Hextechs.tv hosted the latest in their open events, with the Oberon Open this past weekend. Today I want to talk about the Top 8 of that event, and what this may mean for the standard environment. To do that, I’m going to examine what a healthy constructed format looks like and how that applies to Hex. The full Top 8 decklists can be found here.

Out of 8 decks, each with the potential to run 4 copies of any given card, there were 24 copies of Cerulean Mirror Knight and 17 copies of Gore Feast of Kog’Tepetl in the Top 8. That is an absurd amount. A full half of the Top 8 were running relatively traditional Ruby-Sapphire Gore Feast decks, with very similar builds of the deck. Another two players were running different Gore Feast decks, one Mono Ruby and the other a slightly more Inspire Humans style build of the deck. Rounding out the Top 8 were Blood-Diamond Midrange and Sapphire-Wild Aggro.

So there were 6 Gore Feast decks in the Top 8. That’s interesting, but there were also 6 Mirror Knight decks in the Top 8. Cerulean Mirror Knight is the card that interests me more. On /r/hextcg, /u/Karatevater and /u/djscrub both had some lengthy posts about this card. I specifically did not read those posts once I saw the topic because I was intending on writing this article, dealing with Cerulean Mirror Knight as opposed to Gore Feast, so I wanted to make sure what I said was my own. I would imagine that we will both come to similar conclusions on the matter, but to the two of you, please know that I did not take anything you said, and would not claim it as my own if I did. Now on to the fun.

In a healthy format, there are going to be three (sort of four) very broad deck types that exist. There is Aggro, Midrange, and Control. To some extent there also exists combo, but currently in Hex the card pool is not large enough to facilitate combo as a viable competitive strategy so it will be removed from this discussion. Aggro decks are low to the ground, fast, and try to kill the opponent before they are able to execute their main game strategy. Control decks are slow to get going, and focus on card advantage, slowly edging out your opponent in a game of 2 for 1s that eventually culminates in an empty board and the control player finally casting a way to end the game. Midrange takes aspects of both of these decks, it has early game removal and Troops that let it survive the onslaught of an aggro deck, and it then tries to end the game before the overwhelming inevitability of a control decks beats it.

This set of decks generally plays out similar to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Aggro decks beat Control decks, Control decks beat Midrange decks, and Midrange decks beat Aggro decks. In this hypothetical environment, there is no one best deck because every deck has the potential to be both a bad, good, or neutral matchup for you. Having this kind of variety in decks enables people to gravitate towards the archetype that they enjoy playing the most, and be able to have reasonable success with it given some amount of skill.

[quote_center] “Aggro decks beat Control decks, Control decks beat Midrange decks, and Midrange decks beat Aggro decks. In this hypothetical environment, there is no one best deck because every deck has the potential to be both a bad, good, or neutral matchup for you.”[/quote_center]

The goal of a game designer is to create sets in which the limited play facilitates several broad strategies, but also to facilitate these different archetypes in constructed. To do this, they need to supply tools of relatively equal power to each deck. What, then, are the tools each deck needs?

Let’s start with control, since that is my favorite and the order of this is extremely irrelevant. Control needs to enable trades that result in net card advantage for the player. Effective card draw and board wipes are the two most visible tools that any control deck absolutely needs in most environments. Looking at the card in Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny, we see that as far as board wipes go, Extinction and Yesterday are the most reasonable of these cards. They have Resource Costs that you should be able to get to on time, and provide effects that will stop you from dying to a horde of creatures should you be able to cast them. In terms of card draw, Oracle Song and Zodiac Divination are the only cards that actually result in net card advantage when you cast them. Both of these are mediocre at best. Oracle Song can be cast early, which is something at least. It only gets you +1 card though. Zodiac Divination costs a lot, and isn’t even a Quick Action, making its power suspect. It does get you +2 though, which is something that is extremely necessary in control.

Looking at this all together, control gets one good board wipe (Extinction), one sort of board wipe (Yesterday), and two mediocre card draw spells. That is enough to play control, but only sort of enough to maybe do well. And this is the experience that playing control has been for me. Sure, I can usually survive the early game on the power of Extinction, but by the time I get to the end game, I’m running out of cards and have no real way to catch up. The only games that I end actually ahead are games where I can get Archmage Wrenlocke active, because he gives you spells that replace themselves, and makes all of your card draw turn from bad to good.

Next up are the tools for Midrange. Midrange likes to have some early game creatures that stunt the aggression early on, but also not be extremely dead in the later parts of a game when draw. The deck also needs to have targeted removal to deal with things that it hasn’t been able to beat in combat. It wants some larger Troops to be able to close out a game. If we call a low cost troop one with 3 resources or less, Midrange decks of all shards have some good options, with all kinds of varied effects. Here are just a few: Living Totem, Monsuun, Shogun of Winda’jin, Sight of the Sun, Cerulean Mirror Knight, and Hired Horn Sellsword. That is just 1 for each shard, there are plenty more with tons of other effects and stats. Now in terms of targeted removal, we can sort of count Crackling Bolt, Polymorph: Dingler, and Ruby Lance, but the best removal spells are Repel, Murder, and Solitary Exile. So the targeted removal can destroy non-Artifact Troops, and attacking troops at Quick speed, or exile any card at Basic speed. That’s pretty good. Finally, larger late game creatures with lots of value: Angel of Dawn, Vampire King, Wrathwood Master Moss, Reese the Crustcrawler, and Legionnaire of Gawaine, just to name one for each shard again. There are plenty of high impact cards in this slot as well.

Overall, the success of midrange is shown in the Blood-Diamond midrange decks that were everywhere in Shards of Fate constructed, and have shown with this Top 8 that they aren’t done yet. The decks can play great cards and ride the power of every draw step to victory.

Lastly, we have aggro decks. Aggro needs cheap troops with the potential to deal a lot of damage very early on. It also likes to have some spells it can point at the opponents face for damage after they have destroyed all the troops it played (this is what’s known as the “reach” of the deck). Hex has given aggro decks a lot of cards like this, I will highlight a few of the more powerful ones: Psychotic Anarchist, Arena Regular, Emberspire Witch, Baby Yeti (jk), and Ragefire. These cards lets you restock your hand, deal damage just by playing a resource, stop your opponent from recovering, and then blast them into oblivion once they have stabilized. Aggro decks usually lose their advantage once the first board wipe hits, so if their opponent hasn’t stabilized at enough life, they can usually win.

This is the point at which Cerulean Mirror Knight comes into play. In general, aggro decks are low on ways to restock their hand, and keep pace with the card advantage from a control deck or sheer value of troops in a midrange deck. Cerulean Mirror Knight almost entirely negates all the advantage that you can gain from casting an Extinction, and completely wrecks any potential you had at trading 1 for 1 on spells. Unless you can kill the Mirror Knight before they get the chance to Inspire a troop with it, you’re already losing the card advantage race.

Almost every deck that plays the Mirror Knight will have it on turn 2 as well. If that is the case, what cards answer it either on the play or the draw? None permanently. Time Ripple can stall for a turn, but that on its own is already losing you card advantage. The turn after, you have the chance to Murder it. By then there’s likely already been another troop played so you’re behind. What if you didn’t have the removal spell for it on turn 3? Then you’re probably trying to just survive, and to do that you need to cast Extinction, which, against any other aggro deck would be ideal, but against a Cerulean Mirror Knight deck is just letting them refill their hand to repeat the first four turns of the game, except you’re down by several cards. Rinse and repeat until you die.

So there are scenarios in which you can beat a Mirror Knight on turn 2, but it becomes critical to topdeck well or keep hands only that can beat this eventuality. The fight isn’t much better for midrange, because Extinction is just as necessary (read: bad), and presuming they’ve loaded up the board, a Gore Feast will cut through any troops you cast as a line of defense. Then you die.

Without Cerulean Mirror Knight, aggro decks still are very likely to have a pretty good time against control decks that aren’t expecting them, and be able to maybe beat midrange, as they should. With Cerulean Mirror Knight, there’s almost no hope for control or midrange in the average matchup. With all of these matchups that I’m talking about, I’m referring to evenly matched players who play enough games to average out the luck of topdecking. It doesn’t help when the best players identify that a deck like Mirror Knight Gorestorm is by far the best deck in the format, because then, not only is the matchup imbalanced, but their skill will likely be enough that you wouldn’t have a chance at winning.

So what can be done about this? The answer is: not much. Play the best deck, or play to beat the best deck. The unfortunate part is, that the best way to beat the best deck is bad at beating the best deck (Extinction << Cerulean Mirror Knight). If this were a more developed game, along the lines of Magic the Gathering, I would be calling for Cerulean Mirror Knight to be banned, given another one or two tournaments with results like this. As it is, there are ways to beat it, but the card is probably the most oppressive card in terms of format health. Without Cerulean Mirror Knight, aggro decks are a lot weaker to their natural counter in board wipes, and there would be more variety in how aggro decks were built. There would also be more of a chance for control decks to exist, as opposed to the current format where it is extremely difficult.

So is the current Hex standard format a healthy environment? I am inclined to say that no, it is not. It is important to note that there is not enough data to draw any long term conclusions from just this and the Blood Cup. Going forward, if the Ruby Cup is also dominated like the Oberon Open, I would say that banning Cerulean Mirror Knight for events going forward should be considered. I for one, will be sticking to control and staying away from the Mirror Knight. I will, however, be keeping the card in mind during every step of the deckbuilding process as I go back to the drawing board for Wrenlocke. Thanks for reading everyone, and I’ll see you in game.