Mage (Vanndar Stormpike)

Vanndar Stormpike

This is a newbie (2 weeks in the game) test deck build centered around Vanndar Stormpike (Neutral, Cost: 4, Stats: 4/4, Battlecry: If this costs less than every minion in your deck, reduce their Cost by 3). Comments and critiques are welcome.

Quick rundown:

• 16 minion cards. All are Cost: 5+ besides Vanndar Stormpike (Cost: 4).
• 14 spell cards. 9 that do not summon, draw or otherwise activate minions, 5 that do summon when cast. 
• If I can survive the lean early rounds – the middle and endgame can be quite powerful.
• The gambit is that I forgo early attack options for a chance of huge, supercharged attacks later.
• If Vandar Stormpike and Lor’Themar Theron show up on time or soon thereafter then things can be great. If not, things aren’t over but things aren’t optimal. 
• Reduce costs and double all stats – at all costs!

The deck feels a bit top heavy at times due to the minion cost restriction (All minions besides Vanndar must cost 5 or more) which leans towards the early rounds being very quiet on my side – mostly relying on low-cost spells to summon minions or cast damage mitigating spells, if available. It’s a “Feast or Famine” deck. “Take no prisoners!” as Vanndar would say when attacking. 66% of the deck is Cost: 5+, 30% of the deck is Cost: 7+ which doesn’t seem too bad now that I’ve done the math and typed it out. I have a 33.3% – 40% chance of playing Vanndar on time (round 4) depending on whether I play first or second. In any case, the sooner I get to play Vanndar and Lor’Themar, the better.

If I can survive the early onslaught and play Vanndar I can look forward to casting minions with taunt, health regeneration etc. to defend as my attack ability grows with cheaper cards churning out every round. Being 15 health or lower triggers special effects or cost reduction for Reno Jackson and Lokholar the Ice Lord cards but this website isn’t showing those effects on the cards themselves. This website doesn’t always show correct card attributes (Faceless Manipulator has an Infuse effect not listed for example). If Patchwerk is played early by my opponent, it has potential to break or at least hurt my deck strategy but I’ve avoided this disaster so far. 

So much is dependent on how my scrambled deck plays out against my opponent’s scrambled deck. The fact that Mage class doesn’t seem to have a Dredge or Summon card that can draw Vanndar forth in Standard Play is disappointing. The card “Simulacrum” could work but it says it is for Wild and Duels formats only. Although I did see a Cost: 1 version of this card played against me today by another Mage who used “Tear Reality” to generate the spell randomly. 

More later…