Hearthstone’s Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion card reveal season is underway! We can expect to see multiple cards revealed on daily basis leading up to the expansion itself.
In this post, I take an in-depth look at Ghastly Conjurer.
Ghastly Conjurer
Ghastly Conjurer is a rare Mage class card from Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion. It is a four-mana 2/6 minion with a Battlecry to add a Mirror Image spell to your hand.
I think this card is really interesting. It has a durable body, but it does not have Taunt, so it is able to defend you only in a limited way. However, Mirror Image gives you some Taunt minions, it’s the Mage basic spell that creates two 0/2 minions with Taunt.
So what Mage deck would be interested in running a durable, even if under-statted, body that gives you a cheap defensive spell from outside your deck?
Secret Mage is not interested. The list is already tight, and even though Mirror Image is a nice spell to use together with Archmage Antonidas, which is included in some Secret Mage lists, Secret Mage has other, better ways to trigger Antonidas’ special effect. Secret Mage is also a very aggressive deck, it does not need a defensive minion like this. Same goes for Tempo Mage.
Quest Mage, on the other hand, looks like a perfect match. The 2/6 body can help with trades, most likely multiple trades even, and Mirror Image both advances the Quest and gives you some Taunt minions. With Prince Taldaram potentially giving Quest Mage some redundancy, things are looking really interesting for the deck.
Those were the obvious cases, the aggressive decks that do not like the card at all, and Quest Mage that is always interested in gaining spells from outside its own deck.
What about other Mage archetypes?
Freeze Mage is not interested. It already has its own gameplan, and a 2/6 minion does not contribute sufficiently towards that gameplan.
Perhaps Gunther Mage or some other slow Control Mage build? Mirror Image is great for Antonidas, if that is included in the deck, but a 2/6 body for four mana is a big tempo loss. That said, Control Mages don’t play a ton of cards in the four-mana slot right now:
- Fireball
- Polymorph (sometimes)
- Water Elemental (sometimes)
- Eater of Secrets (sometimes)
For a Control Mage that includes Archmage Antonidas, Ghastly Conjurer can be quite attractive. Mirror Images could help defend against aggro even if you are not running Antonidas, but as they only stall a bit and don’t really help to clear the board, they might not be enough in that case.
Ghastly Conjurer can see play in the future in Quest Mage or Control Mage. The new cards are especially interesting for Quest Mage, which will have a lot of experimentation ahead to determine the optimal build.