I had only beaten Hermes once before (with a CCYB variant) when I got him for my next false god today. I had lost miserably the last time I had him with a slightly upgraded version of the Protected Phase Shield deck in the opening post. I was trying for several hours, after reading this thread, to put together a deck of some sort. Finally I decided just to play with the version of Ready & Waiting I had been playing with decent results yesterday against random false gods. The only adjustment I made was removing an Ulitharid that I didn't think would be useful against Hermes.
I won with mastery. I did get a good draw. I got a quinted and sharded Purple Nymph on turn 3, and I drew my Explosion and a Supernova before he played the only Fire Buckler I saw. He played two dragons fairly early, which kept me constantly healing 30 a turn whatever he managed to do with his growing creatures. I never liquid shadowed those two.
I also had a pet Shrödinger's Cat, which drew an early fire bolt. He hit me with several firebolts, then usually healed me right up after.
Ready & Waiting (adjusted for Hermes)
6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 7dm 7f2 7gp 7gr 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h8 7um 7um 7um 80h 80h 80h 80h 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q
I would be very curious to hear if anyone else tries this deck against Hermes and what their success rate is. (Or against any of the other false gods it is good against, for that matter. Scorpio, with Purifies added, for instance.) I rarely have time for more than the three games a day (with my pet) these days, and haven't really been able to give this deck the kind of testing I would like to give it, though it has been slowly evolving.