Mech Mage

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off-meta deck each week with an in-depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

The expansion has just launched, and to celebrate this series is going to do an event called Wild Week. Over the next 10 days, there will be one guide a day, one for each class, using as many new cards as possible. If you want some specific deck archetype to be covered for a particular class, you can comment it to this article and it may be covered during Wild Week or after.

Mech Mage was a powerful deck way back in Goblins vs Gnomes, but has been very weak and out of the meta for years since. However, this has all changed in Voyage to the Sunken City. The new expansion has showered Mech Mage with support, so much so, in fact, that over half the deck is made up of new and powerful cards that support the archetype. It's quite a strong deck and is very fun and enjoyable to play as well. Unlike most spell based Mage decks, this one is actually based on minions and winning the board, and has a lot of refill and value generation to keep the pressure going. It also has a neat aspect of having miracle-like turns with Mecha-Sharks and a lot of cheap mechs fueled by your plethora of mech discount effects. If you want to play Mech Mage in Wild using the new mechs and mech support cards, give this deck a try!

Mech Mage was theorycrafted with JambaJooze and anchorm4n.

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

Mech Mage has three main strategies. It can win by pure tempo of dropping powerful mechs for cheap using mech discounts, win with Mecha-Shark turns, and generate a ton of value and out value the opposing deck in the lategame.

Tempo - Mechwarper, Galvanizer, and Seafloor Gateway all discount mechs in your hand. You can use these discounts to play a lot of mechs for cheap early and potentially win the board through sheer early tempo. A key minion for this strategy is Security Automaton, who will keep growing as you play minions.

Mecha-Shark - You have multiple effects that discount mechs in your hand, and by combining these effects you will be able to play a Mecha-Shark or two and fill your board with other mechs in one turn, combining for a lot of damage. You can also use Ini Stormcoil to summon an additional Mecha-Shark if needed.

Value - How do you generate value? You have Book of Specters, Trench Surveyor, and other cards for draw, each of which you can combo with Archmage Arugal to get more value. You can also get the Sunken Sweeper from Azsharan Sweeper for even more value - including getting it with Trench Surveyor the same turn as Archmage Arugal is on the board to get two, resulting in 6 random mechs being added to your hand. Now that's value!

Overall, Mech Mage is a deck that can win early with a tempo offensive, midgame with a Mecha-Shark turn, or even lategame with lots of value. This gives it a lot of flexibility and adaptability to different situations and matchups and also gives the deck replayability and makes it more fun to play.

Highlights

This highlight shows how powerful mech cost reduction can be, where Gaia, the Techtonic was played on turn 4 and won the game a turn later.

Mulligans

• Keep Book of Specters, both copies if you get them.
• Keep Archmage Arugal if you have a Book of Specters.
• Keep a Starscryer unless you have 2 Book of Specters or a Book of Specters and a Seafloor Gateway, 2 if 3 spells are still in the deck and against a Midrange or Control deck.
• Keep a Seafloor Gateway if you have Book of Specters.
• Keep a Mecha-Shark.
• If you have a Book of Specters and a Mecha-Shark, keep a Galvanizer.

Overall, you want to get card draw which is good for all your strategies, and Mecha-Shark which is your key mech. If you do have card draw, discounts are good to be able to set up more powerful turns.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is to play your mechs at the right time to balance maintaining general tempo on the board with your power turns with Security Automaton or Mecha-Shark.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Tempo Vs Power Turns

It's important to balance playing your mechs on curve as soon as you can with saving cheap mechs, especially mechs hit by cost reduction, for power turns.

For example, do you play 3 0 cost mechs now or wait 2 turns and play them along with a Security Automaton or Mecha-Shark? If you're really behind on the board or against an aggressive deck and fear you may not be able to comeback later, you can play one or two of the mechs now. However, if you're against a slower Midrange or Control deck, you can decide to save those mechs for a few turns for a shark or automaton turn.

In general, you need to try to predict and plan around how much tempo loss you can have in the short term and still survive and then comeback and win with your power turns. 

For something like Security Automaton, against a lot of decks, you can play it turn 2 and have it survive and snowball. This is often the right play if not against a deck that can remove it easily. However, for Mecha-Shark, don't play it on turn 3 without having other mechs to immediately play. It's a lot better to save it to be able to get more damage out of it - don't save it too long if against Aggro but you should be able to set up very strong turns with it and have at least 2 or 3, often more minions played with it on the same turn. Due to your 6 mana discounting cards in the deck, this will be easy to set up in most games.

Related to this, is that you shouldn't just play Mechwarper on turn 2 unless it's against a deck that has low removal and you think early tempo will win the game. Against slower decks, you should often save Mechwarper for a power turn.

Overall, there's no one strategy that's always better, but if you think about balancing tempo vs power turns based on the different board states and decks you face you will be better at the deck than if you always go for tempo or always wait for power turns. This flexibility and adaptability is actually key to what makes Mech Mage so powerful.

Mecha-Shark Synergy

Security Automaton Power Turns are pretty self explanatory - you play a lot of mechs and the stats grow. It's similar for Mecha-Sharks, except there are a few intricacies you should keep in mind.

You can of course play one Mecha-Shark, then a bunch of discounted mechs to deal a lot of damage. What you can also do is play 2 Mecha-Sharks in one turn, or use Ini Stormcoil to summon a second one - or even do both to have 3 Mecha-Sharks.

Keep in mind that Mecha-Sharks work on summons, not just plays, and don't work on magnetic minions being used as buffs. What you can do to deal 3 more damage if your board is full is to either trade or even use your hero power on a Mecharoo or minion buffed with SN1P-SN4P to summon 1/1s and activate the Mecha-Shark.

Zilliax Combos

Zilliax is good on any mech, but is especially great on Mecha-Sharks and Gaia, the Techtonic. When they deal damage with their abilities they will heal you.

Trench Surveyor

The best pick for Trench Surveyor is usually Sunken Sweeper from Azsharan Sweeper. However, you may want to pick a powerful mech like Mecha-Shark or card draw like Book of Specters or even Aluneth if you are running low on cards. 

Archmage Arugal

There are multiple ways to get value from Archmage Arugal, and they can be combined in one turn for extra value.

First of all, he will double the minions from Book of Specters.

He can also double the mech drawn from Trench Surveyor - this is discoverable by you so you can get a high quality mech like Sunken Sweeper or Mecha-Shark.

Seafloor Gateway works with him as well.

Finally, he will double all the minions drawn at the end of your turn from Aluneth.

Aluneth

Aluneth is very powerful and the ultimate tool to not run out of value. In addition to not running out of value, Aluneth means you will draw both Mecha-Sharks, Ini Stormcoil, and all the mech cost reduction cards in your deck in a few turns.

Therefore, you can guarantee that you will be able to setup some kind of ultimate Mecha-Shark power turn. You can use cost reductions to have a lot of cheap mechs in your hand and play 2 Mecha-Sharks, a Mecha-Shark and Ini Stormcoil, or 2 Mecha-Sharks and Ini to be able to deal a ton of damage by playing mechs until your board is full, even more if you play a Mecharoo that you can then ping yourself to deal 6 or 9 more damage.

Don't play Aluneth too early, as you may end up milling yourself. Play it when you need value or want to start drawing to your ultimate Mecha-Shark Power Turn.

You may want to dump part of your hand and not play other card draw, including purposefully not dredging a mech with Trench Surveyor, if you have Aluneth up and are close to a full hand already.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Cost Reduction

These cards reduce the cost of mechs in your hand to enable both general tempo and power turns.

Tempo Mechs

Cheap mechs that can be played for free after a few cost reductions to fuel a Security Automaton or Mecha-Shark or provide general tempo.

Power Turns

Security Automaton can scale quickly and win games by itself. Mecha-Shark can win games by itself as well, even more efficiently as it gets value immediately even if your opponent has removal. It's possible to do 30 damage on turn 4 with 2 Mecha-Sharks, discounts, and the right hand. These are your two key cards to enable your powerful miracle turns where you play a lot of mechs in one turn to have more of an impact.

Powerful Top Ends

These cards cost more than 2 and aren't as impactful for your power turns without a lot of discounts, but they each provide value or tempo and are worthy deck inclusions. SN1P-SN4P is generally great to buff mechs, but especially powerful with a Mechwarper or two. Ini Stormcoil on a Mecha-Shark, Security Automaton, Gaia, the Techtonic, or any buffed mech can be great to gain board control. Zilliax can help you restore health and stabilize against burst decks. Finally, Gaia, the Techtonic can turn your mech board into a lot of damage to all enemies each turn and tip the game in your favor against other board based decks.

Card Draw and Value Generation

These cards either draw cards or generate value. This is important to keep the pressure going against decks that remove your early boards. Starscryer is especially notable for drawing one of your key spells (either Book of Specters or Seafloor Gateway) while Trench Surveyor can get the Sunken Sweeper from Azsharan Sweeper.

Mech Mage has been one of the most fun and exciting new decks to come out of the expansion, and it is quite powerful as well. If you like decks with multiple strategies and synergies or just like the Mech Mage flavor, give it a try. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

What are your favorite wild decks? Which off meta decks have you been playing? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!