Style Points – Righteous Paladin

Hello everyone! Dino here.

Welcome to the latest installment of “Style Points,” an article for the creative deck builder. Here we like to show you how even the most unexpected strategies can be your friend. Last time we showed you how to make your opponents sheepish with Midnight Shepherd. Today I’d like to show you how to pal around with Righteous Paladin.

So without further ado, let’s look at your collection differently.

HEX PvE Campaign was released at the beginning of the month, and if you are anything like me it has been a constant companion in your gaming life ever since. Not only has HEX combined two things I adore—TCGs and RPG leveling—they have a number of puzzling encounters that encourage you to dust off that brain-box and befriend bizarre strategies to succeed. Of these encounters, few bring the heat quite as often as Devonshire Keep.

The last dungeon, Devonshire Keep has been on my mind for quite some time. Behind those gates lies the chance at one of the more powerful PvE cards to date, Lady Devonshire. But between an army of the burning dead and the grotesque goblin Wiktor, farming her can sometimes feel like walking across hot coals. To overcome these hurdles, we needed an ally who can be a balm to our burns and a friend against the flames. When you’d rather not roast, look no further than the Righteous Paladin! He goes a little something like this:

Two resources gives you a 2/2 body that knows how to grow. With every bit of health you gain, Righteous Paladin gets +1/+1. And while that might not seem like much on its own, it is the foundation of a beautiful PvE relationship. Let’s break down how the Cleric class traits make the Righteous Paladin a force to be reckoned with.

Right out of the box, the talent Affinity: Cleric gives our Righteous Paladins (as well as any other clerics included in our deck) lifedrain. Functionally, this is like having an even better version of rage. Now, every time our Righteous Paladins attack or block, they get +1/+1. When this advantage is combined with The Righteous Path (which gives all troops you control steadfast), things can get out of control quickly. Having these two talents together means that you will always have a blocker and can theoretically pump your Righteous Paladin multiple times in a single turn. This gets even crazier when you consider that Righteous Paladin gets +1/+1 per health gain source. This means that if you have several troops with lifegain on the board, Righteous Paladin with get +1/+1 for each troop that attacked or blocked.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! Healing Aura grants us the ability to gain 1 health every time we play a resource. Now we don’t even need to be attacking or blocking to buff our bestie. And finally, as if that weren’t already enough, Unlock: Divine Altar gives us the chance to copy every single cleric that we play! Talk about your friends doubling your joy. Between all of these buffs, it’s not unusual to end a match with over 100 health remaining.

Let’s see it in action:

“Double-Din” – Devonshire Drops Deck

Champion: Shin’hare Cleric

Equipment:

Deathly Cowl

Holy Beads

Mountain God’s Vest

Ink-Stained Gloves

Steel Treads

Hungering Battle Axe

Royal Diplomat socketed with Minor Blood Orb of Hatred and Minor Diamond of Duty

Looking at the video, you will notice straight away that I went with an unconventional race for my cleric. Shin’hare are usually associated with Blood and Wild. When you think Blood-Diamond, many people immediately think of the Necrotic. Especially in Set 3, cards like Deepgaze Disciple and Gemsoul Feeder have formed the backbone of many a draft deck. However, the PvE card-grid for each race tells a different story. Let’s compare them side-by-side:

On the left we have a Necrotic Cleric at level 9. On the right we have a Shin’hare Cleric at the same level. If we want to run both Blood and Diamond clerics (which we absolutely do because of power cards like Paladin of the Necropolis and Corrupt Harvester), the difference between the two grids is night and day. The Necrotic Cleric gains the ability to run one extra Diamond Rare. In every other category, Shin’hare are superior. They get to run a full playset of Blood Uncommons (the only race able to do so) as well as three each of the Diamond Uncommons and Commons. If we want to harness the power of B/D, there is every reason to get buddy-buddy with our bunnies. At over 20 undefeated runs, I am confident in saying that Shin’hare Clerics offer the perfect tech to take down Devonshire Keeps.

Let’s break down the “Double-Din, Devonshire Drops Deck.”

Firstly, almost every troop in the deck is a cleric. This has several advantages. As highlighted above, this means that every troop in our deck will have lifedrain. As we showed in an earlier Style Points article, lifedrain is zone-agnostic. Troops have lifedrain no matter where they are, whether that is in your deck, the crypt, or in your hand. This is useful against Devonshire encounters as this means that half of our deck is immune to Mindpyre Wraith’s champion ability—not to mention cards like Mindpyre Wraith and Mindpyre Revenant. Furthermore, the lifedrain gives us immense staying power against everything that is trying to kill us.

These tribal effects can be massively boosted with PvE cards and equipment as well. Tech like Form Ranks and Elegy of Death with their equipment gives us the ability to boost our clerics and make our fallen mighty.

Second, Hunger of the Mountain God provides a massive win-con in a single card. Everything in the Devonshire Keeps wants to tick you down with incremental damage. This includes the Mindpyre Wraith, the Spitfire Elemental, and even Wiktor’s potions. Hunger of the Mountain God can explode to ridiculous sizes very quickly in this environment. The only caveat is that you must have his weapon equip, Hungering Battle Axe, to use him effectively against the later encounters. Without this weapon, your Hunger will die to Spitfire Elemental immediately, either in his Champion or his card form.

Third, our Shin’hare racial trait gives us immense staying power against even the most volatile dungeon encounters. Between Expendable Lives and the Fortitude Cleric trait, we have 6 dungeon lives to burn. Considering that the deck is powerful enough to make it to the last boss unscathed 90% of the time, to face defeat in this dungeon you would practically have to lose against Wiktor 6 times in a row. This has yet to happen on my end.

Finally, this deck is friendly to a new player’s budget. The only two Rares included in the entire deck are PvE Orc racial rewards, which are easily farmable with a minimal time investment. Everything else is either a Common or an Uncommon. Quick use of the auction house should have you making friends in no time!

Hopefully I’ve been able to show you how to warm your hearts without getting burned. HEX’s PvE campaign provides so many new relationships your cards can have, it is exhilarating to see them blossom. What are some of your favorites? How do you go about turning dungeons to chum? Show us your moves here in the forums!

Dream big, everybody!

Dino out~

Dino is a regular HEX streamer and the creator of the 4Keeps competition. If you enjoy building wacky decks, playing for sweet prizes, and watching hexcellent shenanigans, you can check him out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Twitch TV.

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