How to Complete Alterac Valley's Mage Achievements for Rewards Track Experience - Great Deck Lists!

Welcome, fellow achievement hunter.

Ever since the introduction of the rewards track, each expansion has always brought us a handful of achievements to complete in order to gain more rewards: while some of them are relatively easy to complete, some others may take some time or a proper set up. In case you're wondering what's the best way to gain all that sweet sweet XP locked behind Fractured in Alterac Valley's achievements, do not fret, as we have the answer you're looking for!

In this guide we'll focus our attention on the Alterac Valley Mage achievements (here's the full list of all the Alterac gameplay achievements) and provide at least one way to complete each of them so that you'll be able to get closer to the end of your reward track.

Disclaimer: as always, all expansion achievements can be completed in Ranked Standard, Ranked Wild, Arena, Casual & Heroic Duels and Classic - Casual Standard, Casual Wild and Tavern Brawl will not count towards your hunt! Moreover, we'll always take Ranked Standard as the default game format for our strategies: if we happen to have some strategies or particular interactions belonging to other modes to highlight, we'll be sure to specify it.

In case you're still deep in your achievement hunt, worry not: we prepared a guide for each class (and neutrals!) for you to take inspiration from, so that you'll be able to complete them in no time for those sweet sweet XP points.

• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Demon Hunter Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Druid Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Hunter Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Mage Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Paladin Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Priest Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Rogue Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Shaman Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Warlock Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Warrior Achievements
• How to Complete Alterac Valley's Neutral Achievements
• How to Complete Onyxia's Lair's Achievements

Mage is lucky: Makes Yogg Proud apart, both Do You Wanna Build A Snowtroll? and HONORABLY DIE, INSECT! are not that difficult to complete. Sure, they both require quite a bit of setup and some thinking, but it's no Oh My Yogg! whatsoever.

Edit: updated with the Onyxia's Lair Mini-Set "Thank You For Your Matronage" achievement.

How to Complete the "Do You Wanna Build A Snowtroll?" Mage Achievement

Requirement: End your turn with a Snowman, Snowbrute, and Snowgre.

Speed Rating: 3/5

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to complete this achievement in Standard: the only reliable method seems to be combining discount effects such as Siphon Mana and Incanter's Flow as if you were playing a Mozaki OTK deck. However, this idea doesn't particularly intrigue us. Wild, on the other hand, is a lot more manageable as the game format has access to insane mana cheating tools, that have the potential to let you play all three levels of Build a Snowman.

Nor Drek'Thar neither Ice Block, the two most expensive cards in the list, are necessary, but the surely help you putting Apprentices in play and surviving early aggression.

Here's the game plan you should follow:

• Have a hand made of Drek'Thar/double Sorcerer's Apprentice, at least one Molten Reflection and some card draw.
  • Try to start your combo with as much available mana as possible, since only setting up Apprentices will take up 7 crystals.
• Put both copies of Sorcerer's Apprentice in play.
• Cast one Molten Reflection on them (and do the same with the second one as soon as you draw it): now you have a 4 mana Discount on every spell.
  • If you played the Drek'Thar version, make sure to save up a way to kill it, otherwise you won't have enough space on your board for the achievement's completion.
• Draw out your deck until you find at least one Build a Snowman copy.
• If you followed this process correctly, Build a Snowman will be free: cast it.
• Refresh some mana crystals with the likes of Conjure Mana Biscuit and/or discount your hand even further with Siphon Mana.
• Cast both Build a Snowbrute and Build a Snowgre to get your XP.

• With the correct Sorcerer's Apprentice setup, Conjure Mana Biscuit and Refreshing Spring Water actually give you mana, so you can use it to recover the one you spent playing and duplicating the Apprentices.
• Standard format note: although it requires quite a bit of luck, Rogue can give you this achievement thanks to Wand Thief discovering Build a Snowman and Contraband Stash casting all its three iterations.

How to Complete the "HONORABLY DIE, INSECT!" Mage Achievement

Requirement: Deal 8 damage in a single use of your Hero Power as Mage.

Speed Rating: 5/5

We already described how you should complete this achievement in this article, but for the sake of completion we're going to repeat the same process here.

Even with the new cards, the easiest way to complete HONORABLY DIE, INSECT! is to follow the method we already showcased:

• Draw out your deck until you have double Daring Fire-Eater and Brann Bronzebeard in hand.
  • Until that point, stall the game and use Ice Block to steal a couple turns.
  • We included Wildfire in order to make your life a little bit easier and to improve Multicaster, but it's not necessary to our plan.
• Play Brann Bronzebeard into double Daring Fire-Eater for a 9 damage Hero Power.
• Clockwork Automaton is another way to pull off this achievement, but it requires a lot more setup, so we consider the Daring Fire-Eater one as the superior version.

• As already mentioned, Ice Block is there just to give you survivability. If you don't own it, just ignore it and remove Ancient Mysteries from your deck for 4 cheap cycle/damage tools.
• Brann Bronzebeard helps a lot, but you can do this achievement without it. However, in this case you'd need both copies of Wildfire already casted and both copies of Daring Fire-Eater in hand, for a four (plus two) card combo.
• Baku the Mooneater Odd Mage gives you the achievement by setting up your Fireblast Rank 2 with Daring Fire-Eater into Clockwork Automaton.
• The buffs to Wildfire and Magister Dawngrasp should make HONORABLY DIE, INSECT! easier to complete with this Hero card.

How to Complete the "Makes Yogg Proud" Mage Achievement

Requirement: Cast 100/200/300 Mana worth of spells using Iceblood Tower.

Speed Rating: 2/5

Big Spell Mage started Fractured in Alterac Valley as one of the least performing archetypes of the expansion, but the deck may be worth exploring because of the recent buff to Grey Sage Parrot. Meta aspirations apart, BSM is very fun, and Iceblood Tower is a card you want to include to begin with, so you don't really have to make your deck worse in order to complete the achievement.

Don't fret if you happen to miss any of the cards in the deck: as long as you own Iceblood Tower, you can pretty much put everything you want in your deck, with the only restriction that you should not include low-cost spells - you want your Tower to progress the achievement fast!

How to Complete the "Thank You For Your Matronage" Mage Achievement

Requirement: Deal 100/200 damage with Haleh, Matron Protectorate.

Speed Rating: 1/5

Probably the most frustrating achievement of the entire mini-set, as it requires a lot of mana just to drop Haleh, Matron Protectorate and you're not gonna have many crystals left for your spells. We're not quitters though, and we still want those damn achievement points.

The most efficient way to complete Thank you for your Matronage can be seen as a worse Mozaki, Master Duelist Mage (and it fact it is), with very few minions and lots of spells and mana-cheat. Siphon Mana, in particular is huge, as it provides a 1 mana discount to your entire hand, which means you'll be able to dump more spells.

• Just like with Boomkin's achievement, trading Haleh gives you progression points.
• Although it has an unavoidable component of RNG, Druid has the Solar Eclipse-Cenarion Ward combo, Germination, lots of cheap spells and lots of ramp/mana generation, so you may want to test your luck. For completion's sake, there are 35 8-Cost minions in Standard, which means you have a 2,8% chance to get Haleh, Matron Protectorate off Ward.
• Wild format note: although it means more setup, Molten Reflection doubles the progression's speed rate.
• Duels format note: [Hearthstone Card (Ancient Reflection) Not Found] is a game-winning play that will give toy tons of progression points.

Other Resources

Our clever community members set up a forum thread to share your achievement progression journey, and we have added an #achievements channel on our Discord server if you want to talk with others in real-time. If you need an assist, you can also respond to this guide and we'll do our best to help you out; the comments are also a great way to share your own decks that you've used to complete the achievements above.

Good luck tackling any of these achievements for your experience boost or just for the sake of satisfying completion!