Hex: Shards of Fate TCG - Set 7: Frostheart 6/29/17

attog_sl said:

This looks like digital cocaine. I backed it at $500. If anybody else has the tier where you gift the 30 card packs and wants to trade them back and forth, that sounds good.

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Palum_sl said:

Hmmm, it IS only $500 for all of them... Plus $300k seems reasonable like they have sunk money into it to get it this far.

And what an excuse to buy a tablet. Damnit.

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Draegan_sl said:

The project is fully funded from the profits of their other games. This kickstarter is probably just to cover their marketing. It's actually marketing in it's own right.

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Palum_sl said:

So are the dungeons/raiding actual coop? Like 4 people with decks vs PVE cards sorta thing? Kind of hints at it but all the demosseemto just show 1v1.

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Dungeons and Raids

Throughout the story-based campaign, you will be called upon to hurl yourself into a number of bold adventures in the form of dungeons, raids, and side-quests. In addition to the main storyline, your exploration of Entrath will open up opportunities to experience smaller stories, as well as gaining experience, equipment, and cards.

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Explore

When you arrive at a new dungeon, you will only be able to see as far as the entrance. Each dungeon is completely unique: you may find yourself exploring an underground cavern teeming with vennen poised for ambush, an ancient haunted forest, the tower of the sphinxes, or the twisted castle of a crazed, sentient skull. As you work your way through, you will encounter battles, traps, puzzles, and caches of treasure all leading up to the final encounter.
Go For The Gold

Whenever you complete a puzzle, navigate a trap, or defeat an encounter, you gain momentum. Your momentum directly increases the rarity of the final encounter's reward. You could choose to head directly for your final objective, and receive a healthy pile of gold, a new magical trinket, and a new card. If you fully explore the dungeon, however, you might get a mountain of gold, an artifact, and a much more powerful troop for your deck.
But Don't Fail

Whenever you fail to win a battle or are caught in a trap you gain a Death Mark. Death Marks only persist for any given attempt at a dungeon, and once you get three, you're out, and you will have to start the dungeon again from the beginning. Part of the dungeon's strategy is deciding when to keep pushing and when to merely sprint for the finish line.

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Decisions Matter

There are many factions in Entrath with their own goals and plans. As you encounter these factions, you will be able to choose to support them, oppose then, or even join their cause as a full-fledged member. These decisions have both a direct impact on other encounters in the same area, as well as a longer lasting impact on your path through the game and the rewards you are eligible to gain.
It's Dangerous To Go Alone

Several dungeons unlock the ability to go on a raid against the greater evil responsible for those events. In raids, you and two of your friends must work together to battle against a foe of significant power. These cooperative battles offer much danger, but also unlock some of the best equipment and cards in the game!
A Unique Experience

Your champion, deck, and decisions across your career combine to significantly alter the flow of the dungeons. If three gnoll princes are all seeking to overthrow their father, you can choose which prince you wish to support against the gnoll king!

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Mercenaries are alternate champions that replace your champion in the PVE campaign. They level up similar to existing champions, but in a faster, more streamlined way.

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Caal_sl said:

I have to know more about what makes it different from playing MTGO before I'd consider. If it ends up being interesting... god help my wallet.

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Equipment

What RPG would be complete without items? In HEX, the equipment you acquire during your adventures will improve your character and customize your play experience. Victory in battle, looting treasure chests, and completing quests are just a few ways to acquire equipment in HEX. Equipment has four different rarities, similar to the cards you open in packs.

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What equipment does

Equipment is exclusive to the PVE campaign. Every piece of equipment in the game is associated with a card. Its effect is related to the card it is attached to, improving it in some way by reducing its cost or changing the way it functions to create different deck-building opportunities. As your appreciation for specific cards grow, you'll definitely want to chase down the associated equipment to make your favorites even better. Each card has two or three pieces of equipment. Collect them all!
How equipment works

When you gain a piece of equipment, it goes into your collection of cards that can be used in building a deck. Each champion has six equipment slots (Helmet, Armor, Gloves, Boots, Weapon, Trinket) and each piece of equipment is one of these types. In any particular deck, a champion can equip one of each type of equipment, totaling six pieces. When making a deck, you'll have to decide whether you want to double or triple down on specific cards or spread your equipment choices over many different cards to insure more cards in your deck are improved.

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Other things you can do with equipment

In some cases, when you equip items in the right combinations for a specific deck you will complete a set bonus! Completing a set bonus will confer additional benefits to the cards involved or even provide additional cards you can then include in that deck.

We wanted to create a true sandbox experience with nearly unlimited combinations, allowing players to bring their creativity to the experience of crafting the ultimate decks.

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Socketed Cards

A Gem is not a card, but rather something that you socket onto special "socketing" cards.

Gem Socketing is something that you manage while building your deck, and it will change the way your cards play out during the game. Each gem offers a unique power, so Gem Socketing adds a completely different layer of fun, discovery, and creativity to the game.

By matching gems with different cards to create various effects, you can further customize your decks in ways that have never been done in any TCG before.

Gems And Socketing

Gem Socketing allows you to customize your cards, allowing even more creative ownership over the deck-building process. There are 10 Minor Gems (two for each of the 5 shards), and 10 Major Gems (again, two for each shard), for a total of 20 gems. Some troops in set 1 have the ability to socket any Minor Gem, while others have the ability to socket any Major Gem (as well as any Minor Gem).

Gems And Socketing

Each gem will enhance the card it is socketed onto in some way, provided that you control at least one of the shard thresholds that is associated with that gem. If you don't have that threshold, you can still play your card as normal, but that power won't activate until you obtain the necessary threshold.

BoulderBruteWebThe real fun of the gems is finding the gem that's going to combine with a particular Socketable troop in a way that fits your goals. Many of the gems open up cool interactions that might not be obvious at first glance. For example, the gem that allows your troop to be played at Quick speed creates a sneaky combat trick when combined with the troop who enters play and boosts the Attack and Defense of one of your troops.

Socketing is a great use of the digital space that traditional card games cannot explore. Sockets and gems create a game play experience that is new, unique, customizable, and allows you to take more control over your game play experience than ever before. We really wanted to give players a chance to make their own card and feel a new level of ownership of their cards and decks that they create and customize. Now players get to try their hand at designing cards that they want to play.

As a note to more experienced TCG players, you'll find that in addition to adding a lot of extra depth to constructed deck building, socketing also adds a new element to draft that has never been seen in a TCG before. To illustrate this with a simple example, let's take Boulder Brute, a 5 cost 4/4. You could socket him with cost minus 1, and get a 4 cost 4/4, or +1/+1, and get a 5 casting cost 5/5. So, depending on where you're light in your curve, Boulder Brute as a draft pick can function as either of those cards even within a deck that is solely Wild. Of course, if you're playing more than one shard, he could fill any number of other roles as well!

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Q:Will the account bonuses like 10% xp, and raid leader +1 in starting hand be available for cash as account upgrades when game is releases? And if so is it safe to assume it will be at a more expensive rate then those who purchased theses upgrades via the pledge drive.... Or are they exclusive to the ks pledge drive?
A:No, we are adamant that the kickstarter rewards are really exclusive to those who were in this with us at the beginning. All of the PvE cards on the KS, the alternate art PvP cards on the KS, and the account blessing (Raid reward, Guild leaders) will never be made available again.
It's important I communicate that all the PvP *cards* (eg, Pack Raptor) *will* be available in boosters, just the KS ones have a different piece of art that will never be available again.
Finally, it's important to know all KS rewards, except 'account blessings' can be freely traded. So there will only be as many Void Marauders as there are people who donated at that level, but those people can trade them to other players if they wish

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Flight_sl said:

Most all the game mechanics are a direct copy of MtG. I wonder if WotC will sue them and close them down. They've done that to a number of physical CCGs with far less in common (sure they did it to a couple just based on being a CCG and using the 'tapping' mechanic, under a different name, in the 90s).

Guessing kickstarter funds and advance orders would just be lost money if that happened ? Haven't done the kickstarter yet for this reason.

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Palum_sl said:

Uhhh, have you played other CCGs? Every single CCG has gotten away with it since those early litigious days by using synonyms. L5R uses bow, bunch use exhaust, commit, etc. Can't copyright rotating cards sideways or else there would be precious few mechanics available for any CCG. And IIRC anyway that was a tap SYMBOL thing, which was a trademark issue and not just rotating cards.

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A Kickstarter project for an indie game called Kaiju Combat: Giant Monsters has been put on hold, due to a trademark disagreement with game publisher Wizards of the Coast. Soon after raising $112,513 for its $100k goal, developer Sunstone Games received an infringement notice from Wizards of the Coast. The notice claimed the name of Sunstone's game violated Wizard's "Kaijudo" trademark, which refers to a collectible card game based on a Hasbro TV show.

Sunstone says its lawyer contacted Wizards last December to argue that "Kaiju" (a Japanese word that means "monster") had nothing at all to do with "Kaijudo," and they believed the matter had been settled. But this past week Wizards took the matter to Kickstarter directly, which took the project offline, claiming it was "the subject of an intellectual property dispute."

Sunstone's owner Simon Strange says he's working as quickly as possible to get the project reinstated. Going through court costs, he says, would be prohibitive on the company's "limited development budget." Strange adds he's "hopeful" that Sunstone won't have to change the game's name.

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Flight_sl said:

Yes mate. I've played CCGs (including L5R and Magic) since a couple months after MtG was launched. I know a lot of games have adopted the various mechanics, but Hex is a total copy of everything in MtG. You can even name the MtG card that pretty much every Hex card in that vid is a direct rip off of.

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Palum_sl said:

So I don't get the concern then? MtG concepts and some similarity are basically required to have any success in the market. Look at GW, their lawsuits about copying rules have gotten smacked down for years by courts not recognizing simple interactions assembled in a rules sys as intellectual property.

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