Control Archimago with more healing than we know what to do with. Wins with either huge late game burn spells like or , or a combo finisher - load up a fistful of 's + and chain a few cheap spells, machine gunning down the enemy avatar healing x per cast.
The aim of this deck is to smoke aggro or burn by outhealing their damage and stabilising control, and break the control mirror by having way more healing than them. Between casting 6x s (recast with archi), and replicating (recast with archi) ring or s, i usually heal on average of 20-30 per game, sometimes as much as 50.
If they hit you with a , gollum to the rescue () and start again. The other sneaky move is shuffling ring back and play to refetch it.
Common mistakes:
Rushing. Play your sites back and chill. Let them come to you. Be comfortable just playing a site and passing the turn if they arent putting threats out. You win the long game!
Running out of spells in the cemetery. Don't burn them for low impact effects or just to spend your mana for the turn. The cemetery is your toolbox and also an extension of your hand. Try to keep a blink in there for surprise positioning or double draw with .
The deck's weakness is having your divine healings hit with or just getting overrun with burst damage. It's also a hard deck to pilot in general as the decision trees are huge and you need to make counterintuitive plays sometimes which can include just passing the turn and wasting your mana, or trying to bait them into a disenchant.
Matchups
Aggro: their best way to kill you is fast burst damage. Most people will overextend in that position, so try to play your sites in a structure that favors poison nova or earthquake. Your best cards in the matchup (aside from healing) are , , , and egg/ring with replicate. Don't worry about getting damage in until you have the game under control. Let them play threats and focus on answering them in the most efficient way while slowly building spells in the cemetery. for , or and clear a dude is a common play, gaining 2 spells in cemetery.
Mirror: try to outheal and outvalue the other archimago and bait them to disenchant. Your best cards here are , , , , , and .
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Hypergeometric distribution (here). This is a 4 colour deck so our threshold needs to be on point.
Atlas pip count (remove 1 for calculations excluding mirror realm e.g. when looking for first pip):
Air = 20
Earth = 19
Fire = 10
Water = 9
Results.
Air = 99% to have 1 pip earlygame, 95%+ to have 2-3 pips by mid to late game
Earth = almost identical to above
Fire = 86% to have 1 pip earlygame (posion nova), 85% to have 2 pips by late game (major explosion)
Water = 80% to have 1 pip earlygame (if luck shines on you and you have replicate with egg or ring), 94+ to have that first pip by mid to late game when its likely to be relevant.
Earlygame = 5 sites. Starting hand + 2 mulligans.
Midgame = 7 sites. Early game + draw 2 more by turn 5.
Lategame = 9 sites. Midgame + draw two more
This shows that pretty much all relevant breakpoints have over a 95% success rate, with the niche scenarios haviung 80-85%+.
