INTRO
I’ve got something a little different for you all today. I had considered writing a guide to control mage, and I did just about the bare minimum needed for that—24 games with one list at rank 1 and legend—but I think the archetype is pretty well understood, and other people have written about it at length recently. (
naturesbfLoL just shared an excellent
guide to what’s arguably the archetype’s most important matchup earlier this morning!) There will be an abridged deck guide at the end of this post, but the bulk of it will be devoted to a topic I don’t think we’ve had much discussion of: reading the meta and choosing and teching a deck that will beat
tomorrow’s popular lists.
Here’s the decklist: AAECAf0ECNACigfTxQKb0wLy0wKj6wK38QLF8wILTYoByQPsB8rDApbHAtXhAtfhApbkAr7sAqbwAgA=
And here’s
proof that I won at least one game at legend with this list. I don't use any kind of deck tracker, so that's all you get!
WHY BOTHER?
Your first question might be "Why go to the trouble of doing a bunch of analysis and sifting through out-of-game resources trying to predict the future when you could just pick the meta’s best deck and play that?" I see a lot of people here and elsewhere repeat questions and complaints about grinding their way to legend that make the same assumption. Can it be done with anything that’s not "a tier 1 deck"? Is there any point in playing archetype X when archetype Y has a winrate so much higher? Many people in the post-nerf KnC meta insisted that murloc paladin was the surest path, or the
only sure path, to legend. But the obsession with archetype "tiers" is misguided.
Let’s say you just missed legend last season, and you start the new season at rank 5, one star. Naturally, you pick the archetype with the best winrate from the Data Reaper report for your grind. In a settled meta, that winrate is probably only 52 or 53 percent, but let’s say—generously—that your skill lets you push it up to 55 percent. At that rate, you’ll have to play 203 games to reach legend†—on average. That’s over 200 games just for a 50/50 shot at making it by the end of the month. To have 95 percent confidence of reaching legend, you’ll need to budget time for
499 games. Even if you’re playing a very fast deck and averaging six minutes per game, that’s 50 hours each month you need to commit to the game. For many players like me, that’s not possible.
What can you do, then, if simply picking "the best deck" isn’t enough? Let’s say you have, on average, about half an hour a day to commit to the ladder (that's roughly what I have in a normal month), and let’s also say you’re going to be playing a slower deck—you’re going to average about nine minutes per game. Now you only have time for about 100 games in a month. With a 70 percent winrate, you’ll have 95 percent confidence of getting it done in that time. (On average, you’ll do it in 59 games.) But how do you win seven games out of ten if the "best" archetypes usually hover around 52 or 53 percent? You either master an extremely powerful, extremely skill-intensive deck (e.g., patron warrior or highlander priest) or you get ahead of the meta. The release of a new expansion is a great time to do the latter, because the meta changes dramatically and frequently, although this is something you can do in all but the very stalest metagame states.
†
This figure and those that follow come from this handy little site. PICKING AN ARCHETYPE
On the first day of the Witchwood, I climbed from 7 to 3 in the process of trying out various new decks—mostly even paladin and tempo rogue. I didn’t get to play on Friday, but on Saturday, seeing that paladin had quickly become the "it" class, I looked for a list that would perform well against it while still standing up to hunter and warlock, the classes I had been seeing most. I settled on
this even warlock list from Senfglas, which carried me smoothly to rank 1 in the limited time I had to play on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday morning (didn’t get to play on Sunday).
By Tuesday, I had the sense that the meta was shifting again—hunter and shaman had nearly disappeared, and cubelock was back on top—so I turned to the internet to confirm this (you can check
Data Reaper LIVE for near-real-time class breakdowns by rank) and to see what new decks people were chattering about. There are many places to look for this sort of information, but I find that just taking the pulse of Twitter and scanning the daily "Ask
/CompetitiveHS" thread right here is often enough to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing. A lot of people were buzzing about taunt druid being a strong answer to cubelock, so I decided to gamble on that being the next hot deck. There was a little buzz about quest rogue too, but I wagered—correctly, I think, based on overall meta trends, although I personally queued into and got butchered by two quest rogues, and only saw one taunt druid!—that people would gravitate toward taunt druid, because it was reportedly strong against both paladin and warlock (whereas quest rogue gets wrecked by paladin). Players tend to have a slightly-too-long memory for the meta, too, and I expected that although odd hunter was no longer relevant, fear of it would influence the quest rogue vs. taunt druid choice in the same way.
If paladin (showing great diversity but mostly focused on wide, relatively fast aggressive strategies) and warlock (overwhelmingly cubelock) are the top classes, and I expect taunt druid to join them, what should I be playing? Can any archetype reliably beat all three? I saw some of the early adopters of taunt druid complaining about Hex ruining their combo and decided that control mage was worth a try. I have a lot of experience with the archetype, my collection is suitable to experiment with it (i.e., I have fringey legendaries like Sindragosa and Dragoncaller Alanna that are worthwhile in exactly this deck but otherwise not worth crafting), and although conventional wisdom says that it loses badly to cubelock, I was willing to bet that conventional wisdom was wrong—the loss of N’Zoth really hurts warlock in this matchup, and with heavy anti-weapon tech to take Skull of the Man’ari out of the equation, I believed that I’d actually be strongly favored. (It’s a small sample on paper, but the results bore those expectations out—none of the games were even close.
naturesbfLoL’s experience and analysis also support my conclusions.)
The three classes I expected to be most popular would all be favorable matchups. What would my bad matchups be? Quest rogue, certainly; I just hoped that people would be afraid to run it in the teeth of so many paladins. Tempo mage, but I expected it would also continue to be suppressed by paladin. Face hunter and Shudderwock shaman had already nearly disappeared. Quest warrior and combo priest could be tough, but they were trending down. I made two tech/flex choices based on these expectations: I’d run multiple weapon-removal cards to improve the paladin and warlock matchups, and I’d choose Dragoncaller Alanna as my main late-game bomb (along with Sindragosa). She’s weak to hard board clears—Twisting Nether, Brawl, Psychic Scream—but I knew that warlocks had overwhelmingly chosen to forgo the former, and if my predictions were wrong, and control warrior and control/combo priest did turn out to be prominent, I was going to struggle anyway.
THE DECK
Most of the decklist is set in stone at this point; the rotation of Firelands Portal and Ice Block really settled the question of which spells to run.
CORE CARDS
- Frost Lich Jaina is the whole point of the deck. The big-spells package may get top billing, but it’s only here because it’s an effective bridge to the DK. The DK is so important, in fact, that you should basically always keep it in the mulligan (it’s not only the best card in the deck, it’s also the hardest one to draw, because you have only one copy and nothing tutors for it).
- Baron Geddon is too good with the DK, and too effective against wide boards in general, to pass up right now. No, you don’t need Geddon to play the deck, but you’re really shooting yourself in the foot by not including him.
- The spell package: two each of Flamestrike, Blizzard, Meteor, and Dragon’s Fury—the big spells that give the deck its name—plus Raven Familiar to draw them and Arcane Artificer to leverage them for armor. And two Polymorphs, because you’re not going to beat druid or warlock without those, and they’re big enough to work with the rest of the package.
- Two Doomsayers; they’re good early against aggro and they’re good late with Blizzard. Tricky to use against cubelock, but still a must-include.
That makes eighteen core cards. Next are some slots where similar cards are always played, but there’s a little room to respond to the meta.
ALMOST-CORE CARDS
- Two copies of a 3-mana taunt minion. I chose Tar Creeper, the reliable all-rounder; other people prefer the higher-value, lower-impact Stonehill Defender, but we’re not in a value-oriented meta. Don’t sleep on Lone Champion, either, which is the best of the three against cubelock specifically and worth consideration for that reason alone. I thought I could beat cubelock just fine without them, so I stuck with Creeper.
- Two copies of some kind of draw/cycle/tutor minion. Acolyte of Pain, Bright-Eyed Scout, and even the humble Gnomish Inventor have all gotten reps here, but the new expansion brought us two superior options: Witchwood Piper and Sandbinder. I prefer Piper for the perks of usually knowing exactly what I’m going to draw, always knowing exactly what it’s going to cost, and effectively doubling my chances of drawing Artificer each game, but Sandbinder is an interesting option too (and also greatly improves your ability to pull Artificer); all five elementals in my current list are high-impact pulls, and there are others you might consider running (like Pyros and Arcane Tyrant). The very good odds of pulling Geddon might make Sandbinder the optimal choice in a slightly different meta.
- Some kind of weapon-removal package, ideally two cards for the present meta. The strongest and most popular classes right now, paladin and warlock, are heavily reliant on weapons. Being able to destroy Skull of the Man’ari, Vinecleaver, and Silver Sword, in particular, as soon as they’re played, gives you an enormous advantage. I’m running one Acidic Swamp Ooze and one Gluttonous Ooze, but I’d probably run two Gluttonous if I had two copies (and no Acidic—although you wouldn’t be wrong to run three weapon-removal minions right now). I think Harrison is a poor choice because it risks overdrawing against cubelock.
- Voodoo Doll—most people run two; I think it’s better to just play one. Even with some spicy synergies in the deck, it’s inferior to Polymorph, and you really don’t want three or four of Poly/Doll in your hand at once. In a world without warlock or druid, I might actually consider two Dolls, one Poly, but we do not live in that world.
We’re now up to 24–26 cards, depending on how much weapon removal and how many Dolls we’ve included. Time to put the finishing touches on the list and really tune it for the meta.
THREATS, UTILITY, AND FLEX CARDS
The DK wins a lot of games by herself, but can’t beat everything (and sometimes you just never draw her). You need a couple of alternative win conditions, which is where we see the most variation in control mage lists. As I noted above, I chose Dragoncaller Alanna and Sindragosa, concentrating as much power as possible in as few cards as possible and leaving a couple utility slots open. If Twisting Nether, Brawl, and Psychic Scream become more prominent in the meta, I’ll have to drop Alanna, but right now few popular decks can answer her.
A lot of people run the Lich King, which is also a solid choice, and/or Toki, which is fine, but suboptimal in my estimation. Many also run Alexstrasza, which I strongly disagree with. You don’t have the burst damage to turn her into an effective offensive weapon, and without Ice Block, it’s difficult to use her as a defensive tool (besides, there are a number of popular decks—cubelock, Mind Blast priest, miracle rogue, etc.—that can burst you down from well above 15 anyway).
If you pick two or three big threats to top your curve, you’ll have two or three spots left for utility cards. I decided to try, and am really liking, two copies of Arcane Keysmith, which is a great little Swiss Army knife that lets you tailor your secret choice to the matchup at hand, making even niche picks like Mana Bind and Frozen Clone devastatingly effective sometimes.
I added a single Rotten Applebaum to shore up the weak face hunteodd rogue matchup a bit. As it turns out, I didn’t encounter any of those decks, but it’s still a decent 30th card. The slot could be devoted to any number of other options, of course: the Lich King for more pressure and value, Skulking Geist to counter various combos lurking on the fringes of the meta (e.g., Togwaggle druid), even a third weapon-destruction minion.
THE RESULTS
So, how’d it work? In 24 games at rank 1 and low legend (from around 3400 to just shy of 2000), the deck went 17-7. Specifically, the matchups broke down like this:
- Paladin: 5-1 (even 3-1; odd 1-0; murloc 1-0)
- Rogue: 2-4 (miracle 2-1; quest 0-2; tempo 0-1)
- Warlock: 4-0 (all cubelocks)
- Druid: 2-0 (taunt 1-0; Spiteful 1-0)
- Priest: 1-1 (Blast 1-0; Vivid 0-1)
- Warrior: 1-1 (face 1-0; quest 0-1)
- Mage: 2-0 (both tempo)
I encountered no shamans and no hunters, and a number of these decks (murloc paladin, Vivid priest, quest warrior, and tempo mage) only showed up at legend. Even taking those opponents into account, the three classes I expected to dominate the rank 1 ladder—paladin, warlock, and druid—made up fully half of my opponents, and I think I was unlucky to encounter so few druids; per Data Reaper LIVE (as of this posting), druid makes up 22 percent of the rank 1 meta (nearly 25 percent at rank 2) and is nearly twice as common as rogue (druid, warlock, and paladin combined are well over 60 percent of rank 1). I went 11-1 against the classes I was targeting.
Notably, there’s a tremendous difference between ranks 1–4 and legend right now. The top four classes remain the same, but their relative frequency goes from druid > paladin > warlock > rogue (with, again, druid being nearly twice as common as rogue) to the exact inverse: rogue > warlock > paladin > druid. This means that just reaching legend effectively weakened my deck a little. And the meta doesn’t just change from rank to rank—it’s in a constant state of flux. By the time you read this, Togwaggle may have already supplanted Hadronox as the weapon of choice for druids, and control mage’s moment may have already passed.
All the same, I hope that my explanation of the process of analyzing the meta, predicting which decks you need to target, and choosing and teching a deck to do so has been helpful to some of you. And if you do want to give control mage a spin—it’s a fun deck and, as I think I’ve shown, can be built to target fairly wide swathes of the meta—some tips and notes on strategy follow.
MULLIGANS
Always keep Jaina. I said it before, I’ll say it again—unless you
know the game is going to be over before turn 9, always keep her. She is the alpha and omega of this deck, and finding her on the mulligan hugely improves your odds of winning.
You always want Doomsayer and Tar Creeper unless you’re certain you’re against an opponent who will put no pressure on you, and you obviously want your weapon-removal tools if you expect your opponent to have weapons (you’ll sometimes want to keep them even against, say, druid, just to have something proactive to do early). If you know for sure that you’re up against a Spiteful deck, you should toss Raven back—it won’t be able to draw anything on turn 2—but otherwise, always keep it.
You almost always want to keep Dragon’s Fury; it’s your cheapest and potentially strongest board clear, and you always want to use it earlier rather than later, so that it doesn’t whiff because there are no spells left in your deck. It’s also better for Raven and your second copy of Fury to have the first in your hand. Cubelock, which will never have a Fury-able board on turn 5, is the principal exception to this rule; combo decks that never build a board, like Vivid priest, are also exceptions, but much rarer in the meta.
The same principle applies, a little less strictly, to Polymorph—you don’t want to lowroll it with Raven or Fury, so keep it on the mulligan if you think you can afford to (or if your opponent might get something huge out early, like Edwin or a Mountain Giant—you should always keep it
and Voodoo Doll against cubelock).
TIPS—PALADIN
Use your life as a resource. They have poor burst but endless reserves of small threats; don’t be afraid to take a few extra points of damage to catch a few extra minions with each spell. Keysmith can be absurdly strong—look for Counterspell before odd paladin’s turn 5 or even paladin’s turn 4 (if you’re on the coin); Spellbender and Mirror Entity can be backbreaking too, especially if you read the opponent’s hand well.
TIPS—ROGUE
Tempo and miracle rogue, though quite different to play, are similar from the mage’s perspective. They’re basically the opposite of paladin: They can burst you for a ton, but they struggle to build a wide board, so you can be fairly liberal with your spells. Flamestrike on a couple of 4/4s is often the right play.
Reserve Poly, Meteor, and Voodoo Doll for Edwin, Questing, and Thug if possible. Look for Ice Barrier, Vaporize, Explosive Runes, or Spellbender according to the circumstances. Note that neither archetype ever plays Vanish, so getting Alanna down ASAP with 4+ dragons is often an instant win.
Quest rogue is basically impossible. Have fun with that!
TIPS—CUBELOCK
Be careful with Doomsayer. Used correctly, it can deny them a turn 4 Mountain Giant or, with Blizzard, crush their entire post-DK board; used sloppily, it gives them free activations of Lackey and Cube. Dig for weapon removal—it’s very hard for them to win without Skull. Don’t Poly a Giant unless you really have to; you want to save them for Doomguard or, if they give you the opportunity, Cube. (Voidlord poses no real threat—you’re happy for the DK to rez a couple of those and a bunch of Voidwalkers if it means no Doomguards.)
TIPS—DRUID
Against taunt druid, dig hard for Polymorph, and then Poly things: Hadronox or a Cube that ate Hadronox if they let you; Arthas if they don’t. If they only get Hadronox off once (or if you somehow stop them from getting it off at all), you basically can’t lose. It’s really that simple.
Spiteful druid is basically like mega-paladin—lots of threats, almost no burst; you can let yourself get quite low before stabilizing. Hold Voodoo Doll, if you can, for the possibility of a Tyrantus highroll from Summoner; save Doomsayers to use with Blizzard later—a combo they can generally only beat with Spellbreaker. They’re usually slow to develop a board in the first few turns anyway, so Doomsayer is less impactful then. Counterspell or Mana Bind is hilarious if you know they have UI in hand.
Against Togwaggle, tech Skulking Geist and dig for that. Dump cards to prevent them from comboing you, if you have to.
TIPS—OTHER
The above four classes are about 75 percent of the high-level meta right now, and I don’t have a great wealth about advice about off-meta matchups anyway. Mind Blast priest plays a lot like miracle rogue; Vivid Nightmare priest plays a lot like slowly drowning in quicksand. Against hyper-aggressive rush decks (face warrior, tempo mage, odd hunter, etc.), be ruthless with their board and your hand. You have way more value than you need—if you can save a few points of health by Flamestriking Spellbreaker, Blizzarding an empty board with Artificer, or Polymorphing Mana Wyrm (I did this twice in one game and won), do it.
submitted by Since this is my first post I feel I should introduce. It's been 6 months and 5 pens since I contracted nib fever. Once I realized how much money I wasn't spending on alcohol since starting law school, I figured I would spend that money making sure I was using the best tools. So what started out as the search for the perfect highlighter turned into a downward spiral that ultimately brought me into the world of fountain pens and premium paper. I've got to say, this is pretty sweet stuff. I started with Pilot Metros in F and M, and my collection has blown up to its current state: Lamy Safaris in F, M, and 1.1; a Faber Castell eMotion (M); and a Platinum Century 3776 Nice (M).
After falling in love with the wetness of my smooth writing Vista F nib, I decided I'd "check the box" and pick up a Lamy 2000 that put down a similar line. After reading up, I figured the EF nib would be my surest bet, given the testimonials regarding line width and wetness of the EF being virtually indistinguishable from the F nibs.
Today the 2000 arrived in perfect working order. Before inking up with Iroshizuku Shin Kai, I made sure the tines were aligned, inspected the nib/feed unit, and I made sure I gave the ink some time to saturate the feed before finally putting the nib to paper. (Side note: Reports of a dreadfully small sweet spot appear to be greatly over exaggerated; you really have to rotate the pen to fall out of it.) When compared to a Lamy Vista F, the actual width of the dried lines are not too different, but the EF is noticeably finer (if only slightly). However, this isn't the gusher I was hoping for.
[tl;dr] I like this pen, but I would like it a lot more if it were a bit more generous with ink. Any tips on increasing the ink flow on this tiny nib?? Or should I just send it back and ask for one in fine?
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