I’ve been very anxiously awaiting Alpha… Maybe it’s time to make a confession: I’ve got a college rule notebook filled nearly front to back with deck lists scribbled across nearly every page. Many of them start to blend together; on page 40 or so I came up with a list that I’d already written on page 7; somewhere around halfway I started abbreviating all the card names, in many cases I have to wait a second to remember what “4x harb” or “BB w/g1 b1″ stand for. Crazed is probably a good word to use. Having shared ideas with a number of folks already, turns out that I’m not the only crazed one out there.
However, there’s a flip side to that coin. My wife and I play a lot of board games and card games together, she’s shown a bit of interest in Hex (though I think she might just be humoring my obsession), but I know she just becomes petrified any time I try and get her to build her own deck in any of the games we’ve played before. There’s a ton of folks out there that are just intimidated by the process, they just wanna PLAY! I’m writing this one for those of you who might feel a bit timid when it comes to deck building. It’s a great mental exercise and can be quite a bit of fun, give it a shot! With that said, I’m going to describe one of the common processes which I use while deck building as well as include a step by step walk through so that hopefully it makes a bit more sense.
Step 1: Determine Your Format
I usually start off by establishing some very broad guidelines, the first of which in Hex’s case is whether the deck is meant for PvP content or PvE content (PvP will have far more limitations on what cards you are allowed to use and you will also not be able to use equipment on cards). If you’re building a PvP deck you will also likely need to figure out what format you want to play in. A format sets the rules for what types of cards are allowed.
Ex: -only use cards released within the past year -no more than one copy of each individual card within your deck -decks must have at least 60 cards
Walk through: MikFrey left a comment on one of my initial Hex videos which I made months ago, he was asking me to build a deck that consisted of cards which any player could easily acquire. Well it just so happens that many TCG’s have a format that fits the bill. In Magic the format is called pauper, you can use just about any card that had ever been printed at the common rarity. We still don’t have a full set spoiler (as of 9/20) but I think we at least have something which we can work with.
Step 2: Determine Your Personal Limitations
Next, you should figure out what your personal limitations are. Are you only willing to use cards you already own or will you buy any missing pieces? If you’re going to buy new cards how much do you plan to spend? Is this deck meant to be used for cutting edge PvP tournament play or just something you can play with your friends? There are many other factors which might also come in to play, and it is important to think of them so that you don’t go overboard or wind up with something that didn’t meet your expectations.
Walk through: Well, with our walk through we have already answered the largest of these questions. This step doesn’t really apply to us right now (particularly since we don’t have our hands on the client yet) but it is still something important to keep in mind.
Step 3: Find a Starting Point
What’s the card that brought you here? Maybe there’s a card or archetype that seems really strong and you wanna see where you can take it. Here are some tips:
- Figure out what you want the “cornerstone” cards of your deck to be. In general you want to include 4 copies of all of these cards. If their resource cost are higher than 4 you likely want to reduce the quantity of them which you include in your final deck list. Otherwise you run the risk of having opening hands filled with cards you can’t cast in a reasonable amount of time.
- These cornerstone cards will likely also determine what threshold colors you are using. Keep the variety of different threshold colors to a minimum. Playing two colors is going to be fairly common, but going up to three means you will likely be spreading yourself too thin. It’s definitely possible but at least early on there will not be all that many cards which can efficiently fix your threshold problems.
- If you are building a 60 card deck, you should plan on including 23-25 resources. The type of deck you are building will alter the number which you include. In order to get the right feel for it though you might find this tool over @ HexMetrics to be quite useful http://hexmetrics.ni.tl/tools/resourceDraw
Walk through: Alright! Here’s where we finally start getting to some of the nitty gritty. After sifting through some of the commons that have been spoiled so far I noticed that there are very few troops that have more than 3 attack (9 right now by my count) though there are some that also have Rage so that is worth noting that their attack stats could increase over the course of the game. Troops are often the main source of damage (and victory) for most card games, and in such a low power format (pauper) they become even more important. With that said here’s where we are starting off:
- 4x Briar Legion
- 4x Glimmerglen Witch
- 4x Boulder Brute (both of the wild minor gems seem worth trying out, but we’ll start off with the +1+1)
These 3 cards put us pretty comfortably into wild, we could still use a bit more support from a second shard though. Lets give blood a shot and add the following cards as well:
- 4x Call the Grave (might raise an eyebrow at first, but it works really well with our existing 3 cost troops)
- 4x Murder
- 4x Giant Corpse Fly
Step 4: Curve & Speed (fill in the cracks)
Now that you’ve built the framework for your deck, take a look at it again and see what it might be missing. Do you have enough troops so that you can apply pressure to your opponent? Do you need more utility cards so that you can deal with your opponents threats or create roadblocks of your own? If you are looking to build a very fast aggressive deck which catches your opponent off guard so that you can claim the early victory then you probably don’t want to include very many higher cost cards, with a majority of your cards ranging from 1-3 resources. Likewise, if your goal is to be slower and more controlling where you rely on surviving to the late game where your more powerful cards can create an insurmountable advantage, well then you’re going to need a few strong win conditions along with a handful of cards that ensure you can survive the long haul.
Finally with Hex, now is the time to determine what champion / mercenary you plan on using if you have not already done so.
Walk through: At this point you might notice that our 3 cost slot is very full we could really use a couple early cards which ensure we don’t lose too much early momentum. Additionally we might be able to lean on our Call the Graves a little more and take advantage of some of the permanent effects that distinguish Hex from other games we’ve come to know. Let’s see if we can push the envelope a little further:
- 4 Sensei of the Milky Eye (an early drop which helps our deck stay consistent)
- 3 Runts of the Litter (ensures we survive the early game, once we start playing our 3 drops very few decks will be able to compete)
- 3 Blood Aura (our larger troops will be able to easily swing through most opposing blockers)
- 2 Wild Growth (a versatile card which can save one of our guys early or force through the last bit of damage on the final push)
That puts us at 36 cards for the deck, now we’ve just gotta add our resources and champion before we wrap things up:
- 4 Shards of Fate
- 8 Blood Shard Sources
- 12 Wild Shard Sources
- Herczeg
Step 5: Play
Listing this as a step might seem strange at first, playing the game is common sense right? Well one of the biggest things a lot of people miss when people find a deck list on the interwebs or assemble a list themselves is to play with it BEFORE they start making adjustments. This isn’t always totally necessary, but if you plan on making changes to an existing deck list, it is in your best interest to have a firm grasp of how the deck functions to begin with.
Go out there and play a few games. See what works and what didn’t. Maybe there was a gaping hole that you didn’t see or something that worked particularly well which might take the deck in a whole new direction. While you’re playing it might help to keep a written list of cards that felt dead (they felt like they were never useful).
Walk through: After playing 3-4 games I wouldn’t be too surprised if we felt like 4 copies of Boulder Brute was too many, or that perhaps a different champion was more suited for the deck (Monika’shin maybe?).
Really though, going through the iteration process with the deck is probably a topic for another day, doing so often requires a bit more finesse and this was really meant to primarily be a starting point for the uninitiated. There are also a few more nuanced aspects to deckbuilding which I haven’t discussed here because they’re a bit more advanced. Primarily sideboarding & meta-decking, but hey I’ve gotta save something for later right? Anywho, alpha is right around the corner, go out there and just build whatever whacky concoction you can come up with. That’s what they’re counting on!
On that note, I can’t end this without saying one last thing… Cryptozoic just announced that Alpha will most likely start on October 8th and that they are going to roll out access to it to all the backers over the course of a few days. If you haven’t already backed through Kickstarter it’s not to late, you can still utilize the slacker backer option which can be found here: http://hextcg.com/donate