Dirty rat is probably his only card to play that gives him a chance to win. He could've popped a mire keeper or evil could've had no other minions in hand. Never know

Any new freezemage lists, now that meta has settled? I found freezemage didn't work competitively when assessed as the sum of its viability across ranks legend to 15.

I'm looking at two different (Quest) variants:

Variant #1: Yes to Alexstrasza: board clears and stalls, run ice barriers, run doomsayers;
- 2 sub-variants: giants-tempo, or Infinite-OTK with Alextrasza as backup

Variant #2: No to Alexstrasza: no board clears, only stalls, no Blizzard, no ice barriers, no doomsayers, use Mirror Images to help clear a hand that refreshes itself too quickly

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Apr 18 2017 05:08pm

TL;DR:

Mirror Image = great for freeze mage b/c freeze mage needs to reduce hand size & stall.

Other cards that are useful to freeze mage to make deck more meta-competitive?

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Apr 18 2017 05:54pm

Giants won't work anymore because quest Warrior is top tier

I think the best freeze mage right now is to just throw spells at the other guy's face behind ice blocks and board freezes.

This post was edited by FroggyG on Apr 18 2017 06:02pm

You're right. I couldn't figure out how to make giants work from release day. I am working on a tempo elemental mage with tar creepers and giants. The idea is pretty straight-forward: Midrange deck with late game lock-down.

My focus is OTK mage primarily, but I can't help but look at tempo quest mage every time I make a change to my OTK list.

Cards I don't like right now include: Blizzard, doomsayer, and anything else that is clunky and highly conditional
Cards I do like right now: Mirror image, all draw creatures, and anything that plays cheap and fast

I'm trying to build based on two different approaches:
1. Strawman approach. Build the deck to work as well as it can against any opponent.
2. Meta-specific. After step #1, modify the deck for the meta.

Step #1 is meta-general, and makes a deck more resilient in all settings. Step #2 means you make your deck worse against certain decks, so that you can be better against others.

There's a third building strategy which I like to consider:
3. This might sound silly, but it's the consideration of running 1-of cards.

Step #3 takes a look at a card like Acolyte of Pain, and says "Which is more valuable to this deck? Drawing this card more consistently, or not drawing this card twice?" The best actual example is Brawl, which was run as a 1-of for a long time back in early ladder days. I said it was more valuable to draw it consistently, but eventually everyone ran 2 because it was also needed as a 2-of. This is a valuable way of thinking for Freeze Mage, to figure out whether to run 1 or 2 Arcanologists, for example.

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Apr 18 2017 06:23pm

Here's another card I'm looking at: Freezing Potion

Costs 0. Seems pretty useless, but in a deck that has troubles emptying its hand, it may help free up a turn to focus on drawing.

You should only have trouble emptying your hand against slow decks

I'll give an example of a so-so OTK deck from release: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/787600-dogs-time-warp-otk

Such a list would have troubles with emptying hand, before getting the combo off.

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Apr 18 2017 08:26pm

Time warp mage hasn't lived up to the hype though
You're better off steering away from OTK and just hitting them in the face.
Lots of taunts in the meta but not as much healing

This post was edited by FroggyG on Apr 18 2017 08:43pm

Freeze mage, I find, is best played as a non-quest deck.

2 arcanologist
2 ai
2 loot hoarder
2 acolyte
1 blood mage

The draw is there. Rest is basic freeze mage
2 ice barrier
2 block
2 fireball
2 frost bolt
2 doom sayer
2 frost nova
2 blizzard
Alex
Antonidas
2 primordial glyph for extra burn or removal

Idk the last 3 cards I use but that's my list. I'll post a pic when I'm not on my phone