Latest Brew – Failure and Success

Wurtil here again!

I have a great opportunity on my hands here which I always hate to squander: Failure. With Primal Dawn spoilers and new decks screaming to built be everywhere, I promise to get back to our typical Latest Brew format in the next installment. For today though, and as a lesson before we move into a brewer’s favorite season, there is something to be said for trying to metagame against the game’s best and coming up short. Today, hopefully you can learn and avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

For those not aware, I did a lot of testing for the HEX $100k Invitational as a teammate to Infam0usNe0. Ne0 and I have been friends since even before the first alpha builds were released, so when he qualified I knew it meant a long grind of testing and brewing was in front of us. It wasn’t just a two person effort though, as the entire Rated Hex team we were a part of pulled together to try and accumulate as much information as possible on how we could break the tournament.

Failure #1 – We focused on breadth instead of depth

In hindsight, our tournament testing strategy was faulty from the start in a couple key ways. Rather than looking to test thoroughly on one specific deck, our strategy was to divide and conquer to learn the interactions of each deck in the format. We had tested things down from the Tier 1 and 2 matchups all the way down to even figuring out rogue versus rogue matchups like BS Vennen against DR Rutherford Banks decks. In some ways, this was great because we really felt like we had (and still have) a great grasp on the format and what cards different matchups hinge upon. It is a fine approach for a large tournament where you expect many different types of players and decks, but that isn’t what the Invitational was.

What we failed to recognize was that this tournament would be against the other 10 or so best players in the game all piloting decks they likely had perfected. Understanding broad matchups and what beats what in general is great, but when you are talking about the best players then you must be able to match their depth of understanding when it comes to the small interactions of each deck. Time spent testing Vennen versus Blessing the Fallen decks was time we weren’t fine tuning the actual deck we would be bringing to the tournament. In a larger tournament with less lead up time then this approach could have worked, but given that the other best players in the game would have ample time to perfect their individual deck choices it turns out our approach was not perfect.

As always designing tournament winning decks requires understanding what you need to do to win against the other decks in the tournament, not necessarily making a perfect deck for a general metagame.

Success #1 – We did correctly pick the tournament field

There was a question I was asked multiple times during the Invitational weekend – “If you had known this would be the field, what would you have brought?” My answer continued to be the same, that we did figure the field would look like it did! We didn’t nail each individual player’s deck choice but the field looked very much like we figured it would. Few tendencies towards Ruby, with lots of players showing from their decks on hexmeta that they would prefer to have reserves full of aggro-hate rather than bring aggro itself. Given the number of Carnasaurus’s and Vampire Kings, it wasn’t like there was a clear pathway for aggro to be ensured a Day 2 appearance anyway, so we figured it was likely safe to assume we wouldn’t have to worry too much about being attacked by Quash Ridge Tuskers.

Failure #2 – We went high risk when it wasn’t necessary.

This is probably the best point to go over what deck Ne0 ended up with for the tournament. If you haven’t seen it, here is Blood Moon:

Champion: Winter Moon



For those interested in piloting it, it is for the player who always wants to be in the control seat. The goal is to extend the game for as long as possible, and with few win conditions it instead relies upon card draw and its removal suite to set up game states where the opponent has few ways of winning and eventually a Phenteo the Brood Priest or Arborean Rootfather can end the game safely.

We really liked where Extinctions, Countermagics, and the Sapphire card selection put us against the field. The price of pairing those tools with Winter Moon was a rough resource base that required running Immortal Tears or some other fixer. Considering that really you just needed to go 2-2 to move on then it really was an unnecessary risk to take. Cyriius’s Day 1 4-0 is a great example of going the other direction of consistency as he got to play the same key cards we did but instead of a risky resource base he got to play fully powered Zin’xith Silks to have more consistent resources than anyone other than MasterMattchu’s Mono Blood deck.

Our shortlist of other decks we liked versus this field included the above Blood Moon, a fairly stock Blood Diamond Banks deck that would have a strong chance at going 2-2, and a few spicy Ruby decks that exploded damage onto the opponent with cards like Soul of Battle and Heroic Outlaw. It’s not worth holding regret about any specific deck choice, but I can likely assure you if given a similar format choice in the future that I would lean less towards the risky threshold juggling machines.

Success #2 – We found a lot of great tech through testing

One of the nice things about testing tons of different matchups is we got to learn a lot of different ways to attack various decks. Relentless Corruption was actually in the maindeck for a period of time over the various troops as the decks sole win condition due to how well it deals with most other Blood and Sapphire decks that are also short on troops. We only moved back to troops maindeck due to the expectation of enough Diamond Wild Ramp and troop-heavy Winter Moon decks like Koma’s build, but we loved the plan of taking out troops and moving in Relentless Corruption to win by beating the opponent with their own cards.

Another great piece of information was from taking notes against Benvolio Burn. We noticed that any time a Drowned Shrine of Ulthar came down against Benvolio, it was the worst thing ever for the Ruby deck. It essentially locked the game up all by itself since it blanked Cerebral Fulmination and Benvolio, while actually making Crazed Rummaging and Psychotic Anarchist into liabilities! One crazy idea led to another, and eventually we tried bringing in the Shrine even with our Winter Moon decks that historically were weak to Shrine themselves. By moving all the “Draw two card” effects to the reserves and having access to cards like Crackling Wit that could be played on the opponent’s turn, Shrine could be made not quite so bad for the Winter Moon deck while totally shutting down the burn deck. Benvolio Burn was an atrocious matchup for Blood Moon, but having access to a card that could totally flip that matchup around felt great.

However…

Failure #3 – We didn’t predict the small changes from other decks

The other interesting card in our reserves that many probably hadn’t seen much was Bird o’ Plenty. Bird o’ came from trying to find some unique solutions to Charge Colossus from Diamond Wild Banks where it could come down in the midgame and just ruin everything if you didn’t have a way to stall into Mass Polymorph: Dingler. Incubation Webs and regular Polymorph Dingler were considered, but the nature of the matchup often meant that you had to use those pieces of removal before the Colossus came down. Bird o’ was a great solution as it kept Crocosaurs from attacking and then could totally blank a Colossus. Unfortunately, it was only a great solution while the Diamond Wild decks were running Pride’s Fall as their primary removal. When we saw the competitor lists come up and Dragonborn was running Martyr instead of Pride’s Fall it immediately meant that Bird o’ became a total blank in the reserves.

It was an “of course” moment, because really Martyr was only worse in the Ramp mirror and that matchup was unlikely to occur given what we knew of the competitors. So while we were trying to maneuver against stock lists with maybe some small changes, we hadn’t considered what could happen if a competitor made a change like that.

Success #3 – The Invitational itself was full of awesome people

Even if the results were a bust, the event itself was full of awesome people. Behind the scenes, every competitor was gracious and excited to be playing some HEX. I would go into specifics, but you would be here for another 3,000 words as I go name by name describing how passionate each competitor was about both the game and putting forth a good event for everyone. In the end, Koma’s 7-2 record throughout the weekend made it clear who was the best and HEX couldn’t have asked for a better person to represent it as the first World Champion.

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