Painting the Target

by Wurtil

The road to Lake Forest and the $100,000 HEX Invitational has finally been revealed to us. Let that really sink in: One-Hundred Thousand Dollars—that’s six figures and the glory to match it. Constructed now has our attention more than ever. However, the real question is this: does it have your focus?

Not every single person who plays HEX is dialed in on exactly how the Constructed metagame has evolved since the earliest days of alpha. If your own thoughts have suddenly turned towards trying to earn a place in HEX history, you should be organizing your ideas and practicing towards the goal at hand—taking down an Invitational Qualifier!

For this first of hopefully many articles delving into the depths of deck design, the focus is going to be on painting the target—what are the current Tier 1 decks, why do they win, and how can I stop them. You can’t be the best if you can’t beat the best, so let’s look at who’s currently holding those titles.

Blood Diamond Midrange

Synopsis: Often dubbed “BD Control”, the Control monomer is often untrue for all but a few variations of the deck. The common BD builds rely upon the efficiency of their threats and removal to win most of their games—and with cards like Vampire King that are just miles ahead of most other things you could be doing it certainly has proven to be a viable strategy since even early Alpha.

BD Midrange has a lot of variations, so we’ll stick with DarkShadowNL’s Top 4 list from the Sapphire Cup. The recipe always seems to be at least the Vampire Royalty, Angel of Dawn, Living Totem, Soul Marble, and Extinction—after that flavor with your favorite removal and other efficient troop choices.

Champion: Zared Venomscorn

Strengths: BD has all the tools that aggressive decks fear. Angel of Dawn is often a free win against an unprepared opponent, and the multiple lines of play involving early removal into Vampire Princess or Vampire King can force aggressive decks to prepare extremely specific answers. BD also preys upon other pure midrange strategies that exist in the format—if your deck doesn’t have a specific endgame in mind you are going to be in trouble, because it isn’t very likely that your cards are going to keep up with the raw efficiency of what BD can be packing.

Weaknesses: True control decks can be an issue for most builds—Mono Sapphire Control has existed in various forms over the past year as the combination of heavy card draw, bounce and interrupts makes it easy to stall the game into threats that are larger than BD’s troops and somewhat immune to its removal—from Prophet of Lodegan to Reese the Crustcrawler, as long as you were going bigger than BD in ways that are difficult for its removal to interact you had a shot. Hard to interact endgames are a common issue for BD, so control-combo decks like Ruby Sapphire Chimes and AzureTetzot, along with control decks utilizing a Bury-based endgame can be trouble.

Closing Notes: BD is extremely customizable, as the core of the deck allows you to surround it by both aggressive troops to try and fight control decks or with more removal and bigger finishers to try and go over the top of other Blood decks. Even Champion choice is highly subject to each list. 756 person stress test finalist Galwen’s use of Prairie Meadow alongside Spearcliff Cloud Knight provided for a slightly more aggressive take on the deck. On the other end of the spectrum, Delryn’s Top 8 list from the Sapphire Cup that is happy fighting until 7 resources to create the ultimate inevitability with Uruunaz backed up by the potential of a Rutherford Banks activation (Countermagic lovers everywhere are dry-heaving at the thought of that). When preparing to fight the deck you know that you will see Extinction, Soul Marble, and 4-butt flight troops, but after that the gamut runs from Solitary Exiles and Martyr to Meek and Rot Cast and everywhere in between. It also is worth noting that many people consider Mono Blood a Tier 1 deck as well, but it follows most of the same stylistic choices and breadth of options that BD does and ends up having essentially the same matchups in the metagame.

Blood Sapphire Control

Synopsis: Control the game with Blood’s removal and Sapphire’s interrupts, then let Reese untunnel or drop a Vampire King with some extra resources open and ride to victory. Some alternative builds go for the Phenteo the Brood Priest / Azurefate Sorceress combo where after a couple Phenteo activations an Azurefate Sorceress with the Major Sapphire of Subterfuge comes down and hopefully hits a Terrorantula Egg. Those 5/5 Terrorantulas will in turn bury more cards thanks to the Sorceress and almost certainly hit more Terrorantula Eggs to quickly spin through your opponent’s entire deck.

Champion: Bertram Cragraven

Slaughtergear’s Innovation socketed with Major Sapphire of Mind

Strengths: Blood Sapphire isn’t designed as a pure control strategy, but it certainly has multiple lines that can play that way when paired with a Reese tunneled early. Blood Sapphire is the go-to strategy when trying to fight a troop-based midrange strategy—Reese especially puts your opponent under the gun quickly to respond as your suite of interrupts threatens to protect Reese from any harm and let a stream of Robots spell the demise of the midrange player. The few combo decks in the format also have a bear of a time getting through all the interrupts and ways to find them.

Weaknesses: Aggressive strategies, especially ones with reach like Mono Ruby, are the bane of Blood Sapphire. Even with 8 Vampires (King and Princess) and more reserve slots devoted to the matchup, it can still be extremely difficult to keep up as too many cards in the starting 60 just don’t match up well. If Mono Ruby is playing multiple threats on the first two turns of the game while you are Peeking into Suffocate, it isn’t going to be too hard to figure out the winner of that one!

Closing Notes: There are two types of games with Blood Sapphire—Reese games and not-Reese games. Reese games are an uphill battle for the opponent to either figure out a way to kill you fast or to find some way to get through your interrupt suite and kill Reese when he does emerge (hint: that’s not easy…). Non-Reese games often end up being extremely skill-intensive affairs for both sides where having put the time in to figure out the small details pays big dividends. Rarely does BS have a pure card advantage engine going over their opponent though—Arcane Focus and Peek are more for digging to that raw power—so it is certainly possible to make one-for-one card trades with the deck and eventually land a haymaker that they can’t deal with. On the Blood Sapphire side, practice patience with those card selection tools. Sometimes you need to just make your early resource drops and must play your card selection tools early, but often the best thing to do is hold back on playing Peek on the second turn and wait until you identify what parts of your are going to need to win the game.

Mono Ruby Aggro

Synopsis: Fill your deck with a one-drop leaning Ruby troop curve, play the damage actions worth their salt, and try to smash your opponents face in before they can pull any nasty stunts. Sunsoul Phoenix creates a secondary plan and some semblance of resilience.

Credit to Mind, winner of the Sapphire Cup for this list.

Champion: Urgnock

Strengths: Despite having lurked around since early alpha, the printing of Quash Ridge Tusker and Urgnock was what really pushed the deck into the forefront. In most situations, Mono Ruby is the epitome of aggression and wants to dump everything from its hand as quickly as possible to force the opponent to either have a narrow answer like Heat Wave or Sorrow. Most other decks aren’t built to handle the pure efficiency with which you turn resources and cards into ATK values chipping away at the opponent.

Weaknesses: Besides the aforementioned specific answers, many Mono Blood and Blood Diamond builds can be difficult to deal with. Often this is because all it takes is a slight stumble from Mono Ruby or even just a piece of removal ready on turn 2 for the Blood deck and suddenly a Vampire or Angel can come down and prevent you from pushing through meaningful damage. Dwarf Robots is another tier 2 deck that can give Mono Ruby fits (so keep those Total Meltdowns handy!), primarily because Robots can pump out 3/3s and 3/4s as fast as turn 2, which essentially negates the efficiency strength by which Mono Ruby is trying to create its wins. The key in all cases is early and meaningful blockers—if Burn or Crushing Blow can’t easily push through it then Mono Ruby is going to be in trouble.

Closing Notes: Sunsoul Phoenix can do serious work for the archetype. Unless presented with especially tasty targets, you are saving your Burns and Scorches to power the Phoenix when possible. Bringing back Phoenix doesn’t happen all that often in the deck, but getting it out on turn 3 certainly does, so on both sides you should be aware of that possibility. Unmerciful Tormentor and Psychotic Anarchist might look like a total non-bo, but because all your cards are so cheap you are likely getting rid of anything drawn off the Anarchist rapidly anyway—that’s the beauty of Anarchist in the first place in a deck like this is that the extra card only matters if they can play it before they are dead…

RW Ramp

Synopsis: Even with the recent banning of Titania’s Majesty, RW Ramp continues to be a powerhouse player thanks to Cressida and the powerful options she can boost you into. The key to the deck still revolves around primarily five-cost cards, with the backup plan being the powerhouse combo that was a fringe player in the previous constructed format combining Eye of Creation with Arborean Rootfather and letting the Minor Ruby of Ferocity and Major Ruby of Destruction mean that no reasonable health total is safe without some blockers around.

Credit to Fierock here with his Top 4 list from the Sapphire Cup.

Champion: Cressida

Aborean Rootfather socketed with Major Ruby of Destruction, Minor Ruby of Ferocity

Strengths: Consistency is one of the big strengths for the deck. 10 accelerators gives you a 79% chance of having one by turn two. Cressida is there to give you another acceleration boost on turn three and with 10 five-drops you are likely to have one ready to drop down on turn three and start cranking. Since the deck is packed to the gills with threats, all it takes is for one to stick and suddenly even Vampire King looks small next to your 5, 8, and even 10 ATK troops. Periwinkle provides a twist that one-for-one removal and interrupts from the control decks aren’t always going to effectively fight your threats.

Weaknesses: Outside of Chlorophyllia, your acceleration choices are easily sniped out by cheap removal. When that cheap removal is paired with a fast clock (like Mono Ruby and some Mono Blood builds can provide), it can result in RW getting run over with a hand full of expensive troops that it never gets the chance to play. Subtle Striker is also a major thorn, as without the reliability of Cressida’s activation the deck can find itself stuttering.

Closing Notes: When designing your deck to beat RW, be acutely aware of what your plan is concerning Periwinkle—unchecked it will result in you getting run over quickly. There also are a lot of viable troop options to fit into the deck, with Crocosaur and Rootfather being the only guarantees. When piloting RW, try to find ways to invalidate your potential opponents deck in troop selection (as Fierock targeted the Blood based decks with Eternal Sage and Droos both being Murder-proof).

[YOUR DECK HERE]

There’s no way we’ve seen the extent of decks that will be considered Tier 1 operators by the end of Armies of Myth Standard. Be watching and listening carefully to forums, Twitter, and fan sites for what is winning the now competitive Daily events because it is likely that what is most popular will rotate rapidly as information disseminates. But perhaps more importantly, be thinking and working on what decks might be able to capitalize upon the flaws in the current “best decks”—somebody has to win these things and my money is on those who are willing to take chances over and over until the work pays off.

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