The Drops of Winter

Hey all! Corey Burkhart here, back once more for another spoiler from Dead of Winter! This time, I’m lucky enough to bring you not one, but two cycles of cards! Without further ado, let’s drop right in!

We talk a lot about resource design and development here at HEX. Resources are the foundation of the game; without them you cannot play your cards, use your champion charge powers, or gain thresholds very effectively. Resources are essential to building decks—you might say they are the very backbone of a successful brew—which is why I am excited to share a new cycle of resources for all you deckbuilders out there.

Some resources we bring to you are all about the thresholds they provide. Take the Wells for example:

These resources fundamentally just bring you a choice between what threshold you want. However, they’re instrumental in being able to build multi-shard decks in HEX. The resources I have for you today are of a different breed. These resources are ones that come with a special action cycle attached:

We call this cycle of resources “the drops” because they each make a 1 cost action with “drop” in their name. Before we dive into each of those actions, let’s look at the resources a little more closely.

These resources are not depleted. They each give you a resource point to use the turn when you play them. This is important to ensure players can play troops and develop the warzone. Second, you’ll notice that they provide you with a threshold, which makes them very similar to their standard resource counterparts. The drawback (which there needs to be) is that they don’t provide you with a charge. Therefore, compared to a Standard resource, we’re trading a charge for these “drop” cards. What exactly do these actions do? Let’s drop some knowledge on you:

Each of these drops is incredibly powerful in their own way, so let’s break them down individually.

Drop of Ichor will thrive in Blightbark Deathcry decks. Spending one resource to get a Zombie Deathcry trigger is actually quite exciting when you can combine it with things like Lady Violet Blightbark, Necronettle, or Isabella the Cursed among others. Getting a Zombie when your troop is destroyed by your opponent’s effects also happens to be quite potent, giving you something to rebuild from. Also, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed there’s a theme going on with the Blightbark team where they care about the undead, so keep your eyes peeled for more cards like that!

Drop of Wax is perfect for the Illuminate decks. Plain and simple, Illuminate 1 for a single resource is awesome. What more could you be looking for in these style of Candlekin strategies? This card is going to be extremely potent for decks looking to go wide and then hard in on Candlekin. Worse comes to worst, you’re playing a Diamond Shard that gives you a 1/1 elemental instead of a charge. That’s a deal I’m strongly into.

Drop of Feralfuel is perhaps the most powerful of these resources. Giving any Gladiator an additional Gladiator 2 is terrifying. This allows some troops to attack for as much six damage on turn two! This card is all about being aggressive on its surface, but given the nature of Gladiator, it also means your troops are beast on defense as well. If your troops are being outsized, you can suit up one of your Gladiators with an additional two points of defense and hold the fort while you plan your counterattack.

Drop of Chaos is exactly what chaostouched bury decks needed—additional cheap ways to bury cards from their opponent’s deck. This card combines exceptionally well with cards like Fever Bloom and Cult of the Nameless City which provide even more benefit from burying cards off your opponent’s deck. In addition, Sapphire (and Ruby) are shards which care about playing actions. Therefore, these two drops are even more likely to be potent additions to their shards even if your deck’s strategy isn’t focused around the mechanic of their specific team!

Lastly, Drop of Whimsy is all about that party time! Drop of Whimsy will pull a Holiday’s Whim on one of your troops, with the additional restriction that it stays in the same shards. This can prove extremely potent as there are some valuable combos for transforming things in Merry Caravan decks. In addition, Drop of Whimsy is great to use on your troops that have powerful Deploy powers but with low utility in play. Upgrading them into something more exciting can be an incredibly interesting strategy!

These new resources are going to change the face of deckbuilding. By encouraging you to try out different strategies, they’ll challenge you in ways that you haven’t been challenged before with our resource system. I, for one, am excited to see what that leads too! I’m a huge fan of these resources, and it’s a privilege to be able to show them off to you here today. Be sure to stay tuned to Hextcg.com for more Dead of Winter spoilers as we march closer to release day. You never know what you might see next!

~HEXPureforce | Corey Burkhart

Got any questions? Want to chat with other players? Then discuss this article in our Forums! You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, our YouTube channel, or enjoy regular streams on our official Twitch channel.