Control Mage Guide: Frost and Flame

Control Mage has been getting more and more popular with several high ranked players using the deck to climb the Legend ranks. The deck is quite powerful against a lot of the decks in the current meta and has plenty of removals and AOEs to drain your opponents of all resources and beat them in the value game with Frost Lich Jaina. This particular list is by Monsanto who achieved Rank 21 Legend with the deck.

Card Choices

Arcanologist: While the card might not be as appealing as Mad Scientist from Curse of Naxxramas, which allowed you to directly draw and play a secret when the minion died; it still is a very good card and allows you to draw specific secrets and thin out your deck to get to your important cards.

Frostbolt: Frostbolt is a good early game removal and it can also help you freeze big targets if you do not have hard removal in hand to buy more time to get to your stronger removal spells and it can also complement AOE spells to finish off targets that survive.

medivhs-valet: Medivh’s Valet gets guaranteed value up until your Ice Block is triggered. It is a great tool to control your opponent’s early game plays.

Primordial Glyph: Primordial Glyph is a good way to find answers to your opponent’s plays based on your situation. It is a very powerful spell that almost always delivers.

Arcane Intellect: A cheap and efficient way to draw through your deck and find your combo pieces in time as quickly as possible to get to your removal spells quickly.

Frost Nova:  Frost Nova on its own can block a lot of incoming damage from big boards when you need it to, but aside that you ideally want to combo it with Doomsayer to wipe out enemy boards and prevent them from playing anything.

Ice Barrier: Our only form of healing in the deck is Ice Barrier which allows you to gain 8 life (Armor)for 3 mana. We run only one copy of the card but if you happen to face a lot of aggressive decks you can consider running a second copy of Ice Barrier as well.

Ice Block: Ice Block allows you to be immune for a turn when you take lethal damage and gives you the extra bit of survivability that you need with the deck and find time to find your lategame cards to close out matches.

Fireball: Fireball is a very good removal against targets with medium to large health pools, it can also be used as burst damage after playing Alexstrasza in conjunction with other spells to kill off your opponent in two turns.

Polymorph: Polymorph is a hard removal and silence effect stacked into one to deal with otherwise hard to deal with minions. It is quite strong in the current meta against a variety of decks.

Blizzard: Blizzard is used as an AOE / stalling mechanic. While Flamestrike might be the better card when it comes to actually clearing minions, against boards that cannot be dealt with by Flamestrike, Blizzard does a much better job at mitigating damage and stalling until you are able to finish off your opponent.

Flamestrike: Flamestrike is a powerful AOE tool that is very effective against decks like Paladin, Shaman and Aggro Druid.

Frost Lich Jaina: Frost Lich Jaina is a great Death Knight card and is one of the win conditions of the deck. Being able to summon a multitude of Water Elementals each time you kill a minion with your hero power is quite good and the elementals also allow you to heal back up with the Lifesteal effect.

Dirty Rat: Dirty Rat is a very good tool to combo with hard removal spells or to disrupt decks like Quest Mage and Kazakus Priest as you can pull out key combo pieces of Battlecry minions and disrupt your opponent’s gameplan.

Doomsayer: Doomsayer works great as a follow up to board clears as well as a combo piece with Frost Nova. You should play it early on against aggressive decks to buy time and potentially wipe out their board. Even if they do manage to clear your Doomsayer it is still 7 healing that you receive for 2 mana which is quite good against aggressive decks.

Gluttonous Ooze: Gluttonous Ooze is a tech card to deal with weapon based classes and with Rogue, Hunter, Paladin and Warrior being popular classes that run weapons, you can get value out of the card most of the time.

Skulking Geist: Skulking Geist is predominantly a soft counter to Jade Druid but it also deals with a lot of powerful meta cards like Tracking, Evolve, Upgrade and many other powerful 1 cost spells.

Alexstrasza: Alexstrasza can be anything between a comeback mechanism to a straight up win condition based on the status of the game. You can either use the minion to gain back health from low HP or use it offensively and burst down your opponent with spells.

Deck Code: AAECAf0EBpvTAsUEoM4C7QTTxQLLBAzsB8kDTbsCwAGrBJjEAte2ApYFigHf xALBwQIA

Mulligans 

• Arcanologist
• Doomsayer (and Frost Nova against aggro)
• Frostbolt
• Gluttonous Ooze (against weapon decks)
• Arcane Intellect

Conclusion

Control / Grinder Mage is a very good deck in the current meta and it performs admirably against Priest and other variants of Mage in general. If you are looking for slightly unorthodox decks then you should definitely give the deck a shot.

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