Card Mechanics: Infected [Proposed]

HexVault — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 17:31:16 +0000

Hello, I’m Gage “HyenaNipples” Lawhon, and it is my pleasure to be this week’s guest contributor to Hex Vault’s “Card Mechanics” column! For my contribution, I have something completely new. This idea bounced right out of my brain, so this definitely isn’t something the Cryptozoic team has up their sleeves.

My concept is a new Keyword, but unlike any of those already in the game, this one is a detrimental Keyword. I call it ‘Infected,’ and here’s what it would do:

‘Infected: at the beginning of each turn, the controller of this troop takes 1 damage.’

Before I go deeper, let’s take a look at the two cards featuring this new Keyword. The first card is essentially a Wild version of the Blood card, Zombie Plague, except that it works a little differently.

Fungal Infection

I think Fungal Infection offers a slightly different play experience than Zombie Plague. Whereas the Blood card overtly turns the opponent’s deck against them after a period of suspense, Fungal Infection would be a more subtle and sinister force. Each turn, the victimized player knows that their own, un-cast troops are all becoming dangerous; they are all becoming poison, but since you have to play the troops in order to survive, it’s a poison you are forced to swallow.

For the player who is employing Fungal Infection, you get to wait – like a komodo dragon stalking the poisoned buffalo. You don’t need to rush, you have plenty of time to watch your opponent slowly die. Of course, for this strategy to be viable, you will need a more active approach to spreading the Infected Keyword:

Bloated Sporeburster

I think it’s important that ‘Infected’ isn’t something the player can directly control. This is germ warfare, not dripping poison into someone’s drink. It should require a bit of creative thinking to spread about the battlefield, and it should be messy and inexact. This is the concept behind the Bloated Sporeburster. Note how if you want to use it, you have to get it killed. You can’t simply sacrifice it, because you need to do actual damage to pop the spore filled sack. Also: it will infect your own troops, too. How are you going to deal with that?

This also gives the opponent a chance to prevent the infection of their own troops. They can remove the Sporeburster without damaging it, they can choose not to attack, or they deal with it in some other way. However even with the ability to counter cards like the Sporeburster with play decisions, the addition of such an offensive Keyword will require the addition of some defensive measures for opposing players to employ.

Here is an example of a Diamond card that would utilize the recently revealed ‘revert’ keyword. A card that is reverted back to its natural state would also lose the Infected keyword. Since we have yet to see Diamond’s (X) cost spell, I took some liberties:

Faith Rewarded

Of course, all the colors should have some manner of reversion. Fancy healing shouldn’t be available to an offensive color like Ruby. Their method would be less elegant, less effective, but potentially useful as a weapon:

Arena Medic

And that’s my idea for the Infected Keyword! I hope you all found this interesting, as I would love to come back and write for Hex Vault again in the future! Please let me know what you think on the forums! Also, if you liked my writing, you can find more articles at my home site, HexTCG Shuffle. Thanks for reading!

Art Credits for Card Art

Fungal Infection: ‘Fungus Zombie Final Comp’ by Art-Minion-Andrew0
Bloated Sporeburster: ‘Plague Spitter’ by Chippy
Faith Rewarded: ‘Dawn Star‘ by puimun
Arena Medic: ‘Sexy Orc Portrait’ by thomaswievegg

Card Mechanics: Weaponize [Proposed]

HexVault — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 20:56:18 +0000

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…

Hex Vault » Card Mechanics

Card Mechanics: Infected [Proposed]

‘Infected: at the beginning of each turn, the controller of this troop takes 1 damage.’

Art Credits for Card Art

Card Mechanics: Weaponize [Proposed]