Another challenger approaches! This week, David brings on his own special Mage deck–built on lies and secrets–to challenge Dan’s claim to the Happy Hearthstone throne! Can Dan’s Hunter Beastmaster deck withhold David’s onslaught, or will his reign as the Happy Hearthstone Champion Deck be short-lived?
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The Links
- Watch our livestreams of Hearthstone
- Watch our interview with the devs at BlizzCon
- Watch the epic Hearhtstone tournament at BlizzCon
- Sign up for the beta if you aren’t already in it!
Hello!
- David is on the show this week
- Topic: The Secret Mage deck
- Reasons to be happy this week
What is a Deck Challenge?
This is a new episode type we started cycling in last month. Basically, guest hosts bring on their favorite deck onto the show, and break it down for you, telling you what cards they put in it, how it works, and why they like playing it.
Then, they put their decks to the test and do battle against me in a best-of-3-series, live on the show. Each time, I’m going to be using the current Reigning Champion Deck of the show — the last deck a guest host brought onto this show and won with.
Right now, Dan’s Hunter Beastmaster deck is the reigning deck. So I’ll be using it!
And, of course, David has put together a full deck list for his deck, along with some great commentary for the deck that he’s going to be playing today — so you can recreate that one too.
The Deck
- The Secret Mage: Load your deck up with Secrets and creatures that play off of Secrets well to disrupt your opponents plans.
- How it wins: A lot of the Secrets excel at keeping your big threats safe from removal, letting you invest into big creatures late-game that are almost guaranteed to live long enough to punch face. Disrupt the opponent’s plans and keep them constantly second-guessing with Secrets to delay until then.
Five Key Cards
- Counterspell: Always useful, great at protecting your minions.
- Spellbender: Solid as a defense, like Counterspell, and will occasionally steal a huge buff for you.
- Ethereal Arcanist: Perfect in this deck, where it can potentially scale out of control very quickly.
- Kirin Tor Mage: Perfect turn 3 drop. Get a big creature and a secret for free!
- Any legendary minion: The secrets excel at keeping your big threats safe. Any big threat will do.
Ragnaros is coming, and they don’t even realize it…
Full Deck List
You can get more insight into the deck by reading David’s guide, which goes through every single card with full explanation and advice, but here’s the simple deck list with no commentary (ordered by mana cost), if you’d rather just try it out yourself.
Creatures
- 2x Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2 mana)
- 2x Acolyte of Pain (3)
- 2x Kirin Tor Mage (3)
- 2x Ethereal Arcanist (4)
- 2x Water Elemental (4)
- 2x Azure Drake (5)
- 1x Ragnaros (8)
Spells
- 2x Frostbolt (2 mana)
- 2x Counterspell (3)
- 2x Mirror Entity (3)
- 2x Spellbender (3)
- 2x Fireball (4)
- 2x Polymorph (4)
- 2x Blizzard (5)
- 2x Flamestrike (7)
- 1x Pyroblast (8)
Sideboard
The deck list is pretty tight for The Secret Mage deck, but there are some alterations you can make if you are missing some cards.
- 1x Archmage Antonidas (7 mana)
- 2x Vaporize (3)
- 2x Ice Barrier (3)
- 2x Arcane Intellect (3)
- 2x Secretkeeper (1)
- 1x Bloodmage Thalnos (2)
- 2x Novice Engineer (2)
- 2x Gnomish Inventor (4)
The Defending Champion Deck
Dan’s Hunter Beastmaster Deck, which relies on lots of Beast minions and solid removal spells to rush the opponent down.
The Beastmaster Deck has reigned supreme for 1 month, beating 1 other deck before this episode.
The Duel!
Josh’s perspective
David’s perspective
Post-Duel Commentary
- Who won
- Obligatory bragging session
- Challenger Deck: How well did it perform?
- Defending Deck: How well did it perform?
- Best moments in the matches
- The Happy Hearthstone Champion Ceremony(tm)
Community
- Question: Must-pick Arena neutral minions Nathan Montgomery
- iTunes Review: Mjb222, Dan Streelman
Card of the Week
Song by Chris Briggs
Farewell
- Follow David on Twitter
- Watch his videos!
- What you want to see in future episodes
- What hosts you want to visit the show
- Extended version of my interview with the Hearthstone devs at BlizzCon
Join The Podcast
- SUBSCRIBE to The Happy Hearthstone podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
- FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
- MEET new Hearthstone friends and discuss deck strategies and the latest game news in our Google+ Community.
- PLAY with us in Hearthstone, whenever you get into the beta!