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Seems like a hodge-podge of support cards, rather than a unified package. Discard here, self-damage there, imps and healing and removal and tutoring. That can have its place, certainly; just more rare in this age of super-synergy.

I think warlock just wins the best set for this expansion. Most of their cards either heals, or do something good though mundane, without convoluted conditions.

Imprisoned Horror is just asking for a nerf. You can drop one for 1 mana as early as turn 2 with double Spirit Bomb. Even if youre not putting stats early its still too easy to get it to 0 mana.

For some reason I really love the art for aqua archivist. It will probably be pretty good too bc cost reduction is always great. But having magic discovery feels perfect. Mage still doing fun random stuff 😊

I'd give this one a high score, but I know well enough that there's nowhere near enough elementals in the current standard pool to support anything close to elemental mage, or even tempo mage.

At some point team5 would probably be printing more elementals but for now its just a good card for a non-existent archetype.

I saw Chill-o-matic and heard sad "chugga chugga" noises in my head.

With spell damage, this card can be a beast, and I suspect its the finisher to all that effort in playing all the spell schools.

But its really not a good card outside of that. In terms of net mana to damage, even Frozen Touch is the better option. You'd respect it for the double spell damage effect, and as a combo piece, nothing else.

Mage's best card this expansion.

Simple, flexible, and useful in just about any mage deck. You can say fairer than that.

At some point there would be enough good elementals to actually make this work, and make elemental mage a thing.

But for now its just a card found wanting, wanting for more actual elementals in mage. Not to mention the fact that elemental mage even back then used to be shit anyway. I'll respect this card, simply because if there were going to be any chance for elemental mage, it'll be because of this card.

Realistically its merely an Arcane Intellect 90% of the time. Refreshing Spring Water is/was good because you can just slam it on 5 (4 before it was nerfed) and draw cards for 1 mana. This card however, requires you to play spells before it even gets decent, and to do more you'd have to rely on other cards played first, to get to spell schools mage don't usually have.

In other words, you'd play this because your deck is geared towards that direction anyway. I highly doubt the deck itself to be in any shape good, and this card is likely one of the more contentious of all.

Its a card for big mage, and yet bizarrely requires ideally small spells to be good.

In other words, its mostly a discover option. Its never realistically a build around, because it doesn't win games on its own, and requires a quite frankly difficult condition to fulfill without dying. At most its a greed card, the sort of thing you put into your deck so you dont just lose to control decks.

The powerlevel of this card depends on the pay off, and this card to be fair is one such.

I dont really like cards that rely on other cards to be good, especially since at default mage really only has three spell school types. As Coral Keeper found much to its dismay, that you cant really just play spells for the sake of charging up a card because you'd lose tempo and you'll likely just lose the game in general, at least in standard.

But the biggest problem with this card is actually redundancy. We already have plenty of payoffs in mage, Vexallus, Grand Magister Rommath, DJ Manastorm, Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable. All of them powerful, better and faster than this card, and yet neither sports any good win rates.

Is there any reason not to just play Aegwynn, the Guardian? A card that's proven to be good, and even dead still does retains its value.

I guess this is support for Overload Shaman. Probably not living for long, but it could be worth it even if it only discounts one card.

So powercrept Snowchugger

Well, its still crap to be honest. I mean, in 2023 a vanilla minion that does nothing more on board is pretty much a no-no, and this card really doesn't stand a chance against other better 2 drops like Trench Surveyor. Even in mech mage, you'd rather just have cheap minions like 1 drops to combo with Mecha-Shark, and magnetize doesn't trigger that neither.

Outside of a mech deck this card gets even worse, so no point discussing that. The only good out of this card is from discovers or random effects. A minion that can freeze may sometimes be good, but more often than not just redundant. Mage has plenty other ways to freeze.

Definitely not bad. Also it's support for Overload Shaman, though a bit expensive for overloading a bunch in one turn.

Another payoff for playing nature spells. I think there's enough nature spell generation that it wouldn't be hard to get this down to 2 mana or less.

This event is supposedly live now, but my account must be bugged or something.  Nothing showing up.  Signed in and out, back in, etc, multiple times.  Rewards just says I can claim another reward in 19 hours, but I never claimed one to begin with.