The Forbidden Sequence is Quest Mage for people with a more refined taste, a taste for summoning big Taunt minions with Stonehill Defender. Since Trial cards are letting us play this Legendary, and a few other high-Rarity cards, without the need to craft them, we're going to take full advantage of the free tempo we get from The Origin Stone and minions who discover minions to win the Hearthstone.

Discovering the Possibilities

The gameplan for this deck is to use cheap Discover cards like Winterspring Whelp, Spark of Life, Sands of Time, and others to complete the Quest as quickly as possible so we can play The Origin Stone and use it to summon extra bodies from Stonehill Defender, Treacherous Tormentor, and (my personal favorite) Beast Speaker Taka. The deck has some early game interaction against aggressive decks (First Flame, Sleet Storm, and Storage Scuffle) to keep us alive, but I found that turboing the Quest is still the best strategy even against something like Hunter.

Sidenote: A lot of our Discover cards will find other cards that Discover (Winterspring Whelp can get us Tracking or Deja Vu, for example). In other words: With the right draw/RNG, we can complete the Quest ridiculously quickly.

Mulligan Guide

This deck is built entirely around abusing the Quest reward, so we obviously want to keep The Forbidden Sequence no matter what. Against slower decks (and decks we can't beat fairly, like Druid) , we keep anything that costs 2 or less and has the word "Discover" on it. Against faster decks we might want to keep First Flame or Sleet Storm, but we should also keep Winterspring Whelp or any 1-Cost card that Discovers. There's not a lot of high strategy involved in these decisions, unfortunately.

Now, you may be asking, "That's all well and good, but where does Khadgar fit into all of this?" Luckily, our next section can help answer that question.

That's All Well and Good, But Where Does Khadgar Fit Into All of This?

The return to Standard for Khadgar is perfectly-timed for Budget players, since he synergizes with our minion-Discovering minions who synergize with The Origin Stone. Now, the one thing this deck doesn't run is natural card draw (so if you're looking for something to change in this deck, two copies of Smoldering Grove could replace your least-favorite Discover cards), and the only way to tutor Khadgar is with Nightmare Lord Xavius, so sometimes we're not going to see Khadgar when it's time to start abusing our Quest reward. Honestly, we're probably going to be fine without him (but don't let him know I said that).

As far as I'm concerned, our Discover cards fall into two categories: Pre-Stone and Post-Stone.

Pre-Stone cards are ones that mostly Discover spells (and often only cheap spells): Winterspring Whelp, Spark of Life, Runed Orb, Q'onzu, Alter Time, Shadowed Informant, Sands of Time. These are the cards we want to use to complete the Quest. The random nature of The Origin Stone casting cheap spells makes it much more rewarding to save its activations for minions or cards that can guarantee high-Cost Discovers.

Post-Stone cards are ones that summon minions or guarantee us a big tempo swing: Scrappy Scavenger, Creature of Madness, Stonehill Defender, Nightmare Lord Xavius, Treacherous Tormentor, Beast Speaker Taka. We want to save these minions until after we play the Quest reward, unless we need to use them to complete the Quest.

This deck is fun, fast, and can sometimes cheese a win out against an unsuspecting opponent. Give it a spin if you're in the mood for a game that doesn't quite go as planned.