My Hexcellent Adventure – Be a Champ! 

By Chris VanMeter

Greetings my fellow Shard lovers!  In my last article I talked about the different draft archetypes and where I felt that they sat with the addition of Primal Dawn.  This time on “My Hexcellent Adventure,” I want to dive a little deeper into the new champions added with Primal Dawn and the different decks that I have been able to draft with them. 

At the end of my last piece, I alluded to Uzzu the Bonewalker as being extremely powerful and allowing for multiple different archetypes.  This is definitely true and leads to some of the more interesting decks that you can draft with Primal Dawn.  Generally, when using an Uzzu deck we will be two or three shards and end up splashing a fourth or fifth.  To do so, we will rely on Uzzu the Bonewalker’s champion ability, or cards like Hallowed Radiance, Hextricator, and Resource Optimizing Infusion Device. 

There are many different cards that you can play in your Uzzu decks.  In fact, Uzzu’s flexibility lets you play anything, really.  That said, there are a couple cards that I will generally look for in the early picks if I am going to end up playing an Uzzu multi-shard deck. 

These two cards are extremely powerful, and they greatly reward you for playing multiple shards.  With Necrotic being available in Blood, Ruby, Sapphire, and Diamond shards, when we see an early Scion of Volosolov, or even a late one, I am generally keen to take the card and move in. 

Scion of Volosolov can be played in Yotul Mogak decks, but it fits very well in almost any Uzzu strategy. 

Lyrical Chanter is my pick for best uncommon in the set.  As a 2/1 for two with only a single Wild threshold requirement, it is a decent body that can draw you a random Chant.  But the Empower ability is really what puts it over the top.  Most of the multi-shard Uzzu decks are Chant decks which are generally sparked by an early Lyrical Chanter. 

Take this deck for example:

This deck was awesome, and I had a blast playing it.  Lyrical Chanter is insane, especially when you have at least one Death Chant in your deck.  Getting two random Chants when it comes into play and the being able to get it back with a Death Chant (or any other Chant once you have the Death Chant in play) is just so much value. 

The other card that really impressed me in this particular draft was Trufflehead.  Death Chant doesn’t revert the card when it is returned to your hand, so any bonuses that it has will stay.  Trufflehead will become a 6/6 when it goes to the crypt and will stay as such when you return it to your hand. 

Midnight Convergence and Midnight Paladin were both pretty underrated at first, but they are seeing more and more play even in traditional two-shard decks.  Be sure to grab them early if you are wanting to play multi-shard. 

Here is another Uzzu the Bonewalker deck that I drafted. 

This deck was also very fun.  We still had the double Lyrical Chanter, but we also got to fix our shards with a bunch of Hextricators.  These constructs also made our Purge very powerful in the late game.  Young Seer in particular is sweet in these decks, since hitting a Lyrical Chanter lets us play an Empowered Chanter for zero resources. 

In general, when drafting a Chant based Uzzu deck, I am base Wild/Ruby with cards of the rest of the shards.  These decks are very powerful, and since Uzzu lets us gain any threshold that we need, they are generally going to be playable and can overpower most opponents.  Just remember to prioritize removal.  We aren’t going to have many ways to interact in the early game, and we need to get into the mid/late game for our Chant card advantage to take over. 

Important cards to keep in mind for Chant based Uzzu decks:

Lyrical Chanter

Monk of the Six Strikes

Recoiler

Young Seer

Most Chants

Most Removal

Next I want to talk about the Diamond/Sapphire fliers deck headlined by the new champion Fiona Honeyfinch. 

I liked trying this archetype when it was just Armies of Myth, primarily because I felt like Windspeaker was one of the super powerful, but underused uncommons in the set.  Now that we have the support for this shard combination, I have been very successful when the decks come together. 

The headlining cards for this strategy are Spellstone Gargoyle, Chilltail Guide, and Windspeaker from Armies of Myth. 

These uncommons are extremely powerful and really just require that we play a bunch of troops with flight in our deck, or troops that can gain flight as we will see from my latest Fiona draft deck. 

The curve on this deck is beautiful, and I was able to take advantage of some generally underplayed cards by having a clear game plan in each of my matches. “ Race with flight’” was my mantra, and it worked out splendidly. 

Runeweb Weaver and Quell are generally cards that you can get in the 14-17 pick range, and they work very well in this archetype.  Almost all of our troops are going to have flight, and this will likely let us jump our Runeweb Weaver and make it so that the troop we gave defensive to won’t be able to block anyway since all of my attacking troops will have flight. 

There are some skyguard troops out there, so having access to Windspeaker, Spirit Eagle, and Chilltail Guide is very nice, as is something like Incubation Webs.  Removal is at a premium in this strategy, but make sure you also have lots of threats. 

Cloudspeaker is an interesting card.  There aren’t many two attack, two cost fliers, so utilizing a defensive two drop that can bolster our attacking troops is nice.  It’s also great that Cloudspeaker also generally goes pretty late in the draft. 

Spellstone Gargoyle and Chilltail Guide are easy first picks that can send you into this archetype, so be on the lookout for them late in the draft. 

Raven Talon has been one of my favorite new champions.  The Wild/Diamond health-gain style of deck has been very fun to play and can lead to some pretty silly board states.  I also like that some of the deceptively powerful cards for this archetype, like Sylvan Bard, generally go late. 

Here is a Raven Talon deck that I drafted. 

This deck was extremely fun and I got to do some very silly things.  I was surprised to pick up three copies of Ghost Howler, as he is by far the premier card in this strategy.  I have had quite a few multiple-Ghost Howler decks and they have all been insane.  It doesn’t take all that many Young Seers and Sylvan Bards in play for a few Raven Talon and bard triggers with your Ghost Howler out to finish a game. 

Removal in this archetype is at a premium, so make sure you keep an eye out for Totem Trap, Pride’s Fall, Fearless Fray.  Don’t forget pump actions to use as pseudo-removal cards. 

These decks generally have a lot of troops in them, so make sure that you are picking ones that are either the best stats at their cost (like Risen Lancer or Pious Paladin) or have lots of great synergy with the rest of the deck (like Sylvan Bard, Chlorosaur, or Cheery Songbird). 

You can generally tell that the Wild/Diamond deck is open when you are seeing Ghost Howlers get passed.  If there is one that goes around, there will likely be more passed if they are opened. 

One of the strongest draft champions right now is Yotul Mogak, and that is mainly because of how insane his champion ability is when combined with the cards Cleave or Staggering Blast.  Yotul’s power is further exacerbated by how awesome all of these cards and interactions are with the headline uncommon, Whirling Brutalizer. 

Here is a Yotul deck that I drafted.  It wasn’t perfect, but still did very well. 

We didn’t have any Whirling Brutalizer or Staggering Blast, but we still were able to take advantage of how amazing Yotul’s champion ability is with damage based cards.  Bombwright hitting for two, being able to make our Highlands Blackbelt do extra damage, or getting insane value out of a Burning Tendrils was the name of the game for this draft. 

Generally, there are going to be a lot of removal cards at our disposal when we are Ruby/Blood, so making sure that we have great threats or some card advantage like Grave Offering when we play this archetype is generally pretty important. 

One card that I have been pretty impressed with is Vampython.  There isn’t much that can kill it and it’s a huge body on defense that can let us climb back up in health once we start to take over the game with all of our removal. 

Yotul is great, and every time that I have an insane Ruby/Diamond deck I just get wrecked in the finals of the draft by Yotul + Cleave as a three-for-one. 

Morgan McBombus is the newest champion that I have been the least impressed with.  There have been some sweet decks that I’ve been able to snag with multiple Combat Trainings or Seeing Reds, but even still those types of effects are so vulnerable to removal that it can be rough to try and lean on them too hard. 

Making sure that we have a good number of actions to be Morgan McBombus is really where I have had issues.  A lot of times, my Bombus decks end up as just Benvolio decks.  Here is a sample Ruby/Sapphire deck that I have drafted. 

This deck did better than I expected it to, but I found out very quickly that Mackerel Mitts is poor in the main.  Although it can be backbreaking in some situations out of the reserves, I would much rather have actual removal, bounce, or something like Soothsaying instead. 

Having a good curve with aggressive and/or evasive troops is the hallmark of a Ruby/Sapphire deck, and when we decide to go Morgan McBombus it’s important to ensure that you have some good three cost actions so you can make a Bumblebot on turn three. 

I was pretty impressed with Shadestalker in this deck, though.  When combined with troops that can get out of hand fairly quickly like Crazed Raider, Shadestalker can end the game in a hurry.  Beguiling Temptress was another card that surprised me as being better than I had hoped. 

All in all though, I think that Morgan McBombus is a pretty weak champion choice.  If I were to end up with an aggressive Ruby/Sapphire deck, I would rather just be Urgnock or Benvolio instead. 

I have only drafted Kagulichu once, and that was in the first couple days of Primal Dawn before I was taking screen caps of my decks.  I was unimpressed and wished that I had branched out into another shard and just played Uzzu the Bonewalker.  All of the cards that we are going to want to play in a Kagulichu deck are also usable in a Uzzu the Bonewalker, three-or-more shard deck.  I feel that going Uzzu will ultimately give you a more powerful deck.  I don’t think that the self bury and “random” card draw from Kagulichu is worth not being able to play powerful cards from every shard.  I would love to be proven wrong though! 

If I had to rate the new champions among themselves I would put it as follows:



How have you fared so far in Primal Dawn drafting?  Winning all of the packs, or just barely getting by to your next draft?  I would love to see some screen caps of the different decks that all of you out there have drafted with the new champions, so please feel free to share on the forums! 

Until next time, may Kismet smile on your top decks, and may all of your P1P1 be Legendary! 

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With 20 years of TCG experience, Chris VanMeter brings a unique perspective to HEX.  Favoring constructed decks that can either go under the competition or as far over it as possible, you can find Chris playing draft, sealed, and constructed on his Twitch channel and talking about his experiences endlessly via social media. 

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