As we get ready to say good-bye to the very first set of Hex: Shards of Fate – I thought it would be appropriate for this column to look back at some of the funkiest and most terrible combos that you may or may not have come across throughout your first year battling it out in the world of Entrath. Just to be clear, if someone pulled off one of these in a match against you, they pretty much won regardless of whatever traditional win condition the game engine might have judged things by. Without further ado, let’s dive right in at the 5 most cringe worthy combos in Shards of Fate.

#1 – Sneaking In a Cheap Chimes of the Zodiac

Cards Involved: Cosmic Transmogrifier + Pterobot + Reversion



Chimes of the Zodiac is a great card, Tier 1 material even, but at 7 cost he can be intimidating to cast and the opponent could always use Countermagic to crush your plans – wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid that somehow? Worry no more, there’s a combo for that™. The slightly unfortunate point here is that it requires AT LEAST 3 other cards to make it happen, and even then you only have a 1 in 7 chance to make the ‘dream’ come true. I told you these were terrible. So what you want to be doing is getting a Pterobot into the game as early as you can. Then you play Cosmic Transmogrifier. The final bit is waiting until your opponent’s end turn, casting a Revert on your Pterobot (thus making sure its casting cost goes back up to 7) and then activating the ability on Cosmic Transmogrify. You’ll likely end up with a 7 costed troop like Uruunaz but you might just get Chimes of the Zodiac so why not go for it?? The video below demonstrates the type of craziness that might arise (apologies for the quality of the video, I was multiboxing):

I was trying to stack the Cosmic Transmogrifier abilities but unfortunately failed to do so. Do note that your 0 costed troops get sent to the graveyard as currently there are no 0 costed cards but in set 2 all of those cards will transform into the legendary Forge of Cadoc – unfortunately still not enough to elevate this deck anywhere close to ‘Tier Playable’ status.

#2 – Infinite Draw

Cards Involved: Avalanche Giant + Bird o’ Plenty + Shrewd Manipulation



Bird o’ Plenty is a good ground blocker but often times you will struggle drawing any cards from it as your opponent exercises his right not to attack into it – and that makes me incredible sad. Luckily in Hex, we can take matters into our hands. Avalanche Giant allows us to discards two cards in exchange for doing 4 damage, and when aimed at the Bird o’ Plenty would draw us 4 cards. Once you add Shrewd Manipulation to the affair we can go infinite – drawing 4 cards and discarding 4 cards at every go. While cycling your whole deck is kind of cool in of itself, you can turn it into a win by adding a Twisted Fate to this ridiculous combo (and Sadisctic Castigator if you’re going for extra style points). Thinking about it, this combo might just not be THAT terrible after all..(*goes to make deck*).

#3 – Infinite Life

Cards Involved: Bone Warrior + Hideous Conversion + Boltpaw Wizard + Blood Bearer



Ever wanted infinite life? Well it’s entirely possible, the price of admission is simply a four card combo. With all four cards in play, you want to sacrifice your Bone Warrior to Hideous Conversion to generate 1 resource, you then use that 1 resource and Boltpaw’s Revert ability to transform the Pile of Bones back into Bone Warrior. You can keep infinitely doing this and with a Blood Bearer in play you will gain a life each time Bone Warrior dies. Infinite life won’t win you games, but in the current incarnation of the Hex client you could probably win by timing people out if you really wanted to be a scumbag about it.

UPDATE: Reader Arkios rightly points out this combo doesn’t actually work – talk about a combo being bad…

#4 – 5,000 Damage

Sliver of the Immortal Spear + Infernal Professor + Demented Demolisher



Sliver of the Immortal Spear has been a trap set for dreamy deckbuilders since its inception and unfortunately there’s simply no way to really make it work in a competitive setting. But if we’re going to go down that road we might as well do it properly. The combo deck is literally going to be 4 Infernal Professor, 1 Immortal Spear and 4 Demented Demolisher – with the rest of the cards being resources. You’re hoping to draw an Infernal Professor or Demented Demolisher in your opening hand (or mulligan until you do). Since Infernal Professor fetches non-resource cards, and since it is able to cycle itself for free, we have an 80% chance to fetch a Demented Demolisher on turn 2,cast it on turn 3, and then use its ability on turn 4 clearing the way for drawing your Immortal Spear and activating it and drawing it almost every turn. Now that all sounds great but what makes it terrible is the incredible amount of risk involved starting from your mulligan choices all the way to not interacting with your opponent at all and hoping you stay alive.

Technically the Infernal Professor + Demented Demolisher combo can also be used with Escalation cards like Ragefire and Chronic Madness, but those seem less terrible so they didn’t make this list. You could also pair the combo with 4x Time Bug and 2x Doppelgadget have infinite turns but even I have limits as to how bad combos can be to be acceptable.

#5 – Infinite Troops + Infinite Resources

Cards Involved: Devoted Emissary + Replicator’s Gambit + Hideous Conversion



This wouldn’t be a proper set 1 combo list without including somewhere everyone’s favorite combo card: Replicator’s Gambit. The combo itself is pretty self explanatory – you cast Replicator’s Gambit on your Devoted Emissary and the next time you draw it and play it, it creates copies of itself which can in turn return the original back to your hand. You can sacrifice the replicas to Hideous Conversion to generate the resource needed to cast it again and have some resource left over. With infinite troops and resources your options to BM your way to a win are open for your picking.

With set 2 around the corner, we can expect the combo permutations to increase by several factors of magnitude and that will make for even funkier decks. Let me know in the comments if there are any terrible combos I might have missed. Until next time, always go super size with that combo meal..