With Scholomance Academy, we're receiving some serious support for Spell Damage in Mage! This has been one of my all-time favourite mechanics in Hearthstone so to see it really shine the middle of the year, I know we're going to be causing plenty of trouble for the next year and a half in Standard which is plenty of fun.

Our end-game is like any Exodia-style deck to fire off masses of Fireball through Archmage Antonidas and cost reductions via the evergreen Sorcerer's Apprentice. If we can't make that magic happen though, we have fun Spell Damage modifiers that can turn our other spells into unsuspectingly dangerous weapons.

Will this ultimately be competitive? Probably not. Will it be epic? Nah, Legendary!

Let's dive in!

New Spell Damage Support in Scholomance Academy for Mage

Here are all the wonderful new cards that will be supporting Spell Damage for us.

• Lab Partner - The reveal for this card was fun since it involved Master Wang getting dressed up and dying his hair that lovely green and yellow. This is some fantastic sticking-around power though for early-game fun with that beefy 3 health for 1 mana.
• Primordial Studies - Stupid. Stupidly good. I dislike how much cheating of mana we have in Hearthstone, and even card generation to some degree, but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist and not include it in the deck. We get to spend 1 mana early on to choose a new minion we can play later, and then get it discounted for that same mana? Studies be so good.
• Cram Session - Card Draw in a deck with as many cheap cards as we have is ESSENTIAL which makes me thankful for the addition of this card into the game. This should help us solve mid-late game problems where our hand simply needs to be restocked.
• Ras Frostwhisper - Now that's a cool card. Ras is a better Despicable Dreadlord because it has more staying power. If we are in an Aggressive meta, this card should easily help us clear enemy boards. Imagine getting one of these out onto an empty board alongside a Lab Partner that was generated by Primordial Studies. That's a 2 damage AOE which will continue to go off if your opponent doesn't have removal.
• Mozaki, Master Duelist - The big daddy of Spell Damage. We can fire off SO MANY MISSILES.

Card Choices

Going to talk a little bit about some of the card choices.

• Anything with card draw is here to aid in getting our good stuff.
  • Bloodmage Thalnos
  • Spellbook Binder
  • Cram Session
  • Vectus - Bit of a stretch but can possibly clone our Thalnos deathrattle which is neat!
  • It may not feel like enough, but with the generation possibilities we have, things should be okay.
• Astromancer Solarian is an essential piece for us early-on. Getting it onto the field and dying can let us hopefully clone the Deathrattle with Vectus. Oh yes, please! Imagine dropping a few Solarian Prime for that Yogg praising action. MMM!
• Frost Nova can help us keep enemies away from our board as we establish more presence for combo goodness. It also serves as a way for us to activate Ray of Frost if we need it for removal and not just being a pain in the ass!
• Arcane Explosion is here to help clear out mid-tier minions easily with our hopefully abundant Spell Damage. Hopefully, you won't need to use it on tiny cards!
• Vectus has great Deathrattle targets here along with consistency!
  • Violet Spellwing - Pew Pew Pew Pew
  • Astromancer Solarian - Yoggtastic
  • Bloodmage Thalnos - Card Draw

Also, here are all the minions you can generate from Primordial Studies in Standard. Cards that reference "Spell Damage +" and don't have it as a permanent stat are not included.

Experimentation

• I'd love to find a way to work in Potion of Illusion. The card would be very strong if we can establish some board presence, saving our nice combo pieces into our hand on the cheap. I'm thinking Frost Nova, which is in the deck to give us a little bit of breathing room to get stuff onto the board, may be a good candidate to get one of these potions into the deck. Arcane Explosion would be the other possible target, since we can be hopeful in cloning our Ras, which is a much superior drop for 1 mana :P Intrepid Initiate may be a good spot to replace with.
• Learn Draconic is a favourite for Exodia Mage play, but we don't necessarily need the body ever. Might experiment with it depending on how things look.

Good luck out there in Scholomance Academy and may RNGesus bless your packs.