Welcome to the Sparkmage deck!

Features:

This deck is designed to cast two spells per turn and then tap Sparkmage for 3 to 4 damage nearby while using repositioning magics and defensive sites to control the battlefield and protect your avatar.

This deck caps out at 5 mana, while most cards are 2 or 3 and two air threshold. Allowing you to cast two cards and spark for 4 damage.

Because of our mono threshold, we take advantage of some defensive sites in water in order to manipulate the top of our deck and stall in the early turns.

Strategy:

First, ensure your opening hand contains a defensive site. Prioritize Forsaken Crypt, Open Mausoleum, Mountain Pass, and Bottomless pit.

We want to develop 5 sites while stalling our opponent and avoid spending any cards before we can do so. We will use our first 2 draws for sites, afterwords drawing only spells. Spending as few cards as possible until we have our full power.

During the early turns, we can take advantage of our defensive sites to stall our opponent. Particularly Forsaken crypt to develop a Ghoul or Open Mausoleum for a Skeleton. Things like perilous Bridge and Bottomless Pit can be handy here as well.

It is important to keep your nerve during these early turns. As ideally you'll only be playing sites and drawing spells. Avoid playing sites to the middle of the board early unless you feel there is some sort of advantage. Keeping your sites contained can help out later on, as a smaller board will help keep things in range once you start sparking.

We want to save any card with more than one threshold and go into the midgame with a hand loaded with sparks. But we do have some role players for these early turns.

Highland Falconer can help develop the board by finding a Vampire Bats and create two bodies and some healing to ward off early aggression and get some life back. its okay to spend this card early.

Poisonous Dagger is a dangerous artifact in your Sparkmage's hands. Killing anything they throw at you early, while also giving lethal to your sparks. If you can get this on the board, you can be a little more aggressive with how you spend your cards since your sparks will be lethal.

Fine Courser is another card to help avoid attacks while still being able to tap to play sites.

Later on, Gift of the Raven will help refund some of the damage taken during the early turns.

Once we have 3 or 4 sites on the board, its time to start thinking about setting up the midgame. Our last sites will ideally be a physical barrier, such as Bottomless Pit, Perilous Bridge, or Mountain Pass. We want to place this in the middle of the board and use it to protect our Avatar while giving us a centralized location to Spark from.

Once we've established 5 sites, its time to get started.

Ideally, we have a 2 cost, and 3 cost spell in hand both with 2 air threshold. We can use our movement tricks to get into position, or put enemies where we want them. Or we can flood the board with fast and evasive minions. Afterwords, we can spark for 4 damage, favoring killing enemy units so ours can take over the board.

There are a number of ways to create card advantage. Skeleton Mage, Gift of the raven, Merlin, and Hexham Haunts will be your main tools to do so and I recommend getting as much as you can from these plays, as options are generally limited beyond this.

Notes:

This deck is vulnerable in the early turns. Playing defensively and being tactical after turn 5 is very important as that is a critical moment for you to dismantle whatever they have built and take control. This is why we favor targeting minions rather than the opponent's Avatar. It took me a number of games to get a feel for playing this deck, so be patient and keep your nerve. Keep in mind this is an aggro deck forced to play midrange.

Running out of cards essentially turns off you main advantage. Be conservative with your cards and do not use them early unless you absolutely need to. If you have a card advantage play, such as Hexham Haunts or Skeleton mage, use it over saving it for later. This will help extend your power into later turns and see more of your deck in the long run. So look for opportunities to use them when they are available.

Arc Lighting is an emergency kill spell. its 4 mana doesn't help our plan. But that combined with a follow up spark will kill most big problems.

Savior is our worst matchup. This is why we have Murder of Crows in the Collection. its also a good card advantage play, so could be considered in the mainboard. Good Luck.

Seasoned to taste:

There are a few possibilities for other ways you could customize this deck.

Evil Presence is something I considered since we are playing a number of spirits and is also a card advantage play, but it is only 1 air threshold. so there is a trade off there.

Highland Princess and Kythera Mechanism is another play you could go for to help increase the accuracy of your sparks. I don't find it entirely necessary, but it is useful. Especially if you pull off a Thunderstorm - Sphere of Animosity combo.

Vanish is a card that will replace itself and fits inside our desired cost and threshold specifications. If you want to take advantage of stealth, this is a good option.

Being monocolored, you can probably run up to 9 off color sites while having a 90% chance to draw the threshold you need. This is the best place to get creative. Rivers, Earth sites for soldiers, or other advantageous sites. I am interested in trying out darkest dungeon to pull their avatar in a place where I can spark them.

I really appreciate if you've read this far and want to try out Sparkmage!

Best of luck contesting the realm!