Anyone who’s looked at Hex’s Kickstarter page and read up on the wild plans this game has in store for the future has no doubt had their minds blown at the level of innovation Hex: Shards of Fate is planning to bring to what was until very recently a stale genre. Leveling, socketing, and equipping cards? Raid Bosses you can tackle with two other friends? Rare mercenaries you earn through dropped loot and use as your champion?

The list goes on, but let’s put those amazing upcoming features aside for a second and focus on a part of Hex that’s received excessive criticism from those on the outside looking in: the actual gameplay portion of the PvP that’s already in the game right now. Whether it be Magic: The Gathering trying to shut the game down or uninformed gaming fans quick to label this a shameless ripoff – the hate is real, but is it at all valid? Take a look at all the actual innovations buried within the core TCG battle experience and decide for yourself whether Hex: Shards of Fate should be considered a clone or successor to Magic: The Gathering.

Improved Color Screw

In a TCG, planning out your deck and building your resource base to support your strategy is one of the fundamental pieces of the genre. On the surface, the shard resource system in Hex looks similar to that of Magic: The Gathering. You have 5 shard types (Sapphire, Diamond, Wild, Ruby, Blood) whereas MTG has 5 land types (Island, Plains, Forest, Mountain, Swamp) – but the similarities end there. Hex has developed an improved threshold system that facilitates the way multi colored decks can be played.

In Hex TCG, any colored Shard you play brings with it 1 threshold in that same color that stays with you until the end of the game. That is enough to meet the color requirements to cast any card that only requires 1 threshold of that type. Consider the case below, you have been stuck on 3 Islands the whole game and finally draw your Mountain that you need to cast red spells.

In Magic you would unfortunately only be able to tap the Mountain land once and play just one of your 4 Shock spells that turn.

In Hex, what seems like an identical situation is actually very different. You also have 4 total resources as 3 of them being blue resources and 1 of them being a red resource, but in Hex you would be able to play all 4 of your Burn cards on the same turn.

This subtle yet significant difference makes not only playing multicolored decks easier and more fun, but it allows you to make legitimate comebacks in games where you might have been color screwed early on.

Improved Color Fixing

Not only is playing multi-colored decks easier, but the threshold system also makes color fixing cards much more flexible. In Hex, because the resource cost and threshold requirement components are separated, the designers can much more freely handout threshold gain abilities to just about any card. Here is an apt comparison of some of the color fixing that each game provides.

Again, to the untrained eye these might seem like near duplicate cards but they function much differently. The Druid of the Anima MTG card, despite being a green creature, is a measly 1/1 and on top of that can only provide the color fixing on the turn after it comes into play. It also provides an extra source of mana but if you’re simply looking for color fixing, that might not be relevant. The Royal Herald Hex card, on the other hand, is giving you that threshold immediately and perhaps even more importantly, it gives it for the rest of the game. You don’t need to worry about the troop dieing because it has already served its color-fixing purpose. It perhaps can’t generate an extra resource like The Druid of the Anima can but that’s a design choice that Hex can elect to use in order to make more powerful color fixing cards and still keep them balanced. Below you can find an example of such a card that not only fixes you for any color in your deck but has a powerful ability and decent body to boot.

In fact, you can play multi-colored decks playing only resources from one color – which is a bit crazy when you think about it. The threshold system being separated from resources also allows for different costing of cards, like this 1 resource card for example that requires multiple threshold.

Mind Games

This gives Hex an extra dimension with which to cost cards and opens up a whole bunch of possibilities in an elegant and clear fashion. Whether you like these changes or not, it’s clear Hex: Shards of Fate has added value to the genre by making these innovative changes to what was already a very solidly-designed resource system in MTG.

Let’s get to something that could be slightly more interesting to the casual outside looking in: mind games. TCGs are very much about trying to guess and anticipate which cards your opponent might be holding and what else might be coming off the top of their deck. In Hex, thanks to the digital nature of the game, the mind games go one step further.

Tunneling troops are cards buried underground and only come to the surface after a certain amount of turns. While this mechanic sheds some resemblance to the Morph/Suspend ability in MTG, the functionality works very differently. First of all, Tunneled troops can actually have triggered abilities as opposed to MTG’s Morphed creatures that only do something when the player in possession turns them over – an activated ability. MTG Suspend cards on the other hand only have visible and predictable abilities that usually happen at the start of turns. The triggered abilities on Tunneled cards remain mysterious and force the opposing player to immediately consider what they could be, because one wrong move on their part could result in a huge swing of the game:

Depending on what type of deck your opponent is playing and how many Tier 1 valid Tunneling troops there are in those colors/deck, you might in the end be able to take a good guess as to what exactly is buried in your opponent’s side of the board. However, the mind games don’t stop there in Hex. Usually in TCGs, everything is out in the open and everyone knows what they and their opponent knows or doesn’t know. There is no sense of doubt as to what information is missing and this allows for making mathematically induced ‘best plays’. The two cards below in Hex are a good example that in this game, all information might not be equal:

Permanence

Cards like the above keep players on their toes and sport a healthy dose of paranoia because that combat trick or devious play you might have planned to swing things in your favor might already be known by your opponent. These type of cards ensure once again an extra layer of strategy and thought process when playing, and for a game that’s all about trying to create a cerebral edge, the extra depth seems like a positive evolution.

For one reason or another, cards in MTG instantly forget any history they had when they transition from one zone to another (hand, deck, graveyard, play, exile). So a buffed creature will immediately revert back to it’s original state if it dies or returns to hand or is temporarily exiled and comes back. It probably has to do with the difficulty associated with tracking counters between zones that a physical TCG simply can’t deal with. Regardless of the reason, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and takes away from the immersion of an ongoing battle of attrition that should make players’ actions have lasting consequences .

Thankfully Hex has come in and put a permanent end to this nonsense as everything you do is remembered for your convenience, without having to rely on counters or tokens or any such archaic tools. You can put cards in an opponent’s deck, you can take cards from your opponent’s deck, you can put cards in your own deck with special buffs attached, you can summon troops from the graveyard with their buffs still intact, and you can even transform cards into something entirely different, whether good or bad.

The above cards are just a glimpse into the innovation trove that Hex can tap into. These are all fun cards that make a welcomed addition to the genre and can only be created with a digital TCG such as Hex.

The permanent ability in cards can even go one step further and actually have lasting implications beyond the game as the PvE card Spectral Lotus below demonstrates.

Personalization/Customization

Now before you go and cry foul at its resemblance to Black Lotus from MTG, please understand this is clearly a homage to the founders of the genre. What’s interesting about the card is that once used, it gets permanently destroyed and transforms into a 3/1 artifact troop. This is just a fun little PvE card that’s not allowed in PvP constructed tournaments, so worry not about its seemingly over the top power level.

Some of the most popular games in the world, whether it be League of Legends, Puzzle and Dragons or DotA, include Champions/Heroes that can alter your core gaming experience and lead you to build strategies around them. Hex has taken this leap and has a robust Champion system that severely impacts the flow of games – without changing things too drastically like MTGO’s Vanguard mode. Whether you wish to employ a Champion that helps you kill small troops or one that takes more time to build (through charges granted everytime you play a Shard) and allows you to summon a huge troop – Hex allows for personalization in your strategies beyond just deck building.

Now take Lionel Flynn here whose ability becomes available for 5 charges (so usually on turn 5 after playing 5 shards) as long as you have a Ruby threshold. His ability is to permanently give a troop +3/0. This is quite strong in certain decks and would be a fine choice if you have some evasive troop at your disposal. There’s another champion available in Ruby which grants a 3/1 troop with Speed that dies at end of turn (in exchange for 4 charges and a requirement of two Ruby threshold). Which one of these two (among many other Champions) you pick becomes an important decision in shaping your deck strategy and your chances at victory – but it is never too strong to overshadow the actual cards in your deck.

The customization goes even deeper with the presence of socketable troops – which allow you to insert one of the 20 available gems to build your very own card. You can even change these in between games if you feel it will help your chances, allowing for increased flexibility in foiling opponent plans. Here are the customizations you can currently make to socketable troops (some of which have multiple sockets):

Adding customization to actual cards and managing to keep things balanced is a hefty task but Hex has pulled it off. You can only pick up to 4 of each type of gem for your deck so nothing here is really exploitable. But what it does allow is for players to make any socketable cards potentially a key piece in their often forgotten (from a card design standpoint) rogue deck. For example, the Xentoth’s Inquisitor card below which would normally appear in control or mid-range decks (equipped with the Prime Blood Orb of Brutality gem giving a troop – Attack), can also be a key tool in some special Blood/Sapphire mill deck (equipped with the Prime Sapphire of Subterfuge burying opponent’s cards into his graveyard).

Rules Engine

Obviously, having the computer manage all the rules and phases is a godsend and MTGO players are fully aware of this. However, because MTGO is based completely on its paper version that is MTG, it will never be able to take full advantage of it all – something Hex isn’t held back from. There are tremendous amount of things you can do in terms of design when an omnipotent rules engine is overseeing everything and players trust it fully. For example, making a specific deck composition a requirement for certain cards opens up the door significantly in terms of design space. Witness these two cards:

While MTG can have cards like Relentless Rats, this level of specific requirements would be a nightmare to enforce. Being rewarded for making interesting deck choices is certainly welcoming, especially for the crowd that favors creative/rogue/fun decks over the usual super-optimized net decks. There are other conveniences to relying on a rules engine and benefits that arise from it like being able to print cards such as these:

Wrapping Up

There are a bunch of other abilities and mechanics that separate Hex from Magic, but I believe the point has been made. The very basic core aspects of the game are borrowed from MTG, but what’s been added on top is nothing short of remarkable. With MTG’s 20+ year 12k+ card history, it would be impossible to make new cards if the game was simply a ‘copy’. But as demonstrated, there are fundamental differences to how the game works starting with the resource system all the way down to the seemingly limitless possibilities that a digital-only medium provides. These changes are substantial and create for a very different gaming experience for hardcore TCG fans – and changes which MTG, whether they were inclined to or not, simply cannot make.

At this point, the question is not which of Hex or MTG is the superior game – the reality is that they can successfully co-exist. MTG due to its physical nature can more easily be played in social settings, while Hex’s digital optimization makes it more suitable for playing with people across the world from the comfort of their home on PC/Mac/tablets. What is important is for a game like Hex to be allowed to exist (and win their legal battle against Magic: The Gathering), because denying these innovations and the fun cards and gameplay options the game brings would be a tragedy of epic proportions for the genre. It would also clearly go against the 17,000+ Kickstarter backers of Hex who voted with their wallet wanting a game like this to be made. Next time you see someone label Hex: Shards of Fate a copy or clone of MTG, link them this article and remind them that the TCG universe is not only big enough but also better off with both.