Deck Drilldown – Ruby Wild Aggro

by Jeff Hoogland

Welcome back HEXer’s to my next installment of Deck Drilldown. Today, we are going to deviate a bit from the first couple of decks I wrote about in a few ways. First, is that this deck does not come from the HEX 100k event. It is a decklist that a player by the name of iskowee has been having success with in gauntlets for the last couple of months now. This means that if you want me to considering playing / streaming / tuning a sweet deck you are working on – you should be out there playing it in some gauntlets so I can come across it on HexMeta.

The other difference is that this deck does not feature a single Sapphire Shard! That is right – there is a lot more to Hex than playing copies of Arcane Focus. Today we are going to take a look at an explosively powerful Ruby-Wild aggressive deck featuring Poca, The Conflagrater as the champion. Iskowee has a few small variants in their most successful lists on HexMeta, but the latest looks like:

Champion: Poca, The Conflagrater

The first thing many people will ask is “why play a two-shard aggressive deck? Is the payoff really worth the drawback of having a less consistent shardbase?” After having spent a lot of time playing with the mono-Ruby aggressive deck in addition to this Ruby-Wild deck I think the answer to this question is “yes.” The two big cards we get from playing Wild cards in an aggressive Ruby deck are:

Gas Troll feels like the most powerful aggressive troop in HEX. For just a single resource you get a threat that not only continues to grow out of control, but also crushes past any chump-blockers that might get thrown in front of it. Verdant Wyldeboar, on the other hand, provides a very reasonable four damage for the cost of two resources, which is great before you even consider the fact that your pig could come back as an 8/8 later in the game.

The base of this aggressive deck is Ruby cards, though, including three very aggressive one cost troops:

All of these efficient threats get paired with a plethora of cheap removal / reach to clear a pathway to victory. The thing that makes most of these threats so powerful is that they scale in power level as a game drags on. Quash Ridge Tusker gets larger by just doing what you want to be doing – attacking – while Kindling Skarn and Gas Troll both grow larger as you deploy the threats from your hand. Our deck is so full of low-cost cards that Unmerciful Tormentor is generally a four ATK threat by turn five at the latest.

For being an aggressive deck, I also like the small amounts of synergy a number of the cards in it have together. Gas Troll’s crush pairs nicely with bonus power from both Quash Ridge Tusker and Wild Growth. Quash Ridge Tusker on the other hand works fantastically with both Crushing Blow and Wild Growth. If you target your Quash Ridge Tusker with a buff before he triggers in combat, you effectively get double the buff you paid for. If you have multiple Quash in play, each one can pass the buff down the line – making a single Wild Growth quickly lethal for most life totals.

The reason why this deck opts to play Poca, The Conflagrater as the champion, as opposed to the more commonly played Urgnock, is because of the body Poca’s champion power provides. Not only does having a 3/1 Blaze Elemental pair nicely with Quash Ridge Tusker, but it can also give you a target for a Wild Growth or Crushing Blow you might have stuck in your hand waiting on a troop.

Something to keep in mind while playing this deck is that the opening hand you keep is the most important decision you will make most games. Because aggressive decks do not contain card advantage / selection, the cards you start the game with are going to be the majority of the cards you see in that game.

Ideas for Improvement

After playing a number of matches with iskowee’s configuration there were three things I wanted to change:

Troop Density

Shard Base

Reserves

Throughout the first couple of gauntlets I played with the deck I found myself running out of threats with Wild Growths and Crushing Blows in hand. The initial configuration only played 20 troops, four of which were Verdant Wyldeboar (goes away at the end of turn). The cards you play in this deck is a bit of a balancing act. If you play too few Ruby cards Gas Troll becomes worse. If you play too few actions Kindling Skarn becomes worse. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to play two more threats in the main deck. After trying a few different troops I settled on two copies of Deadeye Ripper. Additional one-drops maximize our number of triple one-drop starts and turn one Deadeye Ripper into turn two Quash Ridge Tusker is very powerful.

I mentioned that one of the drawbacks to playing a two shard aggressive deck is a slightly less consistent shardbase, but even so I feel like the base I was starting with could be improved a small bit. Because we are a base Ruby deck with only 12 Wild cards, I feel like our shardbase should favor Ruby just a bit more. The reason being that we need double Ruby to use our champion power and all of our wild cards only require a single threshold. For this reason I am cutting at least one Wild Shard for an additional Ruby Shard. Perhaps playing a third Shard of Savagery is also an option, but having shards that do not provide a temporary resource right away is a large drawback.

Finally – the reserves needed a bit of work. While I really liked the inclusion of Vine Lash as a way for our aggressive deck to kill troublesome life draining vampires, four felt like too many. If you have one rotting in your hand when they do not have a vampire in play not only does it leave you exposed to a card like Inquisition, but it also keeps your Unmerciful Tormentor from becoming a 4/4.

Even with two additional troops in the main deck, I felt like I was still a bit threat-light, especially in the removal heavy match-ups so I wanted a few more troops to bring there. The inclusion of Emberspire Witch gives us an additional method of beating vampires and her Swiftstrike makes her potent against opposing aggressive decks. Mentor of Oakhenge felt like the final piece I was missing against decks that play a plethora of removal. While a 2/1 for two is not particularly impressive – the fact that he replaces himself with another troop after dying is powerful.

Without further delay, here is the current Ruby-Wild aggro deck that I am playing:

Champion: Poca the Conflagrator



Match Ups

The matches you play with Ruby-Wild Aggro are often fairly straight-forward. It is very rare for you to be anything other than the aggressor in a particular matchup. Because our entire deck costs two or less, most other decks will have a more powerful late game than we do – so ending the game as soon as possible is always one of our goals.

The strongest matchup for Ruby-Wild Aggro is Sapphire-Wild Wintermoon control. Even the slightly lower to the ground configurations with main-deck Brown Fox Scouts and Carnasaurus generally have trouble keeping up with the damage we push out. One of the most important things to remember in this matchup is that leaving up Burn or Wild Growth can blow out Carnasaurus when they try to fight your troops. The other thing to keep in mind is that Crocosaur can only fight if you have two troops in play. This means if you have a 3 power Gas Troll or Quash Ridge Tusker it is sometimes worth holding back your second troop so you do not get blown out by a large dinosaur.

As far as reserving in this matchup goes – less is more. I often just hit submit without making any changes because we are so strongly favored with our default configuration. Scorch isn’t particularly impressive, so I would not fault anyone for cutting it for Mentor of Oakenhenge – but I like at least a couple copies of Scorch for quickly making Kindling Skarns / Gas Troll larger.

The ramp decks in the format such as Diamond-Wild Rutherford Banks and Ruby-Wild Cressida are generally favorable for Ruby-Wild aggro. Burns, Scorches, and Crackling Bolts can easily keep them off of their acceleration while we ride a single threat to victory. Occasionally, a Succulent Cluckodon can steal a game, but if you are smart with your use of Wild Growth you can normally fight through this as well. Just like against the Sapphire-Wild decks, be sure to evaluate if playing out your second threat is worth getting blown out by a Crocosaur in the late game.

Against the ramp decks I would cut the Deadeye Rippers since they are quickly outclassed, as well as a Crushing Blow in order to bring in the three Emberspire Witches to cut off the lifegain Cluckodon and Rootfather provide. Against Cressida, I might consider bringing in some number of Heat Wave, as well, due to the high number of smaller troops they have.

The Azure Cannon match up, overall, is close. Game one I feel like the Ruby-Wild deck is a bit ahead, but post reserves when they bring in additional cheap interaction I think we end up a bit behind. When you are playing you want to keep in mind that your Wild Growths are not just combat tricks when playing against other Ruby decks – they are also protection against cards like Burn and Crackling Bolt. The most important thing to do is not leave yourself exposed to a Heat Wave post reserves. This card is very good against our Quash Ridge Tuskers, but most of our other threats can quickly grow out of range if we sequence properly.

Because they are bringing in additional removal, I like to up our threat density post reserves. Scorch and two copies of Crushing Blow come out and Heroic Outlaw and Mentor of the Oakenhenge come in.

The difficulty of the Mono-Blood match up varies depending on how many anti-aggressive cards are in their reserves. This matchup can be a bit of a difficult balancing act. You have to keep enough pressure on the table to beat targeted removal, but at the same time not deploy so many threats that an extinction is devastating. Post reserves we cut our Scorches, Burns, a Wild Growth, and a Kindling Skarn to bring in Vine Lash, Emberspire Witch, and Mentor of Oakenhenge.

Gameplay Videos

I have been streaming with this deck recently as I experimented with different things and you can find some of the archives of this below.







Wrapping Up

This Ruby-Wild aggressive deck is a powerful choice capable of pushing large amounts of damage in a very small amount of time. If you are interested in blowing your opponents out with combat tricks and winning gauntlet matches as fast as possible I would highly recommend giving it a try.

Have a question about this archetype that I did not cover in the article above? Let me know by leaving a comment in the forum!

Thanks for reading.

~Jeff Hoogland

Jeff is a professional gamer who enjoys the competitive aspects of HEX: Shards of Fate. Constructed is his preferred format and he is always looking for that new piece of technology to give him a leg up on the competition.

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