[dropcap]I[/dropcap] first heard about Hex from a friend at my local game store, who saw it on Kickstarter. Being a poor college student, I wasn’t able to Kickstart it like I had wanted. By the time I finally got the money to support what looked to be the best thing for online card games pretty much ever, I was only able to slacker back it. Luckily, I have some experience with TCGs and drafting, so I’ve been able to stretch out that initial investment. It wasn’t easy, though.

I had been following the development for some time, reading all the posts, poring over the spoilers that went up, and brainstorming decks. There was one card that immediately jumped out at me as being exactly what I wanted:

Look at him! Let it all sink in. This card is insane. 4 resources for a 3/3, not a perfect rate, but still reasonable because of those few lines of text. “Whenever you play an action, draw a card.” Most of the Sapphire cards spoiled in the initial set looked pretty great on their own: a 3 resource counterspell that increases the cost of the others, a 3 resource draw 2, a 2 resource bounce that increases the cost. These spells are all pretty playable on their own, with Countermagic and Time Ripple being considered as some of the best cards in the Shards of Fate set as commons! Being able to draw a card when you cast these spells makes them even more powerful.

When I finally got my alpha invite I was so excited! I had been dying to start playing, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My friend from before had been on Hex since the initial Alpha invites. He had been playing the same deck the entire time since he told me of the game: a Blood-Sapphire Control shell I had designed and we were refining through his play. This was the first deck I had tried to fit Archmage Wrenlocke into. The deck certainly showed promise against the somewhat unrefined decks at the time, pretty much going undefeated in the early Alpha.

By the time I got on the Alpha, people had started figuring out how to build decks, so the competition was a little stronger. The deck continued to perform extremely well, which got me thinking that we may actually be on to something. This testing has continued into the Beta, and I’ve been able to play it against some of the known Tier 1 decks, to slightly less success than I’d like. In this column, one thing I’ll be exploring is the progression of both this deck, and my own skills, as I continue to test against, and learn about how to beat, the meta.

[quote_center]”In this column, one thing I’ll be exploring is the progression of both this deck, and my own skills, as I continue to test against, and learn about how to beat, the meta”[/quote_center]

The Deck



Blood Sapphire Wrenlocke



Troops (7)

2x Archmage Wrenlocke

3x Buccaneer

2x Storm Colossus

Actions/Constants/Artifacts (27)

4x Countermagic

4x Murder

4x Extinction

1x Polymorph: Dingler

4x Oracle’s Song

4x Peek

4x Time Ripple

2x Life Siphon

Shards (26)

14x Sapphire Shard

8x Blood Shard

4x Shards of Fate 14x Sapphire Shard8x Blood Shard4x Shards of Fate Champion: Zared Venomscorn

Reserves (15)

2x Shrine of Prosperity

3x Inquisition

2x Polymorph: Dingler

1x Eternal Guardian

1x Cosmic Totem

2x Chaos Key

1x Storm Colossus

2x Yesterday

1x Secret Laboratory





The Cards

4 Countermagic – This card is super good and I cannot wait for Shattered Destiny to come out soon so

that I can add in more counterspells. Countermagic is phenomenal and one of the most

overworked cards in this deck.

4 Murder – Another powerhouse card. This hits basically everything in the big decks unless the Blood-

Diamond Midrange list gets a Soul Armament down. This card is relevant in basically every

matchup except Chimes combo decks with Life Siphon or Burn to the Ground.

4 Extinction – Easily the best cleanup card we can run, and the main reason to play Blood in this deck.

The only equivalent card in Sapphire is Yesterday, which doesn’t really do as much as we need,

because we still have to answer all the cards over again.

1 Polymorph: Dingler – This card is silly, but also pretty good in small amounts. It, along with our

Champion, can permanently deal with a Xentoth’s Inquisitor. It is also a way around Lixil with

Immortality active. You can reasonably expect to find it against these decks because of our card

advantage package, and there are more in the Reserves as you’ll see below.

4 Oracle’s Song – This is the first part of our card advantage package. With the exception of Extinction,

we are attempting to trade 1 for 1 with our opponents, which means that even just on our own,

we will run out of cards. This doesn’t even account for opposing Inquisitions and the like.

Drawing extra cards is the best way to go. I wish this was a Quick Action, but there isn’t much I

can do about that.

4x Peek – Peek is one of the better cards we can draw late in the game. Because of the Resource base

I run, that I will also discuss below, this card is often just 2 Resource as a Quick Action to put any

card from you deck into your hand. It tutors out Countermagic in response to a Gore Feast, it

fetches our win conditions after the use all of their Resources on their turn, and it’s in general extremely versatile.

2x Archmage Wrenlocke – Now we get to the best card in Hex, and in this deck. The Archmage himself.

You may be wondering, “Dan, why are you only running 2 if you think he’s so amazing?” to

which I would respond, because I only have two. The problem with only having slacker backed

and being a poor college student means that I only have access to so many cards. I’ve opened

one, and had the funds to purchase another, but I plan to increase this to at least 3, probably 4.

He’s awesome and draws us tons of cards. Even though he’s unique, it isn’t much of an issue to

run 4 in the deck because he’s such a lightning rod for opposing removal.

3x Buccaneer – This guy is great as a tempo play. He is at his worst against the Blood decks running Giant

Corpse Fly or Xentoth’s Inquisitor, but against Angel of Dawn, Living Totem, every inspire Troop,

and so on, Buccaneer shines. The only downside is that he can only hit Troops.

4x Time Ripple – The other Buccaneer. This hits Constants, so it can get back your Wrenlocke being held

in Solitary, or surprise the Diamond player attacking with his Soul Armament buffed Troops into

your Wrenlocke, expecting to survive the fight. It makes things cost more too so against the low

shard count aggro decks that I see a lot, this on a Ruby Pyromancer is effectively a Murder.

2x Life Siphon – This card is pretty fantastic against decks where the game goes long. If you even get in

one or two hits with a Buccaneer or Wrenlocke, this card can pretty easily lethal the opponent in

one cast. And if you have two you can even leave up Countermagic for them!

2x Storm Colossus – This guy is great. Evasion, Spellshield, and a big body makes him a great win

condition. I don’t usually cast him until the board is empty and I have Countermagic, since the

only cards to deal with him are Extinction, Yesterday, or sort of sometimes Lightning Armada.

He’s a great finisher in this deck.

14x Sapphire Shard, 8x Blood Shard, 4x Shards of Fate – This shard base means that we can reasonably expect to have 4 Resources on turn 4, and 2 of each of our Shards, enabling us to cast Extinction against the Gore Feast decks. It also means that after turn 4, we usually don’t end up with more than 3-5 Blood so that our Peeks are maximized. This is higher than the shard count run by most of the other decks in Tier 1, but that is because being able to play a shard every turn is super important for the deck. Being able to Peek at 10-12 cards in the late game depends on this, as well as casting Storm Colossus with Countermagic on defense, or Life Siphoning the opponent for 20.

Now, on to the Reserves!

2x Shrine of Prosperity – This is mainly for the Blood decks that love to tear our hand apart with

Inquisitions and Giant Corpse Flies. It makes it much easier for us to recover, enabling more

activations of our Champion to kill all their Troops, or to draw into stuff more easily.

3x Inquisiton – This is something I haven’t used as much, but I wanted to have some answers to Crown of

the Primals based decks that isn’t just hoping to Time Ripple into Countermagic. I’ve only played

that particular deck once, and realized I needed more answers after being stomped by it.

Polymorph: Dingler is pretty great against that deck though, as it deals with the creature they

targeted with the Crown without reverting the Crown. This is also good if a true Control mirror

ever crops up in the meta.

2x Polymorph: Dingler – I want more of these for the decks playing Lixil or Crown of the Primals. It’s very

good against both, and upping the count in the main will help deal with the threats those cards

pose to a Murder and Extinction reliant build.

1x Eternal Guardian – Very good as a finisher against Gore Feast, provided you can resolve it and protect

it. That shouldn’t be too difficult to expect.

1x Cosmic Totem – This is also for the Blood decks that shred our hand, just as another way to possibly

get those cards back. They also love to deck us with Relentless Corruption, a card I think

deserves some changes to how it reads, but that is a topic for another time.

2x Chaos Key – The best catchall card in this set. Answers any card, without spellshield at least, for a

reasonably accessible Resource cost for this deck. Hits Crown, Soul Marble, Solitary, and other

such cards.

1x Storm Colossus – I like having another one of these to bring in against opposing decks that run

Extinction as a way to increase the amount of win conditions we have. Sometimes against the

Blood decks, we will just answer every threat the other plays and stare at each other for 10

minutes. Having more ways to end those games is something I like.

2x Yesterday – Like I mentioned above, this is the Sapphire’s “weaker” version of Extinction, but it does

have benefits. You can cast it in response to a Gore Feast and it’s effectively a counterspell that

also stalls them quite a good amount.

1x Secret Laboratory – This one I’m not very sure on. I kind of want more filtering for my draws against

the Blood decks, especially the slower ones. The deck really wants more draw spells, but for now

we have to settle for this and cards like it.

Champion: Zared Venomscorn – Xentoth’s Inquisitor, Ruby Pyromancer, Royal Falconer, and Giant

Corpse Fly are all cards that Zared outright removes, pulling double duty and stopping Xentoth’s

Inquisitor from being more than a –X/-0 spell for 6+ Resources. He can make it favorable for us

to block Living Totems with Wrenlocke, and in general helps us have more removal spells than

our deck allows for.

I would include some sample games for you to watch, but a) I haven’t recorded any and b) this is a way for me to pitch my stream of the deck! So watch me stream it! I will try to get some good recorded games of the deck playing against some of the more meta decks in the field. In upcoming articles I’ll go more in depth about how Wrenlocke Control plays against individual meta decks, and hopefully be able to display some of those games for you.

My goal for this column, at least the majority of it, is to chronicle my progress as I continue to develop as a player, develop this deck, and play both constructed, and other formats, with the initial goals in mind. I know there are a lot of people who have dreams of “going infinite” off of their initial backing payment or with their starter deck, so another goal of this article is to hopefully be a useful guideline in doing that. I slacker backed Hex, and so far haven’t added funds. I want to keep this deck as the product of what I can gain from playing the game, and nothing else, to show you that you can do it too.

Let me know what your thoughts are on the deck, if I’ve forgotten some amazing card, or you’d like to try out your decks against it! Feel free to message me in game, I’m known by the same name as on this site: Ombra. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you in game!