Conjurer Mage Deck List Guide – Rise of Shadows – May 2019

Check out alternative versions of this deck on our Conjurer Mage archetype page!

Conjurer Mage Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Twilight Drake – A good early minion that can trade away opponent’s minions.
• Book of Specters – Card draw tool that powers up your main threats.
• Firetree Witchdoctor – Spell generator and early minion that does not reduce the number of cards in your hand.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Mountain Giant – The main early threat in the deck, keep against everything else except Rogue.
• Scaleworm – Flexible early removal tool. Currently a keep against Rogue.
• Dragonmaw Scorcher – Area-of-effect damage. Keep against token decks.
• Mind Control Tech – Comeback tool. Keep against token decks.
• Acidic Swamp Ooze, Harrison Jones – Weapon removal. Keep Harrison against Rogue. Keep Ooze against Hunter and Paladin.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Mountain Giant – The main early threat in the deck.
• Twilight Drake – The secondary early threat in the deck.
• Book of Specters – Card draw tool that powers up your main threats.
• Firetree Witchdoctor – Spell generator and early minion that does not reduce the number of cards in your hand.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Harrison Jones – Weapon removal. Keep against Warrior.

Conjurer Mage Play Strategy

While Khadgar reaps all the glory, the real engine of the deck is the quartet of Mountain Giant, Twilight Drake, Book of Specters, and Conjurer's Calling. An early Book of Specters can fill up your hand so that you can play an early Mountain Giant or a huge Twilight Drake. Never hesitate to cast Book of Specters, it is always worth it even though you risk discarding some spells.

Thing get really scary for the opponent when Mountain Giant hits the board. Conjurer's Calling summons two minions of the same cost, and there are only two 12-cost minions in the game right now: Mountain Giant and Grave Horror. Therefore, you have a 75% chance to get at least one 7/8 Taunt minion when you cast Conjurer's Calling on your Mountain Giant. If you can curve up from Book of Specters to Mountain Giant to Khadgar + Conjurer's Calling, you are looking at the best-case scenario of four 7/8 or 8/8 minions on the board on turn four when on the Coin. Of course, that happens extremely rarely, but I hope it illustrates the pure minion power available to the deck. Nothing prevents you from doing the same later in the game in a single turn, either.

Another power combo is Khadgar and Power of Creation. There are 3 Mage minions and 29 Neutral minions in the Discover pool for Power of Creation in Standard format, and this means that you have a 14.62% chance to Discover a Charge minion – either Argent Commander for 16 burst damage or Reckless Rocketeer for 20 burst damage – when you combine Power of Creation with Khadgar. You also have a 39.53% chance to Discover a Taunt minion (including Hogger, although a big group of Hoggers can be a little inconvenient). Without Khadgar, Power of Creation is OK. With Khadgar, it can provide some crazy swings.

One more thing about Conjurer's Calling. Note how it does not specify whose minion you should target with it. Yes, you can use it as a hard removal spell if you really want to. Unfortunately, the owner of the minion gets the newly summoned minions. Then again, if you want to use Mind Control Tech and the opponent only has three minions on the board, I guess that’s one way to activate the Battlecry effect. There are many uses for the spell.

Another thing you need to pay attention to are your dragon synergies. Mage does not have access to a large pool of dragons, and your synergy enablers are limited. Firetree Witchdoctor, Scaleworm, and Crowd Roaster all require that you are holding a dragon in your hand to enable their full effect. Sometimes you may need to play them without the effect: Scaleworm is the most likely candidate for such a move, as the others have such a major upside. Nonetheless, always consider your dragon synergies when deciding on playing your dragons.

VS Aggro Decks

Your approach to facing aggro depends on the type of aggro deck you play against: Dragon Mage is capable of taking firm control of the board during the game, and much of the time you will be able to set up some Taunt minions as well. However, your healing capabilities are limited. Therefore, when you play against decks that have inevitable damage, you do not have the luxury of just chilling and outlasting all of their damage like a Control Warrior might do. Likewise, you are not great at clearing wide boards, except with your own minions, which do not do a whole lot against a board full of tokens buffed with Soul of the Forest. The subsequent Savage Roar play may just end the game.

What you can do, however, is defend yourself early on and then bring some big guns to the party and crush the opponent. Mountain Giant is always nice and your opponent typically has to react to it or risk getting blown out early with Conjurer's Calling. Twilight Drake can also take down multiple minions while defending you. However, they are by no means the full extent of your tricks.

Against token decks, the key tool you want is Mind Control Tech, which can prevent them from snowballing early on.

If you’re able to play a couple of big minions on the board, even Twilight Drakes that are not that great to combo with Conjurer's Calling, you can give them Taunt with Sunfury Protector – or if you do end up playing Conjurer's Calling on a Twilight Drake that has done its share of value trading, you can Taunt up the random minions that are summoned.

Firetree Witchdoctor is a great card when you’re on the defense, as it gives you a small minion to trade with and also a spell that you can use to keep defending. Sometimes you can even find board clear spells with it.

Scaleworm can have an immediate effect on the board thank to Rush, and Dragonmaw Scorcher can burn down some small one-health minions.

Remember that you are not invincible. You do not have a solid supply of health or armor. Compared to many other slow decks, you need to start turning things around faster and go for that face. With all your early-game defensive tools and the big minions you can get on the board, you can often punch the aggressor in the face early enough that something like The Forest's Aid comes in too late to mow you down.

VS Control Decks

Your goal is to pressure control decks until they crumble. Sometimes you can achieve this early in the game with some Mountain Giant magic, but much of the time it is all about just lining up one threat after another, so that you can always repopulate the board if it is cleared. You do not have Deathrattle minions that would ensure a sticky board, so you need to have cards in hand to be able to go for more.

You need to be aware of the tools control decks have at their disposal. For example, you want to build boards that are difficult to clear with Mass Hysteria against Priest – three similar minions are better than two, because then two of the minions kill each other and leave the third one up (assuming that they do not have enough health to hit multiple ways). Against Warrior, Brawl is a tricky card to play around with no Deathrattle minions, but you can achieve more against Shield Slam and Warpath by keeping track of how much damage the Warrior can deal with them and planning the health totals of your minions accordingly. Minion positioning can also be crucial to play around Supercollider: an extra Sunfury Protector may help prevent a good Supercollider hit either by taunting up a specific minion or just by sitting between two big minions (which risks losing it to a Shield Slam or other such single-target removal card, if the Warrior has enough mana).

Overall, control matchups are much easier to navigate with Dragon Mage than aggro matchups, as you get to use your extensive arsenal of threats to wear them down instead of trying to find small edges to cling on and carefully evaluate how much you need to trade like you do against aggro decks.

Conjurer Mage Card Substitutions

Like many control decks, Conjurer Mage is an expensive deck, and your options to make it cheaper are limited. You can actually replace any of the Legendary minions, but there are lots of mandatory Epic cards in the deck.

• Khadgar is at the very center of the deck. However, while the swing turns it provides are half of the fun of the entire deck, the deck is playable without it. You can substitute in more win conditions, depending on what your build is missing. Additional copies of Astromancer can do, for example. While missing Khadgar undoubtedly reduces your win rate, I have not drawn it in most of the games anyway, and the deck has still performed in all of those games.
• Harrison Jones is a meta choice. Weapon removal is strong in Rise of Shadows, and some builds of the deck run all three available cards: two copies of Acidic Swamp Ooze and the Harrison Jones. You may add another Acidic Swamp Ooze if you do not already run two, or you can go for a strong midgame card, such as Dragonmaw Scorcher.
• Zilliax is perhaps the most universally used card in the game. In this deck, it provides some crucial healing, an area the deck struggles with. Rotten Applebaum is the best substitute, but you really should craft Zilliax if you can, because you want it for every class anyway.
• Kalecgos is a huge threat if it sticks, because the few spells in the deck are very powerful. Furthermore, you can discover a game-winning card from Kalecgos – really, I have done so, and you can do so too. It is not indispensable, however. You need to keep up the dragon count for synergies, but if you happen to have an Alexstrasza, you can use that one instead. Dragonmaw Scorcher is another reasonable dragon for the deck. In a pinch, any dragon will do, really.
• Book of Specters and Mountain Giant form the core engine of the deck together with the cheaper Twilight Drake and Conjurer's Calling. You need this quartet, or there are not many tunes to play, and any ones that would be left would be in minor key.
• Astromancer and Power of Creation can substitute for each other to an extent. Without Khadgar, Power of Creation becomes much weaker and should be used as a single copy at most – you would always want two copies of Astromancer in that case.
• Crowd Roaster is all but mandatory. You may be able to get by with one copy, if you can add another Dragonmaw Scorcher. Mage has limited access to dragons, and you need at least six dragons for the deck to function.