If you're reading this, it's a safe guess that for you, as for me, there is something about Hex that you love. What I love in Hex is the feeling when a deck I've worked on comes alive, each card working with every other to form a breathing, harmonious whole. Most of my deck-building efforts don't quite work out - they never quite spark to life, something is missing. But those few that do make all the effort worth it. Playing them, I often get the sense that I'm not playing the deck at all. The deck is my baby, and it's now grown up and winning games on it's own, and I'm just along for the ride, helping from time to time.

Sapphire/Diamond Rutherford Banks Bird Control won seven matches for me without losing any during the last CCS, the best competitive result I've had in my short (roughly nine months) Hex career. Its older sibling, Mono-Wild Shoku, carried me to a top eight finish in the season two CCS, and while that deck will always have a place in my heart, between you and me, Bird Control is my favorite (but please don't tell Shoku - it would break his poor, scheming, mad scientist heart). I'm grateful to Battleshopper for inviting me to share what I can on how to get the most out of this versatile, resilient deck.

Let's start at the beginning: The deck list.

Main Deck

One Cost

4x Arcane Focus

4x Thunderfield Seer

4x Transmogrifade

Two Cost

2x Repel

3x Phoenix Guard Messenger

Three Cost

4x Lanupaw's Sight

4x Countermagic

1x Bring to Justice

2x Clash of Steel

Four Cost

4x Silver Talon Adjudicator

Five Cost

4x Dark Heart of Nulzann (Socketed with Major Gem of Hope and Minor Gem of Protection)

Resources

7x Diamond Shard

9x Sapphire Shard

4x Shard of Purpose

4x Well of Purpose

Reserves

1x Bring to Justice

1x Clash of Steel

1x Mad Robomancer

1x Martyr

2x Mentor of the Wind

1x Psychic Ascension

2x Repel

2x Scouring Light

4x Verdict of the Ancient Kings Champion: Rutherford Banks

Now here is the first thing to know about playing Rutherford Banks Bird Control: You're probably not going to like the deck much until you've played a couple dozen matches with it. But once you've taken the time to get to know each other, I'm hopeful that you and Bird Control will get along famously. My first twenty or so games with the rough draft (which was only two cards off from the final 75) felt like the deck could be good if I could only play it correctly. Thankfully, the more matches I played, the easier good lines of play came to me, and I started winning more and more consistently. So please don't give up on the deck prematurely - who would ever learn to swim if they quit based on how their first few attempts went? Unless you're an Angus player at heart. In that case, what are you doing reading this? Shouldn't you be committing arson or tormenting adorable, defenseless woodland creatures or something? (Joking, Joking! … mostly.)

The second thing to know about Bird Control is that when everything is going well, it's not so much that you're winning… it's that you keep failing to lose as your opponent gradually runs out of threats, answers, and patience. Then you slowly whittle them down to zero, at a rate of three or four damage per turn. Not to say that we want to dawdle when it's time to turn the corner and start attacking (especially against Angus). Hex has a lot of powerful decks, and it's dangerous to unnecessarily give an opponent draw steps to find what they're looking for. Just keep in mind that as long as you're not losing, your opponent probably is. Trust your deck to give you the tools you need in good time. You'll usually be right.

So why does the long game generally favor Bird Control? What makes this deck good? The rest of this article will discuss the four primary reasons:

1. Versatile, efficient answers

2. Card advantage and card selection

3. Dark Heart of Nulzann and Silver Talon Adjudicator are hilariously powerful cards, and we've got four copies of each (plus Rutherford Banks' charge power)

4. Psychic Ascension and Mad Robomancer are winning conditions that many decks just can not deal with.

1. Versatile, efficient answers

For removal actions, we've focused on having cards that are quick speed, cheap, and hit most anything. Angus and Grandfather Elk are dangerous decks largely because of speed troops. Letting them get a hit in before taking care of them is a recipe for frustration, and losing. Our humble 1/1 cantrip (cards that draw a card) dorks also can trade outright with Baby Yeti or Boltspasm, and make effective chump blockers against most other troop based decks. One tip: if possible, leave back two 1/1 dorks against Angus or Kagulichu, in order to threaten a trade with Psychotic Anarchist or a Hierophant with speed and ramp gems. Bring to Justice is slow, has demanding threshold requirements and costs more than we prefer, but it's a clean, permanent answer to troublesome cards like Underworld Crusader, Ardent Crusader, Wrathwood Master Moss, Heart of the Wrathwood, Yazukan, and opposing Dark Hearts. Clash of Steel is good against mid-range decks, but its primary value may be that our opponents know it's there, discouraging them from vomiting their hand into play. Countermagic is fantastic, and I never take any of them out in reserves. We'll talk about Dark Heart and Adjudicator separately.

2. Card Advantage and Card Selection

Bird Control plays fifteen troops in the main, more than is common for a control deck. However, every one of them offers some form of card advantage or card velocity (that is, how quickly we can go through our deck to find the cards we need). The higher troop count also lets us play four copies of Lanupaw's Sight, which is a massive upgrade on Oracle's Song. Earlier Sapphire/Diamond Control decks often had too few troops to regularly find the prophesied troop quickly enough to matter, but with a more even ratio of actions, troops, and shards, we don't have that problem. Additionally, our cantrip dorks and card draw action empty our hand during our first three turns, increasing the odds that we can refill with a turn four Adjudicator. Arcane Focus is quietly one of the best cards in Hex, and we're happy to keep all four copies in every game we play. Dark Heart offers a different form of card advantage, which we'll discuss next.

3. Dark Heart and Silver Talon Adjudicator

These cards are the heart and soul of Bird Control. The dark heart and silver talon, if you'll forgive a terrible joke. Seriously though, without either of these cards, there isn't a viable deck to be built here. The best decks right now all center around ridiculously powerful cards. Underworld Crusader, Herofall, Crocosaur, Mightsinger of Ages, Mama Yeti, Matriarch of Flames, Rune Ear Hierophant, etc. Control decks that can't match the raw power level of the dominant mid-range and aggro archetypes are doomed to fail. Thankfully, Dark Heart and Silver Talon Adjudicator rise to that challenge.

Dark Heart is our primary game one winning condition and our most potent answer card. A great many decks just can not deal with a resolved Dark Heart, especially when we can protect it with Countermagic and resurrect it with our charge power. It's important to value our Dark Hearts appropriately, and not be wasteful with them. I lost an important game in the Blood Cup over the weekend when I decided to double block a Mama Yeti with my Dark Heart and a 1/1, when I could have chumped with the 1/1 and Mentor of the Wind. Don't let this happen to you! Before deciding on a line of play that risks losing your Dark Heart, make sure to look for any reasonable alternative. On the other hand, if you lose a Dark Heart to Gemborn Prowler, it's usually not the end of the world. Keep your cool, continue the plan of “don't lose”, and you'll draw into another one with time.

Silver Talon Adjudicator is Dark Heart's equally powerful, equally essential partner in crime. It is the biggest reason we've got a 70/30 advantage against Angus, and the reason we can generally out-draw and grind down Kagulichu and similar mid-range decks. Often there will be a choice to use our charge power on either Adjudicator or Dark Heart. Generally, we want Dark Heart if it will immediately remove an important card at the start of our opponent's card, or if our opponent probably can't remove it, and we want the bird when we have cards we don't want to sacrifice to Dark Heart, when it will gain life and draw cards, or when the evasion matters and our opponent's life total is already low. Bird beat-down is a totally valid winning plan when we can answer everything our opponent is trying to do.

It is important to always be aware of Adjudicator as we play, and think about lines that give us the best chance of getting both the five life and the two extra cards. This may mean spending a Countermagic or Transmog when otherwise we wouldn't, or choosing not to attack with a 1/1 when refraining lets us gain health, or playing a non-prophesied shard when we've got another that would draw us a card. It's a weird thing to keep track of that Hex usually doesn't ask us to care about, but the rewards for proper care and feeding of our owls are vast.

4. Psychic Ascension and Mad Robomancer

Don't let the fact that these start in our reserves fool you! They are a critical part of the deck. Against control or mid-range opponents - especially against Kagulichu - these are our unfair cards, which usually just win the game by themselves. In a meta that was just a bit slower and had a bit less Angus in it, they'd both be in the main deck. In my experience, they give the deck just an insanely favored match-up against Kagulichu - I've only lost once to Kagulichu in ladder or tournament play with this version of the deck, and that was when I ran out of time in a game state where I had a huge advantage.

So when playing against mid-range decks, even more than in game one, remember that time is on our side. Eventually we'll draw one of these cards, and then that should be all we need. The part of the game before we play them is usually the hard part, but here are a few tips on how to go about winning once we've got one of them: First, try to play around Herofall wiping out your Robomancers. This can mean using Transmog or Martyr on your own Robomancer, having Countermagic to protect it, having more than one in play, or having your charge power ready to resurrect the copy hit with Herofall. Second, we can afford to be patient about when we play them. If we have a choice between playing Robomancer or Ascension immediately or taking a line of play that delays that a few turns to keep a grip on the board position, it's worth seriously considering the slower option, especially if we're a bit low on life. It's more often correct to play Ascension as soon as we can than it is to do the same with Robomancer. Third, against Mono-Blood decks, or two shard decks where Blood is primary, it's worth bringing in some number of Verdict of the Ancient Kings from reserves to protect those two cards from hand disruption (or even worse, hand disruption plus Steal Intel).

If you'd like to buy this deck, click the link below to search for all the cards in the list!

Decklist Search