No Minion Mage Deck Guide – Ashes of Outland

Our Heartstone No Minion Mage Deck List Guide takes a look at this archetype from the Ashes of Outland expansion! We've got a look at the best list for the deck as well as mulligans, play strategy & combinations, and card replacements!

While Mage decks have flirted with the idea of not including many spells, this archetype instead goes the opposite direction and gets rid of minions! I really like the idea of this because it really makes sense flavor wise with the class. A Mage should be casting spells, and there's few decks in the game that would have you casting more then this one! Ashes of Outland gave the class enough new spells to work with that not only fit the theme, but are better when you don't include minions in your deck.

No Minion Mage Deck List

Our early look at this deck includes a version from Thijs! We'll be updating this list with more refined lists as the meta starts to shape up.

No Minion Mage Mulligan Guide

Always Keep

• Font of Power - We have no minions in our deck, so we can get three of them into our hand with this card!
• Incanter's Flow - Great card to have in the beginning of the game so you can get maximum value out of it. This sets you up going forward with additional tempo, and you will hopefully be drawing many cards going forward.
• Ancient Mysteries - Gets you a Secret at a discount!

Possible Keeps

• Raid the Sky Temple - Lots of spells in our deck, so the majority of the time this is going to be our turn one play. You should be able to finish this quest relatively quickly, especially if you get an early Incanter's Flow. While it's close to an auto-keep, you very likely want to pitch it against aggressive decks.
• Learn Draconic - Fine keep against slower decks, but might be too slow in more aggressive match ups.
• Ray of Frost - Solid keep against aggressive decks where you need to get rid of or stall minions.
• Arcane Intellect - Good keep against slower decks where you're going to need to compile more resources.

No Minion Mage Tips & Play Strategy

This deck might be a bit on the slow side, but once we get it going it has the potential to be problematic due to the powerful spells and the randomness of what we'll be producing with those cards. We'll also be able to burn our opponent down from higher life totals due to some cost reduction that's in the deck.

We've got two cards in this deck that benefit from the fact that we don't have any minions in it. Font of Power is a powerful tool to fill up our hand in either the early or late game. Apexis Blast is another of these cards. It's very versatile, because not only can you remove a minion with it, you could also go to the face! Best case scenario is we remove a minion and then get a powerful one of our own. It's a card that can swing games depending on the situation.

Incanter's Flow is an amazing early game card, but it's something that will be pretty dead in the later stages of the match. However, it will really help us gain tempo throughout the match, so it's worth including in the deck.

The secret package in this deck is largely up to what you feel like best works against the meta you are facing. If you're facing decks that run high cost minions, you can run Mirror Entity instead of Flame Ward . Your other secret options aren't that great, but Counterspell and Ice Barrier are other possibilities.

An additional swing card we have comes from Ashes of Outland and it's Deep Freeze . Not only does this freeze an enemy, which can lock down a big minion or prevent their hero from attacking us, it also gets us two Water Elemental that can help us continue to halt our opponent's momentum.

Evocation while costing 1-mana is a late game card. You don't get mana reduction on these spells, so this is so much better to play when you have the mana to cast the majority of the spells you get in your hand. This will likely be used for potential lethal by attempting to get that one or two additional damage spells you need to finish the job.

Not only do we have Evocation now as a potential closer or card that gets us out of trouble, we also have The Amazing Reno ! This gets rid of any problematic boards, and also gets us a spell that will hopefully help us each turn...

No Minion Mage Card Options & Replacements

• Mirror Entity - You can play with the secret package. It largely depends on what you end up facing. If you're playing against decks that play big minions, then Mirror Entity is a quality addition to the deck.
• Flamestrike - Strong board sweep that can be a cheap replacement if you're missing some of the new cards.
• Power of Creation - Solid late game spell that gets us a board and keeps with out no minions theme. It's on the slow side, but we're expecting to go later into games.
• Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron - If you want to get really wacky, then throwing the box into the deck could be a fun idea!