Friday Update – A Frond Welcome

Welcome to a round up of the week. We have Kismet Draft Announcements, a new Collector’s Deck, and more:

Blightbark Collector’s Deck Available Now

We are excited to introduce The Blightbark Collector’s Deck to the in-game store! Available now, this deck will let you reap a harvest of pain for your opponents:

This deck comes with two unique Alternate Arts, an animated sleeve, and a brand new AAA (Animated Alternate Art) card! Grow as a player and root for the Blightbarks with this carefully cultivated deck:

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The Blightbark Collector’s Deck is available in-store for 2,000 platinum. Pick up your copy today!

A full decklist can be found here:

The current Kismet’s Draft will be returning to the vault on February 13th at 10am PT. We will be going back to the 887 format so that players can continue to collect their meta-relevant cards before next release. However, there’s a twist! Because we’ve heard from so many players who haven’t finished their collection of sleeves from our first Kismet’s Draft, these sleeves will be available for the duration of the remaining 887 format. After the format ends, however, this cycle of sleeves will never be available again:

As before, you will unlock a sleeve for every three match wins you earn (3rd/6th/9th/12th/15th and 18th matches won). At these milestones, players will randomly receive one of these six, beautifully animated sleeves. Grab them before they go away for good!

Finally, please note that we will be closing out any outstanding Kismet Pools when we return back to the 887 format on February 13th. As we are giving ample advanced notice, we will not be compensating for unfinished drafts this time around. Please plan accordingly.

Haraza Change

Hey guys! Ryan Sutherland here for a quick Champion Update.

Last month in our Dead of Winter Champion Update we made a change to Haraza’s Burning Banner by removing the attack bonus that it gave.

Our fear was that it, in conjunction with Ruby’s charge generation, would lead to aggressive decks that won out of nowhere and unfairly punished decks that couldn’t build an early board presence. Since that time, we’ve been following the impact of the Haraza change both on the ladder as well as in tournament play. One of the impacts of this change (as well as the change to Adoni-Zeddek) has been the development of a very welcome diversity in the format. We’ve seen a wide variety of new decks fill the void that was once filled by only a few.

However, while we are seeing a lot of deck diversity in the format, many of those decks are focused on control or midrange strategies. It’s important for HEX to have the proper mix of control, midrange, and aggressive decks to keep the game in a healthy state. While some aggressive decks have seen success, overall there has been a large drop in aggressive strategies. If you look at the change made to Adoni-Zeddek, it was more successful because, while there was an overall hit to one champion, the change allowed several other champions to prosper within the same strategic space. For aggressive decks, instead of getting a bunch of new aggressive builds as we hoped, we saw a decline in the entire strategy, which was not our intention.

Therefore, this coming Monday, we will be reverting Haraza to her previous state.

Ryan Sutherland-

Arrr you ready for the Platinum Plunder? Ye better be, because it’s almost here! This February 10th and 11th, channel your inner swashbuckler and pillage the platinum from our purses during this special event.

Remember, anyone can enter. The Platinum Plunder has no entry fee. All you need to do is show up on February 10th with your best constructed deck and prepare to send your opponents to the Kraken’s depths.

The Platinum Plunder is broken up into two Stages which take place over the weekend. The tournament will be held in-client under the “Special” tab of the Battlegrounds.

Stage 1:

Starting at 9:00am PT we will have a Constructed Swiss tournament (with best 2-out-of-3 matches). The top 8 players from this Stage will move on to Stage 2.

Stage 2:

Starting at 9:00am PT we will have a Single-Elimination Constructed tournament (with best 2-out-of-3 matches) for the top 8 players from Day 1. Players will then get prizes based on their standing at the conclusion of the tournament.

Prizes:

1st Place: 200,000 Platinum

2nd Place: 100,000 Platinum

3rd-4th Place: 50,000 Platinum

5th-8th Place: 25,000 Platinum

9th Place: The “Salty” sleeve

Top 64 Places: 1x Evolving Gauntlet tournament ticket

Top 256 Places: 1x Buccaneer AA

If you have a taste for adventure and the high-seas, be sure to join us for this latest chance at the pirate’s mighty treasure!

Speaking of high-adventure, this season’s Cosmic Crown Showdown will take place on March 10th and 11th. On those days, our top 64 players from each ladder will get to compete for their share of $5,000! Save the date, climb today, and secure your spot at the table and in the stars.

The HEX Bash and HEX Clash are back once more! Saturday and Sunday, starting at 8am PT (Timezone Conversion), you have another chance to prove your mettle and walk away with cash and exclusive prizes! Will you end up a proud owner of these fine cosmetics like last week’s Bash or Clash winners?

Join us this weekend and find out!

For full details on prizing, please check out our tournament pages here and here.

New Bash/Clash Rotation

As a reminder, starting this weekend the Bash and Clash events will rotate between Saturday and Sunday instead of being fixed. This means that February 3rd will be a Clash and February 4th will be a Bash instead of the fixed schedule we have had until this date. The following weekend the events will be reversed (Bash on Saturday and Clash on Sunday), and they will continue alternating in this way. We hope this new schedule will give you all greater flexibility when it comes to attending these exciting events.

Plunder Dome

Please note that there will be no HEX Bash on February 10th while the Platinum Plunder is running. The HEX Clash on February 11th will run as normal.

See you in the Battlegrounds~

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