Hearthstone Mages bug me?

The past few posts have been about Hearthstone, so there’s no reason to change that. But rather than discuss my favourite cards or strategies, I’m going to talk about why I hate playing against mages and what it is about the spell-slingers that bug me so much.

Firstly, it’s worth saying that I don’t have anything against the people who play mages or any real life mages who may or may not be reading this, but as soon as I see that my opponent is playing a mage my heart sinks, I sigh a little, and I know the game is going to end in the same way. Namely, the match will end with my frozen solid, yet black and crispy corpse.

What is it about Hearthstone mages that I detest so much? What is it about them?

The very nature of their magic is both annoying and devastating. In the most part their magic is either frost or fire. There might be the odd bit of arcane in there, but it doesn’t bug me so it can’t be that much. Anyway, they hit you with frost and you’re minions are frozen and can’t do anything. They hit you with devastating fire and whole lines of minions can disappear in a meaty-vapour. Goddamn it mages!!!

I seem to be matched with mages more than any other class. Maybe it isn’t the case and I’m only noticing it because they’re not my favourite class. However, considering the mage is the first class that everyone plays in Hearthstone, it makes sense there are more of them around. Or, maybe it’s because they kick ass so much, that more people are flocking to play a mage. I could have made all this up in my mind, of course but it does seem like every 9th match is against a mage.

Somehow in the recesses of my crazy mind, I have ‘secret cards’ as being a hunter thing, even though I think most, if not all classes have some secrets. But sidestepping the fact, that I am always a little bit pointlessly surprised when I see secrets in other decks, the mage’s secrets seem to be absolutely immense. Take Vaporise for example which destroys any minion attacking the mage, Ice Barrier which gives the mage eight armour points, Counterspell which nullifies any spell cast against them, and Duplicate which puts two copies of a dead minion in their hand. They all just seem crazy powerful, considering my hunter only has explosive traps, and summoning bears. They just don’t seem to be in the same league.

I touched on magic before, but I want to mention it again, for one very simple and obvious reason. mages spells hurt. Don’t let their hero power of a mere 1 damage fireball lure you in to thinking they’re not going to magically hand your ass to you. Flamelance deals eight damage points to a minion, Fireball deals six damage to a minion, Flamestrike deals four damage to all minions. This level of devastation can be pretty difficult to get round. If you haven’t seriously damaged the mage by the time he’s drawing 6-7 cards a turn, you’re going to see these cards turning up, and when they’re combined with +1 Spell Damage cards you can be sure you’re going home early.

I don’t even know how you can get to this….

Now we’re at number one, do you want to know what really bugs me about playing against mages? Well, it’s simple. Honestly, I hate playing against them because I haven’t developed the tactics and strategy to defeat them. Yep, that’s right. It’s all on me. I’ve figured out strategies against most of the other classes but just can’t seem to get round mages. It’s easy to blame the Mage’s positives on my shortcomings, as I just did. Ultimately, every class has their pro’s and con’s, a way they should be played, and god knows how many variants of that approach. Maybe it’s a good thing that mages seem to come up more often, because I need the practice against them

Seeing as my rank is only really around the 19-18 mark, I guess I need a lot of practice.

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Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin

Jim Franklin is a freelance writer, living in Derby UK with his wife and his player 3. When time allows he likes nothing more than losing himself in a multi-hour gaming session. He likes most games and will play anything but prefers MMO's, and sandbox RPG's.

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