The Comprehensive The Great Dark Beyond Preview

 

Spontaneous Combustion

A 4-damage spell for 2 mana is very good, which is essentially what this card represents in an Elemental Mage deck that’s expected to play an Elemental every turn. With the nerf to Lamplighter, this is a welcome boost to the archetype’s direct damage potential.

What’s more is that Elemental Mage is getting more support that encourages it to run fire-based damage spells. We expect this card to become a staple for the archetype.

Its baseline form may not be unplayable in other Mage decks either, as it will go face if the board is empty. An aggressive deck that’s not centered on elementals may consider it as a burn option, though we can’t see where that deck would be coming from.

Score: 3

Blasteroid

It’s important to note that Blasteroid shuffles fire spells from any class. If there was any doubt that this card was terrible, this should eliminate it. There is a significant number of fire spells that are game losing draws in the context of an Elemental Mage deck.

But even if the card only shuffled Mage spells, we still don’t think it would be very good. An aggressive deck wants to have consistency. It would rather find the original cards in its deck, rather than random garbage at a reduced cost. This card dilutes its game plan, which extends the game, something that isn’t in its favor.

Considering its plain Spider Tank stat line, this is easily one of the worst class cards in the set.

Score: 1

Solar Flare

Based on historical context, asymmetrical 2 damage AOE spells become borderline playable at 3 mana, and likely constructed worthy at 2 mana. We don’t think this is a difficult condition for Elemental Mage to accomplish, considering that it’s an archetype that tends to flood the board quite aggressively. Furthermore, Overflow Surger is a very strong enabler of the spell as it can potentially discount it to 0 mana on turn 5 if we have kept the elemental chain going for the larger Surger board.

Elemental Mage’s possible flirtation with spell damage synergies makes Solar Flare scale further, even turning into a late game nuke in some situations thanks to Saruun and Overflow Surger. An AOE effect that only targets enemies, hits face, and can be discounted to little to no mana, sounds like an enticing card to experiment with.

Score: 3

Blazing Accretion

Fire spells. Elementals. This is how Elemental Mage will be built going forward, partly thanks to the introduction of this card. Blazing Accretion draws 3 guaranteed cards in the context of this archetype, which is an amazing deal on top of a 3/1 body. When you think of cards such as Backfire, which were constructed worthy when they simply drew 3 cards for 3 mana, it’s easy to understand why Accretion is a good card.

It itself is an elemental, so it doesn’t break a Lamplighter or Overflow Surger chain. Elemental Mage already has a decent amount of card draw. This will furthermore add consistency in its game plan. A needed boost for the fallen archetype.

Score: 3

Ingenious Artificer

A steep initial investment. 5 mana for a 4/6 is a very slow minion to play in constructed, but Artificer’s ability could be very impactful. A significant mana refresh, based on the attack value of the minion played, can open all sorts of possibilities. The two class-specific Draenei are the obvious targets of this ability.

The first is Exarch Hataaru, essentially making it “free” and allowing us to have a big spell swing turn. Frankly, we’re not excited by this interaction, as it is value generating with some potential impact on the board but doesn’t offer a serious threat to the opponent.

The other is Arkwing Pilot. Refreshing a baseline of 4 mana after playing Pilot can help us summon a full board of them thanks to spells like ‘Buy One, Get One Freeze’ or even Reverberation. That’s a massive swing turn that can deal up to 21 damage to the opponent, while also presenting a board that must be immediately dealt with. The initial 5 mana investment on a mediocre body doesn’t sound so bad if it’s followed up by a turn like this.

A neutral option is Velen, although the issue here is that Velen encourages us to run many Draenei, which diminishes Artificer’s consistency.

We don’t ever underestimate abilities that enable big mana swings.

Score: 3

Arkwing Pilot

This card looks awfully expensive for a 7-mana 4/3 that deals 3 damage at the end of the turn. What’s the play here? The key is in the spellburst. Every time we cast a spell; Arkwing Pilot summons another Arkwing Pilot. Not a copy, but the original minion that will carry a new spellburst.

So, if we keep chaining spells, we can fill the board with Arkwing Pilots. The most powerful synergy here is with a copy effect such as ‘Buy One, Get One Freeze’, which means the full Arkwing board will be created with just two additional spells.

This game plan sounds feasible considering that Mage has multiple ways of accelerating this game plan. It’s not just Ingenious Artificer that helps us refresh mana when we play Pilot, but there’s also Watercolor Artist discounting ‘Buy One, Get One Freeze’. We can also generate coins with the help of Skyla’s tourism. We can see Arkwing Pilot fit in as a win condition in Rainbow Mage, Big-Spell Mage, or an entirely new archetype.

In faster matchups, Pilot could become very valuable as a faster win condition for established archetypes, as it ends the game against opponents without AOE effects.

In slower matchups, 21 damage, even on an empty board, does not kill a defensive deck with AOE and removal. Sure, they might not die to the first Arkwing Pilot, but thanks to Astral Vigilant, we could have four if we really wanted to.

Might be a bit of a sleeper.

Score: 3

Pocket Dimension

This spell keeps discovering spells until one of the discover options is repeated. For Standard, this checks out at an average of 3-4 discover phases. In other words, Pocket Dimension’s average outcome is discovering 3-4 spells. Note that this effect stops if our hand is full. It doesn’t go forever in Wild.

A 4-mana spell that discovers 4 spells is not good enough, especially when the outcome carries an element of variance that makes it unreliable. For a 1-mana spell that discovers a spell to see play, it needs to be very synergy-driven, such as Discovery of Magic. A 4-mana investment that makes us fall behind the board requires extreme circumstances to be useful. When we compare the card to Volume Up, it’s easy to understand why Pocket Dimension is so comparatively weak.

This spell’s placement in the set seems random and confusing in general. It doesn’t speak to any of the other cards in the set. Feels like a throwaway card that’s going to sit in the collection, forever unused.

Score: 1

Supernova

Remember what we said about Blasteroid? Random fire spells mean random fire spells from any class. Supernova is an absurdly high-cost spell that can only be realistically justified in a Big-Spell Mage deck that can drastically discount it.

Yet Big-Spell Mage probably wants nothing to do with the card, as there’s no guarantee of its usefulness. It’s somewhat reliant on us having hand space to accommodate as many generated spells as possible. For its big cheat turns, Big-Spell Mage needs to be laser focused. Even Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron, for all its randomness, had a clear goal that it executed with deceptive reliability. We don’t understand Supernova’s goal. A downtrodden version of Evocation.

Score: 1

Exarch Hataaru

This legendary resembles Instructor Fireheart in Shaman. We discover a spell. We play it on the same turn. We discover another. The chain theoretically lasts until the rope burns out, or we’re out of mana.

There’s a big difference, however. Hataaru costs a whopping 5 mana. The upside is that the spells are discounted by (1), making them easier to chain, but the front-loaded cost makes it difficult for Hataaru to make an impact at a reasonable time frame.

The one exception is when Haataru follows up an Ingenious Artificer. In this scenario, it refreshes its full cost that allows us to chain discovers with far greater leisure, and as early as turn 6. Theoretically, this could be a 12 mana turn thanks to the discounts, on turn 6.

That could certainly represent a powerful play, but does it make a deck? We must remember that we had to play a 5 mana 4/6 for the privilege. Do we run Ingenious Artificer just in the hopes of finding Hataaru? Do we run Arkwing Pilot alongside it, or does it pose the risk of diminishing the impact of each card due to competition for Artificer’s effect? Most importantly, does Hataaru win enough games to justify its support? We see the threat potential of Arkwing Pilot. We don’t see quite the same here.

At its baseline, Hataaru looks significantly weaker than Instructor Fireheart. Artificer might be good enough to bail it out, but that’s the only scenario in which we can see the card become competitive.

Score: 2

Saruun

A new cornerstone legendary for Elemental Mage? Saruun grants a permanent buff to all elementals in the deck of +1 Fire spell damage. This means that as Elemental Mage reaches the late game, all its drawn minions become fuel for its nuking capabilities after Saruun is played. Spontaneous Combustion and Flame Geyser are two cheap damage spells that offer good damage rates. Solar Flare becomes a big swing card that can nuke a big enemy board and deal additional face damage. Molten Rune may have found a new role in a different archetype, after dropping out from Rainbow Mage with Sif.

But another very interesting interaction that Saruun enables comes from Overflow Surger. A post-Saruun Surger that fills the board is the equivalent of a fully loaded Sif, with +7 spell damage and the ability to OTK opponents with free Solar Flares on top of it.

The main question mark is whether Elemental Mage can afford to take the game that long. Is playing a 6 mana 7/6 as a long-term investment a reasonable plan for the archetype? Is it even necessary? Elemental Mage doesn’t mind going late thanks to Lamplighter, but with the extra card draw and swing potential, it might be able to lean heavier towards the late game and impose a more serious clock on the opponent. But if the format is fast paced, it may consider Saruun a luxury it can’t afford.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts

The Great Dark Beyond Set Rank: 8^th

Overall Power Ranking:  7^th

Mage’s set is a decent complementary collection of cards to its existing archetypes, including both those that have been prominent, as well as those that have fallen to the wayside in recent months.

We think the Draenei tribe in the Mage class has a lot of potential. Arkwing Pilot is a card that initially looks unplayable, but it has grown on us after theorycrafting with it. We believe its weakness in the new format could be the presence of overwhelming stats in play, but its ability to fit into both Raylla decks and Skyla decks intrigues us.

Since Raylla will become a Draenei with patch 31.0, she can be enabled by Ingenious Artificer to execute a stronger swing turn. Rainbow Mage already likes discounting ‘Buy One, Get One Freeze’ with Watercolor Artist, so it can opt for a faster win condition that obliterates board-centric decks with Arkwing Pilot. In Skyla decks, Sea Shill and Metal Detector can do a lot of heavy lifting in enabling an Arkwing Pilot blowout by discounting it and providing it with coins.

We’re generally not fans of tribal decks, but the new Elemental Mage cards look hot. This could be a fantastic infusion of power and flavor into the stagnating archetype. The split between Shaman’s focus on asteroids and Mage’s focus on fire is a great way to differentiate between the elemental directions in these classes.

There are stronger sets in this expansion, so we suspect that Mage might take a step back in power and prevalence, but we expect Elemental Mage to become a popular ladder climber, if its power level allows it to be.