Hearthstone: Control mage versus Jade

[@RitterLake]

Very good game. Was a very methodical chess game that had me analyzing many moves, and thinking omg Strife just do this! But as usual you prevailed, great content keep it up :)

[@cactus2304]

that was a questionable time to play a draw five i would say like the hero even said woah look no more deck and they were like nope gotta kill this 3/3

[@GRAVESGGS]

Damn it feels good to see Jade druid lose to a mage

[@valeriousortherlu5368]

Why not sheep and geist at the end? The order you played seemed very questionable; developing at such low health / him being in deep fatigue whilst knowing his hand, seemed like a misplay.

[@MohammedAbdelhamed]

I thought about that too, but he knows that the idol was the druid's last card, so next turn the druid has two options: -shuffle again which means he loses the board and strife can easily geist the idol much more easily because the druid would have had any board presence -Or play the idol directly and strife had 3 answers to it in his 4 remaining cards (2 frost bolt and meteor) with arcane intellect so he was guaranteed to have an answer and since getting rid of the idol wasn't a priority due to these stated reasons he made the play the the does the most tempo to pressure the druid.

[@valeriousortherlu5368]

It just seemed a little greedy, and the immediate need to generate more (less power) on the board than geisting seemed like a huge risk, even with 3 answers out of 4 leaving it to a 25% instead of a 100%. Though he seemed surprised about the spreading plague which was very out of character for Strife, I just feel like he took an unnecessary risk (since he used the removal he had either way).

[@MohammedAbdelhamed]

He is guaranteed an answer, 3 out the 4 cards answer the last jade , and he can draw 3 out the 4 cards that turn because he had arcane intellect in hand, he is guaranteed to draw an answer, it's not 75%. I dont really see the risk in that play, he had an answer for shuffles which geist, and he had answer for the summon 100% of the time with a guaranteed draw for either with either frost bolt or meteor.

[@MichalisGiannaki]

What if he had a summon draw option like an auctionear?

[@samrare64]

Anyone know why he didn't volcanic potion the turn he played mediveh

[@klausgaming7365]

I don't know, but it was good enough to beat the "wasted spellbreaker " guy.

[@mmorkinism]

Samuel Kim probably becouse potion clears board but doesn't develop anything

[@nez14526]

Along those lines, I suspect you take the first opportunity where you're not dead on board to develop something as greedy as Medivh (if you have strong tempo / survival plays after it like blizzard). Going for the clear, while it lined up perfectly, meant almost no tempo, and a play like Aya + Jade (Spirit|Blossom+Idol) just loads the board back up to a point where it may not be safe ever after to play Medivh.

[@ToxicallyMasculinelol]

it's actually a really good question, in this kind of matchup, a card like medivh is one that you have to play the first chance you get. even if you have a good situational answer, it can be better to play a card like medivh, alex, kazakus, etc. because these cards sink a lot of mana into an effect that doesn't immediately protect you. in some matchups, like against pirate warrior, you're always better off saving your big cards until you've won the board because they run out of steam quickly. once pirate warrior loses the board past turn 5, they can never again summon as much power as they had on turn 4. but with jade druid, the longer the game goes on, the more power they can summon. you can never run them out of steam, and if you try to clear the board every turn you will run out of removal long before they ever run out of draw effects to refill with jade idols. and even at that point, drawing 1 jade idol per turn will still be enough to beat you, even when they have to shuffle it to avoid fatigue, because that 1 jade idol will be a 17/17 and the next will be an 18/18 that late in the game. so the point is that the normal control strategy (clear minions early and look for 2-for-1s until you get a safe turn late in the game to play a big threat) doesn't work against jade druid, because it gets progressively less safe to play a big threat the longer the game goes on. unlike the aggro decks, jade druid usually gives you a safe opportunity to play cards like medivh as soon as you get enough mana to cast it. they don't get started fast enough to threaten lethal on turn 8, so you get your opportunity early on and then, if you miss it, medivh sits in your hand the rest of the game, (or until you concede) because every turn they'll have lethal if you don't polymorph or meteor or freeze. there have historically been other matchups like this but jade druid is by far the most extreme example that's ever existed. if you wait too long to play medivh then you'll never be able to play it at all. whereas if you play medivh early, atiesh will give you at least a chance of taking over the game when you're inevitably forced to play blizzard or meteor to avoid dying. if you're just clearing/freezing the board every turn but not developing anything, then you're not going to win with this deck because there's not enough burn. the only way to win is to get on the board, and medivh is perfect for that because it allows you to develop big, free minions while protecting yourself with your spells. just needs to be played as soon as possible, unlike tirion or n'zoth or deathwing which can stop some amount of damage the turn they're played. at the same time, the reason i think it's a good question is because volcanic potion has a similar kind of dynamic against jade druid. for medivh and alexstrasza, you only get a few chances for it to ever actually be safe to play. but with volcanic potion, you only get a few chances for it to ever actually get any value. if you hold it all throughout the early game, then eventually your opponent has nothing on board except giant minions, and then volcanic potion does nothing. unlike blizzard, which can clear small minions but still freeze big ones, volcanic potion is really only valuable in the early game. in other matchups it can be valuable to just fix up the math on trades, or to be combined with blizzard or flamestrike. but against jade druid in particular, past turn 10 the 2 damage is not enough, 4 damage is not enough, even 6 damage is not enough, so volcanic potion becomes a card that's just taking up space in your hand. that's why in this matchup you'd always want to play volcanic potion long before playing frost nova or blizzard. but compared to medivh it's tough to say what's more important. do you play volcanic potion, and accept that you'll never be able to play medivh? or do you play medivh, and accept that volcanic potion will never be worth casting again? i think in this case it's clear that medivh is more important. it sucks to have a card that will never be able to get value, but it sucks more to throw away your only real win condition. if you don't get medivh down at some point then your win rate goes way down, because you have no other way of ever lining up enough damage to end the game. ideally you'd play medivh on 8, alex on 9, and then win the game by freezing their board while summoning free 6-drops. any version of that has a WAY better chance of winning than the line where you just do your best to clear their jades every turn.

[@ToxicallyMasculinelol]

and of course mage has the special advantage of ice block, so you often have a safety net to play your defenseless power cards. i also forgot to mention that frost lich jaina is another one of them, except in those situations where the 5 armor actually saves you. ice block gives you the ability to play these cards when you'd otherwise immediately die, but that doesn't mean you can always afford to hold these cards as long as you want. it's still better to play them when your opponent can't even break your block. the block keeps you from dying, but only for a turn. so it's good to protect your life with the block, but it's even better to protect the block itself. since you don't have a reno to immediately regain all your health after your block is popped, you're pretty much always going to be forced to either win the game the turn after it's popped, or play another ice block. if you're playing this deck, which has almost no burn, then the former is out of the question. and the latter means you're basically playing the next turn with 3 less mana, so how do you ever turn the game around and start winning? if the opponent is spending 1 mana to summon a 10/10, you just can't afford to be playing with 3 less mana. so even though ice block often frees you up to safely play your big power cards, there are still certain matchups where it's way, way better to play those power cards before the ice block even comes into play. in some situations you might even play medivh before you play ice block itself. a smaller example of that is where you choose between casting ice barrier vs ice block. if you're in a situation where they both protect you from lethal, then it's almost always better to play ice barrier first. early on, ice barrier can give you an extra turn just like ice block, but later in the game there are lots of situations where the opponent has way over lethal, where +8 armor doesn't save you. so you want to use ice barrier as a pseudo-block early on, and save the real ice blocks for the later turns where it's the only thing that saves you. same goes for frost nova and blizzard. you take these calculated risks early in the game so that you'll still have your guaranteed safe button in the later turns where it really counts. with medivh it's a similar thing, except instead we're taking a calculated risk early on so that, if we manage to stabilize, we will have a way to actually win the game. if we don't take that risk, then it doesn't matter how many turns we survive, because we'll never be able to turn that into a win, and at some point we will run out of cards and the opponent will not.

[@Fujosovich]

This deck has a lot of tech choices doesn't it? It's obviously working just a surprising choice to have so many one-of's.

[@CoDLover7771]

replacement for bloodmage?

[@diokosa7001]

CoDLover7771 add a babbling book, mana worm, loot hoarder,doom sayer stuff like that or if you already have a low curve add in another win con it's up to you

[@Kryptnyt]

Consider crafting bloodmage since its so ubiquitous

[@rodrigocosta2365]

dont play this deck, or mage, or shaman and rogue if you dont have bloodmage

[@Uvikeh]

Rodrigo Fsc you can play shaman without thalnos, same thing for at least half mage decks and same thing with keleseth rogue

[@everyvillainislemons9759]

dat double-u doe

[@viper66494]

Flamestrike and meteor topdecks won this game

[@Stilllife1999]

viper66494 few cards left. *top deck*

[@Warm_Pancakes]

Suddenly strife has facial hair 😧

[@bekesseg]

nice mustache strifecro!

[@vediboy22]

Man this camera position is really detrimental. When Strife hovered over the opponent's deck the video didn't show how many cards he had. Even just moving it up a little bit might allow us to see that number.