Welcome to the inaugural Card Mechanics article! Myself or a guest contributor will be covering Hex mechanics in a series of articles that you can expect to see weekly on Hex Vault.
For this first article, I’ve decided to talk about a proposed mechanic (“Weaponize“) rather than one we already know about. Who knows, this mechanic may already exist but hasn’t been spoiled, or may be in Cryptozoic’s plan for Set 2 or Set 3, but I have no knowledge of it’s existence other than an idea I chatted about at GenCon with a couple of other backers. Maybe I’ll even try to make this idea the basis for my “Design a Card” reward…
Worker Bot
A little bit of background… The Dwarf/Artifact deck that was playable at GenCon can create a prodigious number of Worker Bot tokens. These work well for driving the Inspiration Engine, for use as chump blockers, and for providing fuel for the Volcannon, but they do have a minor drawback – the “Defensive” keyword. What if we could remove that limitation? It would make sense that the Dwarves could modify these defensive troops and make them offensive – that’s where “Weaponize” could come in!
Maybe as a Dwarf champion charge power, e.g.:
- 2 Sapphire Threshold, 2 Charges, Weaponize Worker Bot – selected Worker Bot gets +2/+0 and can attack this turn (i.e. removes the “Defensive” keyword); Worker Bot is destroyed at the end of the turn
- 2 Ruby Threshold, 3 Charges, Weaponize Worker Bot – selected Worker Bot is turned into a bomb; sacrifice Worker Bot 3 damage to selected troop or champion
Or perhaps, “Weaponize” as a Constant, e.g.:
- 3 Sapphire Threshold, 6 Cost – all artifact troops you control with the “Defensive” keyword have the “Defensive” keyword removed
- 3 Ruby Threshold, 8 Cost – all artifact troops you control with the “Defensive” keyword have the “Defensive” keyword replaced by “Incendiary” keyword (sacrifice troop to deal X points of damage to target troop or champion where X = the current attack power of the troop)
How much fun would it be to drop Weaponize on turn 8 and explode all of your troops to clear your opponent’s board or finish off the match? Quite literally a BOMB! 
Finally, it could be a troop ability, e.g.:
- Automation Engineer 1/3, 3 Sapphire Threshold, 6 Cost – 1, exhaust this troop to remove the “Defensive” keyword from target artifact troop for the duration of this turn
- Explosives Specialist 1/3, 3 Ruby Threshold, 6 Cost – 1, exhaust this troop to replace the “Defensive” keyword with the “Incendiary” keyword (sacrifice troop to deal X points of damage to target troop or champion where X = the current attack power of the troop) on an artifact troop you control
Thoughts? Questions? Comments? I’d love to hear them…