Latest Brew – Soulshield

Wurtil here again!

If you are like most HEX players, then right now I am shocked you are reading an article instead of playing more of the campaign. You probably also got pulled so hard into PVE that you might have thought that the Constructed scene was at a standstill. Fortunately, you would be wrong…

SaDOlution’s DW Rutherford Banks deck is proving that it was far more than a one-tournament wonder as it continues to make its presence felt in Gauntlet and the FiveShards Weekly tournaments. Cressida Ramp is back on the rise in Gauntlet to presumably push its speed advantage and capitalize upon the lack of aggressive strategies. While WS Winter Moon and Mono Blood continue to be major players, we are seeing unique decks continuing to be developed – from Havoc’s Winter Moon Gambit deck pushing the Winter Moon draw engine to the extreme, all the way down to KingGabriel’s Baby Yeti aggro. One theme about many of these changes though, is that we are seeing more troops clogging up the board now than we have in some time. While this leads to things like Charge Colossus being a kingmaker as people try to go through opposing troops, another approach we can take is to go around them:

SoulShield

Champion: Lionel Flynn

Gem Snatchers socketed with Minor Wild Orb of Conservation and Minor Ruby of Flames

Hold on for just a second, I promise you are in the right place! Yes, this deck looks more like a Rock league spinoff than a typical constructed deck. No, you’ve probably never played Incite Fury in your entire life. None of that matters when you understand what we are trying to pull off here – huge amounts of damage all while hiding under the protection of Spellshield.

As far as troops go, this probably isn’t a selection you are used to seeing outside of limited. The choice of Spellshield troops is actually fairly thin in the game, especially once you consider that only 4 cards in your deck can have the Minor Gem of Conservation. This means that Dandelion Sprite and Manti Ranger become about as good as it gets for now, and we are left looking for the best Minor Gem slot bearer we can. Troop cost being one of our biggest differentiators, Gem Snatchers is one of the strongest candidates even before we figure in that we can also bring him some evasion that will be relevant in many matchups right now. Going dual shard is rough on the resource base right now, especially since Dandelion Sprite asks so much of us, so we end up having to run Chlorophyllia and a shardbase that looks closer to what you would expect out of a ramp deck than an aggressive one. That isn’t really as big of a problem as you might think. Even though this deck wins through racing the opponent in the attack phase, at its heart is plays more like a combo deck trying to assemble pieces before the opponent can kill them first.

Once we have a set of troops to enhance, we need to find some of the best things we can enhance them with. Soul of Battle is the biggest player here, and while the deck can certainly win without it, just the potential threat of the ruby action can give your opponent huge fits. We’ve seen Soul of Battle before in many other decks, ranging from the Goremaster builds shortly after the release of Shattered Destiny all the way up to seeing action in Cressida Ramp and Azurecannon builds. On power level alone, it has proven that when players aren’t packing removal then Soul of Battle can end games out of nowhere. The problem of course, is that when opponents ARE running removal and playing it appropriately then you open your troops up to being stopped before they can even deal their damage. By running exclusively Spellshield troops, we remove that downside. Then we can focus the rest of the deck on further maximizing our attacks in the same way I like to maximize my plates at Golden Corral – PILE IT ON, BABY!

Swordplay and Incite Fury lead the charge next to Lionel Flynn’s power as the key components to suit up your Spellshield troop. Incite Fury is not nearly as good as Swordplay for most of our purposes, but the list of permanent troop enhancements that reach even the levels that Incite Fury can provide is too short. For the most part, you are going to be playing these cards as soon as you have a Spellshielded target to put them on. This is in contrast to our other combat enhancers—Wild Growth, Ruby Aura, and Crackling Sprout. Our quick speed enhancers are there to either help get our troop through combat with an opposing troop (as sometimes they have a flight troop to block Sprite, and Manti Ranger is going to need help often unfortunately). If you’ve read this far, you’ve at least accepted the idea that some draft rejects can pull together to create something larger than themselves, so on that line of thinking Ruby Aura is a card that in testing I found myself wanting to see more and more often in some of the more difficult matchups. Mostly it is an issue with how desperately the deck would love to have something besides Manti Ranger, but once you suit up Ranger with a Ruby Aura suddenly even the shaky Ramp matchups become much more palatable by letting Ranger start swinging through their large troops. The other, and more common use, of these actions is as a finishing blow. Whether that is in combination with Soul of Battle or not, in most cases you are waiting until the moment of opportunity arrives and crashing through with an un-targetable monstrosity.

MATCHUPS

WS Winter Moon – The genesis of SoulShield was based around pushing theories for how to overcome a control deck like Winter Moon. Once the sapphire deck’s interrupts are in hand and the Winter Moon draw engine in effect, few decks are going to be able to do much of anything to change the game further. A rush of low-cost troops can do the trick, but a full suite of Carnasaurus and Buccaneers after reserves make that an unappealing prospect. Spellshield on troops that can sneak into play before Countermagic becomes an issue find themselves in a very good spot in the matchup, as Time Ripple no longer can serve as their catch-all and now they find themselves put into a race situation with a deck that is very much not designed to win those races. The key to the matchup is having that troop get into play quickly—keeping a hand with one Manti Ranger as your sole threat isn’t going cut it as you can expect to have him get hit by Countermagic and your entire plan fall apart. The matchup remains mostly the same into reserves as well, as they will take out Time Ripples but their Buccaneers will likely remain to let them have some semblance of actually attacking you or blocking a Manti Ranger.

Mono Blood – It can be almost guaranteed that at least one player will be throwing their hands up in disgust in this matchup, and thankfully it is far more likely to be SoulShield in game 1. While Extinction is one of the few ways to deal with a Spellshield troop, Mono Blood’s heavy lean on spot removal can create hands that are unplayable against you and give them terrible topdecks. Cards like Rot Cast, Kill, and even Phenteo the Brood Priest are all but blank in the matchup. On the other hand, discard can be your antithesis. SoulShield acts much like a combo deck that needs a few cards in series to do much of anything, so if Inquisition steals your only threat or Arachnophobia’s clear out your enhancement actions then you may struggle to even get off the ground in the matchup. Things get a bit more interesting after reserves, as often the Mono Blood player will have just enough reserves spots devoted to random troops that they can swap out their dead removal. At a minimum, I recommend bringing in some Crocosaurs to stave off their common 3-drop, 4-drop starts. However, if you wish, you can also engage in some mind games by bringing in the Goremasters and Crackling Sprouts. Should they choose to take out their removal, a Goremaster buffed by Lionel Flynn and even just a single Crackling Sprout should be all it takes to win the game. Then again, they might keep in removal, so be careful before you try to match wits with a Sicilian.

DW Banks – Even with their health gain, this is far more favorable to see than a Cressida Ramp variant as they aren’t quite as consistently fast. Puck, Dream Bringer is often the real difference maker in the matchup, as with him they can power out huge troops even before you can, and without him the best they can hope for is that they get the right half of Eternal Sage or Angel of Dawn to stop your evasive troop in time. Still, you have no time to dawdle in this matchup due to Purge, and since Carnasaurus is currently more of a reserves option than maindeck you can toss out your two-drops even if they don’t have Spellshield yet in this matchup most of the time. Post reserves, this is a great matchup to bring in the Goremaster package. Realistically, as long as you don’t drop a second one and open them up to Crocosaur then the Banks player has to either have a Purge or two Carnasaurus’ to deal with the Orc Cleric. That should give you a turn or two to wind-up, and it rarely matters how many large troops are in the way of the Bourbon Chicken of attacks –a Lionel Flynn-buffed, Soul of Battled Goremaster with a Crackling card or two on top. Pile it on or don’t even show up.

Azurecannon – A race, pure and simple. They are hoping to drop an Azurefate Sorceress and get enough damage to kill you before the inevitable happens and your evasive threats kill them. It can be a fairly even race depending upon their build, and you certainly have to watch out for them being able to block Gem Snatchers with their own ruby troops and Reese the Crustcrawler robots. After reserves they get to take out Burns and Time Ripple[/CARD]s and bring in Verdict of the Ancient Kings and more troops, so you have to make sure you are keeping hands that can get started racing soon as Azurecannon will create a consistent clock if nothing else. Heroic Outlaw can be outstanding here with Speed and +X/+X, as often they are one of the few decks that will bring you to a low health total on turn 5 or 6 when you are typically looking to finish the game, and if you can combine the pump from an Outlaw with Soul of Battle you are probably going to finish almost any game immediately. You can also consider bringing in the Goremasters, but because Azurecannon will likely be stuck with Buccaneers or Crackling Bolts in their deck some portion of the time it is not something I would advise against most builds.

Orc Starter Deck – You can substitute a real aggro deck here if you want, as the results will likely be the same only the game will be over even faster. SoulShield is not an “all-comers” type of deck—you have some very specific matchups you are slightly favored against and hoping to see in order to spike a tournament. Decks with a real curve, even if composed of nothing but draft commons, are more likely than not going to beat you down before you can Voltron together a winning troop. You have some tools to bring in against aggressive decks (Crocosaur can win all by itself against poor draws, Heroic Outlaw can help stabilize a board, and Crackling Bolt can buy time), but the core of the deck is composed of troops and actions that just aren’t equipped to deal with a standard “hit you in the face with one and two drops” strategy.

BONUS SECTION

Let’s talk for just a minute about a question I’m not sure gets asked often enough: “What is your goal?”

It seems simple enough, but one of the first questions you should ask yourself every time before you click the “Enter Tournament” button is what you are trying to accomplish. Obviously, at a fundamental level the answer is “Just win, baby!”, but that also isn’t always the case. You might just be looking for a 2-2 or better VIP deck to hopefully ensure you obtain a couple of the Alternate Arts. You might join Gauntlet more with the purpose of learning interactions than actually winning packs. You could be just looking to get the top 64 sleeves out of an IQ. Examples can go on and on, but the point remains to ask yourself the question.

In fact, even when you feel the answer is obvious, stopping to ask the question is worthwhile. “I want to win this IQ” is a reasonable goal for anyone to have, but once you’ve asked the question it hopefully leads you to something deeper: “Well, how do I win this IQ with the deck I’m submitting?”. As TCG players, we instinctively like to categorize decks into tiers or think that we have brought the best deck, and so before even answering the question we assume it is answered for us by virtue of our deck’s pedigree. Just figuring to click your cards and hope for the best is rarely the path to victory, so while “get lucky” is certainly an approach you can take to any tournament, you need to have a plan in order to create a path to your victory. A good player might think that “Dodge Benvolio Burn in the swiss, then hope to get matched up with lots of Winter Moon in Top 8” is their plan, but a great player will instead focus on things like “Make sure I hold my Burns for their Carnasaurus, and mulligan to aggressive hands against Kranok”. Whether you want to go deep on the answer or not, the key above all else is to have a plan.

Bringing it back around to SoulShield, we can think about this on two different levels. First, there are certainly some tournaments where it is better to bring an “anti-meta” deck like SoulShield than others. I wouldn’t bring it anywhere near a VIP Constructed tournament since those frequently have a huge array of decks people are willing to bring, so the odds of seeing the matchups it is designed to beat are very low. On the other hand, if I’m looking for a deck to win an IQ then something like SoulShield that tries to prey upon specific matchups can be fine if I value the win above all else—you might still run into some unexpected matchups early in the tournament but as things progress you would expect to see more and more of the decks you want.

One a different level, before joining a tournament with a deck like SoulShield I would remind myself of the high level goals in key matchups. “I win this tournament by finding hands with early pressure, and if I run into aggro I’ll take my chances with nailing their poor hands with Crocosaur”. It may sound corny to focus your thoughts on things that can be so simple, but there are reams of research into using heuristics and mental exercises to help elevate the way your brain functions. All we are doing here is forcing ourselves to repeat the “mental reps” one last time, and hopefully if you do this tournament after tournament you start to really bring your own game up a notch.

Thus, my challenge to you for the next week is that, every time you are about to click “Enter Tournament”, take 30 seconds as ask yourself what your plan to victory is. Take the full 30 seconds, don’t just say “I’m going to stay open in draft” and consider it done. Instead, think about what staying open looks like to you – maybe it means looking for middle pick Hatchery Cultivators or signs that Ruby two-drops are going around too much. You might be surprised what forcing yourself to vocalize as your plan will do in terms of putting you in the right mindset to actually pull off what you wanted in the first place – “Just win, baby!”

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