Mastering the Echo Giant Mage: Advanced Guide

This is part 2 of this extensive deck guide series. Be sure to check out the other sections:

• Part 1: Beginner Guide
• Part 2: Advanced Strategies, Alternate Cards, and Tech Choices
• Part 3: Match-ups and Mulligans

Tips & Tricks

• Because of Duplicate and your draw effects, you are sometimes in danger of burning cards. For example if you play emperor-thaurissan with duplicate up and have 8 cards in your hand and your opponent then kills the Emperor you will burn one of your cards. This is only problematic, if you absolutely need to draw one specific card, like flamestrike against grim-patron or if the game will go to fatigue. When you don’t need one specific card and the game does not go to fatigue, burning one card is not a huge deal. The reason for that is that each deck is completely randomized, you don’t know what you will draw on your next turn. So the burned card may also have been on the bottom of your deck, if you don’t go to fatigue, the burned card did not matter. So don’t be too afraid of burning random cards, if you can set up some crazy duplicate value.
• acolyte-of-pain and sunfury-protector are quite dangerous cards to have on the battlefield if you also have a Duplicate up, because the majority of time you don’t want to duplicate them. So always keep that in mind, that even if your opponent cannot attack them directly because of taunts, he may still force a duplicate on them. Depending on the game state that may matter or not matter.
• This deck is a control deck, with kind of a combo finish that can end the game out of nowhere.  The majority of games, you will always be behind on the board at the early stages of the game. That is something completely normal for this deck, so do not panic and make unneeded plays to fight for early board control. Your game plan is quite similar to Freeze Mage, which is to slow down the game, until you draw into your key cards. Almost no deck can deal with a board full of molten-giants that come out in one turn, so always keep the following in mind: you are not Control Warrior, you don’t need to fight aggressively for board control, you just need to stall as long as possible and then the victory will be inevitable.
• Whenever multiple minions die at the same time, Duplicate will copy the minion that was played first. Always keep that in mind, when playing against decks that have board clears like Flamestrike or hellfire etc.
• When you have multiple Molten Giants out it is important to realize if the best path to victory is to get control of the board and then kill him or simply ignore his board and go face. In general if you have ice-block up, it is recommended to try and push for lethal. If you don’t have Ice Block and only 1-2 antique-healbots it is recommended to use the Giants for board control.

Combos & Interactions

Ice Block & double Molten Giant & Alexstrasza

This is the core combo finish of this deck. If your opponent brings you low on life and does not pop your Ice Block, you can then safely play Molten Giants and pass the turn. Your opponent can’t deal the majority of time with the two Giants and will simply ignore them. At the following turn you will use alexstrasza on his face and then finish him with your Molten Giants. If your opponent managed to pop your block, you can still execute this combo by having another Ice Block in your hand. Duplicate and/or echo-of-medivh on Molten Giants help you finish off your opponent without Alexstrasza. Playing very carefully with this deck is key, because something trivial like pinging a minion you did not have to ping against Hunter on Turn 5, may later cost you the game if you then only have 3 Molten Giants out and the opponent is at 26 life.

Antique Healbot & Duplicate & Echo of Medivh

This can also be some sort of combo finish against the majority of aggressive decks. Even Midrange Hunter will run out of steam if you managed to copy a lot of Antique Healbots. It is highly important to be aware how you want to win any given game and use your resources (cards like Duplicate and Echo of Medivh) optimally to achieve this goal. Using 1 Echo of Medivh for 1 Antique Healbot may win you the game against Face Hunter, but it may not be enough against Aggro Paladin or Midrange Hunter.

Doomsayer & Explosive Sheep & Duplicate & Echo of Medivh

This is another kind of combo finish against some type of decks. If you managed to get multiple doomsayers and/ or explosive-sheeps against decks like Aggro Paladin, Zoolock and Tempo Mage, you will get absurd amount of value and more precious time to draw into your powerful game ending threats. Also note that copying them is only powerful against aggressive decks that need to have board presence to kill you. For example Hunter does not need board presence to finish you off from 20 to 0. For Zoolock, Tempo Mage and Aggro Paladin it is quite an impossible task to finish you off from 20 life points, when their board gets destroyed repeatedly.

Alternate & Tech Cards

In this section, we’re gonna go through the cards you might include in your deck. Depending on the play style, meta or your general preferences, you might want to alter your deck list a bit. We’re gonna give a brief description of every tech card, why it might work in the Echo Giant Mage and how you should use it.

There are a lot of flexible cards in the list, so if you’re wondering which cards you might take out:

• ice-block – The second Ice Block is only really needed against aggressive decks. Against other control decks, the second Ice Block may sit useless in your hand for quite some time. So it is a good cut if you face a lot more control decks than aggressive decks.
• sylvanas-windrunner – Sylvanas is quite useless against any aggressive non Zoolock deck. Your opponent will simply ignore her and you only have a 6 mana 5/5 on the battlefield that won’t steal something very beneficial.
• acolyte-of-pain – The choice to play this card over something else comes down to personal preference. We just like drawing more cards, because having more cards in your hand is always nice. But sometimes you can be kind of flooded with draw effects, that is also the reason why we only play 1 Acolyte of Pain.
• sludge-belcher – Sludge Belcher is a good anti aggression card, but this deck already plays a lot of anti aggression tools and heal effects, so the Sludge Belcher is also not a core card you absolutely have to play
• explosive-sheep – The mechanical sheep is a great card against any board flood strategy, but is kind of bad and can clog up your hand if you don’t face a lot of aggressive decks. So cutting 1-2 in a slower meta game is quite reasonable.

Frostbolt

Frost Bolt is very good against every deck that plays Knife Juggler, which is quite a very threatening minion that can deal a lot of damage over several turns if left unchecked. Therefore Freeze Mage keeps Frost Bolt against every deck that can play Knife Juggler- Warlock, Paladin, Hunter. Frost Bolt also helps you pinging a minion over two turns without taking any damage because of the freeze effect.

Cone of Cold & Blizzard

This deck only plays two freeze effects. Adding another one will help you slow down aggro and midrange decks. Cone of Cold is better against aggressive decks, while Blizzard is better against Midrange decks. Both of them give you an additional combo card with Doomsayer.  Note that both two cards won’t freeze any minions spawned by a death rattle effect, but Blizzard will freeze freshly spawned Imps by Imp Gang Boss. Blizzard together with Explosive Sheep will also give you an additional way of dealing with a board full of Grim Patrons.

Acidic Swamp Ooze & Harrison Jones

Both cards are very reasonable choices in the current metagame. Using them on a Death’s Bite will slow down a Grim Patron Warrior player or slow down the clock of any Hunter deck. In this type of deck, we would recommend playing the Ooze over Harrison, because the additional draw effect is not really needed and the Ooze is just cheaper. Both of them are excellent Duplicate& Echo of Medivh targets. The Ooze is a little bit better target, because he is cheaper. One thing that is worth pointing out, that while the effect of these two cards is nice against the different weapon classes it is not really needed against the majority of them. Both Patron Warrior and Hunter are good matchups anyways. On the other hand, if you also happen to face a lot of Control Warriors you should definitely add an Acidic Swamp Ooze, because it is an even matchup and having access to a weapon destruction effect will improve your winrate against Control Warrior, while also being a nice card against the majority of other popular decks.

Unstable Ghoul

Unstable Ghoul is another tech card, you can choose to play if you really want to push your winrate against aggressive decks even more. Unstable Ghoul is an all star against Aggro Paladin, while also being very good against Hunter.  Even if they have an Ironbeak Owl, for it you are still making a very good trade, because Ironbeak Owl is a tempo negative play at the early stages of the game and the Ghoul will still trade for two one toughness minions. In addition to that if you also happen to duplicate this little guy, oh boy your aggro opponent will be in a world of pain. It is also quite decent against Zoolock.

Ragnaros, the Firelord

In a more control heavy metagame, Ragnaros is a very good card to play. Because of Duplicate you can’t really play Dr. Boom, because duplicating Boom Bots is kind of bad. In addition to that, he is also the best finisher against Hunter, because he can pressure them without ever triggering any traps. Another value card, you might consider to play is Ysera. But because of the usually very large hand size with this deck, we would recommend playing Ragnaros over Ysera. The dream cards may clog up your hand and make you burn cards, which can be a huge deal in any control mirror that goes to fatigue.

This is part 2 of this extensive deck guide series. Be sure to check out the other sections:

• Part 1: Beginner Guide
• Part 2: Advanced Strategies, Alternate Cards, and Tech Choices
• Part 3: Match-ups and Mulligans

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