Merc Spotlight – Taking out the Trash

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is a popular idiom. What is useless to one person may be valuable to another. Are we taking out the trash or are we giving up treasure? It depends on who we ask…

How many people playing HEX have been wondering if and when they would ever get to play a robot champion? How many have wondered if they would ever get to play a fully supported Jank Bot deck in the campaign? Wonder no more! Enter Clatterclank, the first robot Jank Bot champion touting a fully maxed out Shard Grid and 26 Health!!

Remember Mercenary Sin’glar from my last spotlight? We go from one deckbuilding extreme to another with Clatterclank. Now we are required to play a 150 card deck, or more. This, of course, screams “Jank Bot.” Clatterclank even shares the same image. Clatterclank *is* a Jank Bot.

Before we consider using Clatterclank, we need to find out what will really make him tick through his other abilities as a champion. The Party Passive for our main-deck – “At the start of the game, if you have more cards in your deck than each opposing champion, gain a charge” – is especially good for decks where we want to utilize other campaign class bonuses like the Dwarf “Friend of Jank Bot” or Mage “Spell Sprites.”

“One Robot’s Trash” is Clatterclank’s charge power that says: “Basic: 5 -> Put a random non-resource card from your deck into your hand. It gets cost 0.” We can do a lot of silly things with this charge power. For example, we could make a deck with only Jank Bots and resources. It would be silly, but we could do it. Due to how powerful this charge power is, our deck will look for ways to use it as often as possible.

Clatterclank also has a passive called “Another Robot’s Treasure” which reads, “At the start of your turn, if you control an artifact, constant, and non-artifact troop, draw a card.” There are a lot of pieces needed to get card draw, but we will do our best to make the passive useful.

We know what we are getting into now, and it’s time to get to building our junkyard bot.

The Building Process

The build process here has us looking at what it would take to activate “Another Robot’s Treasure” while keeping charge acceleration in mind to activate our charge power, “One Robot’s Trash,” as often as possible.

We know from prior Jank Bot building that we want our resource count close to 60 shards for a 150 card deck (roughly 40%), which leaves us with 90 playable cards. For “Another Robot’s Treasure” to have maximum impact, our deckbuilding goal will be to play as close to 30 non-artifact troops, 30 artifacts, and 30 constants as possible. We will also want to try to draw cards right away, so we will look for ways to achieve the “Another Robot’s Treasure” prerequisite by the earliest turn possible.

With that goal in mind, 3 cards quickly rise as the trifecta that can accomplish this for us on turn 1:

Shackles of Malice, the 1 cost blood constant with a nice explosive late-game.

Spectral Acorn, the free card draw that meets our artifact requirement.

Ethereal Healer with the fabled Ethereal Coated Boots of GG.

The boots give a 5% chance per Ethereal Healer to come directly into play when we gain health. Since Ethereal Healers grant a bonus starting health, this means we can start the game with a Healer in play if we are lucky.

Blood and Diamond may seem like an unusual mix for a Jank Bot deck that requires us to draw cards and play threats, but tucked within are many subtle synergies that could be easily overlooked. For example, our final deck list will feature 0 unique cards, many of which positively affect our other cards as soon as they come into play. This is great when Jank Bot is triggering cards to be randomly pulled from our deck. Let’s begin to brew, starting with the non-artifact troops.

With Ethereal Healer as a focal point, we quickly add in Adamanthian Scrivener and their glove equipment, the Ink-Stained Gloves, to gain access to cheap, easy healing. We pull in Radiant Physician because we are going for a big constant theme and he will allow us bonus draw for additional constants of different names. We will also run his chest equipment, the Radiant Plate, to help add a little random flavor to our deck as it creates card advantage when we deal damage. Soul Slaver fills our last Diamond slot and will be our only double-Diamond threshold requirement for the deck. However, running the Slaver is worth it for the free Phantoms we can create to later power our Haunting Cry to dig a bit deeper.

For our Blood troops, we drop in Vampire Prince, Vampire Princess, and Paladin of the Necropolis to weave in some lifedrain-centric synergy. We drop in Hunger of the Mountain God with their Weapon equipment, the Hungering Battle Axe, to do something productive with our growing health total. We finally round out our Blood troops with a Prismatic Blackheart Paladin to punish our opponents a bit more while negating some of our damage.

Now it’s time to look at artifacts. Jank Bot is a no-brainer. It is an instant include that we will want in hand as soon as possible. We lack some traditional card draw options other decks running Sapphire, Wild, or Ruby may have, but our healing and deck thinning abilities should help us get cards out in a timely manner. With that said, we add in several artifacts to influence our unconventional card-draw. We play Boltblast Zeppelin to reduce our charge power cost for free cards and Ivory Pawn with the Bleached Brooch Trinket to over heal until Ethereal Healers enter play.

Our last equipment slot is filled by Tinkertron and their Helm of Reversion to keep them exhausting all day long. Not the most likely pick, but it could help us hit charges when we need them or fix our difficult thresholds. We drop in Doppelgadget to target our friendly Jank Bots or even the rare Boltblast Zeppelin that gets hit with our charge power’s cost reduction. Finally, we round the deck out with Bottled Vitae that achieves card draw, charge gain, and healing all in the same card.

Now for the constants, we mix in a fair assortment to help with the Radiant Physician card draw effect. Dormant One offers late game value while Death Chant grants troop recursion. Oath of Valor makes our Phantoms or Healers larger while Hallowed Radiance grants us fixing and healing. All the while, Incantation of Righteousness makes our healing benefits even better. Finally, Battle Chant lets us stack up the damage by buffing troops.

All together, this list aims to strike a balance by having a strong core start and terrifying late game. It is impossible for us to flood since any added charges we get do not make us weaker – we will always have a threat as long as we can get off a charge power or proc an Ethereal Healer through health gain.

Our ideal Turn by Turn play might look like this:

Turn 0: Ethereal Healer starts in play

Turn 1: Blood Shard + Shackles of Malice + Spectral Acorn

Turn 2: Draw 2 cards, Diamond Shard + Radiant Physician

Turn 3: Draw 2 cards, Crackling Vortex + Bottled Vitae, Use Bottled Vitae, Use Charge Power, play Jank Bot for free.

Turn 4: Profit

Deck List / Shopping List

Mercenary Clatterclank

Troops

4x Adamanthian Scrivener

4x Hunger of the Mountain God

4x Radiant Physician

4x Soul Slaver

4x Vampire Prince

4x Ethereal Healer

4x Paladin of the Necropolis

4x Tinkertron

4x Vampire Princess

4x Jank Bot

2x Blackheart Paladin

4x Boltblast Zeppelin

Artifacts

4x Doppelgadget

4x Ivory Pawn

4x Spectral Acorn

4x Bottled Vitae

Constants

4x Shackles of Malice

4x Battle Chant

4x Hallowed Radiance

4x Incantation of Righteousness

4x Death Chant

3x Dormant One

3x Oath of Valor

Actions

4x Haunting Cry

Resources

23x Blood Shard

4x Crackling Vortex

23x Diamond Shard

4x Primal Prism

4x Shard of Retribution

Equipment

Helm of Reversion (Tinkertron)

Bleached Brooch (Ivory Pawn)

Radiant Plate (Radiant Physician)

Ink-Stained Gloves (Adamanthian Scrivener)

Ethereal Coated Boots (Ethereal Healer)

Hungering Battle Axe (Hunger of the Mountain God)

Other ideas to explore with Clatterclank

His Shard Grid is wide open, so another two themes that immediately pop out are Wild Acceleration (utilizing Chlorophyllia, Howling Brave, Oakhenge Ceremony, Pack Hunters, Titania’s Majesty, and Eye of Creation) or 5-shard midnight if we have confidence in our fixing. Robot Sapphire Ruby themed decks also stand out as our champion being a robot may find ways to synergize with robots and dwarves that benefit by more robots being in play.

I hope everyone enjoyed this second epic Mercenary Spoiler and deck build. It would be fitting to imagine we are going to find this trash crazed robot playing with his treasure in a junkyard, so don’t be afraid to get a little dirty. Start filling out those playsets of Jank Bots!

-Nico

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