Sage cards feature wizards, magic, crystals, ice, magic constructs and other arcane concepts. They control the most out of all alignments and have unblockable offensive habits. Using a combination of literally “unblockable” Champions, burn damage, freezing, and control, Sage can easily swing for game in very large chunks of damage albeit far between. Sage usually has an answer for any situation.

The biggest weakness of Sage is likely to be their lack of threats. While they can usually answer any threat or just work around it, Sage themselves generally do not have Champions that force action from the opponent, at least not on a spot-removal basis. This is because their Champions tend to be flashes rather than of the permanent type.

The few permanents they have, such as Steel Golem tend to be hard to remove anyway as they have Untargetable. Only about 5 Champions in Sage qualify (2 of which are hard to get rid of, but not impossible like Steel Golem and Sea Titan) and of those five, most hardly qualify as threats at all, usually just sporting big Airborne bodies or the ability to deal small burn damage. Their strength then, is in the ability to use lots of powerful flashes usually at Event-speed. Let’s take a look at the Power distribution for Sage.

Two champions were discounted as it confounds the data. Thought Plucker has 1 Power and Time Bender has 2 Power but operates more like a reusable Event, so it was left out. Forcemage Apprentice was ignored in Silvers as it has 0 Power and is only used for direct damage (of which it can reliably get 6 each round).

Despite the high average power of Sage Silver champions, they cannot do the same kinds of hurt as Evil due to the fact that Evil Silvers have better abilities. They can grow, break things that block them, are unbreakable, more of them have blitz, and can control discards. Remember that all of these statistics come with caveats. For example, Sage has some interesting dynamics in their Airborne champions, which warrants a comparison with Good’s.

As Sage can clearly rival Good in the air, is better than anything but Wild on the ground, and can freeze anything it can’t pierce right through, it’s actually one of the stronger offensive strategies, requiring very little defense to make up for it.

Offense

Defensive strategies in Epic have to eventually service an offensive strategy and somehow deal 30 damage. Sage’s offense is already spectacular both on the ground and in the air, and anywhere it doesn’t presently have superiority. Therefore, it can be lax about defense. But it isn’t. Sage sports some pretty great defense.

Including some Untargetable champions as well as four things above 9 defense (a 10, 12, 13, and 14). Nine is a specific number in epic that refers to the best average, which is a 9/9 as well as two prominent kill events Hurricane and Drain Essence which deal 9 damage. Though two of those are actually immune to the targetting of Drain Essence anyway.

Its control is serious business too. Transform is strictly better than Bitten, possibly better than Inner Demon (depending on whose turn you have to use it on) and also potentially better than Banishment (again depending on whose turn). The same goes for Wave of Transformation. It also has powerful hand control in the forms of Thought Plucker and Psionic Assault which can easily be 2 discards each, plus both can be recurring.

Time Bender is a recurring ability to banish your opponent’s best Silvers or bounce their Golds every turn. Sea Titan comes in with the same bounce, netting you gold advantage. Time Bender can boardwipe with bounce, netting either a loss or gain with gold depending on how you time it. Turn gives you control of something, and the conditions change based on whose turn it is but you can get it permanently, which is +1 gold use for you, -1 for the opponent if it’s permanent! Stand Alone is one of the best board wipes when you have supremacy, usually air supremacy. All of the Sage control is very high quality; they aren’t scrounging for effects here. If anything, it’s difficult to decide what not to put into a deck.

Defense

Best champions are always going to be partially subjective but after picking criteria, you can at least try to be impartial. So here is Djinn of the Sands and Ice Drake.

Sage’s best champions are very serious indeed. Djinn of the Sands is the best airborne+blitz in the game, sporting an 8/8 body immediately due to its counters, with the option to draw when you’re in desperate need. This can beat out any air champion besides Thundurus or Angelic Protector, the latter of which can’t kill Djinn either. It’s a truly horrific card that gets slapped down and immediately threatens 27% of your life total, then threatens to do it again next turn. For this reason, Djinn of the Sands has to be dealt with immediately. He’s not even color locked!

Ice Drake is a game winning card. With a body that goes toe-to-toe with the average Good air champion, he can ambushed in at the end of the opponent’s turn to freeze all their stuff from blocking you, then immediately be part of the upcoming mass-attack. Even if your opponent is playing some control, he’s a flash not a permanent and so it’s not possible to stop that freeze with control. The best an opponent can hope to do is board wipe since you telegraphed your big attack. Ceasefire was actually an annoying one to run into since they can stop the kill-shot and still draw. When you see Ice Drake in your hand, plan for your endgame.

Honorable mentions: Juggernaut and Frost Giant.

Juggernaut sports breakthrough+blitz which is practically unheard of. In fact, it’s the only champion in base set with this combination. That means it gets to throw 9 damage out immediately, which is 30% of someone’s life, and they can only mitigate it, not stop it. Since it’s unbreakable, it’s truly unstoppable too. Juggernaut is a threat of the highest caliber and must be responded to on the next turn or with banishment immediately. This is basically Djinn of the Sands-lite, as blitz+breakthrough is roughly equivalent to blitz+air most of the time. The draw a card tops the crazy cake with a fuck-you candle and since it’s the only part behind loyalty, it could technically go in non-Sage main decks. Frost Giant is sported here for the exact same reasons as the Ice Drake, except he isn’t color-locked at all, just doesn’t have as good a backup plan (airborne) and can only be used on your turn. Nevertheless, he wins games.

In summary, Sage has great offense, great defense, excellent control, sometimes higher quality cards than other alignments, what little burn it has is great, not extremely color locked, great draw, and basically great everything. Its only real weakness is a below average number of threats to draw required opponent control like a lightning rod, which means its attackers get hit with the control (which is not what you want), however some of its attackers are unbreakable or untargetable which makes up for it.

Sage generally has an answer for everything during play. Opponent plays a bunch of silvers? Make them discard so they can’t recover easily, skipping gold turns. Opponent can summon a bunch of huge things to block? Freeze them or burn directly. Opponent’s groundlings are too much to handle? Air superiority. Opponent has lots of blitz? You have lots of control that works well on their turn. Unbreakables? You have banish. There aren’t a lot of situations that can be drummed up that Sage can’t somehow escape if the player is good enough or conservative enough leading up to it.