Shattered Destiny – Shards and Sockets

Hey there my little Hexie-wexies,

Ben Stoll here, Head TCG Designer of Hex PvP and lead designer of Set 2, and I want to give you a little taste of what we have in store for you with Hex’s second full set of cards, Shattered Destiny.

Shattered Destiny picks up where Shards of Fate left off. You’ll see the races of Entrath exploring cool new design space, some new keywords, and of course a second set layered in with the first to deepen your booster draft experience!

In Shattered Destiny the Underworld reveal a brand new sneaky tactic, which they use to ambush their foes from underground: Tunneling! Tunneling is one of the flagship features of the set, and Head Developer Dan Clark goes over it in great detail in his article here.

But what else do we have for ya in set 2? Plenty!

In Hex set 1 you saw the advent of the gem socketing mechanic, where any given troop has the option to be socketed with 10 or 20 different gems. But what if you could socket troops with two gems?! The combinations just got a lot closer to endless. Ever wondered how satisfying it would be to be able to socket, say, the Ruby Orb of Ferocity on the same troop that you socketed with the Prime Wild orb of Dominance? Being able to socket your troops with two gems means the gems not only have context with the troops’ powers, but also with EACHOTHER.

The Rootfather is the biggest, baddest, socketed troop we’ve printed yet. As you may realize, this troop can gain terrifying amounts of health, deal terrifying amounts of damage, bury terrifying amounts of cards…you get the idea.

Maybe you want to combine the Prime Ruby of Destruction with the Diamond of Life? Or maybe you’d like to just slap a Wild Orb of Primordium and Prime Sapphire of Subterfuge on this monstrosity, potentially burying…40 cards?! The “rounded up” part of the Rootfather makes the +1 ATK / +1DEF gem subtly a lot more effective.

As you can see, socketing really jumps to a new level with the new double socketable troops.

But Ben (you may find yourself asking), how am I ever going to get all my thresholds to activate all of those gems???

(Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article had these shards at common. They are uncommon and now correctly displayed)

I’m glad you asked! Behold! Mixed threshold, non-standard resources! All ten combinations are represented in Shattered Destiny.

The flexibility these resources lend to deckbuilding is no joke. Multi-shard decks got a lot smoother in internal playtesting once we added these things to the mix. And although you have to wait a turn to access your resource point, you get your threshold right away, meaning if you’re desperate for the right threshold, drawing one of these can more reliably free you up right away then if your deck were filled with just standard resources. And note that unlike the set 1 namesake resource, Shards of Fate, you’ll still get your charge! A pretty important feature, given that we’ve taken what it means to gain a charge to whole new places…

Of course, the Eternal Drifter will also have 5 new champions to be pulling from when looking for his power. Not only is it sweet to have a giant artifact troop that’s charging up just like your champion, but because the Drifter ignores threshold requirements, you’ll get to access different champion powers in the most unlikely of decks! The Drifter charges in ANY ZONE (except in your graveyard), building up even if you haven’t drawn him (Her? It? The Constructs are a race still very much shrouded in mystery, though they’re clearly extremely powerful beings. I mean, I wouldn’t exactly want to get in a bar fight with an Eternal Drifter and an Eternal Guardian …). It’s really fun to rack up a bunch of charges and be on the edge of your seat, waiting to see what the Drifter has in store for you, since you won’t know until you draw it.

The Talisman not only rewards you for using your charge power and accumulating charges, but it provides some extra charges as well. Of course, there are a lot of other cards that reward you for gaining charges, and a few other pretty cool ways to gain charges in set 2, but Brinkman will only let me spoil so much 😉

That’s a taste of some of the major highlights from set 2, but I’ll close out with some other hints at some fun individual cards. Each of the following lines is a tiny fragment of an actual text box in the set:

“If the top card of your deck is a Dinosaur…”

“…Target King, Prince, or Princess…”

“…Each champion’s resources become…”

“…She also becomes inspired.”

“…orcs in all zones…”

“…five random cards in your deck…”

“…for each troop in your graveyard with Darkspire in its name.”

in its name.” “…unless, of course, this is the Unlucky one…”

And that’s all I have for you today. Time for me to go home and pack for Gen Con! I am so excited to see all of you there and for players to get their chance to play with set 2 for the first time! Thanks for reading, Hexers!

-Ben

Discuss this article in our forums!