MArcomage

Incoming Beast change, which will turn Beast keyword into token-based Quick/Swift (and you'll be able to play Keeper of souls with N=9 and Wolf raiders with N=8 together, but it's a different story), will become another niche-shifting change. Last time Beasts became obsolete because of Frenzy keyword that became much more effective than Beast, and now we'll have Beast and Mage in the same niche.

Mage deck pros when compared with Beast:
Additional Magic from keyword (Beasts must raise Dungeon with cards);
Swift cards (Beasts don't have any);
Good synergy with many keywords - Destruction, Restoration, Illusion, Legend, Burning (the only keyword Beasts have synergy with is Frenzy);
Only one resource is really important (Beasts have some expensive mixed cost cards like Chimera and Keeper of souls);
Ice queen, because it's the best support card ever (Call of the wilds was as good before it was nerfed into oblivion).

Mage deck cons:
Really bad attack/cost ratio in general (Beasts have much better one);
Kinda rare-dependent (Beasts are as well, but there are ways to fix it);
Slow token gain (it takes 4-5 turns to trigger a keyword compared with 2-3 for Beast);
Lack of cheap cards, which makes Mage slow and really gem- and Magic-starving (Beast cards are not so recruit-dependent and can live with Dungeon 3-4);
Lack of resource-gaining common supports (I would take Abyssal viper and Fire fox over Acolyte and Conjurer every time);
Ice queen, because if you didn't draw it, your Mage deck is basically screwed (there is no card in Beast deck which would be so game-changing).

Mages can play any role - building (Unliving is MUCH better though), resource-breaking (as supporting part of Destruction decks), resource/facilities+ (with Legends) and, which is the most common thing, attacking. Mage deck is really slow, so the main Mages' advantage lies in Swift - when you can get rid of 2-3-4 et cetera cards in one round, it's great, even when you can't draw a rare after this. But Beasts with pseudo-Swift would do the same thing better and faster just because of great resource commons and better attack/cost ratio.

// -- end of part 1 because of text length

Here's list of Mage cards that aren't in need of changes at all:
Commons: Wizard, Acolyte, Elven sorceress.
Uncommons: Elven enchantress, Red mage, Sorceress, Summon master, Warpriest.
Rares: Elven warlock, Lord of time, Luna, Myth summoner, Thor, Wind witch.

Chaos wizard costs 4G and discards a common from hand. No additional effect, nothing more on top of that. That's definitely not enough. How about something like this: if a card was discarded, add 3 tower, 5 wall or 2 stock?
Conjurer has some potential as resource card, but production x0 is too prohibitive, especially when you have Mage/Legend deck. I'd rework it like this:
Common, 3G
Replace a card in hand with Conjurer
Gems: +6
Wall: +3
If last card played was Conjurer
Production x0
Druid's summoning effect has little to no synergy with Mage, mostly because you don't want, say, Deathwood shaman in non-Nature and non-Undead deck. But I think it doesn't need changes.
Fire guardian - one of the few defensive cards for Mage deck. But for Mage deck it's pretty expensive - 6g. I'm not sure if Mage deck needs another common Mage/Burning or it needs "Mage" in its condition.
Librarian - Mr. Tokens is crucial for any Mage deck, but it doesn't make it even particularly good. Remove its attack and add Quick.
Warlock - this card doesn't worth to play it in 99% cases. Deadweight for Ice queen or replacing cards.
Apostate - just remove Mage keyword from it, it would become effective only with something like "Magic: +1, Mage tokens: +40", which won't (and, what's more important, shouldn't) happen at all.
Elementalist. Swift, Banish, Mage - good keyword combination, but completely unneeded Unliving bane. Maybe add Aria and remove Banish or raise its cost to 15-16?
Knight of time. With, say, 10G/9R cost it would be much better.
Archmage is bad, but I can't say anything on top of my posts in card discussion.
Master of the past. Really, I'm not sure if it must be changed al all... but it doesn't counter any stock- cards like Tornado. So I dare to say it could use 0-cost.

Now let's look at support cards.
List of cards that are fine:
Commons: Mage guild, Fireball, Arcane bolt, Devilkin.
Uncommons: Magical clay, Magical steel, Meditation, Valley of thousand rivers.
Rares: Shadow unicorn.

Wizard's cottage: cheaper and weaker Mage summoner than Mage guild. I'd add Gems production x2 and raise its cost to 5B/1G, similar to Orc banner.
Stonehenge: compare it with Centaur trainer. Pretty much the same cost, but Centaur trainer has two powerful keywords (well, Beast isn't so powerful, but rare Beasts can be summoned quite easily), while Stonehenge doesn't have anything on top of Magic+ and summoning. Moreover, you need bricks to play it, and it means that you won't be able to play something defensive like Fortification. I see two ways to fix it: lowering its cost to, say, 13B/12G or adding some tower/wall gain (say, 7 tower/10 wall).
And last, but not least - Ice queen. Don't get me wrong, I really like it. But if you don't have it in hand, you're in a world of crap. I suggested to make it more reliable several times: Glacial blessing concept, change to Archmage, change to Myr's academy and suggestion about Mage keyword to Ice queen itself. None of those was implemented. Again, Ice queen should be more reliable, even with weaker effect.

And the final part: keyword. I've asked for higher token gain, and I think it would be a good decision. Another possible change - raise potential Magic gain from it to 3 for better synergy with Magic+ cards.

That's what I can suggest to give Mage decks some love. Any kind of feedback is appreciated, as usual.

Thanks for the detailed analysis. I'll be sure to process and test your suggestions before the upcoming update, however the deck sharing feature is currently in development, so it will take some time.

Some quick stabs:
Conjurer could work akin to chaos dwarf based on discard rarity.
Fire guardian is good as it is now, fire has good sinergy with mage and rebirth

Very interesting analysis of the Mage keyword. To be honest, I like the current set-up for mages. While I agree that there maybe some tweaks required, I would just suggest a higher token gain for mages and leave it alone.

Mojko wrote:
Thanks for the detailed analysis. I'll be sure to process and test your suggestions before the upcoming update, however the deck sharing feature is currently in development, so it will take some time.

Also, YAY!!!!!! :)

I say mage deck is already quite good (93 wins and 59 losses for me) but there is always room for some improovments.

chaos wizard could give gems +4 when discarded card is mage

conjurer has a good sinergy with druid, I won many times summoning a chain of nature rares (gems are not a problem in mage deck).

but druid is unreliable, I suggest this change:
replace lowest rarity card in hand with:
Mode1: restoration
Mode2: nature
(Mode3: destruction?)

Fire guardian supporting also mage cards is a good idea

Librarian could have wall:+6 in place of his attack

warlock needs indeed a radical change, something useful for mage and interesting.
just a random suggestion: make it a recruit only mage with attack based on #mage in hand with an attack/cost ratio slightly better than average.

apostate dosn't need mage keyword, I agree: let' remove it.

Elementalist is really useful in unliving decks, you just need to be careful using it. Yes, it's almost useless in mage decks but it's still a swift and sometimes it saves you from titans (watch out for titan: slowly it's becoming a top tier deck)

Knight of time attack/cost ratio seems good to me being swift. If we really have to change it I'll make attck dependable on #mage in hand, but not entirely, something like attack:8+N or 10+N/2.

For Archmage you already proposed nice suggestions. I add one: make it persistant.

Master of the past at zero it's ok.

Let's make Wizard cottage a replacing card instead of summoning

Some wall+ to stonehenge is welcomed

I fell ice queen is already good, I don't have reasons to make it more reliable, but I also don't have reasons to not change it. I just don't want to.

Anyway (in my opinion) mage deck real problems are uncommon unicornss, they're slowing down the deck and poison your hand making ice queen weaker. remove them and you have room for veteran militia, pegasus and some defensive brick only card or magic+ card.

What can we add to make mage better? An uncommon aria/mage(/swift?) useful for cycling cads (looking for ice queen)

Well, my pure Mage deck has basically the same win/loss ratio as Mage/Legend.
Guys, one more thing: don't forget that this analysis was made because of announced Beast keyword change. Now Fithz and jbryant3 are right: Mage decks are not so weak, but Quick/Swift Beasts would make it obsolete and unneeded.

NG_Beholder wrote:
Quick/Swift Beasts would make it obsolete and unneeded.

I agree. Why not increase the additional Beast token gain and lower the base gain (or remove it entirely) to offset for the Frenzy keyword buff? That would require more Beasts in hand to be useful, but also making the deck more susceptible to -recruits and -dungeon cards. Just a thought :).

Mage decks are very weak early-game, when facilities are at their base level, and you have only few gems in the stock. They are very vulnerable to fast attack decks, which can end the game before round 20, but afterwards mages can shatter the strongest fortifications in seconds. To buff them, the simpliest way is to add more reliable defense source which they lack, and make them build their magic faster with the aid of boosted token gain.

Coolis wrote:
Mage decks are very weak early-game, when facilities are at their base level, and you have only few gems in the stock. They are very vulnerable to fast attack decks, which can end the game before round 20, but afterwards mages can shatter the strongest fortifications in seconds. To buff them, the simpliest way is to add more reliable defense source which they lack, and make them build their magic faster with the aid of boosted token gain.

yeah, one or two brick based wall+ mage support common could be useful. like:
Arcane santuary
7bricks common
wall:+N
tower:+M
N=#mage in game
M=#mage in hand

or

Ritual wall:
10B common
wall:+10
gems:+N
N=#mage in hand

Mage needs indeed some (few) recruit/brick only cards like the ones we gave to illusion. Also it's probably the only keyword without a "+N" card (where N=#mage in hand), the type of card that is often the core of other keyword decks (angel, fairy, zeloth, banshee, phoenix, devastator...). Well, there is ice queen, but I feel it's not enough.

I like the proposed beast change, but i'll comment it after its implemantion. right now it seems to me like an unneeded buff, but it's just a baseless sensation.

Now Frenzy is much, MUCH stronger than Beast. 2/5/10 attack every 2nd turn or 2-3/5-26/5-20 attack every turn? I guess answer is obvious. I suggested a nerf to Frenzy, but Mojko said that he likes Frenzy as it is now.