Arcane Explosion

Arcane Explosion is a mage spell card, inducted into the Legacy set, formerly from the Basic set.

Strategy
Arcane Explosion is very useful for clearing enemy minions from the board and destroying Divine Shields, and represents one of the mage's main defensive plays against aggro decks. While its low damage makes it primarily useful against low-health minions, with Spell Damage minions the spell can be improved to deal substantial damage to each enemy minion.

This spell is ideally saved until it can be used to deal damage to several opponents, or until Spell Damage can be gained to amplify its effects. With a full board of enemy minions and a couple of spell damage minions on the mage's side, this 2 mana spell can deal more than 20 points of damage in total.

When playing against early-game aggro decks, mages may wish to save this for the mid-game, when the mage's opponent may have the chance to put several of their weaker minions into play at once, in an attempt to overwhelm the mage. This includes 'Berserker' warriors, healing-oriented priests, warlocks and murloc decks.

As a cheap spell, Arcane Explosion can also be used in combination with other spells, such as using Frostbolt, Fireblast or even a second Arcane Explosion to finish off tougher targets. Flamestrike is Arcane Explosion's more explosive, but also more expensive, "Big Brother".

This card can be replaced by Twilight Flamecaller, having the same effect while also summoning a 2/2 minion for one more mana.

Lore
is a mage spell from World of Warcraft. It is an instant AoE effect, used primarily for clearing out low-health trash mobs, and by mages to fuel their  spell. It is very effective for dealing AoE damage while moving, and for bringing nearby rogues out of stealth. This card's flavor text is purely humorous: no spell named Arcane Implosion actually exists.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Scourgewar" series, for the card Arcane Burst.

Patch changes

 * Moved from Basic to Legacy set.