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Deck of the Week: Blood / Diamond Midrange

funktion — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 00:33:52 +0000

Last week’s Hex alpha patch brought us quite the early winter gift. With a boatload of cards added and another large grip of them changed the alpha meta is sure to be shaken up quite a bit. Just like everyone else I’ve been pretty excited to start experimenting with some of the new cards and see what I could come up with. There has been one particularly straightforward card which caught my interest and made me want to try out a few different strategies. Persecute has been changed since it was first spoiled, initially it was a somewhat clunky card which could potentially net you mass removal against a swarm deck. However, now the card has become one of the most efficient removal spells while still also maintaining a high level of flexibility. Blood already has access to Murder which is one of the gold standards as far as removal goes and I suspect this is why persecute is an uncommon as Blood might otherwise have too much powerful removal in limited formats. With that said, rarity isn’t the same problem for 60 card decks so now there is definitely potential to overload on removal, which just so happens to be one of the keystones of a midrange deck.

Generally midrange decks try to fill in the gap which falls somewhere in between “agro” and “control.” If we’re going this route we want to build a deck which has enough removal to stave off a strong early game presented by aggressive troop-based decks, and follow that removal up with a package of efficient and hard to deal with threats which begin to come into play towards the middle of the game. On the flip side, against slower decks we are aiming to put out threats faster than our opponents can deal with them. Starting off with the removal package we have both persecute and murder as already mentioned, we could go further into blood by adding in terrible transfer but that is likely to be too slow for us. Ruby is definitely an option since it has both Burn and Ragefire but both of these might be a little too narrow for us in terms of what troops they are able to deal with. This leads us to Diamond where we find Inner Conflict which fits very well into our game plan, not only is it fairly cheap but it is able to deal with a wide variety of threats which could prove to be problematic for us (I’m looking at you Fist of Briggadon). Not only does Diamond give us access to Inner Conflict, but we’re also able to add in a number of evasive threats which suit our deck very well.

Without further ado let’s look at the decklist: (I excluded links for cards which aren’t up to date)

4x Living Totem
4x Claw of the Mountain God
4x Giant Corpse Fly
4x Spearcliff Cloud Knight
2x His Majesty, King Gabriel

1x Soul Marble
4x Life Siphon
4x Persecute
4x Murder
4x Inner Conflict

12x Blood Shard
9x Diamond Shard
4x Shards of Fate

A few other considerations:
-Xentoth’s Inquisitor: many gems are currently bugged, once things are stabilized I’d include this along with the discard major blood gem in place of Corpse Fly

-Vampire King: once the king is added to the game this becomes the perfect deck for him

-Relentless Corruption: decent sideboard tech to bring in against slower decks

-Frost Wizard: if our opponents are relying on escalation then bringing this silver bullet in from the sideboard is a pretty easy decision

It seems like the tuning phase of alpha is still ongoing as is apparent with Murder (now has 2 blood threshold) and Inner Conflict (now costs 3 resources). In which case don’t be surprised if some of these cards change dramatically in another two weeks’ time. After playing the deck for roughly 20 games or so I would say that, while very strong, Living Totem often feels somewhat clunky and we may end up cutting a copy or two. The miser copy of Soul Marble is in there as a test more than anything else. This seems like a good deck with which to evaluate its strength but it is also not a card that you want to draw multiple copies of. Finally, King Gabriel is very resilient but is sometimes unable to quickly closeout games, currently this resiliency has worked very well for me but moving towards something a bit more explosive is definitely an option I will continue to consider.

Midrange decks often attack their opponents from a somewhat sideways angle, they’re able to push this even further after sideboarding. That’s not to say that it doesn’t come with some weaknesses, evasive spellshield troops like Storm Colossus dodge our removal and can often turn the game around if the opponent is able to stabalize. Furthermore, there is definitely potential for a powerful deck that includes no troops which in turn makes many of our cards into dead draws.

I hope you all enjoyed the article. Sorry that I haven’t had nearly as much time to write / vlog about Hex this month, or even really play it for that matter. Though in the time I have had to log in I’ve been blown away by the outstanding appreciation I’ve been given from all of the folks tuning in. Thanks a bunch everyone! On that note I’ll leave you with a quick video of this deck in action…

Less Fail, More Funktion

OMG They Nerfed It!?! – Reveal & Winner!

HexVault — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 23:49:30 +0000

I wanted to wait until the card made it into the build, but a number of people have data-mined it now so I figure there’s not much sense in waiting… The nerfed 3 Cost Wild card is:

Card: Eye of Creation

Cost: 3 + X (unchanged)

Card Text: Reveal the top X cards of your deck. You may put any revealed troops into play. If you reveal another Eye of Creation this way, transform it into a copy of this action and play it. Put the remaining cards on the bottom of your deck.

Originally I saw the new card cost (“3X”) and thought they’d REALLY nerfed it since my original interpretation of “3X” was “3 times X”. After talking to Ben it turns out that the actual interpretation should be “3 plus X” – this is going to be refined to make it clearer in a future version.

So, who won? Well, no one got it exactly. A few people got the card and the cost. One person, however, was the first to suggest that they’d restrict the types of cards that Eye of Creation would be able to play (by guessing that we wouldn’t be able to use it to play resources) – not exactly right, but in the sprit of the actual changes (which are even more restrictive!). Congratulations, Mokog!

HexTCG Alpha Stream Today @ 5.15pm EDT/2.15pm EDT

HexVault — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 20:01:27 +0000

I’ll be streaming a few Alpha games at 5.15pm EDT/2.15pm EDT – check it out on Twitch.tv!

I’ll be playing a Wild/Blood swarm deck (mostly Shin’hare) most of the time. Let’s see how the hotel internet holds up!!!

Colin

Giveaway Winners!

HexVault — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 06:55:34 +0000

Website Launch Giveaway Winners!!!

Everyone wins!!! A big “thank you” to everyone who participated in the Giveaway! As a token of my appreciation everyone (rather than just 100!) who entered will get a HexTCG Set 1 Booster when the KickStarter rewards are distributed! On to the major prizes…

iPad – David B. (UK)

Flights To/From HexCon – Cassie M. (US)

Wii U – Brian O. (Grissnap)

I’ll be contacting the winners by email tonight/tomorrow to make any necessary arrangements. Thank you all!

DragonCon 2013: HexTCG PVP Design Panel – YouTube

HexVault — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:51:09 +0000

Note: the images in the slide show at the top of this post are 4x the size of the ones I posted previously – higher quality card images FTW!

Coming Soon: the Future of Hex Vault!

HexVault — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 19:44:47 +0000

I wanted to take a few minutes to let everyone know what we have in store for Hex Vault as we march towards Alpha and Beta. Here are some of the exciting new features you can expect to see from Hex Vault in the coming months:

Crack the Vault
From the Vault – the Comic
Hex Hero
Card Mechanics
HexTCG Limited & Constructed Videos, Streams & Analysis
- Building a Winning Deck
- Tournament Metagame Analysis
HexTCG PVE Strategies
Convention Coverage

Crack the Vault

Hex Vault will be featuring weekly giveaways once Beta starts! Each week you’ll need to do an online scavenger hunt for the combination to the Vault. Of course, the best way to stay informed about HexTCG and hunt down fragments of the combination will be to keep up with articles posted on Hex Vault. The first person to crack the combination each week will win a prize! Anyone who cracks the vault after the weekly winner will have an opportunity to enter a drawing to win another prize.

From the Vault – the Comic

BossHoss will be authoring an original comic about HexTCG and the Hex Community. Each issue will be a great story with wonderful art, as well as an opportunity to learn something about Hex (and maybe even spot cameos of CZE employees and community members!).

Hex Hero

Hex Hero is a series inspired by the FNM Hero series. As such, the concept will be rather similar – the Hex Hero is a new player with no cards, no friends, and a limited budget. However, he has a goal – to accomplish what is thought to be the holy grail of TCG: Going Infinite. You can see a full description of Hex Hero here.

Card Mechanics

If you’ve been following Hex Vault, you’ve already seen the first 2 Card Mechanics articles! Myself or a guest contributor will be covering existing or proposed Hex mechanics in a series of articles that you can expect to see weekly on Hex Vault. I’ve already been inundated with ideas for mechanics – definitely worth keeping an eye out for whatever we dream up next!

HexTCG Limited & Constructed Videos, Streams & Analysis

Once Alpha starts we’ll be posting gameplay videos, draft videos, etc. For many of the gameplay videos we post raw footage of, we’ll also be posting edited versions with analysis and commentary (including showing both sides of key match-ups). We’ve started a PVP Team and many of our members will be streaming frequently so that you can follow along as we refine constructed decks and get ready for the larger tournaments. You won’t want to miss this content – most of the guys on the team have significant TCG experience and have already shown an intricate understanding of what it takes to win at the highest levels in both Constructed and Limited.

HexTCG PVE Strategies

In addition to our extensive PVP coverage, we also plan to provide PVE strategies too. Hints, tips, walkthroughs – whatever you need in you quest to conquer all the HexTCG has to offer.

Convention Coverage

Hopefully our GenCon 2013 coverage gave you an idea of what to expect when we visit conventions where HexTCG has a presence. We’ll be making it to as many Hex-related conventions as possible and brining you reports, pictures, interviews, and videos that will be of interest to the Hex community.

Thank you for visiting Hex Vault! I hope you’ll come back in the future to catch up on everything that’s going on in the HexTCG community!

Colin