Elemental Mage

Elemental Mage is a Mage deck type derived from Tempo Mage. It focuses on using the strong synergies of the Elemental tribe, introduced in the Journey to Un'Goro expansion. Similar to Dragon decks, it aims to have a strong curve of Elemental minions to take full advantage of their powerful Battlecry effects. The strength of these Battlecries makes the archetype very flexible, and capable of shifting between tempo and value play styles. While Tempo Mage is focused more around spells and burst damage, Elemental Mage is more focused on board advantage and value.

In order to be successful, Elemental Mage needs to reliably play Elementals on the turn prior to using their most powerful cards in order to benefit from their effect. To help with this, the deck employs heavy card draw or inexpensive Elemental tokens generated from cards such as Fire Fly to allow them to consistently benefit from high value cards like Servant of Kalimos and Animated Avalanche.

In the Year of the Mammoth meta, Frost Lich Jaina was the centerpiece of Elemental Mage decks, giving the deck a source of healing and constant value generation to outlast the opponent even against control decks. Descent of Dragons saw a return of Elemental Mage as a mainstream deck with Elemental Allies and Animated Avalanche giving Elemental synergy decks the push it needed to fully commit to the archetype. This version of Elemental Mage can use either a Mana Cyclone hybrid deck or a Hero Power based deck for Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk.

Common cards
The following cards are usually in the deck.

Core cards
The following cards are played in most or all versions of the deck:

Optional cards
The following cards are played more than occasionally, but not always:

Wild cards
Wild cards that fit well into this deck type: