game. Then it kind of worked in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, but wasn't top-tier. Now it's stronger than it's ever been. That's evolution.
You can go into the Year of the Gryphon with a chip on your shoulder and hate everything about it, or you can adopt a more positive attitude and spend your energy looking for ways to have fun instead of tearing it down.
I never said I hate everything about it there's some bad core set card choices in my opinion like:
Spider Tank King Mukla Focused Will Nozdormu the Eternal Barrens Stablehand and more...
But I will still play it regardless and try to find creative decks to make.
You are not the first person I've seen dislike the new Nozdormu card, but anyone calling it a "bad core set choice" is being silly since it is obvious that many players love the idea of the card. Unless you are one of the rare players who tries and enjoys everything, you have to accept that a significant fraction of the cards are designed for other types of players.
Complaining about cards is only really justified when you find them especially unfun to play against, AND they are prevalent enough for it to significantly affect your day to day experience of the game. Satisfying both of these is quite common (see every call for a nerf ever), but it is almost never the case for niche or meme cards.
So let Noz be Noz, casuals mess around with hero power mage, and the inevitable mech decks in the Year of the Gryphon be glad Cogmaster and Spider Tank are here to give them a little extra support.
Most players will not have that card in their deck after the first week. Then it just becomes a stat card meme.
Also wouldn't it just be better to add a blitz mode instead of having a goofy restriction for it?
Just seems like we have so many useless legendaries in this core set.
What good would there be in creating an entire blitz mode? It would just be like a normal meta but where any combo, control or value deck is suppressed because they need the time to think turns through. The goofy restriction of Nozdormu gives people the chance to play blitz mode against friends whenever they like, without needing to waste resources splitting the playerbase with an aggro-focused game mode.
Anyway, my entire point was that 'useless' only means something from a limited perspective. Just because you can't envision yourself playing cards, it doesn't mean there aren't players out there making the most of them. A case in point: a friend and I both had a good laugh trying to get Duskfallen Aviana to work. The card is really bad, but it's still not useless.
Edit: I am aware of the apparent hypocrisy in dismissing a blitz game mode while saying no card is useless. If there was a huge appetite for a blitz game mode (best tested in a Tavern Brawl) then I'm all for it. That doesn't change the fact it is more effort with a vastly greater chance for failure than just printing 1 card to do the job: a card needs a handful of players to like it, but a game mode needs an entire community for the matchmaker to work.
This is me thinking of mage in relation to it's WoW counterpart (or rather classic, as I have no idea what current wow mage excels at)...
The idea of spell schools gives credence to the idea that spells will now have "specs". In relation to mage, this means that I think if supporting cards came out for it, things like Frost Barrier. Maybe if you have frost barrier up, and you play some card that says "For the rest of the game your frost spells have +2 frost spell damage". This means that frost barrier, which holistically couldn't gain any more value at it's default 8 armor, could potentially gain +2 armor. Likewise your frost spells will gain power. Maybe they'll have things like "shifting power" where one school will increase, but others decrease. The spell schools open up a ton of meaningful deck building choices.
its ice barrier and spell damage does not at all work on armor gain of it
My apologies oh infallible one. I was still waking up this morning and got ice/frost mixed. And how do you know spell damage in the new system won't affect it? Do you have beta access to forged in the barrens? It has a spell school tied to it, you have NO idea how it may work in the new system. In theory what I suggested could very well be possible with the new spell schools. I'm perfectly aware that spell damage doesn't currently scale the secret's armor gain, but that could change with spell schools and how they interact and work.
It wont cause armor doesnt do damage. if was Spell POWER instead of Spell Damage. then yeah. And if it did we'd alreayd have seen it/heard of it. Caus that would be a mechanic change.
The type of spell dmg is just current spell dmg that onyl works for Some spells. is 0 reason to assume it would change.
the new versionf of spell damage arent entielry new thing, theyre spell damage but onyl for some spells. and they like their smplicity, if would effect other aspects of spells it would be spell power so would efefct armor/life gain instead of only damage aspect.
Aegwynn -> Dopplegangster -> Dopplegangster -> Saronite Chaingang -> Saronite Chaingang.
I want to experience it once in my life
edit: I could have sworn I read that Saronite Chaingang was going to get unnerfed. oh well.
that won't work since he chaingang nerf but I like the way you think..
carnival clown mvp btw
How would you clown? You have to tutor it but you can't tutor it because you will just draw your 10 mana cards that you need to corrupt it. It would be a very slow combo.
It was a joke, this is nowhere reliable..
Hopefully they revert the nerf on Saronite Chain Gang to make it happen.
I don't know. They seem to want to push Mage towards spell damage but the core set lacks any decent burn cards to profit from this (except Fireball). In general Mage will need quite a lot of support in the upcoming expansion imo.
What pisses me off pretty hard though is that they axed Polymorph, one of the most iconic Mage cards. Why Blizzard, just why? This was a perfectly reasonable and fitting card for Mage. Blizzard will also be missed.
Well, if you're using spell damage for face damage, then that's been toned down, sure... but if the idea is to use spell damage to control the board, Shooting Star is a really potent recipient of that boost. Combustion *really* loves spell damage, too.
As for losing Polymorph, silence/transform effects got axed or toned down across the board. Between that and the return of Rivendare, I think the idea is to push Deathrattle minions back into the meta. Mage's solution will have to be spell damage-boosted burn and Devolving Missiles. Overall, it seems that mage is going to be stronger against wider boards and weaker against taller boards. The opposite of rogue, you know?