Latest Brew – A Toast to 2015

Wurtil here again!

With the inaugural Invitational Qualifiers coming to a close, now is a great time to pause and reflect back on some of the best meta-shaking decks from that past twelve (and a half!) months. There are a lot of lessons learned that we can apply going forward, and oftentimes I find that some of the best inspiration for new decks is utilizing principles that may have been forgotten as the metagame continues to evolve.

That being said, let’s jump into 10 decks that I personally found to be the most exciting in how they both shook up the playing field and for the lessons they can teach us as we move into a whole new year of play:

10) Errantsquire’s Exiled BaRD Aggro

Champion: Bryson Maplewood



Now granted, this deck was for a very particular format for the FiveShards Wild Cup, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from Errantsquire’s second place finish. What Errantsquire embodies most that we can learn from here is a complete lack of fear. Exiled Bard requires things to go very right for you to be of use, leading to it being immediately dismissed by many players. Instead what Errantsquire recognized was a format opportunity where many decks were fighting one-for-one attrition wars with few over the top finishers, meaning that if you did draw out of sequence Unique troops it rarely mattered since Royal Den Mother and Royal Falconer could trump those decks in a long game. If you did happen to hit Exiled Bard and friends early though it meant no deck could stand against you. While Exiled Bard was still a risky card, it had a naturally high ceiling and found itself placed in a format where it could remain with a high floor underneath it for the times when your opening draw didn’t pan out.

Lesson – Don’t fear playing risky cards, especially if you can find unique chances to lower the downside.

9) Wurtil’s Majesty

Champion: Cressida



Titania’s Majesty socketed with Major Ruby of Destruction Aborean Rootfather socketed with Minor Ruby of Ferocity and Major Wild Orb of Empowerment

Appologies for the self-plug, but hey, the deck had to come from somewhere first! Ozawa, Cosmic Elder build’s fell out of favor as the metagame realized that the format was warping towards Titania’s Majesty and anti-Majesty decks, but that didn’t stop the winning by build’s with and without the legendary Coyotle. With the launch of Gauntlet right around the same time as the deck’s genesis, it was the players who were most prepared with their initial builds that reaped some great rewards. Much of the initial Majesty decks were built around mathematics and probabilites geared towards forcing the opposition to answer them in the early game as consistently as possible, and so players who understood gearing their decks towards that were the ones who walked away the early winners.

Lesson – If you see something that looks incredibly powerful for a new format, do your homework and be one of the first to try and break it.

8) Al Sayf’s Buno Shield

Champion: Bunoshi the Ruthless



Nelebrin Skirmisher socketed with Minor Wild Orb of Conservation Boulder Brute socketed with Minor Wild Orb of Conservation

“Wurtil”, you said questioningly as you stare at your screen, “why in the world do I care about a Rock League deck?” Glad you asked Mr. Strawman, because it is easy to overlook formats other than the ones that are used in the Invitational Qualifier as being unimportant to growing your HEX skills. Those familiar with Rock League will know that due to the lack of great sweepers the format is often filled with linear decks like Dwarf Robots and Shin’hare. It also sees a fair number of Spellshield based decks like the one here, with Al Sayf using Bunoshi to push his Spellshield troops into absurd attack and defense values that no longer could be reliably dealt with by opposing decks. With Sorrow preventing Robots and Shin’hare from swarming around his troops, Al Sayf covered the bases of pretty much all of the common matchups in the format, but the key takeaway for outsiders to the format is to look at how the absence of a card like Extinction can warp a format.

Lesson – Sometimes it isn’t what cards we have available to us that we should focus on, but rather what tools are NOT present in a format to keep certain archetypes at bay.

7) Boogaloo’s Mono Blood

Champion: Kranok



Xentoth’s Inquisitor socketed with Major Blood Orb of Brutality

It is hard to pinpoint the exact origin point of the discard based Mono Blood decks, but they began their rise in the metagame shortly after Armies of Myth released, and Boogaloo put up this build shortly before the archetype started taking the Constructed Gauntlet scene by storm. Prior to this build, most Mono Blood decks tended to be heavily removal focused and looking to top people out with big Actions by either grinding away with Relentless Corruption or using a Life Siphon / Surge Mechanism endgame. However, that was for a format where Reese the Crustcrawler, Electroid, and Living Totem were the baddest dudes in town. As the format shifted towards a plethora of decks based around “enters play” abilities, Boogaloo moved the fight from trying to tear apart opposing troops on the board up to trying to put them in the crypt through discard before they ever became a problem in the first place. While Subtle Striker’s main target (slowing Cressida decks) has subsided in need, the remainder of the shell is something we continue to see to this day.

Lesson – If you want to fight Actions and “enters play” effects, you’ll need to do it through discard and interrupts.

6) Kaldheim’s Dwarf Robots

Champion: Bertram Cragraven



While BlackRoger took down the first FiveShards Cup of Fate with a variation of the deck, Kaldheim was one of the masterminds behind its initial push into stardom. In hindsight this decklist now looks very obvious and familiar to most constructed players, but at the time it was revolutionary to consider winning with Mimeobots swarming over the opponent while a Megahulk patiently sat and represented certain doom for the Blood and Diamond decks that had moved away from cards that could otherwise answer the 10/10. As mentioned earlier, Dwarf Robots is a very linear deck that grows its power during the game by adding piece to piece before overwhelming the opponent. What wasn’t obvious to most was if Dwarf Robots could be competitive when both Dwarves and Shin’hare had never seen tournament success as lower tier linear strategies. Kaldheim and the success that followed the Dwarf Robot deck proved that at least one aggressive Underworld deck is up to the task.

Lesson – When you see a linear strategy, the developers put it there for a reason. Try to at least give every linear strategy a chance before dismissing it.

5) Mind’s Mono Ruby Aggro

Champion: Urgnock



You might think aggressive Mono Ruby decks have no space to explore. That theoretical you would be wrong, because while much of those decks are often set the breadth of cards available allow for many ways to break the traditional mold. Baby Yeti is one example that KingGabriel (the player, not the card) used to great effect in an IQ top 8, and Sunsoul Phoenix is also one such card, as it saw almost no play prior to Mind’s victory in the FiveShards Sapphire Cup. Previously most attempts to break Sunsoul focused on Ruby/Sapphire decks that leaned almost exclusively on Phoenix for victory, but Mind was able to bring in Phoenix as a finisher that could act like an afterthought in his build while being a major hassle for the Cressida and Azurecannon decks of the day. Those decks had few ways to stop an early flight troop in the first place, let alone if the game started to go long and Mono Ruby could bring it back (which it certainly was capable of threatening to do). The archetype has mostly evolved full circle back to Sunsoul focused decks like the build’s Arrgh has been smashing Gauntlet with for months, but it was the single card leap that Mind made that was the tournament winner.

Lesson – Innovation doesn’t have to come from creating entire archetypes. Sometimes just figuring out the one missing card is all it takes.

4) SaDOlution’s DW Ramp

Champion: Rutherford Banks



Aborean Rootfather socketed with Major Diamond of Endurance

While not technically a 2015 deck, I gave myself an extra half month to cover in order to highlight this deck. You might recognize many of the concepts from this article series a few weeks back, but where The One was a cudgel designed at playing a Cressida style game of smash hard and fast, SaDOlution’s build accepts a slight loss in speed in order to create an incredible aura of redundancy thanks to Rutherford Banks. SaDOlution is no stranger to Banks, having run him to success in the FiveShards series before, but here with Charge Colossus we see that Mono Blood decks are going to have their hands full figuring out a way to permanently get rid of the 8/8. Shardcall is also a stroke of genius, allowing SaDOlution to turn his [CARD]Arborean Rootfathers from defensive stalwarts into Ruby Gem of Destruction wielding terrors should the matchup call for it – with Banks threatening to really turn up the heat by bringing back those Rootfathers for even more damage.

Lesson – Always look for little edges. Add together enough little edges, and you’ll get a big one and that leads to taking down tournaments.

3) JadiimJedi’s Azurecannon

Champion: Tetzot, Son of Omoc



Azurefate Sorceress socketed with Minor Sapphire of Mischief and Major Ruby of Destruction

Eldritch Dreamer socketed with Major Sapphire of Mind

Maybe more appropriately called Dragonborn’s Azurecannon, the idea of Azurefate Sorceress plus Tetzot didn’t take long for players to figure out. However, it was Dragonborn that first pushed hard on the initial builds, eventually leading to member Vazrael’s Invitational Qualifer win with the deck. Many variations exist now, but the combination of intricate interrupt play and lethal swathes of direct damage are the hallmarks of the archetype. The primary reason Azurecannon was so innovative at the time though was testament it going in a different direction from where most other players went with Azurefate Sorceress. Sapphire/Ruby/Wild was far and away the most popular build to see experimented upon, as the allure of Wrathwood Master Moss always coming back due to the combo was alluring to many. Azurecannon pushed for consistency in its sequences, while at the same time the shift in focus towards Sapphire allowed it to switch from a deck that needed to be on the offensive to one that could sit back and sculpt the perfect hand if you allowed it.

Lesson – Understand what the true strengths and weaknesses of the flagship cards to your deck are, and build your deck towards those.

2) Dameneon Mono Sapphire Control

Champion: Wyatt the Sapper



Eldritch Dreamer socketed with Major Sapphire of Mind

I don’t think people truly appreciate how much of a format boogeyman Mono Sapphire Control was during 2015. While the year will likely go down in history being tied more closely to Majesty, Mono Sapphire decks focused on protecting Reese the Crustcrawler to victory went from being considered a fringe archetype being championed by players like InfamousNeo to tournament crushers under grinders like Dameneon and Fridged. For 3 major tournaments in a row, Mono Sapphire Control was winning as an archetype at around the 65% level, which for a deck that had a target on it was pretty incredible to think about. It was the addition of the innocuous looking Storm Cloud that turbocharged the deck above its initial roots – an “of course” thought for players who saw the deck in action but a major leap to make for what otherwise was a very Action oriented control deck. Cerulean Mirror Knight meant that the Storm Cloud could create control and midrange breaking card draw plays, and just the threat of making some Stormlings was enough to make every deck in the format fear what would happen if they let the Sapphire deck just sit around.

Lesson – Commonly accepted knowledge rarely starts off as common or accepted. Look at ways to spin existing fringe archetypes that might not be considered typical and see if you can find a way to propel a deck into the next tier.

1) Eaglov’s Winter Moon Control

Champion: Winter Moon



Aborean Rootfather socketed with Minor Sapphire of Sky

I hate that “Winter Moon Control” is the title I grudgingly continue to use here, for many reasons I’ve spoken about before. You’ll notice a lot of similarities between the deck there and Eaglov’s build, but in my mind even they aren’t comparable as Eaglov truly forged a masterpiece for the metagame he was faced with. He nailed the one-ofs, which is an underrated skill to be sure when it comes to decks like this that lack tutors but plan on making the game go long enough to use deck selection and pure card advantage in their place to find singletons. The reserves are great, and I still gush over the use of even something as simple looking as Sapper’s Charge when it was a fantastic answer to the Sunsoul Phoenixes and Azurefate Sorceress’ that were on the rise and unafraid of the Basic speed Carnasaurus.

Lesson – Do the work. You can build upon the foundation laid by others to be sure, but at some point you have to roll up your sleeves and figure out what the numbers will look like in your deck. It is a skill, and skill is only honed by practice.

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