Merc Spotlight – Critical Bliss

I have one last spoiler for everyone, so we need to make it memorable. It’s time to roll through some dungeons at midnight as if we were playing at a Vegas casino with our favorite frosty beverage. Shake those bones like they’re hot and show those Dungeon Masters who’s boss.

It is time to bust out our wizard hat, wizard robe, and illustrious long white beard – Let’s welcome Gax, the Sly Roller, to the party!

There’s a certain charm in playing a mercenary that is themed around a popular tabletop RPG many HEX fans may have once played. What tabletop RPG is that? Well…

Gax has an Upgrade Text that says, “Dungeon Mastery – While in a Dungeon, your Dragons in all zones have cost -2.” There is no doubt, we are going to be playing Dragons!

Gax has 2 passives:

Critical Success – When a troop attacks, there’s a 5% chance it gets +3 attack this turn.

Critical Failure – When a troop attacks, there’s a 5% chance it gets -3 attack this turn.

While this may be perceived as a wash at 50/50, it can be negated if we build around it and play cards that modify troops after attacks are declared. In fact, Gax is all about loading the dice in your favor. Gax even has a charge power called “Roll” Playing Game:

“Roll Playing Game – 2 cost –> Create a random Dice and put it into your hand.”

What might some of those Dice look like?

As we can see, each die offers some fairly random abilities. Each charge power may end up netting extreme value, or not much at all. Dice are acquired for only 2 charges, are actions, and range from 2-cost to 4-cost. Anything in our deck that benefits from actions being played, helps us gain charges, or gives us extra resources will make each Dice a welcomed addition no matter what their effect is. The D6 is perhaps the strongest on its own, potentially ramping us 6 resources for 2. Making use of a D6 on turn 2 could be a huge early game tempo advantage. The D10 is also very enticing, offering us a random troop of unknown power for 4 resources.

Finally, glancing at Gax’s Party Passive, we see that he provides two unique abilities:

“Adventuring – At the start of the game, if you are not in a dungeon, gain 1d4 health.”

“Dungeoneering – At the start of the game, if you are in a Dungeon, two random non-resource cards in your deck get cost -1.”

The first Party Passive is not bad for all the Ethereal Healer lovers out there. More ways to stack turn 0 health gain is always welcome. The second Party Passive requires a little more build around, but it could be a huge enabler for decks. It makes me think specifically of special builds that benefit from cards having cost reduction. Empower is one nice option, but there are many others.

Our Shard Grid is 4 commons, 3 uncommons, 2 rare, and 1 legendary across the board. Our Deckbuilding restriction is: “Can include up to four copies of any Cleric, Dragon, Mage, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, or Warrior, in your deck.” What this means is that the Shard Grid can be roughly ignored for the troop heavy core of our deck. With access to 4x of any Dragon, which are all mostly legendary troops, we can make great use of Gax’s Upgraded Text.

What does all this mean for us when it comes to deckbuilding? We will want to look at 3 things primarily.

Play Dragons, in the best way possible. Play as many troops as possible to get early attack bonus critical chances. Play cards that help us get Dice and play Dice as often as possible.

The Building Process

The Dragon text sticks out the most on Gax and is itching to be explored. The dream is to find a consistent way to play a turn 3 Syyn, Etherdrake Nomad or turn 3 Daarmak. Alternatively, there are ways we could shift focus slightly and look at builds aiming for consistent turn 3 Zakiirs or Jadiims, but the Daarmak dream must be lived and achieved first!

In order to power up our engine, we are going to need several ingredients. First and foremost, with any powerful midnight engine, we will want our threshold fixing to be on point. In order to do that (and to do that as early as possible), we will make gaining thresholds the primary focus on our deck.

Gax is not your average mercenary. He is not easily acquired and deserves a decklist to match in rarity. With that said, let’s share the most important card for our list, one that makes the turn 3 Daarmak dream possible. That card is Lady Cassandra, a PvE Kickstarter Exclusive card.

What Lady Cassandra offers to all midnight themed decks is essential fixing with her Trinket equipment, The Ring of the Queensguard. Anytime we draw a Lady Cassandra, we can activate the Trinket equipment’s one-shot ability to give us instantly 1 Sapphire, 1 Ruby, and 1 Diamond threshold. This equipment is incredible for the fixing it provides. It can allow us to play a turn 1 Necrophet with the Necrohelm head equipment (reducing is cost by -1 for each different threshold you have) or a turn 1 Forgotten Monarch. Instant threshold gain is incredibly powerful.

We’ll also play the Modular Breastplate Chest equipment to give our Lady Cassandra Swiftstrike and Spellshield. Adding both the Twinstrike and Frenzy gems to make her a 1 woman wrecking ball seems a bit like overkill… but I like overkill.

I mentioned a few Necrtoic above. Let’s add more to the mix to round out a healthy total for our Sepulchra Crypt Dust. We add Lixil, the Deathless Gem for more fixing to the deck. We add Midnight Paladin in to provide some healing. We add Midnight Shepherd in for recursion. Finally, we add in Prodigy of Volosolov with their Prodigy Gloves equipment to give us fixing on death and buffs for our other Necrotic.

We’ll splash in a few The Crowd Roars! for a little card draw and explosive tempo gain with the weapon equipment, Rending Hammer. Who doesn’t like freely playable cards?

Finally, our last few additions continue the midnight theme and focus on threshold bonuses. We’ll add some Sepulchra Bonewalkers for the Bone Walkers Feet equipment that gives us additional threshold fixing when they deal combat damage to opposing champions. That’s pretty good since it means we get fixing and a likely 5/5 body for 3 resources. We’ll also add Midnight Fever for potential turn 3 Dragon dreams.

Our ideal Turn by Turn play might look like this:

Turn 1: Blood Shard + activate Lady Cassandra one-shot trinket ability + play Necrophet

Turn 2: Wild Shard + play Forgotten Monarch + play Midnight Shepherd

Turn 3: Ruby Shard + play Midnight Fever + play Daarmak

Turn 4: Diamond Shard + play The Crowd Roars! or play Midnight Paladin

With some really luck Crit Rolls, we could deal 8 damage on turn 2, 20 damage on turn 3, and 30 damage on turn 4!

Deck List / Shopping List

Gax, the Sly Roller

Troops

3x Midnight Shepherd

3x Lixil, the Deathless Gem

2x Prodigy of Volosolov

4x Sepulchra Bonewalker

4x Lady Cassandra [Major Ruby of Twinstrike]

2x Midnight Paladin

4x Forgotten Monarch [Major Blood Orb of the Underworld]

4x Necrophet

3x Daarmak

3x Syyn, Etherdrake Nomad

Actions

3x Midnight Fever

2x The Crowd Roars!

Resources

4x Blood Shard

4x Diamond Shard

4x Primal Prism

1x Ruby Shard

1x Sapphire Shard

4x Sepulchra Crypt Dust

4x Shard of Retribution

1x Wild Shard

Equipment

Necrohelm (Necrophet)

The Ring of the Queensguard (Lady Cassandra)

Modular Breastplate (Lady Cassandra)

Prodigy Gloves (Prodigy of Volosolov)

Bone Walkers (Sepulchra Bonewalker)

Rending Hammer (The Crowd Roars!)

Other ideas to explore with Gax, the Sly Roller

Gax gives us a huge sandbox to play in. As I mentioned earlier in the article, diving into a Ruby or Wild focus for Dragons also seem like great options. A Zakiir reduced to 4 cost could easily be played on turn 3 with 1 Crimson Clarity. A Jadiim reduced to 3 cost could easily be played on turn 2 with Chlorophyllia plus the Gardener’s Hat Head equipment. Both those Dragons are strong with their PvE equipment as well, so both strategies are worth checking out. Also worth mentioning, the only non-legendary Dragon – Thorntongue Snapdragon – is easily playable in Wild and is an epic 3 drop. You could even mix it up and go, say, Diamond and Wild. That would give you access to Tiaanost and Mylaanth the Lifebinder, two great cards that are worth building around.

Of course, those are only strategies for Dungeoneering with Gax using his upgraded text and Dragons.

Making use of Gax as a normal adventurer could take on an entirely different approach, one that focuses on quick armies of small troops to trigger as many critical successes as possible. Maybe a Warparty Guide with the Guiding Headcover Head equipment and a Quash Ridge Tusker could make for a powerful early game Ardent tag team. With access to 4 copies of the standard classes, we have a wide range of ways to build very strong, troop-heavy decks.

A charge theme could be great as well. I bet playing a crackling deck (as all the crackling cards are common rarity) could be very fun.

Gax is powerful and Gax is rare. As we have seen, more rare, powerful, and quirky mercenaries keep popping up as spoiler season continues. Will you be a future owner of a coveted exclusive mercenary? Pray to Kismet and keep rolling the dice!

Do you own Gax? How would you build him? Let us know.

-Nico

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