It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Boulder Brute!

Used plates, notebooks and clothes fill my sight as I look around my room. I am sure of it now, it is the week before exams. With such an undertaking it can be hard to find time to write about Hex. However, I shall endeavor to write a short article to stem the current drought.

So today we are going to be looking at two interesting combos for drafting wild-sapphire, starting with my favorite common bomb:

A minor socket 4/4 for 5 resources makes Boulder Brute one of the more efficient socketed cards in the game. Generally I see a lot of people use the sapphire flight gem with this guy, and a 4/4 flying troop is definitely good to have. But we can do better, shove the wild spellshield gem on him and use Feather Drifting Downriver's charge power and now you have a 4/4 flyer that wont have to worry about those nasty removal cards. Then it is just a matter of buffing him with cards such as Wild Aura and you can swing each turn for 6 or hold him back to have a powerful blocker. The best thing about this card is that it is common, so drafting him can be very easy. Even with a solid combo like this sadly wild-sapphire in draft does have a serious weakness, its lack of hard removal.

Yes, yes, you have Countermagic and a lot of bounce effects such as Buccaneer and Time Ripple that can slow your opponent but sometimes it can be hard to draft these due to their high pick priority (how quickly they are taken by a player). The solution that I have found works really well is to use:

At first glance Turbulence can only help you against flying troops, and don't get me wrong there is a lot of instances where the card by itself is going to stop you from dieing. But it wont help you if their bomb does not have flight. This is where Feather Drifting Downriver's charge power is going to help us out again! Why? Because you can target your opponent's troops giving them flight. Target their biggest threat, make it have flight, then Turbulence it straight to the discard. This is slightly harder to pull off in draft due to Turbulence being a uncommon, but it is achievable.

Anyway that is it for now, back to my dull studious drudge.

Can you think of any other combos with Boulder Brute or Turbulence? Let me know in the comments!

Please Show Me How to Hexougie (A Newbie Hex Tutorial)

When I first saw the Hex TCG beta on Kickstarter my reaction was a mix of euphoria and disappointment. Euphoria at the prospect of playing a type of TCG I have always dreamed of and disappointment that I could not throw more money at Cryptozoic since I am a poor university student. Since I have played a lot of TCG's in my life, when I got into the alpha of Hex a lot of the mechanics came naturally to me. With the new wave of open beta keys going we are seeing a lot more people that are not familiar with Hex's mechanics playing. Unfortunately, due to the current state of Hex (being a beta and all) there is no official tutorial out to help new players. Here I am going to explore the basics of what you need to know to start playing the Hex TCG.

First lets start a game against an AI.

Up the top left of your screen click the play arrow and select Proving Grounds. This will take you to a new screen.

Next in the bottom left corner of the screen you want to click, the Play AI button. Select a deck and click Challenge.

But before we start the layout of the board lets go over some basics. Hex TCG is a game of two champion duking it out on the field of battle using all manner of troop, abilities and spells. The end goal is to win by either reducing the opposing players' life to 0, forcing your opponent to draw when they have no cards left in their deck (milling them out), or by meeting the conditions of a card effect that causes you to win the game. To achieve this each player has a deck of cards at their disposal (60 or more in constructed, 40 or more in limited) and a champion with a special charge power that is unique to them. The anatomy of a card is explained in detail at the Hex TCG website. Read that before continuing.

Finished? Good. Now there are possibly two option available to you when you first start the game. If you won the coin flip the first choice is to either 'play first' or 'draw first'. Most of the time you will want to choose to play first, I wont go into detail why here but it is better for you in the long run. The next choice is to either 'draw again' (known as a mulligan) or 'keep hand'.

This is one of the most important choices in the game of Hex, there could be a hundred articles devoted on when it is good to keep a hand and when you should just mulligan. For now what you are looking for in your starting hand is 3 to 4 resources and at least 1 or 2 troops.

Now it is time we take a look at the board layout that I have labeled for you.

A: Here you can see a portrait of your champion. The number in the white circle is your life total, this number goes down when enemy troops attack you and up when you use cards that gain you life. The orange number is how many charges your champion has, this number goes up every time you play a basic shard and is used to power your champion's ability. The yellow symbol is the button used to activate your champion's ability this will consume a number of charges depending on which champion you are using. The number in the grey rectangle is how many cards you have in hand.

B: This is your opponent, here you can see how many cards, charges, and life points they have.

C: These two numbers indicate your resources. The number on the right indicates how many resources you get at the start of your turn. The number on the left indicates how many resources you have left until the start of your next turn when it 'refreshes'. Note, when this happens any extra resources you have not spent are lost.

D: This is the game timer, you each have 30 minutes each to play, if one player runs out of time, they lose the game. In tournaments your time is carried over each game you play with the same opponent, so make sure you have enough of it.

E: This is your deck, the blue number indicates how many cards you have left. When a card you control dies, or is discarded it will go to the right of your deck in the discard pile. If a card is voided, it is removed from the game and goes into the orange and black hole bellow your deck and discard pile. You can review your discard pile and your void by right clicking them.

F: This is your hand, when you start the game you should have 7 cards, unless you chose to mulligan. To enlarge cards from your hand, simply right click them.

G: This is your passing priority button, this is used to indicate that you wish to continue to the next phase of the game or to indicate you would not like to take any further actions. This can also be done by pressing the space-bar.

H: This is the turn indicator, it indicates which player's turn it is and what phase they are in.

Finally, there is the large open field in the middle of your screen. This is the play area. Any card that stays on the field you play will be placed bellow the line going through the center of the screen while any card that your opponent has played will go above that line.

Each player takes a turn by going through 8 phases:

Preparation Phase - Where each card that was exhausted, indicated by a horizontal orientation, is now readied, indicated by a vertical orientation. Your resources are also restored to full in this phase.
Draw Phase - You draw one card from your deck.
Main Phase 1 - This is time you can play troops, basic actions and constants, as well as use your champion's charge power. Note that quick actions can be played in any phase, even on your opponents turn!
Declare Combat - This phase signifies your intent to attack and the end of Main Phase 1, its main function is to allow for things such as quick actions and card abilities to be played before attackers are chosen but after Main Phase 1 has concluded.
Declare Attackers - In this phase the attacker chooses any number of readied troops to attack the opposing champion directly, the troop is chosen by the attacker left clicking the troop. At the the end of this phase the troop is exhausted and pushed forward to signify that it is attacking. Note, you can not attack an opponent's troops directly only the opponent's champion.
Declare Blockers - The defender now chooses which of his readied troops, if any, are going to block your attacking troops. This is done by clicking the troop and clicking the attacking troop the defender wishes it to block. Multiple troops can block a single attacker, but a single troop can't block more than one attacker.
Assign Damage - The attackers and defenders deal damage to their respective targets simultaneously. Any attacker that is not blocked deals its power (the axe symbol) directly to the defending champion. Any troops that are blocked deal this damage instead to the defending troop(s), it also takes damage equal to the defenders power. If a troop takes more damage than it has toughness (the shield symbol), it dies and is removed from the field to the discard pile.
Main Phase 2 - After combat is resolved there is another main phase, in this phase you can play cards just like Main Phase 1.
Discard Phase - If you have more than 7 cards in your hand during this phase you have to remove cards from your hand to the discard pile (discarding) until you are back down to 7 cards.

After these 8 phases are completed the next player is then free to take their turn.
With the phases explained, we are now going to have a bit of a closer look at cards and their abilities.

The first type of card we will look at are resources:

You can only play one resource a turn, when they enter the field they give you a temporary resource for that turn, a permanent resource, a threshold of that resource's shard and finally a charge. Early on you want to be playing at least one of these a turn as they enable you to play other cards in your hand and use your champion's charge power.

Next we will look at troops (and artifact troops). When a troop enters the field, it is said to have 'summoning sickness' this means that it cannot be exhausted (for example, exhausting the troop to attack) until the start of your next turn. Some troops have special abilities that activate automatically such as this card:

Abilities like this one activate when the card enters the field. With the Buccaneer in particular, you may choose if you want the ability activate or fore-go it.

Other cards have special abilities that you must activate manually such as this card:

To use its ability you need to right click the card while it is on the field, then left click the ability that appears in blue on the right side of the card. For the Wind Whisperer's ability to function it costs 1 resource and causes the Wind Whisperer to become exhausted.

Constants (and artifacts) once played stay in play. They are not effected by 'summoning-sickness' and can be exhausted the turn they are played. Abilities on constants function the same as abilities for troops. Here is an example of a constant:

Constants and artifacts are unable to attack and do not have power or toughness scores. The Hex engine is an artifact that when exhausted gives you 2 temporary resources to spend.

Actions are a one-shot card, once they are used and their effects occur they go straight to the discard. Here is an example of an action:

A very important concept to understand in Hex is the 'chain'. When a card is played or an ability is activated, your opponent has a chance to respond by either playing a quick action or by using a card's ability. You then have a chance to respond in the same manner. Card effects will resolve in the reverse order they are played. That means that the last card or ability to be used on the chain will be resolved first, followed by the card or ability that was played second last and so on until all cards in the current chain have been resolved.

So that is it for the first installment of my tutorial. So get in there and play some Hex TCG. If you don't understand something or you can think of anyway I could improve this tutorial let me know in the comments :)