Hexploration – Candy is Dandy

Are you excited? It’s Hexploration time with your favorite HEX player, Ali Aintrazi! Last time we talked about some of the cards I was looking forward to playing with most. Welp, today I have a treat for you. I’ve built a deck with three of those ten cards—Rowdy Piper, Sugar Rush, and Treacherous Search—and, oh boy, it’s a doozy!

But, before we start! I’m going to take a hit from Hap’ie’s pipe….

….

Okay.

I’m ready.



I got a sweet tooth; can you dig it? After this article, you’re gonna need a root canal. I love sugar. I mean, who doesn’t? Candy is dandy and since I like all of you so much, I’ll share my candy with you.

Dreamsmoke Diva’s kiss is sweeter than an apple pie, and when she does her smokin’ hot dance, give her a Poppy Pop, and you might have a chance.

I have a Dementia Bar that will surely blow your mind and make you think you’re having close encounters of the cavity kind.

Got a past lover on your mind that you can’t seem to let go? One bite of a Gobblerstopper and you’ll think of them no mo. You’ll just me like, “whoa!”



Sugar, sugar, water, and one boonberry. Mix it like this and make sure to put in a little twist. Baby, it’s all in the wrist. When it’s hotter than ya momma and you’re sweating more than an elephant in a sauna, you’ll be glad you made that Boonberry Punch. It’ll take you to nirvana.

….

Alright, sadly whatever Hap’ie had in his pipe has worn off. I’ll go chat with him a little later.

For now, let me tell you where you can get all this wonderful candy from. It’s a cool cat named Sugarpuss, and he’s very generious with giving away all the candy. In fact, he’s the key to winning in one turn with this sweet deck.

Let’s have a look.

I haven’t been this in love with a deck since Winter Moon and Mastery of Time. Balthsar has earned a special place in my heart, especially after this deck. If you really want to have fun in HEX and win at the same time, I highly recommend playing this deck. It’s very fun and very competitive. It’s not the easiest deck to play—you can’t just jam your troops down and hope for the best. A lot of times you just need to be patient and wait for the right time to deploy your combo and win. But, fret not! After reading this article and watching some gameplay with the deck, you’ll be a master in no time!

The Ramp

Tilling the Soil and Acolyte of Shoku are the cards you would really love to see in your opening hand. It allows you to combo off faster and just smooths your way into the mid game where you’ll really start to shine. If I don’t see either of those in my opening hand or a Palm of Granite, I heavily consider just redrawing a new six. The only exception is if your opponent is slow or grindy like Mono Blood Control. Against those decks, your shards will come in time. Things like Dreamsmoke Diva and Exalted Pathfinder are more important in those cases.

Keep in mind that Acolyte of Shoku does make Dreadlings. This is very important for several reasons. Yes, you want to be able to Scrounge your Tilling the Soil, that’s obvious. But you also want to make sure you make Dreadlings when you have extra resources before you play Sugar Rush so you can draw more cards. Lastly, be wary of making too many Dreadlings and trying to be aggressive with your Acolyte of Shoku. One combo involves Sugarpuss and Gobblerstopper. If your crypt is filled with Dreadlings, then they could interfere with you comboing off. You’ll need to decide if you’re going to win with Exalted Pathfinder beats or combo off with Sugarpuss and play accordingly.

The Combo

The combo involves either burying your opponent’s deck with Dementia Bars or overwhelming them with troops from Poppy Pop and/or playing Dementia Bars/Boonberry Punch for X=0. Both Boonberry Punch and the Dementia Bars make random troops when played for 0. You can do this and take your extra turn from Eyes of the Heart to win.

As you can see, the candies are crucial to going infinite. If your Sugarpuss dies or gets buried game one, you will not be able to combo off, you’ll have to win through damage. This means that you should hold your Sugarpuss for when you are about to combo. When you are continuously replenishing your resources and drawing cards with Dreamsmoke Diva/Exalted Pathfinder is when you should deploy Sugarpuss. X cost actions are fantastic ways to trigger your Rowdy troops. This makes Treacherous Search and all the candies that much stronger.

The magic resource number is seven. When you have seven resources you can deploy Rowdy Piper and play a four-cost card like Exalted Pathfinder, Raucous Revelry, or Treacherous Search to immediately replenish your resources. This is extremely relevant because if your opponent kills the Rowdy Piper in response to you playing your Exalted Pathfinder or Treacherous Search, you’ll still trigger Rowdy Piper and replenish all your resource points.

The Disruption

None! This means you are all in on your troops or your combo. The deck combos very reliably on turns 5-7. Currently, there are no hyper aggressive decks in the metagame which is fantastic for this deck. The decks that can kill you before turn 5 have to get an extremely good draw and they usually involve troops. That means even if they get a great start, you can still chump block with your own troops to not die and buy yourself time.

Currently, I’ve been wrecking people with this deck. If the metagame shifts to something more aggressive, you can always incorporate Runebind into the deck. On the flip side, if Runebind gets popular you can always incorporate Root of Instinct to counteract Runebind.

The Reserves

Reserves are never, ever set in stone. Things change, and so should your reserves. Currently, I have a handful of interrupts for mostly control decks that have their own ways to disrupt my actions. Verdict of Ancient Kings also doubles as a fantastic way to fight of Diamond/Ruby Candles. Robogoyle is to combat bury strategies. Silent Auctioneer is currently the best bury deck, and they bury you chunks at a time (typically once or twice a turn). This means that just a single Robogoyle can buy you the time you need. Warpsteel Shardsworn is just in case I do happen to run into an aggressive strategy since he can clog the board up well for cheap. Rotting Chompknight, Eternal Seeker, and Grove Warden are all to deal with random things I might run into on ladder. These cards can easily change as the metagame shapes up. Wildlife and Sugarpuss are in the Reserves for when I need more ways to win… basically against bury strategies and sometimes decks with interrupts.

You can always throw in a Psychic Ascension or Merry Caravan to combat decks that are trying to stop you from winning with Sugarpuss. Just be adaptive and able. Don’t be afraid to switch your Reserves. You will need to depending on what the top decks are.

The Sugar

I try to give you guys and gals decks that are competitive and fun/new, decks that you can enjoy getting to Cosmic with. Smetimes, I’m too ahead with my decks. I built and wrote about a Blood/Diamond Renner control deck before Journey into Nightmare was a thing. I used Fallen Singularity as my Journey into Nightmare and top 8’ed a Cosmic Crown Showdown with said deck. That deck eventually became Mono Blood Control with Journey into Nightmare.

Recently, I wrote an article about a four shard Blue Sparrow Reanimator deck that was doing well before Doombringer’s release. Now, after Doombringer, I am positive that a three-four shard Blue Sparrow deck is a deck to beat.

Other times, I’m just on point and not ahead. This was the case with my old Wintermoon combo deck that used Scheme, Mastery of Time, and Chimes of the Zodiac. It was the same with the Balthsar Sapphire/Wild Merry Caravan turns deck. They weren’t 100% correct, but the base of the deck was maybe four or six cards off. This is the where I believe the Sugar Rush deck is. It is a deck for now, and one I am continually tweaking. For example, here is an updated list I took with me into the latest Bash:

The reason I’m telling you all this and linking all these past articles is because I want you to feel confident when getting this deck. Yes, I value having fun, but I do also value winning.

Build the deck, have fun, and bury your opponents in sugar. As always, thank you very much for reading and just being a great community in general. HEX players are the best players.

I’ll catch you all next time on Hexploration, but before I go I’ll leave you with a final piece of candy. Here are a couple of my streams where I played this deck, enjoy!

Alright, that’s a wrap. Don’t forget to brush!

Ali Aintrazi

@Alieldrazi on Twitter

My Twitch Channel

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