The Anti Deck Guide: How-to Beat Burn Mage

Welcome to the first installment of Hearthstone Top Decks’ Anti-Guides.  This is a new type of guide which, rather than providing instructions for optimizing play with a given deck, aims to arm you with tools to beat a target deck.

Check out our other Anti-Deck Guides

• How-to Beat Jade Druid

In the Reconnaissance section, we’ll take an in-depth look at the target deck: its cards, mulligan, and overall game plan.  Study of this section will help us to understand our enemy more thoroughly, so that in the Strategies and Tactics section we may learn how to efficiently play around their most interactive cards, prepare to deal with their threats, and make plays which maximize their discomfort and our likelihood of winning.

If you do want to learn how to play the deck, check out our Burn Mage Deck List Guide!

The target deck for our first Anti-Guide is the popular, powerful, and multi-faceted Burn Mage (aka: Gunter Mage, Control Mage, Discover Mage).

By the Numbers

Popularity: 8-9% of the ladder

Clock: 10-11 turn average game duration

Minions: 12

Spells: 18

Secrets: 3-5

Burn Damage: Core of 38, plus 6 conditional from Medivh's Valet, plus an indeterminate amount from Alexstrasza, plus an unknown amount from Discovers and Battlecries. Could easily push upwards of 50.

Reconnaissance

The Deck

First let’s examine the cards that we will have to prepare for when going to battle with a Burn Mage.

Core Cards

2x Mana Wyrm, 2x Arcanologist, 2x Frostbolt, 2x Medivh's Valet, 2x Primordial Glyph, 2x Arcane Intellect, 2x Ice Block, 2x Fireball, 1x Meteor, 2x Firelands Portal, 1x Flamestrike, 1x Medivh, the Guardian, 1x Alexstrasza, 1x Pyroblast

If we’re facing a deck of this type, we can be highly confident we will have to deal with the above cards, but there is also a long and varied list of different ways to fill in the remaining slots, which might include any combination of the following:

Popular Flex Choices

2x Doomsayer, 2x Kabal Courier, 1x Cabalist's Tome, 2x Babbling Book, 2x Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1x Bloodmage Thalnos, 2x Volcanic Potion, 1x Counterspell, 1x Ice Barrier, 1x Eater of Secrets, 1x Polymorph, 1x Pyros, 1x Archmage Antonidas, 2x Acolyte of Pain, 1x Harrison Jones / Gluttonous Ooze, 1x Elise the Trailblazer, 1x Spellbender, 2x Frost Nova

Our opponents deck will usually have, in addition to the Core above: at least 1 more secret, and an AOE package.  For the version of the deck that we will consider for the rest of this guide, we will choose 1x Counterspell for our other secret, and 2x Volcanic Potion and 1x Flamestrike as our AOE.  Due to the current popularity of Mages and Paladins on ladder, and its importance in Mage mirrors, we’ll tech in an Eater of Secrets.  Due to the prevalence and winrate data of the card, we will add 1x Bloodmage Thalnos, and round out the curve with 2x Babbling Book.

Archetype: Control

The precise archetype can be hard to judge with Burn Mage decks.  Throughout Un’Goro, variants of this deck have been called everything from “Aggro Mage” to “Control Mage”.  There are also Combo aspects, with the Alexstrasza/Pyroblast line.  Currently, it is usually constructed and played as a Control oriented deck with Combo potential evidenced by its relatively slow 10+ turn average game duration.  Classifying the deck this way helps stress that, when playing against it, we usually don’t need to rush.

Mulligan

They always keep Mana Wyrm, Arcanologist, and Frostbolt.  They sometimes keep Medivh’s Valet and Primordial Glyph.  If we are playing a class which leads them to think we might be aggro, they will keep Volcanic Potion.

Interactive Cards

Burn Mage is a highly interactive deck with lower than average emphasis on development.  With its combination of burn spells and AOE expect many turns to be interacting with our board, face, or both.

Burn

2x Frostbolt, 2x Fireball, 2x Firelands Portal, 1x Pyroblast, 2x Medivh's Valet (conditional on having a secret up)

AoE

2x Volcanic Potion, 1x Meteor, 1x Flamestrike

Removal

They usually have no hard removal, maybe 1x Polymorph.  But there is lots of soft removal in the form of both Burn and AOE.

Development Cards

Much of the development comes in the form of draw and discover, but they have some early minions and the possibility of going off in the late game with Medivh and Atiesh.

Early Minions

2x Mana Wyrm, 2x Arcanologist, 2x Medivh's Valet

Midgame Minions

2x Mystery Minions from Firelands Portal, up to 3x Mystery Minions from Atiesh– keep in mind, though, that their mid-level minions come into play in the later stages of the game.  There are often no 3-7 drops at all included in the deck!

Big Threats

1x Alexstrasza, 1x Medivh, the Guardian, sometimes 1x Archmage Antonidas

Discover

2x Primordial Glyph, sometimes 2x Kabal Courier

Draw

2x Babbling Book, 2x Arcanologist, 2x Arcane Intellect, sometimes 2x Acolyte of Pain

Synergies

This is a moderately synergistic deck, it doesn’t need synergy to win, as much as say a Murloc Paladin or a Beast Hunter, but the more it can get the harder it will be to beat.  Watch out for:

• Snowballing Mana Wyrms
• Alexstrasza + Burn late in games
• Medivh’s Valet with Secrets in play
• Atiesh + Big Spells
• Thalnos + AOE or Burn

Game Plan

Burn Mage is flexible and can play two primary types of games well, including the ability to switch between these plans during the game depending on board state, clock, and Hero Health: 

• The Burn Plan: Burn us down, using some combination of early minion chip damage, snowballing Mana Wyrms, burn spells to face, Alex, and Ice Block delays.  In this plan, they just kill us, typically this goes into effect when they can count up enough damage over 1-3 turns while being confident you can’t kill them first.
• The Control Plan: Control the board and outvalue us, using some combination of AOE and burn to keep our board clear while accruing bigger threats through Firelands Portals, Atiesh summons, and deploying their own Big Threats.

Against control they want to apply early pressure with Mana Wyrms and their high health two drops, hoping to chip in damage and make us react to their board while drawing cards through the midgame hoping to accrue their high-power late game to combo and/or burn us down.

Against aggro they want to keep the board clear utilizing their early minions, Volcanic Potion, Frostbolt, and Hero Power– preserving as much of their life total as possible so that when the game moves mid to late they can control the board with burn and large AOE while they finally build a board with late game cards and overwhelm us.

Key Cards by Mana Availability

Refer back to this section for a refresher during gameplay.  If they have X mana available, these are some of the options they have.  If read in order, this could be construed as an example of a curve that the Mage may like to execute.

• 1: Mana Wyrm
• 2: Frostbolt, Arcanologist, Primordial Glyph
• 3: Volcanic Potion, Secrets, Arcane Intellect
• 4: Medivh's Valet if Secret deployed. Fireball becomes available here, but they rarely want to cast this on Turn 4, they would rather stockpile it as part of their Face burn finish.
• 5:  3 Damage AOE with Bloodmage Thalnos + Volcanic Potion.  Note that most versions of this deck have no 5 cost cards at all and will be employing some combination of the options on 1-4 on turn 5.
• 6: Meteor
• 7: Firelands Portal, Flamestrike
• 8: Medivh, the Guardian
• 9: Alexstrasza
• 10: Pyroblast

Also, be aware that a Mage with 10 mana is capable of dealing 15 damage (or even more with Glyph discounts!) with 2x Fireball + Frostbolt in a single turn.  So if we have gone deep into a game, and have reason to suspect they have been stockpiling Burn damage, 15 can be a health total that we would like to stay above.

Strategy & Tactics

With this knowledge of our opponent in hand, we can now discuss ways to maximize our likelihood of beating this intriguing, flexible, powerful deck.  Playing against Burn Mage has a high skill component due to both its high degree of interaction that can be played around, and its game plan flexibility that can be responded to.  The more we can play around their AOE effectively, preserve resources to deal with their power moves, and make them expend their resources in ways they would prefer not to, the more we can effectively frustrate their efforts.

Game Plans

In general, the best way to beat a Burn Mage is board presence and pressure.  If we can consistently apply pressure to the Mage, they will be forced to expend their mana on removal, and their burn on minions—thereby protecting our hero’s health.  If we have the board, they will be unable to push damage, and if they are forced to spend their burn on minions to preserve their own health total, they will ultimately have no way to kill us.  If we can keep the board after Turn 7, and hopefully have their health in jeopardy, they will not have time to work towards their power cards or go on a multiple turn Burn Plan, because they will just die.

However, this can be more difficult than it sounds due to their powerful removal tools, both AOE and Burn.  We must walk this tightrope carefully, applying just the right amount of pressure to beat them.  We need to be careful to play around everything we can, not overextending into AOE, or laying out juicy single targets for removal and possible tempo swings.

An alternative game plan for very Controlling decks, especially those with significant heal, is to go almost completely reactive and simply prevent them from being able to kill you.  For example, holding weapon removal for Medivh, saving cards like Priest of the Feast or Armorsmith until after Alexstrasza, removing their board and healing back up out of burn range.  Burn Mages can be exhausted by defensive decks and simply run out of steam.

Mulligan

Mulligan with Mana Wyrm in mind.  This is by far their most important early game minion, and if we can’t remove or contest it effectively we could take too much early damage putting us at a huge disadvantage throughout the remainder of the game.

Value early minions that have or can be buffed to 3+ health as their other early minions are 2/3’s, and their early AOE is Volcanic Potion.  Playing out 1 health minions is a crap shoot, as their Hero Power can remove them, but you also delay their development by 2 mana early.

We probably don’t need to keep our Mage techs [Eater of Secrets, Gluttonous Ooze, etc.] in our opening hand because we won’t be using them until turns 8+ anyway most of the time.  We want, instead, to have a way to deal with Mana Wyrm, and a way to start building a resilient board of our own.

Cards to Play Around

Playing around their removal is a critical aspect of raising one’s winrate against Burn Mage, as their spells are extremely interactive.  Against a Burn Mage, every health point counts: our Hero, their Hero, and our Minions.  If we can get boards to stick after they expend Burn or AOE on them, we’ll be in great shape.  Pay attention to how many games come down to them having perfect lethal, or us setting them to 1 before popping their Ice Block.   Every health point matters!

• Ice Block is easy to identify, as it calmly sits there waiting through the whole game as all the other proc events pass by.  Ice Block is a huge part of the viability of this deck, can and will be used against you.  You could tech in an Eater of Secrets of course and simply chew it up and kill them, but most of the time you will be looking to pop that block with damage.  Always place their health total as low as possible before popping the block, you never know what resources you will have left after giving them another turn, and you want to maximize the chances of accruing a way to deal the remaining damage.  A technical note about the Ice Block card to keep in mind– if the Mage takes damage on their own turn, through fatigue or Eye for an Eye for example, their immunity will not trigger and they will die.
• Always consider Meteor when positioning minions. The most general heuristic here is: place your higher health minions on the edges of your board.  If the Mage is forced to target the Meteor to the edge, they waste 3 damage.  If we stagger our 4+ health minions in a clever way, we can hopefully restrict Meteor to successfully removing only 1 or two targets.
• Early efficient removal. Their efficient single target burns are 3 damage [Frostbolt, Medivh’s Valet] raising the relevance of 4+ health minions.  Their early AOE is the 2 damage from Volcanic Potion, raising the relevance of 3+ health minions on Turns 2-4.  And then of course, their Hero Power can mop up any 1 health leftovers, but at the cost of early tempo.
• Turn 7. Beware entering Turn 7 against these Mages, both the high tempo Firelands Portal to remove a single target with 5 or fewer health or the powerful Flamestrike to wipe a board of any minions with 4 or fewer health, become available.  Single big minions with 6+ health or boards with minions with 4+ health, divine shield, or deathrattle are all valuable here.  If we can keep a board presence that sticks after they expend resources on removal, we will feel pretty good.
• Secrets. Playing into Secrets is a great way to lose games against Mages.  Though Counterspell is typically the only interactive Secret they run, these decks usually have ways of generating additional Secrets.  Pay attention to which deployed Secrets were in the deck at the outset and which were generated in-game.  If a Secret was generated during the game, attempt to proc it efficiently and in the correct order if at all possible.  Consider expending Coin weighed against the possibility of procing Counterspell with it later.
• Prepare for the power moves. If you can’t create a game state that prevents the Mage from playing their big threats at Turns 8+, try to accumulate resources to respond to Medivh and Alex.  We probably would rather hold than tempo out that Gluttonous Ooze, that Priest of the Feast, that Armorsmith.  Plan ahead to those huge late game moves, we know what they want to do, and we need to be able to respond to it effectively.
• Do plenty of arithmetic. Sometimes Burn Mage games can feel like going through flash cards in elementary math class.  We should always keep in the back of our mind: Can they kill us next turn?  Are we on any sort of discernible clock?  Watch for when they go all in on the Burn Plan, which often extends over 2-3 turns.  When they do (assuming we can’t confidently put an even shorter clock on them): we should go into defense mode immediately, if we have a choice between life gain and development, go for the preservation.  Because when a Burn Mage is all in, if we survive the burn and stabilize, we can easily finish them off.
• Defensive Alexstrasza. Don’t forget that Alex goes both ways.  We need to be mindful that if the game state is such that we are ahead, and think we can finish them off, that as long as Alex is still unplayed, we can put them at 1 all we want, but don’t go all in and be unable to deal with them healing back up to 15 health while deploying an 8/8.

Tech Choices

If you find yourself having a hard time beating Burn Mage, here are some neutral cards you can consider adding to increase your winrate:

1x Harrison Jones or Gluttonous Ooze to break Atiesh removing a potentially colossal amount of value, 1x Eater of Secrets which can either be played for major tempo in the midgame eating one or two secrets while putting out a solid body or saved for a surprise finish through an Ice Block, 2x Dirty Rat strategically playable to pull Alex or Medivh (if you are prepared to deal with the big body!) to spoil their powerful battlecries.

Summary

If we’re the aggressive deck, we’re looking to maximize pressure while minimizing the effectiveness of their removal.  It is a game of efficiency and making them uncomfortable and reactive.

If we’re the control, we’re looking to load up and prepare to respond to their power turns, we watch their game plan and efficiently rebuff their threats, keep or heal ourselves out of burn range and exhaust them.

When possible, maintain board presence and pressure…  The more we can control the board, the more likely it is that we will either kill them with offense, or exhaust their resources, making it impossible for them to kill us.  When the Mage is on their back foot—expending their mana and burn on our board rather than our face—they can neither develop to push damage across the board or accrue enough burn damage to scorch our face.

… but do not overextend.  Burn Mage relies heavily on their powerful AOE.  Each time you are entering an AOE turn, and debate playing a minion into a board you already control, take a moment to consider if you need it.  Is this board already something they want to Volcanic Potion or Flamestrike?  If so, playing out another 1/2 or 3/4, respectively, is simply giving them a better AOE and wasting a card.  Do we really want to play a 4/5 into an empty board when a Mage is going into 7 mana?  We might just be handing them a juicy Firelands Portal target.  Remember, their spells are highly interactive.  Let’s do our best to force them to interact inefficiently.

Thanks for checking out this Anti-Guide, leave any questions or comments below, and have fun wrecking those Burn Mages!