Hero Power Fire Mage

I had the "Cast 10 Fire Spells" quest the other day so I decided to make my own Hero Power Mage thinking "Hey!  Wildfire is a Fire spell!"  And since Odd Mage is one of my favorite archetypes, blasting people for big damage using only your Hero Power, I decided to throw this list together.

Most of my other Fire spells come from my secrets, Explosive Runes and Flame Ward to try and help control the board, and then you have a single Counterspell which can help stop an annoying Call to Arms or whatever you may need to try and counter.  The last Fire spells are Forgotten Torch which I only chose over Fireball because the Torches put another Fire spell in your deck when you play them.  And I built this because I was trying to quick complete the "10 Fire Spells" quest.

I didn't go with the Even variant that OoC featured earlier this week because I really love Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk.  No particular reason, I just do!  For some reason, putting her in my Even list didn't seem to be working out...

Anyway, along with the Wildfires there are plenty of other ways to increase your hero power's damage, even if only temporarily.  Daring Fire-Eater, Fallen Hero, and Arcane Amplifier are great for this.  And in case anyone is wondering, playing Fire-Eater into Reckless Apprentice will result in the extra 2 damage on ALL targets as long as you don't use the Hero Power prior to dropping the Reckless Apprentice.  Honestly, haven't tried it the other way, but I'm pretty sure you lose the extra 2 damage one you actually click the button.  So keep that in mind!  Popping a Divine Shield prior to Reckless is great, but not if you lose the damage needed to clear the enemy board.

Brann Bronzebeard has good synergy with a variety of cards.  The Fire-Eaters, Jan'alai, or maybe my favorite use is Brann into Reckless! The one I really want to pull off, but have yet to do is to stick Brann into Mordresh Fire Eye the following turn for Highkeeper Ra levels of damage to the enemy and their board!  Haven't really needed it though, honestly.

Ancient Mysteries and Manafeeder Panthara are the only real draw engines.  But the way I've been playing the deck is to try and hold the hero power buffing minions back until I can combo them with something like Reckless.  You mainly want to try and control the board while chipping away at the enemy HP total, getting in a few big turns of damage when you can combo some cards together for burst, and get the enemy to 10 or less for a Mordresh turn when they feel safe and secure.

Summary

I'm currently 9-4 going through the lower Diamond ranks up to Diamond 5 with this deck.  I've only faced two Taxes Paladins with the deck, and lost both of those.  One of the other losses was against an oddball Big Priest with a ton of healing, and a Druid Combo Meme that played two Majordomos, gave me one, played a Deathwing and then use their new hero power once we were both Ragnaros at 8 HP, and my face was the only target (I LOL'ed hard!).

Substitutes?

Need more draw?  You could add Pyromaniac, [Hearthstone Card (Rigged Fair Game) Not Found] or others.  More board control?  Old favorites like Blizzard or the newly buffed Flamestrike.  I don't currently have a lot of thoughts on this as I have been having succes/getting favorable or at least winnable match ups, mostly.

Want to go heavy into Control?

I did have one thought about how to really alter this deck, and it was based around an old Hero card.  If you want to run a deck based around the hero power that includes many of the odd cost cards in this list, and also want to be more of a control deck... I played a little experimentation game and can confirm that any Wildfires cast early in the game will carry over into Frost Lich Jaina when the hero power transforms.  I played two Wildfires before Frost Lich, and her new power still showed *3* damage with no other hero power buffs in play.

Could this help?  Depending on the build, which I haven't even tried messing around with yet, maybe you can beat the Taxes Paladins.  But it might then become too slow to beat the APM Mages.  So as with most things, it's a trade off based on what you are seeing most.

Anyway, if you have the cards, give it a shot.  But my win record/opponent's decks may not be very reflective of the actual performance when you run into more popular decks on a consistent basis.  So maybe don't go crafting a bunch of cards to try it, unless you got enough to spare and just want to go for it!  But if you do try it out, hope you enjoy it!  if you have any suggestions, or make some good changes when playing it please comment below!

~ Thonson