HEX Update – Happy Birthday, HEX

Hi HEXers! This week, we’ll start out with a very special message from Cory to celebrate HEX’s birthday.

Terrific Twos

As hard as it is to believe, it has been 2 years since our super successful Kickstarter! This is the day I consider the official birthday for HEX. Yes, HEX is in its terrible twos, which means less shitting its pants, but way more screaming and angry tantrums!

I am amazed at how it seems like only yesterday, and simultaneously ONE MILLION YEARS AGO the Kickstarter ended! Looking at the difference in the game from June 2013 to now is astounding. The number of features, the overall polish, the new sets of cards, I think we have made tremendous progress.

As hard as it is for me to accept how incredibly off-target I was for the development challenges the game would face, and surprised by how much work REALLY stood before us as we celebrated this day two years ago, I am incredibly proud not only of the HEX team for busting ass every single day to make HEX great, but also of this community for understanding the challenges we faced and sticking with us, even when it became clear it was going to take WAY longer than we anticipated. I hope the game we have been delivering piece by piece is living up to the dream we all shared two years ago. I think everyone will really like the new features coming with set 3, including some great little additions like extended art.

I am officially amending my obligatory (but very heartfelt) thanks to our Kickstarter backers to include the MANY, MANY new HEX players that have transformed us from a small community to one that is growing by leaps and bounds every day. A community that even with the additions of thousands of new players remains amazingly positive and supportive, a community that believes in the hard work of what we are trying to accomplish, but also in having fun while we do it.

Thank you for supporting HEX! Without each and every one of you, this game wouldn’t exist. Everyone on the HEX team deeply understands the commitment our players have made to HEX and work very hard to make it the best game and community it can possibly be.

I made a little birthday celebration comic with Robb Mommaerts and Peter Pantazis. It tells the story of the Piñatoos… a grand tale of BIRTH, POWER, and the STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM in a world torn apart by magic and war. A story told in increasingly exciting chapters, one tale every year for the next TEN YEARS! Yes, I made up a story about piñata people that will take a decade to tell! I figure that even my poor forecasting skills will be safe in this scenario…

The comic is the theme for the 2nd Birthday sleeve. Each player will receive this commemorative sleeve as long as they had an active account before June 5th.

I’ve said it a million times about HEX, it’s the seed that becomes the mighty oak, the tortoise that wins the race. I believe with all my heart that it is a stone cold lock for the future of digital trading card games, and nothing it going to stop us from achieving that dream.

Love, Cory

New Starter Decks

In Armies of Myth, we flip the highlighted four major races of Entrath. Armies features more necrotic, vennen, elf, and coyotle troops in this upcoming set. To introduce players to each race, we’re adding four new Starter Decks to the game. These decks are designed to complete the cycle of eight, plus give new players a feel for how those individual races play out.

Elves showcase the their love for using resource ramping to play big beaters early and often. Anything with a cost of 5 or greater gets a big boost from these wild troops. Coyotles boast exclusive access to latest keyword: Prophecy. These nomads have a much different understanding of time than all others on Entrath, and they use it to their advantage. Coyotles can see into the future and their predictions come true.

Vennen have taken spiders and made them weapons against the opposing deck. They sabotage your opponent’s deck, turning something that’s usually a source of success in amazing topdecks and weaves in eggs. Draw one and pop—out jumps a spider, either the 1/1 type or the giant 5/5 type that kills a troop when it comes into play. Necrotic have the lock on the other keyword for the set: Shift. Remember, necrotic are not zombies! They’re highly intelligent and operate as a hive mind. Through that shared consciousness, necrotic use Shift to transfer their powers from one troop to another.

For a sneak peek into the new starter decks, you can see the coyotle deck below:

We’ve also improved the tutorial and starter trials in this upcoming patch. The tutorial now takes about one-third the time it used to, and it’s far more exciting. You get to attack with Rampaging Tarasque!

The starter trials are now more focused on teaching a specific TCG skill in each battle along with rewarding players as they become familiar with their deck. New players have so much to process as they learn the game and become familiar with their chosen deck; we adjusted the opposing decks to start out simply and scale up in complexity as the player progresses through the starter trials. It just makes sense!

New Champions

Armies of Myth also introduces 20 new champions for you to use! These are available to all players when building a 60-card Constructed deck in addition to champions from Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny. Players will use these champions and only these champions in Armies of Myth draft. You’ll see some familiar effects packaged a little differently, and you’ll see plenty of support for new draft archetypes.

(Associated Cards: Phantom, Spiderling Egg, Spiderling, Zombie, Oracle Song, Gigantisaur, Scorch)

Spoiler Alert

There are some Armies of Myth spoilers out there in the wild, and we’ve rounded some of them up for you to see.

Devouring Doomspore at FiveShards

Titania’s Majesty on Reddit

Zakiir’s Whim on the Gameforge site

All in the Family on Deckbuilding with Da Squire

If you want to see all the spoilers, the HEX reddit page has done an incredible job. Head on over and check them all out!

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.

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