How to Complete Castle Nathria'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 Murder at Castle Nathria's achievements, do not fret, as we have the answer you're looking for!

In this guide we'll focus our attention on the Castle Nathria Mage 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.

Here are all the achievements we're going to complete together:

1. Magical Mansion Mystery Tour - Cast 40 Mage Secrets from Orion, Mansion Manager.
2. Poor Circulation - Deal 50/100/150 damage with Frozen Touch.
3. Spooky Scary Skeletons - Trigger 15 or more Volatile Skeleton Deathrattles in one game.
4. Overruled! - Counter 30/60 minions with Objection!.

Castle Nathria Mage Achievements Overview

Another quite demanding achievement set for the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion:

• Magical Mansion Mystery Tour has no shortcuts and is dependent on your opponent cooperating with you, which is an incredible bummer to us.
• Poor Circulation has the advantage to be based around a cheap card, which can be generated in multiple ways, but it will take you some time to get the job done.
• Spooky Scary Skeletons is quite easy, doesn't matter whether you own Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable or not.

Edit: guide updated with the achievement from the Maw and Disorder Mini-Set.

How to Complete the "Magical Mansion Mystery Tour" Mage Achievement

• Requirement: Cast 40 Mage Secrets from Orion, Mansion Manager.
• Speed Rating: 3/5.
• XP Points Rewarded: 200 XP
• Related Achievements: 
  • Mage's Poor Circulation -  In order for Orion, Mansion Manager to have more chances to thrive, you need some form of removal. Sure, you don't run many minions, so the chances of chaining multiple Frozen Touches aren't particularly high, but it's still a good card.
  • Neutral's Location, Location, Location! - In our opinion, Nightcloak Sanctum is good enough for it to see play even in non-Volatile Skeleton dedicated lists.
  • Neutral's One of the Classic Blunders - In order to complete this achievement, you'll necessarily need to play games with Mage, Priest and Warrior: trying to complete Mage's part together with another achievement is a clever choice.

A very one-dimensional achievement: play Orion, Mansion Manager and trigger its effect 40 times. There are no particular ways for you to speed things up other than maybe summoning an additional Orion on your side of the board, but even this scenario is quite difficult to materialize. In the end, we think the best way for us to complete Magical Mansion Mystery Tour is to build a rather low curve Secret Mage, with Orion, Mansion Manager and two copies of Faceless Manipulator as the top end.

• Do everything possible to have a Secret active when Orion, Mansion Manager hits the board.
• In order to do so, there are mainly two ways:
  1. Play Oasis Ally on an empty board.
  2. Play Anonymous Informant and refrain yourself from playing any Secrets until you are able to play Orion.
• Scuttlebutt Ghoul is a very good defensive tool: hiding Orion behind 4/10 worth of stats with Taunt will make it much more difficult to kill.
• Wild format note: Secret Mage has a lot of strong tools over there. If you want to give Magical Mansion Mystery Tour a shot in Hearthstone's eternal format, you may want keep an eye on Kabal Lackey, Duplicate and especially Ancient Mysteries.

How to Complete the "Poor Circulation" Mage Achievement

• Requirement: Deal 50/100/150 damage with Frozen Touch.
• Speed Rating: 3/5 in Standard, 4/5 in Wild.
• XP Points Rewarded: 100, 100 and 500 XP
• Related Achievements: none.

Quite the slow achievement, because if you want a Frozen Touch chain to take place you'll need many friendly units to die and Mage is not the most board-based class Hearthstone has ever seen. Our opinion is to not brute force this achievement, but instead to complete it together with either Magical Mansion Mystery Tour or Spooky Scary Skeletons, so that you won't lose your mind over it. If you still want to grind Poor Circulation like there's no tomorrow, here's a list you might want to take a look at.

• Use all the Discovery tools in your deck to generate additional copies of Frozen Touch.
• Discount your Frozen Touch copies with Siphon Mana, so that they will cost less mana and you'll be able to cast more of them on the same turn.
• Solid Alibi is a great card that may buy you a turn or two.
• Your pop off turn is one (or two copies of) Guild Trader followed by as many copies of Frozen Touch as you can.

If you want to complete Poor Circulation in Wild, Mozaki, Master Duelist is probably the smartest build available.

• Discount respectively your hand and deck with Siphon Mana and Incanter's Flow. 
• When you are at 6/7 mana, play Mozaki, Master Duelist and go ham.
• Keep Frozen Touch in your hand as much as possible, letting Mozaki's spell damage grow stronger and stronger.

How to Complete the "Spooky Scary Skeletons" Mage Achievement

• Requirement: Trigger 15 or more Volatile Skeleton Deathrattles in one game.
• Speed Rating: 5/5 with the efficient list, 4/5 with the budget list.
• XP Points Rewarded: 200 XP
• Related Achievements:
  • Mage's Poor Circulation -  With all these Volatile Skeletons dying here and there, you should be able to Infuse Frozen Touch fairly easily.
  • Neutral's Location, Location, Location! - Nightcloak Sanctum is an autoinclude in any Volatile Skeleton Mage deck.
  • Neutral's One of the Classic Blunders - In order to complete this achievement, you'll necessarily need to play games with Mage, Priest and Warrior: trying to complete Mage's part together with another achievement is a clever choice.

15 may seem a very big number, but it really isn't. First of all, those Skeletons have to die throughout the entire game and not in just one turn; secondarily, Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable will grant a really big push, especially in combination with an already crowded board, Brann Bronzebeard or both.

We'll provide both a budget and an efficient deck for you to complete the Spooky Scary Skeletons achievement, so that you'll be able to choose the one that suits you the most based on how lucky you got with your packs.

Starting from the efficient list, the best way to proc as many Volatile Skeleton Deathrattles as possible is to use the combo Kael'thas Sinstrider into Brann Bronzebeard into Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable. Sure you'll have to kill a few Skeletons before going off, but this way you'll leave almost nothing to the case.

• Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable will count towards Spooky Scary Skeletons: the achievement's text states that you need to trigger the Skeletons' Deathrattles, not to have them die.
• In case you're behind, Solid Alibi will give you one or two more turns in order to complete this achievement.

If you're on a budget, then here's a cheaper list for you: of course, it will take you more to get the job done, but in the end it's not that big of a deal.

• Use all your Discovery effects to get additional copies of Cold Case and Deathborne.

How to Complete the "Overruled!" Mage Achievement

• Requirement: Counter 30/60 minions with Objection!.
• Speed Rating: 4/5
• XP Points Rewared: 200 and 200 XP
• Related Achievements:
  • Mage's Magical Mansion Mystery Tour - Overruled! is the perfect occasion for you to hit two birds with a single stone.
  • Mage's Poor Circulation - Commander Sivara and all the other Discover cards will be very helpful in this one too.
  • Neutral's Was I a Good Card?

Just like for Devil's Advocate and Dew Diligence, Objection! has a tutor as well: Arcanologist. Once you make sure Objection! is the only Secret in your deck, this 2-Cost minion will always draw it.

• Commander Sivara is great at granting more than just 2 achievement procs per game: consider playing Objection! while you have this Naga in hand.

Other Resources

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.

•  Demon Hunter
•  Druid
•  Hunter
•  Mage
•  Paladin
•  Priest
•  Rogue
•  Shaman
•  Warlock
•  Warrior
•  Neutral
•  Mini-Set

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!