(KFT) N’Zoth Control Mage

Introduction

A deck I have been toying with since the release of Knights of the Frozen Throne is this Control Mage which I will explain in detail below. Currently, I’m playing around rank 4 on the EU server and have pretty good success with the deck, as long as I can dodge Jade Druids (which is pretty hard to do at the moment, I admit).

And on a sidenote: One of the most underused cards of the new set, in my opinion, is Bone Drake. The card has reasonable stats and most dragons, which you can get from its deathrattle effect, are pretty damn good in the current standard format. Primordial Drake, Ysera or even Sindragosa come to mind. The latter even has the added effect of summoning deathrattle minions which you can revive later with N'Zoth, The Corruptor. When that happens, you can outvalue even the most control-ish decks like Highlander Priest or Quest Warrior.

How to play

In your mulligan, you obviously look for Mistress of Mixtures, Doomsayer and Arcanologist. Against most decks, you also want to keep Frostbolt. If you already have two 2-drops in your hand, keeping a Water Elemental or Arcane Intellect can be correct, too.

In the first few turns, yor top priority is avoiding damage and avoiding to fall behind on board at all costs. Sometimes you can ignore a minion or two and go for card draw or play your secrets, if you already have Frost Nova + Doomsayer in hand, but only when you are confident that your opponent has no way to remove it.

Once you made the transition into the mid- and late game, it all comes down to making good trades, being careful with your removal spells, picking the right cards with Primordial Glyph and making sure your opponent doesn’t trigger your Ice Block before you are able to play Frost Lich Jaina. Having your Ice Block still up and also gaining life with all your elementals will make it really hard for your opponent to actually kill you unless he can one-shot you two turns in a row with an army of jade golems.

So I played Frost Lich Jaina. What do I do next?

Glad you asked. Those sheeps from Polymorph as well as your own 1 health minions (Bloodmage Thalnos and Shimmering Tempest make for good targets to generate some new Elementals with your upgraded hero power while also getting additional ressources (random spells, card draw) to answer whatever your elementals fail to take down. Also pay close attention to the attack and health of every minion on the board. It’s crucial to maximise the value you get out of every single trade and make new minions with your hero power, even if that sometimes means pinging one of your own elementals to replace it with a new one.

In case nothing seems to keep your opponent down and you’re also out of ways to generate new Elementals, it’s finally time to play N'Zoth, The Corruptor. And oh boy, the value you get out of that guy is second to none. Not only do you resummon your Bone Drakes which provide you with even more dragons should they die, but you also get back Pyros in its 2-mana and 6-mana form – these are Elementals by the way, so they also have Lifesteal when you’re in Frost Lich form. And last but not least, you can get back some deathrattles that will give you random mage spells or some life gain (if you needed any more life at this point).

What is this deck good/bad against?

I’ll keep it short: I wanted to play a deck with 2 Polymorph in it to fight those god-awful Big Priest decks. That works pretty nicely so far, instantly polymorphing their minion they “cheated” into play often sets them off enough so you can get your value game going. I also played against a fair amount of Pirate Warriors and as long as you have some sort of early game and they don’t draw the complete nuts, you should come out on top. Water Elemental is the MVP here, of course. Connecting with it once often leads to the Pirate Warrior going far out of his way to remove it that their actual gameplan suffers from it.

What this deck can’t do is beat Jade Druids. You don’t have any way to pressure them, so they have all the time in the world to ramp up and assemble a big jade army. No amount of Water Elementals help against that.

Tech Choices

I haven’t tinkered with tech cards yet, because the decklist is pretty tight as it is. I can see making room for The Black Knight, given the amount of Lich Kings in the meta right now. Other cards I think are possible are Baron Geddon (because he heals you for a ton when you’re in Frost Lich mode) or Gluttonous Ooze.