Buy One, Get One Freeze
This spell draws immediate comparison to Reverberations, which reflects poorly on it. Reverberations helps us remove an opponent’s threat, while this spell only freezes it. Although we do get to summon a non-vulnerable copy for ourselves, it cannot attack on the next turn, so its impact on the game is very slow. Moreover, Buy One is a poor answer to Titans compared to Reverberations, as a frozen Titan cannot cast abilities on the same turn.
Reverberations itself hasn’t been a particularly strong card for a while. Its main asset has been its offensive combo with Sif in Rainbow Mage. The only possible path for Buy One to be better than Reverberations is if Watercolor Artist discounting it to 0-mana is a viable path to revive the Sif combo after the Snake Oil nerf.
Reverberations is not strong enough by itself to see play in a deck like Spell Mage. If Reverberations can’t make the cut, this spell shouldn’t either.
Score: 1
Malfunction
Dealing 6 damage split amongst enemy minions for 2 mana is a decent early game payoff for Spell Mage. The archetype tends to struggle against early game aggression, so Malfunction should help it answer all sorts of early game threats.
Malfunction cannot hit the opponent’s face, which makes it a consistent early game board clear, but not a late game damage tool. We find it hard to believe that Malfunction alone will be enough to lift the archetype from its current 40% win rate to a competitive range. So while it’s a good card for the deck, we don’t expect it to see immediate play. Mage needs either more buffs to its current spells, or new spells that can fit into the archetype.
Score: 2
Darkmoon Magician
Darkmoon Magician’s role seems to be a value engine for a new archetype. The goal will be to accumulate a bunch of cheap spells, then cast them alongside Magician in a big “Miracle” turn. We see some problems here. If we’re playing a bunch of low-cost spells, then the random spells are unlikely to be game changing. They could also end up backfiring since there is no restriction on them to only hit enemies. On average, we don’t think we gain much from them.
So, do we really need to work that hard to win Hearthstone games? Should we build a deck around Darkmoon Magician, the payoff needs to be somewhat consistent. Instead, the best we can do is a Miracle turn that’s likely to cost as much mana as Yogg in the Box, requires more cards, but yet with a smaller average impact on the game.
This is not an archetype defining card. Mage is far from being competitive through its two established strategies. Hard to believe this spawns a new, viable one.
Score: 1
Final Thoughts: Disappointing set, which will likely keep Mage competitively dead. Malfunction needs to do some heavy lifting for Spell Mage to rise in its performance enough to stop being a joke.
