It's Time to Give Lexi Another Chance

I wanted to start this series by showcasing Lexi. Lexi is a much-beloved hero who fell off the map once she transitioned to Living Legend. However, I find players remain quiet about her in Blitz. This is from a two-part problem. 

First, rangers struggle to find their footing. There’s no denying the format is fast, and rangers need space to work with that the format won’t always allot them. 

Second, while Lexi is the de facto Ice hero of the format, the Lightning talent is far more appealing to many players for its ability to race, and Lexi’s arrows have to compete with Aurora and Oscilio, two recently printed heroes who still have the limelight on them from their performances in Classic Constructed.

Despite these factors, I maintain Lexi is an overlooked and underplayed gem. While the odds are seemingly stacked against the Rangers, with the right build an aspiring player can keep their opponent at the necessary distance to pepper and disrupt them. Lexi also provides different play patterns and options within the Lightning talent that Runeblade and Wizard can’t boast. There’s lots to love about Lexi if you’re willing to give her a try. While she isn’t the top dog of the format, she has multiple viable builds that can compete with the broader metagame.

The goal of this article is to show that there’s something for everyone that wants to play the Elemental Ranger. If you are new to the game and started with Lexi, and you want to make the jump to organized play without breaking the bank, this article is for you. If you are an experienced player looking to try Lexi in Blitz, this article is for you. While you may own some of the expensive staples, these are all viable lists that do not require them. If you’re looking for a place to start because you don’t own only some of the expensive staples, this article is for you.

This build of Lexi focuses on her Lightning half. While there are many viable Blitz decks that aren’t rushdown – and rest assured we’ll cover one later – this one is about taking your opponent’s life total to zero as quickly as possible. Rosetta breathed new life into this build with Electromagentic Somersault, and now it’s better than ever. Ranger isn’t known for its high quantity of attacks, especially without Voltaire, but this deck can throw a wide combat chain to keep the opponent on the backfoot with 6- or 7-card hands, and it’s all thanks to this cheeky duo.

My decision to play Lexi was entirely based on wanting to play these two cards together. Snap Shot reads that, if we fuse it with Lightning, we can activate our bow an additional time this turn as if it were an instant. As if it were an instant is a big deal here. That means even if our Snap Shot does not have go again, we can still activate our Death Dealer to load another arrow into our arsenal and draw a card. Thanks to Death Dealer having go again itself, we can shoot that arrow right away. If, for example, that arrow is another Snap Shot we can fuse, we can fire it off, activate Death Dealer again, and draw another card. You can start to see where this is going.

The entirety of the deck is built around maximizing Snap Shot to create the longest combat chains possible while refilling our hand with every arrow to keep the damage coming. Ideally, we fire two Snap Shots in the same turn, and follow up with at least a third attack, and it’s not uncommon for that to turn into a fourth or fifth attack as well. Oftentimes that last attack is pumped with Lightning instants the talent is known for.

Of course, we can’t rely on seeing two of our six copies of Snap Shot every turn to go off. The full rainbow set of Dazzling Crescendo is the other half of our core, giving us go again in a pinch to set up wider turns. The last core piece is the ubiquitous Electromagnetic Somersault, which are our seventh and eight copies of Snap Shot. We can use them to recycle any attack in our hand for more damage, or for extra blocking value in a pinch. It’s taken the deck from "something that works sometimes but is subject to variance" to a fairly consistent machine.

Buzz Bolt and Frazzle are excellent first attacks if they can get go again from Lexi or Perch Grapplers. They’re great for hands with multiple attacks but only one of them is an arrow.

Because most of our Lightning cards to fuse with are pump effect, Light it Up is a shoe-in. We can increase its power to force a big block or a big chunk of damage through. We play a single copy of Weave Ice, the only off-talent card in the deck, just for when we need to give this dominate.

We also can’t guarantee we draw arrows and the pitch to play them off Death Dealer. A suite of 0-for-4s extends our combat chain further when our quiver runs dry on our turn, pushing it to three, four, or even five attacks in a single turn.

Tying it all together, we have our fusion targets. Full rainbow playsets of Electrify are easy arsenal targets that we can turn over with Lexi to give our next attack go again, and then easily play as a damaging on-hit that replaces the card we pitched to cast it. Weave Lightning, Electrostatic Discharge, and Pulse of Volthaven all buff the next attack we play, letting us set up Lexi’s ability then easily play them to clear our arsenal.

While I won’t delve too much into the equipment, I wanted to touch on three pieces. 

Perch Grapplers is the most essential equipment. It can give our arrows go again if we need it to, but primarily it’s here to block two damage without needing an additional resource. This lets us save our cards in hand for fueling our Death Dealer engine instead of blocking.

I chose Blossom of Spring for the chest piece, but really the deck can use any resource-generating armor. I chose Blossom because it doesn’t have a condition other than being action-speed. However, some builds use Vest of the First Fist or Deep Blue instead. Which you play is a matter of preference, but all of them are viable and support the deck better in specific play patterns than others. I value Blossom’s ability to be used as a starter to a turn without needing to invest another card into pseudo-pitching or damaging the opponent, but neither of those conditions are unreasonable for the payoff. 

We can’t afford New Horizon, so instead we use Honing Hood. Because our deck’s primary game plan is subject to variance and needing copies of Snap Shot, the plan for a turn may completely change after we arsenal, or just from needing to block. Honing Hood lets us course correct if we need to change our plan on the fly.

When it works, playing this deck is incredibly fun. I have earnestly never had so much fun playing a deck in FAB before. I have spent all of Armory laughing and squealing like a little girl as I activate my Death Dealer three times in a turn and present over 20 damage thanks to my 7-card hand. It’s not hard to do, either. At the same time, the deck is subject to variance.We live and die by our gimmick. When we don’t have Snap Shots, we’re mostly shooting 7 power arrows, or two 4 power attacks. Sometimes, we can use our Perch Grapplers to start a chain with Frazzle and Buzz Bolt to force damage through with other attacks. These still advance our gameplan and put pressure on our opponent. They have to respect our burst damage from our talent or risk being whittled to nothing. It all builds into explosive turns where our opponent won’t know what hit them as we drown them in obscene amounts of card advantage, sometimes for multiple turns in a row. 

The best part? We’re doing all of this for $10. For less than the price of a fast food combo meal, I started playing the most fun deck I’ve ever played, and won with it. All of our core pieces are bulk commons and rares. Our only Majestic is Perch Grapplers, which takes up almost half the budget. Better still, half the deck is in Lexi's preconstructed deck already. If you already own it, upgrading is cheap. If you don’t, this deck is less than the MSRP on LSS’ official offerings. If you are buying the deck as singles, many of the Lightning cards are talent staples that see play in Aurora and Oscillio. As you build your collection, these cards will be used in relevant heroes across formats. Furthermore, if you fall in love with the deck and want to take it to Living Legend too, some Lexi players in the format are on the same list, and abusing Ball Lightning with it to boot. A Living Legend-viable strategy, all for $10 in Blitz. What more could I ask for?

 Luckily for us, the gimmick keeps the price down. We don’t want too many of the Ranger staples because they don’t fuse to take our damage count over the top. Rosetta gave this deck two other new cards, and I only deem one of them absolutely necessary. 

Channel Lightning Valley helps us dig through our deck faster, more reliably getting us our Snap Shots to “go off.” It increases the power of the deck dramatically, and if you have the money for them I would get them initially if you can.

The only other card that jumped to mind is Current Funnel. It could be useful for chaining Frazzles and Buzz Bolts, or otherwise guaranteeing go again; but it requires setup that the deck won’t always be able to do. It’s situationally useful, but it’s not a card I have personally found myself wishing I had in the deck. In a list with yellow Buzz Bolts and Frazzles, and then Sizzles to give go again more consistently, I could see Current Funnel being great. Otherwise, I think it is too niche for the price tag.

The only other obviously missing card is New Horizons. It’s nice to have, and some players will want it, but I still see players running Honing Hood despite owning Horizons. The ability to pivot on a dime is needed for a deck that can be a bit fragile with blocks. 

While that is my favorite Lightning build, and perhaps the best one, maybe you are of a colder persuasion. Maybe Skaði is your favorite god in world mythologies. Maybe you think racing is for chumps and you would rather take your time in your games. This build is a little more expensive at $50, and many of the cards are not in the preconstructed deck. Half of that price tag is in the two copies of Channel Lake Frigid; they are necessary to our strategy as the only consistent tax effect in the game – so long as we can fuel it – and I wouldn’t play this deck without them.

The Ice variant centers on fatigue. We want to use Voltaire to shoot arrows with disruptive on-hit effects twice in a turn, and we want them to stack on our opponent. Ideally, we’re increasing their power or giving them dominate with an effect we put in our arsenal on the prior turn to get our arrows through. Almost all our buff effects are ice, which means if we can keep arsenaling what we use to fuse with the turn prior, we can keep giving our opponent Frostbites. We play the full rainbow playsets of Chilling Icevein and Blizzard Bolt, and red and yellow Cold Wave to tax as much as we can. Frost Lock is situationally useful, but when fused also receives a power bonus, meaning it can attack for 5 if it’s our second shot with Voltaire.

There’s a fairly obvious missing card in the decklist: Shock Charmers is what makes Ice Lexi threatening. By being able to double up the on-hits, which all trigger on each attack that hits, she only needs one arrow to connect to greatly slow down the opponent’s next turn. However, Shock Charmers is more expensive than the entire rest of the deck. I run Longdraw Half-Glove because it blocks and can still give an arrow +4 attack afterwards to hopefully secure a hit. Mark of Lightning is also worth consideration, and I personally keep both in my inventory to run whichever meets my needs better.

Three of a Kind is the glue that keeps the deck together, so we can find our fuse targets and arrows to stack more effects onto each other. It’s also why I opted for Blossom of Spring again: to avoid sinking cards into casting it.

One of the problems I noticed in testing was the deck could fatigue quite well, but also fatigue itself and end up losing to the opponent swinging their weapon for the rest of the game. To get around this, I included two copies of Endless Arrow and Quiver of Abyssal Depths. In practice, the deck should only need one Endless Arrow, but two is much more forgiving for someone new to the strategy. I found myself wishing I had Quiver of Abyssal Depths in every game I didn’t have it. We will run out of arrows in order to fatigue our opponent, and often when I got there all I needed was more red arrows to close out the game. Both of these cards are how we win, so save them until the end when the opponent is low on resources.

This build is definitely capable of running the opponent out of resources. While it may not be as powerful as the Lightning decklist I covered, for someone who wants to play this style of deck this is an excellent starting point. I felt able to win every game I played with it - while it certainly can’t race the fastest decks in the format, for any Armory populated with off-meta decks, this list is more than capable of running the opponent out of resources.

This deck has a few upgrades available to it. Unfortunately, most of them are pricey. Blizzard and Hypothermia are worth investing in if your local meta has a lot of rushdown decks. In general, it’s worth having at least one of each because everyone has some go again, but how many you need will depend on what you’re playing against every week. Thankfully, these and a few other cards can be played by the other Ice hero available at time of writing, Jarl Vetreiði.

Most of the upgrades are in the equipment. Because this deck wants the game to go for more than six turns, Fyendal’s Spring Tunic is the best resource-granting equipment available, and it will make a major difference in your games. Similarly, because our deck wants to use Three of a Kind, New Horizon is also important. It also allows us to change our disruption elements and run cards like Arctic Incarceration or Winter’s Bite if you prefer. Lastly, Shock Charmers is a good upgrade for the arm slot, but I don’t recommend getting it first or even second. It’s a niche armor piece, and while Spring Tunic and New Horizon see play in many other strategies, Shock Charmers often sits rarely used in other decks’ inventories. If you have them, play them, but if you don’t I wouldn’t make getting them my top priority. I would focus on the other upgrades first, and if you fall in love with this deck and want to make Lexi your main Blitz hero, then I would consider investing in Shock Charmers.

Lexi’s flexibility makes her a unique entry point into the game and the Blitz format. She can play vastly different viable strategies across both her talents, which makes her an excellent choice for someone looking to take the plunge into their local Blitz Armory. I hope these lists are useful for you or for growing your community. 

I also hope this shined some much-needed appreciation for what is playable in Blitz, and what strategies exist when we look beyond the surface of the format. Heroes like Lexi are often only thought of as Living Legend playable, but there’s a place for her in Blitz as well that is often not given enough credit. Snap Shot Lexi has become one of my favorite decks, and one I will play every week. With time, I hope we come to appreciate all the formats we can play bygone favorites in.