Smiter’s Tempo Mage

I’ve been playing tempo mage the past few months because Rogue is still in a bad place, with Miracle being crushed by overly aggresive decks and control warriors and other archetypes still being sub-par.

I’ll explain my decision making in switching out some cards with others below:

After playing many variations of this deck, Ethereal Conjurer seemed like a go to card, with Spellslinger often giving the opponent a much more valuable card or giving me a dead card from another class like Embrace the Shadow. Once Firelands Portal came out, i started playtesting it and added it instead of  Ethereal Conjurer.

Acolyte of Pain seemed a card too slow and it usually made the opponent remove it with me drawing just one card. Sometimes this was good because it got rid of a removal, but most of the times it just pushed be back in tempo. I went to Loot Hoarder but at some point it hit me that it’s pointless to have it because it rarely traded up, and in the late game, it was again a loss of tempo. Finally i went to Novice Engineer and this way i could draw the card early and be fine with a 1/1 or draw the card late and play it in the same turn.

Mana Wyrm was in this deck since forever. The upside of it is you might win a match right from the start with the 2x Mana Wyrm +Coin+ Mirror Image. Most of the time you wont get that combo, but sometimes when you do, it gets removed, and you are too behind on cards to get back in the game. And when you get this in the late game it’s just an OKAY card, it wont do you much. So in this expansion, I’ve started playing Babbling Book instead, and since it’s a mage card, the worst possible outcome would be Shatter or a slightly worse Arcane Explosion. Most of the other cards are great and even secrets will make your opponent change strategy and benefit you even in the slightest. This card will also be useful at any stage of the game.

Let me know how you feel about this deck and how it was trying it out.