[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am prejudiced. I am biased, and these biases affect how I live my life. I am a human, we all do this. Now some people have some socially unacceptable biases. Those aren’t the kind I’m talking about. I’m talking about my bias towards Trading Card Games. I’m a Magic player, as well as a Hex player. Magic was where I started, and Magic is where I draw the majority of my knowledge from. It’s where my experience and techniques and understanding of TCGs came from. And it is what biases my view of Hex and of deckbuilding and of theorycrafting. It is also what is holding me back.

At their core, Hex and Magic are similar. They are both TCGs with a relatively similar resource system, card types, and core mechanics. You build decks of 60 cards, and you start with 7 cards and 20 life. The cards themselves have some similarities as well, both games have a Murder that function in similar roles. The general philosophies of the design groups behind Hex and Magic, however, seem to be very different. Hex has a different arena to explore, in digital only TCG design. Randomness is easier to use, hidden information becomes more of a tool, and the design space of permanence has already begun its foray into the public eye. These aspects have influenced the way the cards in Hex are designed, and it is inherently different than Magic.

The way I approach building a deck in Hex has, to this point, been determined by my knowledge of deckbuilding in Magic. When I want to play control, my first step is to look for the counter spells, then the Quick speed card draw, some form of mass removal, and an evasive and untargettable win condition. Slap this all together with some filler and you have a pretty good structure for a control deck in any TCG. But. These principals assume a relative power level that evens out the power of these cards with the power of Troop based decks, either aggro or mid range. It also assumes the same distribution of effect between Troops and Actions and otherwise. Neither of these are assumptions we should be making about Hex.

Hex has shown that the real power of their cards, at least in Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny, is in the Troops they create. The spells have been fairly lackluster as a whole, with some individual cards standing out, but none really outclassing the Troops. So what does this all mean for us? It means that, if we want to build any archetype, we need to focus on the principals of deckbuilding and apply those to the game, as opposed to using the shortcut methods learned from other TCGs with other power balances. So our new control deck must try and take advantage of the cards where the true power is, as opposed to the cards where we want the power to be because of another game.

So what are those principals? I’ve talked about them before, so I won’t describe them in detail. The main focus is going to be on card advantage, or getting as much value out of our cards as we can, while slowly grinding our opponents out of resources. We do still want to have an evasive and ideally uninteractive threat. And we need removal. So what cards within Hex can we use to get these effects?

Let’s start with card advantage. We want cards that have additional effects that will allow us to “2 for 1” our opponent. For those of you who were fortunate enough to watch the Budget Cup II, Henip played a mono Blood deck that was seemingly built around this principal. He did everything he could to have an effect, and leave something behind. Wakizashi Ambusher and Xentoth’s Inquisitor have this kind of effect. They will kill a Troop, or remove the power of another, while leaving behind something that can attack or block.

Another set of cards that have this effect, and the ones that I want to focus on, are the Darkspire Troops. Coming into Shattered Destiny, lots of people shrugged aside these cards as “Proving Grounds only.” Clearly they were wrong. These troops may not be super ridiculous looking when compared to your Angels of Dawn or your Vampire Kings, but they have the staying power and the created value that make Cerulean Mirror Knight such an insane card. The better Darkspire Troops will always either give you a value effect, of discard or damage or outright winning, or they will fetch out a replacement. This is a very consistent, if less predictable, form of card advantage. I want to look at these cards individually now.

This is the least exciting of these cards, but a very important one nonetheless. Darkspire Priestess does something that we don’t have in most of the previous iterations of control; she gives us a 2 drop body. Darkspire Priestess blocks against decks like Gore Knight very, very well. She’s stacked in power, not toughness, so she can trade up easier. She also leaves an effect behind, besides acting as a removal spell or “gaining us life” in the form of blocking. Getting to notch some damage on our opponent is the worse of the options, but still fine. We really want to see her give us a fetch effect, letting us chain her into the next card I want to talk about.

Darkspire Punisher is one of my new favorite cards from Shattered Destiny. In every deck I’ve tried with it, be it Standard Constructed or Rock League or Budget Cup, it has outperformed many of the others “better” cards in the decks. It’s a 3 drop that has a moderately sized body and can give your opponent a chance to randomly discard a card, if it doesn’t fetch out a replacement Troop. These are both very good effects for the deck. A cast Darkspire Punisher usually trades with an opposing Troop, also “gaining you life” and in addition to being a life gain removal spell, it can make your opponent discard. This card is awesome, and I love being able to cast it and get either one of the two death trigger modes off of it. It also chains quite nicely into the last useful Darkspire Troop.

This is a big dude. Lotta power here, though barely any toughness. This is not the card you play early and use to block. This is one of the end game finishers we can fetch. He beats down very effectively, acting as a 4 turn clock if your opponent is still at full life. He also has some very powerful death modes. Chances are, when he dies, there will be at least 2 Darkspire Troops in your graveyard, with likely more. When he dies, you will be able to bury your opponent in card advantage by drawing 2+ cards off of the Troop that you already pseudo drew for free, or you will deal loads of damage to your opponent, killing them. Now Darkspire Tyrant is neither evasive, nor is he untargettable. However, he does what the other win conditions that we have used can’t, he wins the game despite being killed. That is what makes him such a threat. Only Solitary Exile and Immortal Decree effectively answer it.

So these are the Darkspire Troops that I think are effective and useful for us in regards to a control shell. They are Troops who can enter combat, and yield more value as they die, including as powerful an effect as winning us the game. There are two more Troops I believe that are powerful enough, and have a lasting effect enough, to add to the card advantage machine that is Darkspire. I tried to avoid it, but now that I’m embracing Hex as its own game, I cannot avoid it any longer.

I’ve also written a decent amount about this card, though mostly from the perspective of it making our job as a control deck extremely difficult. This is due to it being ludicrously strong. It makes killing Troops painful, as they replace themselves. Cerulean Mirror Knight does so much work in the deck that we are in the process of assembling now. We already want our Troops to be dying, because that gives us a secondary effect, whatever it may be. Adding CMKs inspiration to these Troops make them even stronger. Now when a Darkspire dies, not only does it likely trade with an opposing troop and gain us life and make our opponent discard a card (or lose) but it ALSO draws us a card. At this point, we’re riding the value train.

[quote_center]”I tried to avoid it, but now that I’m embracing Hex as its own game, I cannot avoid it any longer.”[/quote_center]

In terms of mass removal, Extinction is still the best card option we have, for many, many reasons. It takes out most troops our opponents have. That’s the basic mode. The hidden mode it now has is to trigger our myriad death effects, be it from CMK inspiration or from Darkspire inherent abilities. The common dictum of mass removal is that if you play it, you want to make sure you minimize the impact it has on you. In traditional control decks in other TCGs, this means you play it with as few Troops as possible. In Hex, this means we want to load up our board with death triggers so that when we do pull the trigger on an Extinction, it nets us our opponent’s board being erased, and I would estimate around 2 cards drawn, a Darkspire Troop tutored, and our opponent discarding a card at random. This is a really profitable style trade, and how we can maximize the effect of Extinction in this type of control deck.

The other Troop that I find is good enough to play is Xentoth’s Inquisitor. He’s been tossed around a lot in the Blood and Blood Diamond Midrange decks that you see a lot. He, when socketed with the Orb of Brutality, will drop the power of an opposing Troop by 3. This stunts aggo decks, but also makes it easier to kill your opponents’ Troops if they could have otherwise blocked the Inquisitor. He isn’t as good with Extinction as the previous pile of synergy we had, but he won’t die to it permanently, which is what we want.

Now what are we missing from the deck? We have card advantage, we have mass removal, and we have win conditions. I want to find more removal and disruption. What better place to go than to Murder and Countermagic. These are two very premium spells in Hex. The best removal at common, and the best for us. We are very heavily committed to Blood right now, so Countermagic makes our deck need a little more Sapphire, but it is likely worth it. For this reason, I’ll run less than the max in the abstract. Other than those cards, I also want a little more raw card draw, for if our Cerulean Mirror Knight gets dealt with. For this reason, and to synergize with the Darkspire Troops we run, I want to include Necessary Sacrifice. It is a cheap way to draw several cards for us, and also enable a death trigger on our terms.

Enabling death triggers on our turn is the reason that you see players like Henip running Bunoshi as their Champion in Darkspire heavy decks instead of Zared. Bunoshi lets you enable your own triggers as well as growing your own Troops, making combat more profitable and making your lower quality Troops necessitate an opposing removal spell. So as our Champion, Bunoshi makes all of our Troops into relevant threats.

The last non Troop I like running is a singleton Life Siphon. This card has always been very good for me. It is great to cast for a middle level, pushing you into the late game with a small boost of life against an aggro decks, but it also acts as the last bit of damage needed in the late game after you’ve gotten in some beats with your dudes or triggered a Darkspire Tyrant to nuke your opponent.

So with all of this thrown together, here is what I’ve arrived at as a conceptual Darksapphire Control deck.

Darksapphire Control

Troops

3 Xentoth’s Inquisitor

4 Cerulean Mirror Knight

4 Darkspire Pristess

4 Darkspire Punisher

4 Darkspire Tyrant Actions, Artifacts, Constants

4 Extinction

3 Countermagic

1 Life Siphon

4 Murder

4 Necessary Sacrifice 4 Extinction3 Countermagic1 Life Siphon4 Murder4 Necessary Sacrifice Shards

11 Blood Shard

8 Sapphire Shard

4 Shard of Cunning

2 Shards of Fate 11 Blood Shard8 Sapphire Shard4 Shard of Cunning2 Shards of Fate Reserves Champion: Bunoshi the Ruthless



Now when I actually get the chance to pick up all of these cards I’m missing for this deck, I’ll be able to talk about reserves more, and intricacies of the deck as it plays out, but for now I’m relegated to theory only. Please try it out and iterate it into the ground playing matches, if you’re interested in this sort of deck. I’ll be working on building it and playing it as well, in the coming weeks. Let me know your thoughts and ideas about it, and I’ll see you in game!