Cygames has some very big plans in store for Shadowverse check out our exclusive card reveals here ), and with it, a whole new class – Portalcraft!

“ “From the beginning we’d considered having eight classes as being the complete set of classes.” - Yuito Kimura.

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“ Because Portalcraft is a completely new class, it will be getting 42 class cards in Chronogenesis (compared to 12 each for the other classes), as well as 11 Basic cards.

Portalcraft - Basic Cards 4 IMAGES

The Shadowverse community was very much expecting formats to be introduced before too long, but the announcement of a new class this far into the game’s life came as a very pleasant surprise. How did this come about? “From the beginning we’d considered having eight classes as being the complete set of classes,” says Yuito Kimura, Game Producer and Executive Director at Cygames. “We do understand that some people might feel that seven might be too few, so we decided to add another class now that the game’s been out for a while. And now that we’ve finally introduced this eighth class we feel the class set is now complete.”The final result incorporates an intriguing new mechanic – Resonance. The basic idea is that Resonance is active if the Portalcraft player has an even number of cards in their deck. So unlike other classes that are primarily concerned with the cards in their hand, Portalcraft is all about playing with the number of cards in the deck itself to then activate the cards in-hand. The core way to do that is by playing cards that either add Artifact tokens to the deck, or pull them out. This way the player can manipulate whether Resonance is active, and utilise cards that have Resonance-related abilities.“The Resonance effect itself, it came a little bit later on in development,” Miyashita-san tells me. “We already knew that we were going to introduce these Artifacts, which are very powerful tokens for this class, and there are other classes that utilise tokens, such as Forestcraft, which uses fairies, and Swordcraft, which has lots of tokens. Taking those into consideration we thought about how to have this class evolve into what it is now, and as a way of introducing something new we decided this class would manipulate the number of [cards in its] decks. And that’s where this Resonance effect came from.”Because Portalcraft is a completely new class, it will be getting 42 class cards in Chronogenesis (compared to 12 each for the other classes), as well as 11 Basic cards (bringing it into line with the other classes), so the team has a fair number of cards to play with to lay the foundation for the class; to try and make Portalcraft viable and fun, and to highlight the new mechanics while still retaining balance. As far as Resonance is concerned, there’s definitely a fine line for the team to walk - if it's too easy for players to stay in Resonance it could be a problem, or at least mean that the Resonance effects can’t be too strong.

All the Portalcraft cards above are part of the Basic card set.

Portalcraft - Artifact Tokens 4 IMAGES

“Resonance is an effect that will activate once every two turns even if you don’t do anything,” Miyashita-san points out, “so it was important for us to make sure the balance was right there... We also have an issue of going first versus going second, so we needed to be extra careful there.” That "issue" is simply the team’s ongoing efforts to try and ensure that decks have close to the same win rate whether they go first or second. It’s something that can definitely be balanced for using Portalcraft’s Resonance mechanic. If you go second, for instance, Mechanized Servant (which is in the slideshow above) will have Rush for you by default, allowing you to play it and immediately make a trade, lessening the likelihood you’ll be behind.There will be 13 cards that have the Resonance tag come December 28, and five different types of Artifacts that can be generated to help manipulate Resonance. Interestingly for tokens, “there are low cost Artifacts and somewhere-around-the-middle cost Artifacts,” Miyashita-san tells me, “and all of them have powerful stats and abilities for their play point costs.”

Four of Portalcraft's Artifact tokens.

Thankfully, they're all pretty good.

A powerful effect.

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“ "We predict that there will be decks that are a little bit on the Puppet side and other decks that are a little bit on the Artifacts side, and one that’s a complete mix of both.” - Naoyuki Miyashita.

Portalcraft - Puppet Cards 4 IMAGES

Many of the cards we’ve seen also generate random Artifacts, which add another layer to working with the tokens. “There are cards that put specific Artifacts into your deck, and there are also cards that say in the skill description ‘randomly put two kinds of Artifacts out of four options into the deck,’” Miyashita-san explains after I ask about the role of RNG in the design of Artifacts. “So it’s up to the player whether to choose to only have certain types of Artifact generators in their deck or have a variety of Artifact generators in their deck, since they have different abilities.”So how will Portalcraft play? After seeing the Portalcraft Legendary Deus Ex Machina, I immediately assumed that the class would be built with a low curve so that it can play Deus Ex Machina then repeatedly dump its hand and reload, and rush the opponent down. “That’s definitely one of the ways you can utilise the card,” Miyashita-san tells me, “but in general, Portalcraft is stronger in mid-range or control types of decks, so it’s not necessarily for low curve decks.”“Artifact tokens,” he continues, “require the preparation of generating them and putting them into your deck, then drawing them, so that naturally led the class to be something that excels at longer games. So in terms of game range, it’s more control oriented and in terms of class theme it’s more centred on doing combos.”Artifacts aren’t the only way to manipulate your deck size, of course, as card draw also serves that purpose. Starforged Legends in particular added in some powerful neutral card draw tools, such as Mystic Ring and Purehearted Singer. I ask whether the team had Portalcraft in mind when designing those cards. “We did have the next set in mind when designing cards for Starforged Legends,” Miyashita-san confirms, “but another reason why we have those cards is because we had a goal of improving the Take Two play environment, to have a neutral draw source.”Those neutral draw sources will be particularly important for Portalcraft in Take Two, as they’re additional ways to manipulate deck size in a format where you can’t necessarily rely on Artifacts in the same way you can in constructed. “We did a lot of testing for Take Two for Portalcraft,” Miyashita-san tells me. “One of the big reasons is because the sheer volume of the card pool is very different compared to other classes, but we had that in mind, and put bronze and silver cards in Portalcraft that you can utilise in Take Two as well, so it’s just a matter of carefully picking the right cards during the selection.”Coming back to Resonance in the Rotation and Unlimited formats, it will also be interesting to play against, as there’s some subtle and not-so-subtle counterplay to the mechanic. At a basic level there’s risk evaluation when a Portalcraft opponent is natively going into or out of Resonance (i.e. what could he or she play and how does Resonance impact those plays?) but also in the design of some of the cards in the set.“If your opponent is using Portalcraft,” says Miyashita-san, “you can try and shut down Resonance by choosing whether or not to destroy certain follows on board, such as Radiant Artifact, which has the Last Words ‘If it’s your turn, put a random Artifact card from your deck into your hand. If it’s your opponent’s turn, draw a card.’ So you have a choice of whether to destroy that or not. Portalcraft, however, is a class that has lots of light costed cards that manipulates the number of [cards in your] decks easily, so reading the Portalcraft opponent’s hand, and playing accordingly, would be the key to success against Portalcraft.”Puppets are a big part of the flavour of Portalcraft – and its leader Yuwan, as the class is all about dimension-hopping, mysterious artifacts and controlling enchanted lifeforms like puppets. (We’ll even get a taste of Yuwan as a character on December 28, as he’ll be added into the single player story at that point.) The puppet side of the class is a little different to Artifacts, however. “’Puppet’ is the name of a follower, and it’s a token follower,” clarifies Miyashita-san, “whereas ‘Artifact’ is a trait in the game, like Officers in Swordcraft. [Puppet] is simply just the name of the card. And there are also cards in Portalcraft that strengthen Puppets specifically.” As you can see below, there are also numerous cards that generate Puppets.

The Puppet-related cards for Portalcraft we've seen so far.

Shadowverse: Chronogenesis Cards 33 IMAGES

Portalcraft is shaping up to be a pretty fascinating class, and in combination with everything else that’s coming to Shadowverse, December 28 onwards should be an incredibly exciting – and chaotic – time to be playing the game. Stay tuned to IGN for more Shadowverse content soon, including features on the new formats, the year that was and on Chronogenesis.

All the collectable Chronogenesis cards revealed to date.

Cam Shea is senior editor in IGN's Sydney office and has somehow become a CCG specialist. He's on Twitter