Latest Brew – Rally at Dawn

Wurtil here again!

We have a lot of slang terms in TCGs for how to win games. The overwhelming majority of games are won due to some troop, and how that troop wins us the game is often described in a shortened term to help us understand what a deck is doing.

Are you removing every troop your opponent plays and trying to use card advantage to ensure that whatever troop you have at the end of the game is the only one in play? That’s Going Long.

Are you playing nothing but super-low cost troops to try and win before the opponent can get to the point of playing their important cards? Going Under.

Maybe instead you want to have the largest troop in play to ensure that you control the attack phase on both sides. There you are Going Big.

Almost the strategic opposite would be trying to flood the board with as many troops as possible, under the theory that while they might have the largest troop it won’t matter if it can only block 1 of your 5 troops. That’s what we are going to talk about today – Going Wide!

We’ve seen examples of each of the above strategies rule the format throughout HEX’s life. Winter Moon control was the embodiment of going long; Mono Ruby Aggro played even the maligned Baby Yeti as it went under its opponents; multiple Wild ramp decks have shown the power of going big; GoreStorm just needed to be 1 or 2 troops wider than the opponent to be deadly. If you look at those decks, you’ll see that the first three all have been considered “the best deck” at various points of Armies of Myth constructed, but the last virtually disappeared. To understand why, we have to talk about the major strategic weakness of decks looking to go wide – Sweepers!

Extinction, Heat Wave, Crocosaur, Mass Polymorph Dingler and more can all fit under the “sweeper” tag for cards we are talking about, as well as the new Primal Dawn card Electrofry. Essentially, it is a card that can removal multiple troops of the opponents that are on the board out of just one card of the opponents. Most sweepers happen to be decent against many opponents but particularly effective when the opponents plan is to play more and more troops. Decks that go wide typically have to commit hard to that plan and fill their decks with a larger number of troops and troop generators than any other deck. After all, if your plan is to win by having more guys then you have to create that advantage somehow!

Extinction is the clear powerhouse sweeper of the bunch, but the problem for decks looking to go wide previously was that non-Blood decks had access to the excellent Heat Wave and Crocosaur. If Blood decks were the only bad matchup you could cross your fingers to not get those matchups and try to beat the other decks in the format, but when three shards can have cards that invalidate your strategy you start to worry too much about how to win in the format. Heat Wave was avoided somewhat in GoreStorm by trying to play more X/3 troops that could survive, but the arrival of Crocosaur spelled doom for swarm decks with smaller troops. Crocosaur versus an army of 2/2s is a massacre because not only will he eat two of them when he arrives but their dinosaur could sit and threaten to block what you had left for the rest of the game. Sure, swarm decks could looking to use quick removal to take him out in response, but those decks want to be proactive at all times which goes at odds with the thought of using a lot of removal both in terms of deckbuilding and gameplay. Thus we entered a long drought of decks wanting to win by going wide…

…that will cease thanks to Rally of Kings!

Proactively enhancing your board is the name of the game with swarm decks, and when you are already going wide you get a bigger boost from Rally of Kings global pump than a normal deck. The other really important part about Rally of Kings is how well it can soften or even negate many of the current sweepers. Extinction is going to get its pound of flesh out of your troop position, but Rally at least provides you a card that will stay on the board after Extinction and continue to give you a benefit with your next wave of troops. Heat Wave can be totally ineffective against a Rally of Kings if you play a lot of X/2 troops, and with Empower you also can just blank a late Heat Wave entirely!

Crocosaur is a little more complicated, as much like Extinction it is going to be impossible for Rally of Kings to totally save you. What Rally of Kings DOES do though is change the math in favor of the deck sporting a lot of 2/2s, as while Crocosaur survives to block indefinitely against troops with those stats he is “just” a two for one if all your troops happen to be 3/3s thanks to Rally. That might not seem like a big deal since the opponent still kills your troops and is getting value, the fact that you can continue to attack afterwards is a very big deal for letting swarm decks push through a Crocosaur now when previously their entire plan would fold to it.

Where do we take a Rally of Kings deck from here?

There are a couple of options for how to best build a Rally of Kings deck, and what shards we want to pursue. When going wide, the biggest delineation is going to be between Ruby and non-Ruby decks as Ruby gives us access to ways of finishing off the opponent other than having to turn troops sideways. As aggro players know, dealing 16 damage with your troops in a mono-Ruby deck is very different than dealing 16 damage with your troops in a mono-Diamond deck. Ruby decks often have easy access to reach cards that can kill an opponent who thinks they have finally gained control of the board, while non-Ruby decks are going to have to keep dropping troops and hoping for the best.

Let’s start with the baseline, a hyper-aggressive Mono Diamond approach.

Diminutive Diamond

Champion: Palamedes the Righteous

Gems: Protectorate Defender equipped with Major Diamond of Solidarity

Going with just a single shard lets us really cut back on the number of resources we have to play, provided we have a low enough curve. Twelve one-drops and Fifteen two-drops highlight the curve that ends with a combination of both Rally of Kings and Grace of Tiaanost as proactive methods of pushing your troops forward for three resources. Martyr as the most efficient and flexible removal Diamond has access caps off the deck to provide a huge amount of tactical options for both keeping big troops off the opposing side of the board or buffing your team at quick speed against opposing aggro decks.

It can’t be reiterated enough how important cards like Rally and Grace are to Diamond for fighting back in the metagame we have today. Crocosaur has been a monstrous beating for aggressive decks from day 1 of Armies of Myth, for reasons that may not be apparent beyond the obviously craziness it is to begin with. For Diamond decks, a Crocosaur could be unbeatable as it was far more than a two-for-one due to how all the stats lined up. Diamond would curve out a 2/1 on 1, a 2/2 on 2, then probably another 2/2 or a 3/3 on turn 3. By that time, Wild decks had likely gotten a ramp card and then Crocosaur would come down and eat two troops while living. The part where Wild still had a 5/6 sticking around was backbreaking, as now additional troops from Diamond were turned into blanks that couldn’t swing through. The only real counter to this was to switch from a proactive plan to a reactive one where the Diamond player would hold up resources for Martyr, Pride’s Fall, or some other quick speed answer. Strategically, that meant the opponent had already won though, as now your proactive aggro deck had been reduced to spending one of its key turns holding back instead of developing its board. Crocosaur was one of many problems for Diamond, but he certainly represents the biggest reason why Diamond was considered one of the weakest shards in Armies of Myth Constructed.

Back to Rally of Kings and Grace of Tiaanost. What they do is change the math ever so slightly, but they tweak it just far enough to create proactive ways of battling against the Dinosaur menace. With Rally of Kings, your 2/1 into 2/2 start now can have two 3 Attack troops teaming up to be large enough to take down the Dinosaur should he choose to fight. That might not seem like much, but now instead of having a flow of blank troops you have a stat-boosting Constant that sticks around and a clear path for current and future troops to swing in due to no 5/6 sitting around to stop them. Grace shifts the math similarly, turning a pair of 2 Attack troops into just enough to fight the 5/6 and kill it, while this time returning your troop to be ready to attack the very next turn. If that troop happens to be William Rowan or a similar “enters play” type of attacker, then you get another trigger to boot!

Really though, the major reason Diamond is finally in position to takes its place in the metagame as an aggressive contender is the critical mass of great one and two drops. Totem of Lanupaw and William Rowan are going to have their abilities randomly win games every now and again, but really it is their stats that make them shine. In a world where we see champions starting at 21 to 25 health frequently, if your aggro deck doesn’t have enough firepower it just isn’t going to deal enough damage to take down the high health control decks. Pair those great stats with Rally of Kings to create a large and immediate swing in your board state and you have a great way to just run over anybody.

MATCHUPS

Diamond is extremely well positioned against other aggressive decks. Swiftstrikers all along the two-drop slot combined with a great curves makes it extremely hard for other small troop decks to create an edge. Deathless Guardian makes it even more difficult for opposing Ruby builds especially, turning Burn and Scorch into poor uses of a card, and Totem Trap is the efficient removal that you want as it can be used both offensively and defensively to great effect.

Speaking of Deathless Guardian, it and Hopeheart Unicorn both function as anti-sweeper technology. Guardian is about the best thing going against Heat Wave, and with the printing of Electrofry that makes Hopeheart Unicorn an inclusion as well against Ruby unless you can count it out. Hopeheart also still obviously makes for an excellent solution against Extinction, as it always has done.

Finally, for the Sapphire control decks you are fairly well positioned already. Frost Wizard helps against the Winter Moon menace. Diamond doesn’t have a lot of great ways to finish off a Sapphire control deck should it take over, so focus on keeping your deck lean and beating them into submission before that can happen.

Not all swarm decks are stuck without a way to finish off a control opponent who has started to gain an advantage on the board. Next let’s look at a Ruby based Rally of Kings deck that can hit both hard and fast while having a bit of reach.

Ruby Rally

Champion: Bryson Maplewood

Gems: Protectorate Defender equipped with Major Diamond of Solidarity. Iljun’s Parade equipped with Major Ruby of Destruction.

Decks looking to go wide with Ruby tend to also edge towards going under in many cases. Having a way to finish off opponents at a low health total (Iljun’s Parade in this case) means that we can be rewarded for synergizing between the two approaches since both find games much easier to win with a little bit of reach. The curve here reflects that as with 10 one-drops and 11 two-drops this deck looks to push out troops on the first two turns, land a Rally on turn 3, and then follow that up with one of the two troop producers.

Speaking of curving out, one of the biggest helpers for aggressive decks in general is having access to better threshold fixing. There is a reason aggro for the first three sets has been mostly defined by Mono Ruby, and that is because without using some form of threshold fixing it is simply too dangerous for most decks to try and go dual shard without sacrificing too much consistency in their draws. Carloth Cobblestone is a literal game-changer, as Humans already were the core of some of the most powerful dual-shard decks. With Humans likely to be core to the game for a long time, be sure to grab your Cobblestones soon because I imagine they will be seeing play for a very long time even if all your deck wants to do is play two of the three shards the Human tri-shard can make.

Speaking of Humans, let’s take a moment to talk about William Rowan. He’s not redefining the metagame, but he is such a high-floor two drop that it is going to be hard to make aggressive Diamond decks without him. In Constructed, the math says that each attack is going to result in landing Rowan herself around 10-15% of the time (there are too many variables to nail a number for each attack, but in general it will be closer to 10 when the game starts and closer to 15 if William has attacked a few times without finding Rowan). That means that in most games you will not expect to see Rowan come down as the opponent will probably be dead before that happens. In games where you DO happen to have Kismet on your side though, things can be over in extremely short order.

There are a lot of interactions happening here that make this a somewhat tricky deck to pilot. Flamehand Invoker can supercharge a Quash Ridge Tusker or Royal Falconer to quickly result in lethal damage. Spiritbound Spy makes a solid Invoker target as well thanks to retaining the shift power even after becoming a Phantom. Valiant Escort also has some relevant interactions beyond saving a troop from removal, and while it is sometimes relevant to rebuy a Royal Falconer just to create more troops the scary part of Escort is when you can pick back up an elephant to play again for lethal. Rally can be a bit of a damage boost in that case, but also look for opportunities to get an Invoker power on the Iljun. Late game you can pump the Mirthkin, return it with Escort, then replay it all in one turn for extra damage!

It also bears talking about Empower as it pertains to Rally of Kings. In Ruby Rally, you almost always will be trying to play Rally as soon as you can in its normal state to push through more damage. Obviously in late game situations off the top you can get a bonus, but that is rarely what you are pushing for. The exception of course is when you see chances in attrition matchups to build up to a big Parade or two, since having two 4/4s deal damage when they come down amounts to lethal very easily.

A quick note on the reserves. Decks that go wide rarely can devote lots of reserve slots to reactive cards or non-troop cards in general. Filling your aggressive swarm deck with 3 cost removal is going to really dilute your ability to actually run over people, so be careful with the balance as you go forward.

MATCHUPS

The Iljun in the room is that Blood still isn’t your favorite matchup to see. You can beat Vampires and Extinctions, but you often only have a small window in which to do so. Be sure to save your Bryson Maplewood activation for when you know it will count, as it is all too easy to find yourself with a board for 3/Xs that can’t punch through a Vampire King. In the reserves, this is one matchup you can normally play with your curve a bit more than normal since most games will go a bit long. You try to slow things down a bit with Hopeheart Unicorn and Danse Macabre coming in over your Tuskers who rarely have time to get large enough to swing through Blood’s great troop assortment. Both Hopeheart and Danse give you some solid anti-Extinction technology, with Danse being one in particular to watch as you get all the modifiers you may have put on the troops you bring back! Invoker shifts, Defender pumps, Bryson activations – all come back with your Phantom army and can make a lethal force from just one card.

Winter Moon decks are some of your favorite matchups to see. Going under is particularly strong against them, so keeping aggressive hands is important. Spiritbound Spy and a Defender give way to Frost Wizards, but otherwise you are pretty happy with your deck composition and just want to watch for Crocosaur with keeping either Martyr or Rally in mind.

Other Ruby-based aggro decks are a hallmark of what Diamond loves to be fighting against. Deathless Guardian is mostly for the Ruby/Sapphire decks that might be packing Heat Wave, but he’ll slot in over Flamehand Invoker just fine, while Royal Den Mother comes in for your Martyrs to give you more ways to catch up to them. You do move around your gems a lot in this matchup, with Defender going down to a minor gem for lifedrain and Iljun’s Parade turning into a 4+ health-gain bomb against them. This is a decent matchup that turns into a fantastic matchup post-reserves.

Finally, the ramp decks turn from a negative matchup into a positive one almost entirely on the back of Rally of Kings. They will still have insane hands from time to time that nobody beats, but for the most part you should be able to push through early damage and then show the power of going wide as you deal the final points of damage while swinging into one or two of their larger troops with your entire team. Danse over Spiritbound Spy to provide some real flight power is about the only change I like universally against these decks, but there are plenty of small edges you can exploit against various versions (moving Protectorate Defender to the Discard/Draw 3 gem against the slower DW ramp, for instance).

One other way to take Diamond swarm strategies gets lumped together with all the non-Ruby combinations, including Mono-Diamond itself. Without any way to deal damage and finish off a game in ways other than the attack phase, the rest of the Rally of Kings archetypes will rely upon either winning before the opponent can take control or going so wide through the use of troop generation that you can win in the face of surmounting card and troop advantage engines.

Wild Rally

Champion: Warmaster Fuzzuko

Gems: Rune Ear Hierophant equipped with Minor Wild Orb of Conservation and Major Diamond of Solidarity. Iljun’s Parade equipped with Major Wild Orb of Dominance

We see more Primal Dawn cards forming together in this build, with Rune Ear Hierophant center among them. It is no secret that Spellshield as a minor gem is an incredibly powerful ability, and when paired with a low-cost troop who can grow to enormous proportions I would be surprised if we DIDN’T see Hierophant making waves in Constructed. Here, we’ve paired him with the global pump ability from Diamond to create a one-two punch where you play Hierophant, then follow him up with one of your multiple troop generators and ask the opponent if they want to chump block the now 4/4 or 5/5 or if they would rather let you further enhance your large assembly of bodies.

Moving back to an old hit, Warmaster Fuzzuko is a card that has never really had its time in the spotlight for Constructed. A limited powerhouse champion back in Shattered Destiny draft, Fuzzuko is the essential swarm champion as he provides his own version of a Rally of Kings for free. If that isn’t good enough, Danse Macabre is an incredibly powerful combination as it ensures that if the opponent does happen to get Extinction for your board then Danse will be bringing back an army of 2/2 or larger Phantoms that will end the game fast.

Where this deck really has to earn its keep though is at the two-drop slot. Diamond Wild has plenty of power troops and troop generating effects starting at three cost, but few good ways to really support those cards with their cheaper troops. While Lithe Lyricist is a serious consideration, instead here we will go with Moon’ariu Sensei and Cottontail Explorer to provide a potent pair of card advantage bunnies I expect to see together often. Sensei is a known quantity by now, but Explorer is the new Wild star on the block. On average you’ll get a card or more off the Explorer’s ability, which by itself is enough to warrant inclusion. Wild Rally doesn’t fully push Explorer’s trigger to the max, but where you can really go crazy is when you start including ways to benefit from having troops in the crypt. It just so happens that we are pretty happy running Danse Macabre already as sweeper-insurance and a long game threat, and Explorer helps fuel Macabre with every troop it puts into the crypt. It might seem like these 1/1 bodies are inconsequential, but when you play Rally of Kings and Fuzzuko then you can easily have them attacking as 3/3s or bigger!

Best Friends Forever!

Our final pair of new cards sees a bit of a tribal splash. Greenpaw Emancipator is a pretty obvious inclusion due to the 12 attack worth of troops you’ll get for your 5 resources thanks to Fuzzuko, but Young Seer probably warrants a bit more explanation. One of the real conundrums for aggro and midrange decks in HEX is how they plan to go dual shard reliably. For Diamond Wild, we obviously have Shard of Life but Howling Plains Bluegrass can also be fine provided we are playing enough Coyotles. Many of the best Coyotles end up in Sapphire, which limits us somewhat in terms of reaching a critical mass for the deck, but Young Seer helps keep the deck moving quickly while providing a body for the eventual flurry of global pump effects. You also can occasionally live the dream of reducing the cost of an Emancipator, as hitting 8 to get an Empowered Greenpaw Emancipator is much more reasonable to happen than hitting 10.

MATCHUPS

Again, we will mostly be working in generalities as the new format means that decks will shift rapidly and what you will need to be ready to stop will also change quickly.

Ruby aggro decks are traditionally a fine matchup for DW, where the combination of efficient troops and health gain can spell doom for them. Spiritbound Spy is an underrated card to bring in against aggro, as it can be extremely annoying to almost any start they have and often ends up as a two-for-one that you can drop on your very first turn.

Cerebral Domination is some standard fare against interrupt decks. With so many 4 and 5 cost cards, the deck can be prone to slower hands that need to stick a troop generator in order to compete. Cerebral Domination does that extremely well, but as a general rule you don’t want to bring in too many or else you risk drawing too many Dominations and not enough actual threats.

Blood decks HATE seeing Danse Macabre, as it can undo all their removal in a single card and also provide such an enormous amount of attack power that they have very little time to respond to it. Gale Force is also worth talking about, as the games where you will have the most issues are ones where Vampires take over the skies and fly above your chump blockers. Gale Force is fine even if it kills just a single Vampire, and devastating if they overextend into it.

The Airvolution will be televised

Speaking of Gale Force we have one last deck looking to go wide to talk about, this time taking a flight focused imitator of Rally of Kings for a spin:

The Beautiful Airvolution

Champion: Fiona Honeyfinch

Gems: Forgotten Monarch with Major Sapphire of Mind and Minor Sapphire of Sky

If you had told me I would be playing a Windbourne Acolyte in Constructed thanks to Primal Dawn a couple months ago, I would have said you had lost your mind. Force of the Tomb changes everything though, making the much maligned one-drop into a powerhouse enabler for your free Phantoms. Much like our other non-Ruby swarm decks, The Beautiful Airvolution is only winning in the combat phase, with the twist this time being that it is full of evasive bodies everywhere thanks to Force and Storm Cloud. And of course, what would a Storm Cloud deck be without life-partner Cerulean Mirror Knight powering the deck as well?

Air Superiority in combination with Force of the Tomb is a potent duo, as it creates a whole heap of cheap bodies that most decks won’t be able to block so early in the game. Air Superiority in combination with Storm Cloud was always a powerful tandem as well, but until now it simply didn’t have enough supporting players to make it work. At the same time Airvolution fills many of the holes the deck has due to playing a few ground-based troops as you want some cheap Necrotic troops to enable Sepulchra Crypt Dust and Force of the Tomb. Spiritbound Spy might get flight eventually, but Airvolution means he and his buddy the Forbidden Tomeseeker can really take advantage of the synergy the rest of the deck offers.

Speaking of which, Forbidden Tomeseeker is a sweet card all by itself. It is both one of the cheapest Shift troops we have seen as well as one with the most upside as its power can quickly grow to incredible heights. By itself, it can become big enough to win games, but where it really shines is when you can give it Flight or shift its power onto an evasive troop to take over a game. Shifting it over is most often the correct play unless you have a High Infinitrix or Airvolution waiting in the wings, because not only will the let the damage start accruing but it also creates a buff that will stick around should the troop later die and be returned by Ethereal Caller.

The final Primal Dawn card to talk about is another real doozy. High Infinitrix can be completely dominant against a whole host of decks. We’ve seen the 3/4 Flight and Lifedrain statline dominate the format at various points on Vampire King, and it is arguable that High Infinitrix’s upside is even higher. Oftentimes she doesn’t even need to attack or block to define the game, instead acting like another Rally effect all by herself by pumping troops, reverting thanks to a fresh Necrotic, and repeating the cycle. In particular, we are extremely interested in her ability to give Flight in this deck, as turning on Air Superiority is vital.

We also do need to talk about Champion selection for a deck like this. Diamond/Sapphire doesn’t have quite the same power level of champions at its disposal for strategies like this one, but the new Primal Dawn champion Fiona Honeyfinch is more than capable of handling herself in a fight. Basically, our choices mostly come down to whether we prefer having card advantage champions like Wyatt the Sapper or Rutherford Banks or if we prefer champions that help us win a damage race like Palamedes the Righteous or Fiona. I think Fiona will win out in the end, as while she is not great in some matchups she can also just completely wreck a number of decks thanks to her high starting health and her champion power to thwart a few key attacks each game.

MATCHUPS

This deck is a midrange’s nightmare. All these flight threats combined with both Fiona’s charge power and your draws with Air Superiority and High Infinitrix creating huge amounts of Attack and Defense will overpower the opponent far more often than not. Mecha Hive can both come in against various types of midrange builds to provide more game warping threats, especially synergizing well with Air Superiority and Airvolution to easily create 8 or even 12 Attack in the air.

Opposing aggressive decks will find that while their cards may make this matchup look somewhat even on the surface, the combination of Diamond’s strong troops and Fiona’s incredible advantages against your typical agro deck mean that few decks will ever want to get in a race with The Beautiful Airvolution. Spiritbound Spy shines here already, as does High Infinitrix and any Forces. Totem Trap comes in from the reserves as an absolute house against any aggro matchup. Transmogrifade also can be incredible, as often aggro has a few centerpiece cards like Quash Ridge Tusker or a Jags the Blademaster that their deck will crumble if they can’t work around that one piece. It is worth pointing out that while using Transmogrifade on a one-drop can often result in hitting a Forge of Cadoc to give your opponent a boost in their resources, even that is worth the price of admission and discounts that often you also could be giving them a Hex Geode and laughing all the way to the bank.

Control can be a little more difficult, as while Fiona is incredible against opponents who care about your health she is far less impressive when the opponent does care if you are at 25 or 45 as long as they can take over the game. Forbidden Tomeseeker can be an all-star if left unchecked, while Countermagic allows you to play a Fish-style game of sneaking in a few threats and then trying to buy just a turn the opponent wasn’t expecting to finish them off. Lightning Skyhunter is also a decent reserves option against Extinction decks, but to really get it to pay off you often have to set up situations where you are not swarming the board quickly with Force of the Tombs but rather waiting until you have Skyhunter level resources, hitting the opponent and playing a free Force or two with Skyhunter backup for a big swing the following turn.

Some Final Takeaways

It is important to note the curve on these decks, especially when compared to Ruby Rally. Let’s take a quick look:

Diminutive Diamond: 12 one-drops, 15 two-drops, 6 three-drops (and two “free” Angel of Dawns)

Ruby Rally: 10 one-drops, 11 two-drops, 4 three-drops, 8 four-drops

Wild Rally: 6 one-drops, 8 two-drops, 11 three-drops, 4 four-drops, 6 five-drops

The Beautiful Airvolution: 8 one-drops, 14 two-drops, 10 three-drops, 1 four-drop, 2 five-drops (and four “free” Force of the Tombs)

While Diminutive Diamond has the lowest curve to work with, that speaks more to how it is flooding the board with individually cheap troops as opposed to multiple troop generators. It is more interesting to note the differences between Wild Rally’s multiple five-drops and Ruby Rally’s lower curve. This goes back to the issue of reach, as Ruby wants to curve out to ensure it can turn on its finishers while Wild Rally just wants to chain troop generator after troop generator and eventually win with the widest of board states. Wild Rally runs more shards to accommodate that, and you’ll also find that you’ll be playing Empowered Rally of Kings more often in this deck as mini-Onslaughts to smash over the opponent.

Going wide hasn’t been the most popular strategy for much of HEX Constructed lifespan so far, but we now have the tools at our disposal to both enable those strategies in powerful new ways while also proactively creating board positions that are far less vulnerable to the popular sweepers of the format. So watch your curve, and play more troops!

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