Tournaments and Reserves are Here

Hello everyone! Shaggy here and I am super excited to talk about Hex’s newest feature. For those of you that missed last week’s Kickstarter update, this patch features tournament functionality. I know the word ‘tournament’ can be intimidating to new players. But, don’t view tournaments as only a competitive feature. Tournaments can be a fun and efficient way to quickly test deck ideas against multiple players; you may even face an opponent with a similar deck and share your ideas. It’s a great way to make new friends and win some prizes at the same time.

As you can see, our landing page has received a very nice visual update. We truly have amazing artists. By clicking the play button on the newly designed drop menu, you will be able to choose between two options. You can choose Proving Grounds which allows you to play games by challenging players from the lobby or testing the strength of your deck against the AI. The new option, Tournaments, will take you to our tournament lobby, giving you access to the available tournament queues. Currently, only the 8-player constructed queue will be available for testing at this time.

After you have chosen to enter a tournament, you will be prompted to select your deck just like when you play a normal game. You will then be taken to the waiting room where you can see all the players currently in your queue. After that, you’re free to sit back and relax while the client finds more eager players to join. If something comes up in the meantime, don’t worry, you can drop without effecting the other players.

Once your tournament has been filled with players, your group will be taken to the Tournament Lobby where you will see the participating player’s name and record. You will also be able to see the match list on the right which will list pairings for the round. After a short countdown, you will be sent into the game to battle your opponent. Remember, every tournament during this testing phase is single elimination, so if you lose your first match feel free to enter another tournament and try again!

Another exciting feature I am eager to talk about is Reserves. Reserves are a pool of 15 cards tied to your main deck that you can create using the card manager! Currently you may only use Reserves during Tournaments and only during the second and third game of your ‘best of three’ series. Before the start of your second game, the Reserves screen will open allowing players to customize their deck by adding or removing cards. For example, you can choose to add a card like Nature Reigns to your deck, which wouldn’t be very good against a deck full of Orcs, but would come in handy versus Dwarves and their pesky artifacts. When you are in the card manager before entering the tournament, you will notice a Reserves button by your deck name. Clicking this button will toggle between your main deck and your Reserves pool. Once your Reserves are toggled on, you’re free to add any card from your collection of cards to your Reserves pool. In Limited tournaments like Booster Draft, any cards not in your deck are placed in the Reserves for you to use. Don’t forget your Reserves are considered part of your deck and because of this your Constructed deck may not include more than four copies of any card or gems between your main deck and Reserve pool.

Build your best deck, strengthen it with Reserves, and get ready for endless battles in the 8-player Constructed queue! We are very thrilled to get this feature in everyone’s hands, it means a lot to all of us here at Cryptozoic to see everyone enjoying our game. This is your game, so please give us some feedback so we can continue to make the game you want to play. Thank you.

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