Hello, there !

With the additions of new cards enhancing its hero power, and cards rewarding you for pinging (cf  Pyromaniac  and Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk) , a ping focused mage seems to be something that people will want to play early on the expansion, and i believe it’s an archetype that can be very competitive once it gets well refined. 

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what this archetype could look like, and how you should play it ! 

Why and Odd deck ? 

It’s true that playing an Odd mage is rather weird, as it forces you to cut out not only Spirit of the dragon hawk and Waterboy, which would be great in a ping deck, but also some great spells like Blizzard or Polymorph, So is it really worth it to cut all of these tools in order to make this deck work ? 

The answer is yes, because having a basic ping of 2 damages is sometimes enough by itself to stop your opponent from playing a big board fast, and you can deal with 4 health minions on turn 3 by dropping a Daring Fire-Eater before your ping, enough to take out a buffed Heng-Clan Thug, and you have a lot of turn 3 value in Black Cat, Stonehill Defender or Pyromaniac. 

Also, Blast Wave is a good compromise for Blizzard. Yes, the freeze effect is better than a potential random mage spell, but if you can deal with 2-3 minions and leave one in ping range, that’s good enough. 

How do you win, tho ?

Well, that’s pretty simple actually, against aggro, you need to use your early pings carefully to lower their damages output, and then clean the board with a Blast Wave or a Dragon's Fury. 

After that, you can start being more aggressiv, with Clockwork Automaton and Zilliax being a great combo to get yourself back in the game, but Baron Geddon, Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk or Frost Lich Jaina  are also enough to win against most aggro decks. 

If you go against a slower deck, you want to get as much value from your hero power as you can, so first thing is to get to Frost Lich Jaina and overflow your opponent with Water Elementals, and once he used his removals on them, drop the big guys : Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk, Dragoncaller Alanna, Clockwork Automaton + Zilliax, even Baku the Mooneater can be threatening if you are in control, or can be used to bait out strong removals. 

Also, remember that using Zola the Gorgon on Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk allows you to play two Ragnaros the Firelord, and it was a card that could solowin some match-ups back in the days ! 

There you go guys ! Tell me what you think about this deck, what changes you would see happen, and maybe debate on its viability in the incomming Rastakhan’s meta !