Sold!

I had a good first run with a Duplicate Control Mage as I mentioned in my earlier post, 'A Good Deck'. My luck did not hold. I didn't play the deck much after that post, and when my next Mage Victory quest appeared this week, I really wanted the 10 extra gold since I want to buy the first wing of The League of Explorers. But after 7 losses to 1 victory with this setup, I was ready to bite the bullet and craft the class cards I mentioned lacking previously. After crafting 2 each of Mana Wyrm, Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Spellslinger, I had 90% of the cards I needed for this Tempo Mage deck: Icy Veins Tempo Mage .

Still missing? The 2 epics and one rare, Polymorph Boar. There are super obvious replacements for Arcane Blast (starts with Arcane) and Polymorph: Boar (starts with Polymorph). What, though, is a reasonable replacement for the Grand Crusader?

Grand Crusader is an unusual enough card and inclusion that it merits a note about it in the guide to the deck on Icy Veins. I wasn't about to spend the dust, so I filtered my collection by the keywords 'add' and then 'draw' and I found a card I had only very recently acquired, from one of the last Arena runs I did before realizing I needed to hoard a little cash for an adventure: Gadgetzan Auctioneer.

It seemed like a very reasonable choice, in all regards but one: Grand Crusader provides a strong tempo play on turn 6, consistently. Gadgetzan Auctioneer does so only in the cases where you have a Sorcerer's Apprentice on the board and an Arcane Missles in hand, or you went second and hoarded your Coin, because you missed your Mana Wyrm early combo. Both of those happen from time to time. But what I have found is that I am often in a pretty good place around turn 6 or 7 already, with so many strong starts, and I can often play an Auctioneer on turn 7 or 8 with one spell, or even 9 or 10 with 2, and gain a huge advantage thereby. In the time I have run the deck, at least 50 matches in 3 days, I have used the Auctioneer more than twice as often as I have played Antonidas, in fact, although the dream is both. If you have both on the board and a cheap spell to play, you (almost surely) win.

Now I am off to experiment with Icy Veins Secretless Tempo Mage . Spoiler, I don't have Rhonin, we'll see how this goes ...