Shattered Destiny is finally upon us and the flood gates of funky deck building have been unleashed. Before we actually get to the meat of things and get to making cool decks, it might be good idea to see what interesting deck building avenues have been opened for us with the arrival of 248 new cards. Here I give you a glimpse of some of the cool things we can do now with the release of Hex TCG’s latest set.

You can cast a Turn 1 Droo’s Colossal Walker



Shattered Destiny has brought with it a lot of resource acceleration and while it’s nothing close to something like Spectral Lotus from the PvE side of things, we are inching ever closer to some explosive and downright scary starts. Not explosive enough for any reliable turn 1 win of course, but scary enough to lead the few affected souls to rush to the message boards announcing the game’s death. The following ‘combo’ would certainly qualify somewhere in my worst combos of Shattered Destiny list if I ever made one but the 7 card combo of 1x Forge of the Cadoc, 1x Random Artifact,1x Ruby Shard, 3x Crimson Clarity, 1x Droo’s Colossal Walker lets you get out an 8/8 troop with Crush on your first turn – which as you might imagine, would be pretty hard to deal with.

You can have 5 color threshold on turn 1



In similar vein to the above there’s an embarrassment of riches as far as color fixing goes including 10 dual color shards. You can have access to all thresholds by turn 1, allowing you to turn online the special abilities of your turn 2 Midnight Shepherd or turn 3 Lixil. But the best use of such a start would probably be casting a turn 1 Forgotten Monarch (spellshield+card draw gems sound good to me). This requires 3 Hex Geode, 1 Wild or Blood Shard, an Adaptable Infusion Device, and a not so sane brain.

You can go crazy with…charges?!



There is a huge emphasis on charges and what they allow you to do in Shattered Destiny but one of the most exciting uses revolves around Goremaster. There are plenty of ways to earn charges but combining it with Wild charge accelerators like Genesis Pool Naiad and Chlorophylia will allow you to get an early Lionel’s Flynn +3/0 buff on him and then double his attack for every charge gained afterwards. Who knew drawing Shards and gaining charges could be so much fun.

You can play Replicator’s Gambit and not rely on RNG



Everyone loves Replicator’s Gambit – how could you not.. but the problem is RNG, man. Now thanks to Archon of Nulzann’s ability to fetch other copies of himself you essentially only need to ever see any two of them (one to Gambit, the other to start the fetching) to get off with the Replicator’s Gambit. Socketing it with the Speed and come into play damage gems, you’re looking at a potential 56 damage on one turn.

You can have even more Buffalo



While not as popular as Baby Yeti, Rigid Buffalo holds a special place in Hex players’ hearts. In fact most drafters tend to have over a hundred copies like some sick sheep cloning experiment and seemingly can’t stop themselves from accumulating even more. Thankfully with Set 2 we won’t be denied further buffalo as Rotting Buffalo will fill the void and keep growing your Buffalo collection.

You can control control decks



Control players don’t like to be controlled, so that’s why playing Cerebral Domination and Drowned Shrine of Ulthar can be a real treat. You prevent them from drawing too many cards and not allow them to do what they like to do best (even more than having sex I’ve heard) which is countering your spells.

You can have a champion Battle Royale



While this is no professional wrestling, you can have a tag team of champions at your disposal thanks to the ability of Eternal Drifter. But who cares about a tag team match when we can have a Battle Royale. Simply have 4 Eternal Drifter, 2 Mimic and 4 Mimeobot and get out on the board 14 Eternal Drifters + your one original champion and have your opponent do the same. This should become even crazier when PvE Champions (Heroes) and Mercenaries get introduced because Eternal Drifter should be able to get the power of any champion and that includes Heroes and Mercenaries. I’m totally expecting a Construction Plans: Wrestling Ring in future sets.

You can throw rocks



Anyone who’s played Lionhead Studio’s 2001 classic god simulator “Black & White” will know first hand how fun tossing rocks can be. We can get in on the fun in Hex thanks to Boulder Toss which might just be my favorite card of the whole set. I imagine one of the favorite targets will be a Lionel Flynn buffed (+3/0) Daring Swordsman that deals 10 damage. The best part is you don’t even have to sacrifice your troop so Daring Swordsman + 2x Boulder Toss is a nice 3 card win combo without even having to attack. Any troop abilities that activate on damage also trigger so this one is going to be a fun card to mess around with.

You can spin the WoR for free



The Wheel of Randomness as I like to call it, is like the Wheel of Fate, except it gives you the best award (that random card) and it’s entirely free. Cards like Jovial Pippit and Parallel Evolution continue the Cosmic Transmogrifier fun but on a more accessible scale. Kismet even got her own card in Kismet’s Reverie where you can invite your opponent to spin the WoR along with you and spread the gambling fun.

You can build stuff



While not to the degree of a game like say Sim City, we can now build a lot of cool new stuff. Perhaps you’d like to build a citadel complete with 4 Castle Walls, 3 Burning Oils and 2 Sniper Towers – Citadel of Adamanth will allow you to do that. Or maybe you’re more interested in making things like a Bot Shop, Crank Rocket, Hornet Bot, or Tower Hulk. Maybe we’ll even have a tower defense game built into the game one day, who knows..

This wraps up our peak into some of the fun things we can do in Set 2 and I’m sure this is just scratching the surface. Next week I’ll be putting some of these cool ideas together for a fun deck you won’t want to miss. Until then, don’t throw stones at glass champions..