Exclusives, Treasure, and Mercenaries

By Cory Jones

Hello! Cory here…

So, we announced some Gen Con exclusives, and as I expected, the community had a mixed reaction. Some people loved it, some didn’t mind, and others felt pretty strongly it was the worst idea ever. In the end, I felt like the spirit of what I want to do, which is make the live HEX events more fun and exciting, is worth the risk of doing exclusives.

To be clear, I don’t think any choice we have made so far in the creation of this game will please everyone. Not a single choice (seriously, not even ONE!). But in the end, I have to stay true to our vision while still weighing feedback from the community. So, when it comes to tough decisions like this, I attempt to argue both sides of the position, and often this will provide insight into a solution that perhaps meets many (if not all) of the needs of our fans.

What we’re doing is this: the sleeves are given out only if you attend the event, like a collectible convention badge (sleeves are going to be EARNED). The mercenaries and alternate art cards will be included in the booster pack treasure chests generated during the hours of the event (in the case of Gen Con 2014, it would be 12 AM Thursday to 11:59 PM Sunday, across all four days of the convention).

Now, I know this creates a bit of a problem for Gen Con 2013 since you won’t be able to open booster packs during this time. So, in this case, we will add GenCon 2013 to the loot table of GenCon 2014.

Treasure Chests

Let’s talk a little bit about treasure chests.

Each pack of cards comes with a treasure chest. The chests range in rarity (common, uncommon, rare, legendary, and primal). Common and uncommon chests drop one item, rare and legendary chests drop two items, and primal chests drop three items! Each chest will have a loot table determined by the set it came from, so a treasure chest from set one will always drop loot from the set one loot table and the treasure chest will be marked as such.

There are also Special Events, which include holidays and conventions like Gen Con 2014. If the chest is generated (meaning you opened the pack during the event), it will have a stamp that lets you know it has a modified loot table to include the special event items.

Did we give a list of the kind of stuff that would come from treasure chests? Well, here it is again. Now, this is just the first list, and I reserve the right to come up with more awesome stuff and shove them into the treasure chests…

Mercenaries

Equipment

Alternate Art Cards

Gold

Crafting Materials

PVP Cards

Pack of Cards!

Sleeves

And more…

To be clear, some things, like a specific sleeve design, will be exclusive to treasure chests. Ultimately, I want the experience of opening a pack of cards to be this amazing thing; I want you to feel same excitement I feel when I tear into a new pack of cards and the treasure chests are a big part of that.

Mercenaries

Let me start of by saying, it will be impossible to collect every single Mercenary. Seriously, you can’t.

We are going to do a bunch of Mercenaries. They are great characters to build around and should be considered fun, not competitive. The design goal when we make mercenaries is “wacky fun.”

So, in that spirit, I want to say that unlike cards (where there will be no modifying, only banning in tournament formats), mercenaries will be fixed if they are damaging the game experience. They represent a design challenge that is far greater in terms of balance than a single card, and we will not allow our attempt at “fun” to trivialize the PVE content.

I hope everyone can get on board with this concept, because let me tell you, the mercenaries are sooooo fun! Here is a great example, one of the GenCon 2013 mercenaries:

Yes, maybe you caught that I said ONE of; we actually have TWO available and will be showing the other off soon with a Gen Con announcement. But I really wanted to show you GAX early, and so I did!

That’s it for now. Thank you again for being an amazing community! Our message boards continue to blow my mind with so many great ideas.

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