Hex Plant Swarm

Hex PVE Wild Deck: The Power Plant

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Hippies had it right all along, my Hex friends. Flower power is the best way to build a quick and cheap PVE deck to start crushing dungeons and amassing loot.

I’ve had a lot of fun with this plant-heavy deck in Hex’s Frost Ring Arena dungeon, and I hope it’ll help you too. If you don’t have all the cards listed here, don’t worry—the deck is super flexible, and the only truly required cards are all cheap.

Try it out in Hex’s PVE dungeons, and let me know what you think!

The Power Plant Deck

Sets: Shards of Fate, Shattered Destiny, Armies of Myth
Format: PvE Dungeons
Style: Cheap, Defensive, Swarm

Hex Plant Deck

The Deck List

This deck is all about stalling out the enemy aggression in the early game, growing your board presence in the mid game, and then swooping in for a one-turn burst kill when you have all the tools you need.

It’s a safe, slow, and steady deck that also has a lot of fun tricks that let you outsmart the AI on a regular basis.

BOLDED CARDS are the core, most important cards that are needed to make the deck work. Any non-bold card can be subbed out for other strong Wild cards you have in your Collection.

Resources

Troops

Actions

Champion

Equipment

Upgrade Options

If you own more cards than I do or don’t like some of my picks, here are some alternates to adjust the deck. These are listed in order of my preference, with the top of the list being the first upgrade I would chase.

  • 4x Plant Garden (Replace 1 Rune Ear Burrower, 1 Moon’ariu Sensei, 2 Battle Beetles)

Hex Plant Brave

How to Play The Power Plant Deck

Get your defensive wall up, flood your board, and wait for the right moment to strike!

Step 1: Build That Wall!

Plants are king in this deck, and your first goal in every match is to get a couple defensive plants on the board ASAP. As soon as you have a Vine Trap and a Bramble Creeper or a lone Thorntongue Snapdragon on the board, the opposing AI will pretty much stop attacking. They’re amazing defensive tools that will gobble up anything dumb enough to charge in.

Reaching that safe state with health still on the table is the hardest part of playing this deck. If you get a slow start, pure aggressive decks will be able to exploit the empty board and really punish you. That’s why we loaded up our early minions with card draw and mana ramp: we’ve got to get that wall up quickly! Because, once it’s up, we’ve pretty much won the game.

Step 2: Keep Your Board Growing

Once you have your wall in place and the enemy AI isn’t attacking with serious threats, it’s time to grow your army. Play as many troops as you can each turn, prioritizing them for long-term efficiency.

Your first priority is to keep the defensive wall strong. If it ever looks like the enemy is starting to outnumber you, or build up a single troop that can stomp your blockers, you need to bolster defenses immediately. Always remember that the Trapper Grips debuff stacks if you block with more than one Vine Trap, so having a couple on the board will make a huge difference in what can stomp through your wall and what can’t.

Your next priority is to get troops down that grow your board power every turn. That’s your Shiitake Chefs, Giant Caterpillars, Fist of Briggadons, and the like. Dropping these guys early will give you more firepower when it’s time to strike.

Hex Plant Onslaught

Step 3: Wait for the Win Condition

Once you’ve got your board built up with a defensive wall and an army of scrappers ready to rush the enemy’s face, you just have to wait to draw a win-condition card.

There are a few sure-fire ways to get the kill with this deck, and you only need one of them.

  • Fly Over Them: If the enemy doesn’t have sky blockers, a single Giant Butterfly or Jadiim will be enough to win the game.
  • Run Through Them: This deck lets the enemy board build up over time as well, but a little bit of Crush will let your attackers deal damage through anyways. Wreckasaurus or Onslaught will give it to your whole team, often letting you just rush straight at them and win.
  • Skirt Around Them: You have to sacrifice one of your troops to make it happen, but Pheromones gives you a super easy, super cheap, super reliable way to ensure 99% of your army gets to punch straight to the enemy’s face.

Card Tricks

Here are some of the coolest tricks I’ve learned while playing this deck—and tips for getting the most out of these key cards.

Giant Caterpillar

This little guy is the best buy I’ve ever made on the Auction House. He’s never let me down and should be in every Wild PVE deck.

He’s exactly what a stall deck is looking for: the Giant Cocoon is strong defensive body up front that can absorb up to 3 damage per turn. Then, after absorbing 9 damage, it turns into Giant Butterfly—a game-winning bomb. I’ve won many, many games with the Giant Butterfly’s ability to make the entire enemy team unable to attack.

Remember to not transform this card into Giant Cocoon until right before your turn begins. Every now and then, this’ll let you pull off a fun trick. You can bait out removal like Burn that won’t kill it once you transform. You can even block an incoming troop, and then transform into something that can absorb the hit (and getting exhausted after blocking is declared doesn’t hurt it).

As an extra bonus, War Bot won’t use his champion power if this is the only troop on the board. Dropping this early and keeping the rest of your board empty is the only reliable way I’ve found to beat that challenge in Frost Ring Arena with this deck.

Hex Plant Vine Trap

Vine Trap with Trapper Grips

That attack reduction is permanent and happens before damage is dealt. That makes these able to survive blocking anything with less than 6 attack. That should cover pretty much everything in the early game.

And by the time you run into bigger threats, you should have two on the board. And their attack reduction stacks. If they attack you with a 6/6 and you block with two Vine Traps, it becomes a 2/6. Permanently.

It’s hard to overstate how strong this effect is. It’s the only troop-based counter for Invincible Troops, and the perfect counter for Rage troops that threaten to scale out of control.

Wild Growth

The oldest trick in the books. Like most players, the AI often makes its decisions to block or attack based on what it can see—and just hopes you don’t have something extra in your hands. Use this big stat-booster to kill premier targets the AI otherwise wouldn’t put into risky situations.

This deck doesn’t have a ton of removal, so you have to use it wisely.

Pheromones

Speaking of this deck’s lack of removal, this is your final trump card. When things get desperate and you really, really need to kill something on the other side of the board, you can use this as removal.

Throw it on whatever has enough attack to kill your target(s), and that you don’t mind losing, and throw him into the fray. You’ll get to choose which of the enemy troops to deal damage to first, so you can guarantee that pesky utility Troop takes the first punch.

Hex Plant Overkill

Have Fun!

That’s the grow-and-explode Power Plant deck that I’ve been having fun with in Hex’s PVE Frost Ring Arena so far. I think it’s great for new players who only want to buy a few cheap cards off the AH to get started clearing dungeons.

As soon as you get a few wins under your belt, you’ll start accumulating gold for buying the fancier pieces if you’re digging the deck—or start your next deck, if you’re not!

I hope you try it out, and let me know what cards or equipment you swap in to make it work!

If this deck isn’t your style, be sure to check out all of my Hex Deck guides to find one you like!