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

New article up:http://hextcg.com/adventure-awaits/

Talks a bit about one of the dungeons and spoils a couple of (not terribly interesting) AI only cards, so at least we know for sure that there are going to be AI exclusive cards in both raids and dungeons.

Also, spoils one new card (The tarrasque has been up in the card gallery for a while, so it's nothing new). My first impression is that tectonic break seems spendy and random, but I guess it could find a home in a "Make big creatures" deck. Maybe. It's a nice weenie board clearer, but weenies are mostly a problem before you have 8 spare mana to spend. The legendary equipment for it makes it *hilarious* though. Might actually almost be useful as a deck thinner for your own deck in late game with that.

Yea. Given that the game seems to follow the flow of MtG, against a good aggression deck you are usually painfully waiting for a measly 4 mana to cast spells like Wrath of God. Of course if green follows suit like MTG and has tons of fetch resource/land cards, it might not be as bad....but 8 cost board sweepers are generally never a good idea in 1v1. In dungeon encounters though with other players in pve who knows? It could be good in that setting if you and your friends design decks to take advantage of it if the game is slower.

I'm worried less about having to pay to win in this game, since there will be guilds and shit. We can just trade with each other to get what we need, tbh.

Looks like they just updated the final goal
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...9b3159648b6f05
The not good 250 tiers (ie. not pro) are getting a free draft per week for a year. That will probably push sales up to the 1.5m soon.
And tablet support, people have been wanting that.

Update up!http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...e/posts/488512

Tablet support, more set 2 boosters for everyone, and adding a draft to the other 250$ tiers

Playing a potentially screen intensive game like this on a tablet sounds like hell to me, and I don't even own one, so not so legendary to me, but whatever. The rewards seem to be things everyone was clamoring for, even if they aren't interesting.

Meh. A little miffed that they are giving the Pro Player bonus to the other 250$ tiers for one year. I guess that they saw these were barely selling, but the reason that you make 1000 of something (and then say that they really are the only 1000 of that something that will ever exist) is that it will feel exclusive. That was the allure. Any confidence I had that they wouldn't actually sell these bonuses again at a later date is gone.

WhatsAmmataU_sl said:

Meh. A little miffed that they are giving the Pro Player bonus to the other 250$ tiers for one year. I guess that they saw these were barely selling, but the reason that you make 1000 of something (and then say that they really are the only 1000 of that something that will ever exist) is that it will feel exclusive. That was the allure. Any confidence I had that they wouldn't actually sell these bonuses again at a later date is gone.

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Yup. I'm pissed. Should have bumped pro player up to 2 free drafts a week for the first year, one free per week after that in perpituity.

WhatsAmmataU_sl said:

Meh. A little miffed that they are giving the Pro Player bonus to the other 250$ tiers for one year. I guess that they saw these were barely selling, but the reason that you make 1000 of something (and then say that they really are the only 1000 of that something that will ever exist) is that it will feel exclusive. That was the allure. Any confidence I had that they wouldn't actually sell these bonuses again at a later date is gone.

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Yeah, I wish they would have gone another way to incentivize those tiers more (Like maybe giving us a deep dive on how PvE works in excruciating detail already, for the love of all that is holy). Show us that it takes a while to collect loot and the dungeon tier starts looking pretty good. Show us a brutal raid deck and the raid leader tier starts looking pretty good. Collector should have been at least 4 copies of all of the alternate art every year, and it got devalued a bit as soon as they added the extra set of kickstarter exclusives to everyone. Guild Leader... I don't know. Some sort of other cosmetic guild perk that's functional in PvP as well might have done something for it. 90 extra boosters is nice and all, but there's going to be such a ridiculous flood of set 1. I'm sitting on 645 booster packs from rewards, and that's not even including everything from starters, primals, months of VIP or free drafts.

Really though, the pro player tier was the only one that didn't give you something truly exclusive (except the pre-release tournament, which isn't why everyone was buying it). It was just a good deal. Still is if you're planning on being in for the long haul, but everyone's attention is so mayfly like these days that 1 year and "as long as the game is out" might as well mean the same thing psychologically. If I was just a pro-player, I'd probably be feeling fairly burnt.

I wonder how many grand kings are now downgrading.

p0rkbelly_sl said:

I wonder how many grand kings are now downgrading.

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Exactly as many people as are swooping in to grab them. I'm sure some have shifted, but pro-player and grand king have still been sold out every time I've looked.

Pro player free draft per week is for life and it stacks while the new reward is just for a year.

One of the Cryptozoic devs popped in at the official forums and made a fairly useful post today. Not really new information, but confirmation about some things people have been saying secondhand about the devs intenthttp://forums.cryptozoic.com/showthr...l=1#post220228

Summary:
1) You can make multiple accounts, but each will require a separate credit card. Note: That's multiple accounts, not just merging multiple reward tiers into one account, which is something different
2) They want real money tournaments, but still need to explore the legal issues
3) They want an RMAH, but see above re: legal issues
4) They personally don't care about people running secondary markets, but again, legal issues. (So in other words, they might say "Nope, can't do that" in the ToS, but it's unlikely they'll expend much effort hunting you down)

And the other stuff is just responses to silly questions (namely, money doesn't make betas happen fasters, and the tablet apps should be both ios and android based)

Pro Player should have gotten an extra draft for a year. All those who went Pro indeed felt a little burnt on that last stretch since the Pro goes for the exact same amount. They neeed to give PP something.

I am curious to see how they handle this controversy though. They will be sponcering tournaments that will have real money value. Seeing how a company deals with players upset about a descision will go a long way towards whether or not they actually get my money. I am glad this event took place with two weeks left on the pledge.

You responded just as I edited. Does not matter the difference, what matters is that nothing was granted to that tier at all. It DOES make a difference.

Mahes_sl said:

Pro Player should have gotten an extra draft for a year. All those who went Pro indeed felt a little burnt on that last stretch since the Pro goes for the exact same amount. Or..maybe a better idea...give pro some of the advantages the other tiers have for one year...

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You mean like drafts forever for their accounts? Something like that?

I don't know that Pro Player needed anything else. TBH 1 free draft a week for life is already so good a bonus in a TCG that it might as well be the legendary stretch goal reward. Of course it's value is entirely based on how good the game is but that's the risk vs. reward part. The other 250 tiers getting this for one year (non-stacking) is nice for them and hopefully that will generate more kickstarter dollars for Hex so they can continue to reinvest in Hex and make all of these initial kickstarter rewards more valuable.

If Hex is good there could easily end up being a million plus players with less then 10k kickstarter rewarded accounts.

Mahes_sl said:

Pro Player should have gotten an extra draft for a year. All those who went Pro indeed felt a little burnt on that last stretch since the Pro goes for the exact same amount. They neeed to give PP something.

I am curious to see how they handle this controversy though. They will be sponcering tournaments that will have real money value. Seeing how a company deals with players upset about a descision will go a long way towards whether or not they actually get my money. I am glad this event took place with two weeks left on the pledge.

You responded just as I edited. Does not matter the difference, what matters is that nothing was granted to that tier at all. It DOES make a difference.

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I eventually changed tiers and settled at the Pro level, it would be nice to get the extra draft for a year but I don't really "feel burned" that they left us out. Pro tier was already so much better than all the other tiers, value-wise. Assuming the game lasts a few years that is.

New card previews:http://hextcg.com/artsy-beginnings/No new meat in the article though. PvE details, please!

As for the cards, judgement is an interesting late game board clearer with a caveat. Great if you have the biggest card out there, as it's now uncontested on the field. Much like the previous green card though, it's best against weenies, but you'd only be able to pay for it after your average weenie deck has already killed you.

The other one is way more interesting, as it's the first interrupt/counter mechanic we've seen, and seems pretty weak (once per game, already needs the creature out, is just a soft counter in that it bounces back to their hand). Wonder if that's a design decision on their part to keep counterspelling relatively weak, or if this card is just a weak example of it and they have other more traditional counters that we haven't seen yet. I'm guessing it's more the former.

I think it was fine. Honestly, the pro player was so vastly better than the others. . .and as for losing exclusivity, we have not paid anything yet and we did not lose anything. If you want to switch to one of the other same priced options - go for it. I think it is a hard, and somewhat selfish, argument to make that you were somehow disenfranchised by them for giving a benefit to other people that will help the overall dynamics of the game (more drafters) and enhances the value of a product that was just not selling ($250 non pro options)l.

Mikey78_sl said:

I think it was fine. Honestly, the pro player was so vastly better than the others. . .and as for losing exclusivity, we have not paid anything yet and we did not lose anything. If you want to switch to one of the other same priced options - go for it. I think it is a hard, and somewhat selfish, argument to make that you were somehow disenfranchised by them for giving a benefit to other people that will help the overall dynamics of the game (more drafters) and enhances the value of a product that was just not selling ($250 non pro options)l.

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My only real problem with it is thematic in nature. I wish they would have done something more in tune with the original thrust of the different 250$ tiers than just give everything an across the board "fix" that so closely mimics the benefits of one of the other 250$ tier. I'm not surprised that the pro-players are cranky about it. It's just human nature. Everyone else got buffed, but I didn't, *wah*. I'm sure there's probably a specific name for that particular cognitive bias, but I'm not a psych guy.

Mostly I just wish they'd release some actual in depth information about PvE instead of the relatively light thematic descriptions they've done just far. Everyone knows what PvP is going to be like in this (it's going to be like Magic), so it's no wonder that the most PvP centric goal went first. Showing exactly how PvE is going to work would go a long way towards making the PvE goals more in demand. Of course with the fact that you can use PvP stuff in PvE, but not vice versa, maybe there's just no way they could have fixed the imbalance without tossing some PvP boosts at them.

I'll note that it doesn't actually seem to have helped all that much. Yesterday and today have both been pretty sluggish on the kicktraq.

Mikey78_sl said:

I think it was fine. Honestly, the pro player was so vastly better than the others. . .and as for losing exclusivity, we have not paid anything yet and we did not lose anything. If you want to switch to one of the other same priced options - go for it. I think it is a hard, and somewhat selfish, argument to make that you were somehow disenfranchised by them for giving a benefit to other people that will help the overall dynamics of the game (more drafters) and enhances the value of a product that was just not selling ($250 non pro options)l.

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Go to the cryptozoic forums and hold dicks with the other fanbois, please.

The argument isn't hard. I made it clearly and concisely. They said they wouldn't make the kickstarter rewards available through other means leading people to believe that what they were buying into was actually exclusive. It took them all of... 14? ... days to go the other direction with that. It now take a pro player one full year to realize the advantage they bought over the $250 tiers. If the PVE "loot" includes PVP cards/tournament credit/wahetever, then they lost out double.

Let's see. What else. Oh, if having more drafters makes the game better they should make them free.... annndddd yes, of course I'm being selfish. What was the point of buying into the kick starter if you weren't looking to better yourself with regards to the game? Is there one person out there who actually thinks the game wasn't getting made without the kickstarter funding? Seriously, just stop it.