HEX Update – Freshen Up

Hi HEXers! It’s Friday and though this is a light update, remember that we have VIP coming up in one week and Convocation Weekend happening in two.

Refresher Course

With this upcoming Armies of Myth release, the draft and limited format supported by the game will change to all Armies of Myth packs. Players familiar with Trading Card Games likely expected this, but if this is your first run of TCGs, we wanted to formally announce this and talk a little bit about how the game’s releases are structured. So, let’s start off by outlining why we release new sets.

Why We Do It

The primary goal of introducing new sets is just like any other game—story progress, show you new things, keep the game fresh, shake things up a bit. Clearly, if you wanted the same game from now until the end of time, you’d play chess (not that there’s anything wrong with chess). TCGs are engaging in that the game is always changing and challenging your creativity. There’s this overall mastery of the game that you’re attempting to achieve, but we’re also creating these pockets of new, specific challenges for you to adapt to as you walk that path. Introducing new sets provides those challenges and prevents the game from getting stale. Players drafted Shards of Fate alone for several months until Shattered Destiny came in and threw a new wrinkle into limited strategies. New decks like were discovered by players. Some cards like Honeycap were less potent due to having two fewer Shards of Fate packs to open and therefore far fewer Honeycaps to inspire players to play mono-Wild. In the case of Darkspire Priestess, it became more potent in games as it found a home with its fellow faithful. Players have been in the Shards of Fate, Shattered Destiny format for a while. It’s time to update the game with another set: Armies of Myth. The old draft archetypes will make way for fresh strategies for you to learn and adapt as the format is completely made new.

Chapters

Sets are individual releases, but some sets are clearly connected to other sets. We organize groups of sets that are linked into chapters, with Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny comprising chapter 1. From an R&D position, Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny were designed to complement one another in limited formats. They both highlight the same four races—humans, orcs, shin’hare, and dwarves. The cards from Shattered Destiny introduce new themes like the focus on charging the champion, as well as new twists on existing themes. For example, the human troops in Shattered Destiny opened up more dual-shard and tri-shard inspire strategies that players explored in Shards of Fate.

With Armies of Myth, this set is designed to be drafted for best results alone or with its future chapter 2 complement, Set 4. In this chapter, the focus is on four new races: elves, coyotle, necrotic, and vennen. Armies of Myth still has plenty of troops from the other four races, but you’ll see way more coyotle than orcs now. There are new keywords like prophecy exploring the digital space. It’s a fresh experience while still being HEX.

Armies of Myth in Limited

We’ve read some player suggestions that players should still be able to draft the Destiny, Destiny, Shards format. We’re moving on to Armies to refresh that format and make the queue times both manageable and attractive to players. What about mixing the packs? Armies of Myth works best as a standalone right now, just like Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny worked best when together. There are certain strategies that ask for a minimum critical mass of cards for synergistic purposes, like shift, and it would be difficult to obtain enough of those cards if the packs were mixed.

For Gauntlet, the format is Armies of Myth for many of the same reasons above. The sealed deck format will be Armies of Myth, so those are the cards you will use in gauntlet and those are also the packs you will win as prizes. In addition to all the other reasons we’ve listed in this piece, we want booster draft and sealed deck to be connected, to have players in general all “speaking the same language” when they’re playing those formats. We want players to be in the same headspace focusing on specific formats and working on mastering that.

What about my Shards of Fate cards?

When you enter a booster draft, your 700 platnium will get you three Armies of Myth packs and entrance into the tournament. Sealed Gauntlet is also all Armies of Myth. All prizes in tournaments are paid out in Armies of Myth packs.

However, your chapter 1 cards are still useful and desirable. Though limited formats are changing, all other formats are simply adding Armies of Myth to the mix. Your constructed PVE and PVP decks will still use Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny cards with Armies; staples like Cerulean Mirror Knight and Burn aren’t going anywhere as far as relevancy. In fact, the latter is the subject of a common joke between Ben Stoll and I.

Me: Hey Ben, I have an idea for a card.

Ben: Ok?

Me: One Ruby—deal three damage.

Ben: Uhh…

Me: I have another after that. One ruby—deal four damage.

Ben: ….

Me: FIVE DAMAGE!!!!!

Ben usually ignores me at that point, and some part of me feels that I’ve just made him happier in the sense that it’s clear not just anyone can be a TCG designer. In most typical RPG/MMO games, the 60 int helm is the best in the game until the game introduces a 70 int helm. In other card games, that would also be true from the joke example above. HEX is a true TCG and we are deeper than those other games. You won’t see common Murder and then a legendary Double Murder at the same resource and threshold cost in the next set that kills two troops. In HEX, each card is more like a new class ability, and we’re adding more ways in which you can gear out your character, customize your deck and strategies with each set. Our R&D team spent a lot of time making sure that chapter 1 introduced many TCG deckbuilding staples across all rarities from your common wild troop buff to your sinister legendary blood flyer. You’ll still need those in PVE and PVP Constructed.

So, as you obtain new cards from Armies of Myth, you’ll still want to get or keep cards from chapter 1 as you add Armies of Myth cards to your existing decks or you find new uses for chapter 1 cards that work well with the new cards. Plus, with PVE campaign coming up along with any other wild format we cook up, you’ll want the widest pool possible as you’re faced with even more challenges. There’s also more to the packs than just cards; remember that you’ll want the items from wheels of fate and chest opening, with chests coming from packs.

Wrap Up

So, now you know why limited formats are changing and reason behind the changes. Though booster draft and sealed deck are moving to Armies of Myth only, you’ll still want all of your existing cards for Constructed play. If you have any questions, please ask them in the forum thread linked at the bottom and we’ll try our best to answer them. Thanks!

Someone Did Think of the Children

Now, a message from Cory on the success of the community-run Extra Life charity stream.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in the Charity Stream for Extra Life. Moreover, I wanted to give a specific callout to infam0usne0 and Cirouss for coordinating and pushing this event through! We were able to get over $27,000 in donations for a great cause #ForTheKids! This is an amazing achievement for the HEX community and our streamers. Over 11k people tuned into the 4-day stream that our phenomenal streamers put on for everyone. There were dev interviews, games, and tons of giveaways. The entire team at HEX are very humbled by the generosity and support our community has shown for not only the development of HEX but these charitable events.

Even though the stream has ended, we invite you to continue donating. Anything you can donate is extremely helpful. The Charity Raffle is still continuing till August 15th. Invite your friends and family to donate for a good cause! You can read more here.

Once again, thank you to everyone, our community, our streamers, and anyone who helped to donate for a good cause.

Grasp that Cup

What are you doing this weekend? Playing in the Ruby Cup, of course! This free event has prizes to the top 32 finishers, plus Primal Pack door prizes! If you aren’t able to play in the tournament, check the FiveShards Twitch stream to check in on your friends’ performance and catch a feature match.

VIP

In case you didn’t catch the announcement, we were able to rework the VIP program and it’s returning with a few changes. The program is $8 a month for a pack per week and allows you access to the VIP tournaments that have exclusive alternate art prizes.

Plus, you get all your tickets upon becoming VIP so you can choose when you play. So, if you were a player who wanted access to the VIP events, the Armies of Myth patch will be your chance to join in!

Patch Announcement on Monday

Speaking of the Armies of Myth patch, check back here at HEXTCG.com on Monday for an update. If you would like an explanation of the memory leak bug you players helped us track down, you can read Chris Woods’s write-up.

That’s all for this week. Please leave any questions or comments in the forums, and don’t forget to Follow us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitch, and register on our forums.

Discuss this article in our forums!