HEX Update – Spoilers From Cory

Hello HEX People!

Cory here. I haven’t chimed in on a Friday update in quite some time, so I thought I would take this opportunity to spoil a few Primal Dawn cards and chat a bit about what to expect from HEX moving forward. The rest of 2016 is going to be amazing, and that’s coming off a pretty big accomplishment from the beginning of the year… our first large scale ESports event, the HEX Invitational!

So let’s start there. The Invitational was incredible, from both a personal perspective and because of what it meant to HEX as a real ESports contender. Starting with the personal, it was so wonderful to have a chance to hang out with the HEX community. It started days before with players arriving early to attend our weekly game night and continued through the entire event. Walking the ESports Arena floor, playing HEX, and chatting with the community was a dream come true. I had a chance to reconnect with many players I have met before and got to put a face to names I have only seen in the forums. All in all, it was a supremely enjoyable experience.

When I look at the event through the lens of what it meant to HEX the company, I couldn’t be more proud in the level of professionalism and polish we accomplished. It was truly spectacular given the size of our team. What would have required entire large departments at other companies we did with just a handful of people.

I was SUPER happy with the job our streamers did and cannot thank them enough. I also want to say thank you to our first place winner, Travis “Koma” Murray. I had multiple people ask me if I wrote that victory speech for him, and the answer is NO, that came from his heart and was such a great testament to the notion that anyone can play at a “pro” level and have a chance to live the dream of winning a major event.

Now I want to talk a little bit about Primal Dawn, our fourth expansion set. I want to make it clear that a 9 month delay between sets is not acceptable to ANYONE here at HEX. The cadence for set releases should be as close to one every four months as possible. I don’t think we will be on that schedule exactly for the next two sets but I think it will be darn close, and it is a HUGE priority for us.

As a person that’s been in the TCG business a long time, I can tell you delays between set launches is the number one thing that will kill your business, and we are not going to let that happen. I don’t have an update today on the exact release date for Primal Dawn, but its done. We are just ironing out last minute bugs and should be ready soon, we have committed to doing what it takes to release the most polished bug free version of our content updates possible, and setting this standard for ourselves is good exercise as we get bigger and grow as a company.

As promised, here is a spoiler. Behold, digital chicanery!

How cool is that! A card that changes in your hand every turn, so the utility is modified depending on the turn and situation. I really love this concept, it continues to explore the very fertile possibilities of what a digital only TCG can be. This is something you’re going to see more and more as we move forward. The engine for “general” TCG mechanics are in, so it’s fun to push and expand what we can do from the technical side.

And yes, the technical side is great, but we are also pushing the storytelling with Primal Dawn. You may recognize the familiar character on the card I just spoiled, I think its super fun to have champions show up later on cards. And I can tell you that Savvas will have a role to play in the story of Chronicles of Entrath: Chapter 2.

We will continue to spin characters and stories across Champions, Mercenaries, PVP / PVE cards, and dungeon encounters. Our ability weave a meta-narrative across all these vehicles is one of the things that makes HEX so special. We even have more characters from the first HEX novel, The Accidental Knight, showing up in Primal Dawn.

On that note, here are a couple more cards that reference well known HEX characters!

I mentioned Chapter 2 above and I wanted to let you know that we are hard at work on making sure it’s even bigger and better than Chapter 1. Just like the idea that cards can “do more” as we challenge engineering, the Adventure Zones are the same way, expect to see new ways to play as an exciting part of the campaign. Heck, we have already been playing some of the dungeons, as they were relatively easy to get up and running.

As I’ve said before, the beauty of HEX is once the hard part of engineering a system from scratch is done, making new content becomes MUCH easier. And that is important, as our vision for HEX isn’t just about releasing a set every four months, it’s about making sure you have something exciting to look forward to during the 16 weeks between those events. I know that new chapters, tournaments, holidays, and a slew of other stuff is something we can and will do, we want you excited to log in to HEX every week to see what’s new!

It could be as simple as the Convocation packs… speaking of which, this year’s theme is the Pippits partying with Shroomkin. This includes the first named unique Shroomkin… Professor Sporzin!

I want to finish as I always do, thanking the community for the incredible amount of support you give us and the confidence you inspire in our partners. The team here at HEX would not have made it this far without you. We do not take your love of HEX for granted, we work hard every day to deserve the vote of confidence you have given us by sticking with the game.

I think it’s clear HEX has a bright future and we are rapidly approaching the place where we break out and get more and more converts to the game. It’s just a matter of time, and I for one cannot wait for that future…

(Primarily so I have someone to draft with at 3am)

Love, Cory

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