The Hex team just spoiled 2 new cards - Cerebral Fulmination and Sadistic Castigator:
Cerebral Fulmination
Sadistic Castigator
Hex Vault - a Hex: Shards of Fate Fan Site
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HexVault
September 5, 2013
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I had the extremely good fortune to visit Cryptozoic’s HQ last night. Cory and the entire team were incredibly welcoming and I had a great time. As it turned out they would have been more than happy to let me take a bunch of pictures and ask a bunch of questions, but I didn’t want to impose – I’d accepted an offer to participate in “Game Night” so I wasn’t there as a blogger, nor was I on a mission to unearth new Hex information. I figured I’d relay some of my experiences. Never fear, I’ll go back sooner or later, squeeze the Hex team for new information, and document the visit fully for the community!
Hex: Shards of Fate
I wasn’t completely oblivious to the fact that I was at the “source” of Hex. I got to meet the entire team, including almost everyone we saw in the Kickstarter videos, and spent a good deal of time talking to the developers. They’d just got the art assets for the new loading screen and apparently it’s “beautiful” and “incredible”. I also got to see the UI at a much higher resolution than we saw at GenCon – it looks awesome. The (in)famous paper decks that are being used for playtesting Set 2 were laying around – definitely took a lot of self control to not pick one up and start thumbing through the cards. Finally, I saw what I’ll call the Card Manager” admin tool where all of the cards are defined, art is associated, etc. I may have accidentally seen a new bunny and another robot troop from Set 2… 
Cryptozoic’s Other Games
During my tour I was blown away by the sheer number of games, trading card sets, etc. that Cryptozoic is working on. Most visitors to this site are mainly interested in Hex, as I am myself, but CZE has a lot more going on.
Game Night
I started my night playing The Hobbit Deck Building Game for the first time. Same general rules as CZE’s DC Deck Building Game, but with minor tweaks. Definitely a great deal of fun. The most notable thing was that we were clearly playing with a demo version of the game (with mocked up laser printed cards) that’s been around since the game was in development. I lost… narrowly…
I played a few other games, but the highlight of the game was a marathon “The Resistance” session. For those unfamilar with the game, here’s the description from boardgamegeek.com:
“The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!
The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.
Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.”
I have to imagine the resistance (4)/spy (3) ratio with 7 players has to be just about the hardest level of difficulty for a resistance win. The game is ridiculously addictive. Most of us hadn’t played before, so it was a great combination of flat out lying, nerdy strategy discussions (Ben “wait, I need to go read 100 strategy articles before I can play this” Stoll), and general hilarity.
I can’t thank everyone at CZE enough for making me feel welcome. I had a great night doing one of my favorite things in the world – playing games. I also got some unexpected, and personally very exciting news, about something Hex-related that might happen in the near future. I’ll let on what it is when/if Cory confirms it.
Colin
Figured it was time for something off my beaten path. Doing a quick video about:
Everybody Loves Dingler, an American television sitcom starring Dingler Dinglesque Esquire III.
No no, but really doing a video highlighting 5 cards that I’m particularly excited to play / build with. The genuinely fun and interesting things which these cards do is one of the things which has got me most excited to be playing the game at the end of the month.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed it. Drop a line and let us know what are some of the cards which you’re excited to finally play with.
Funktion
HexVault
September 3, 2013
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Episode 1: The Vault
BossHoss has just completed the inaugural episode of the Hex Vault comic! Episode 1 introduces the series and sets the stage for entering the Vault for the first time.
Future episodes will follow BossHoss’s HexTCG-related adventures, his interactions with forum personalities (you might be next!), and will act as a launching pad to learn more about Entrath, the game, the community, and PVE & PVP strategy.
Just 2 more days left to enter our GenCon-exclusive Jadiim Sleeves giveaways – Create a Forum Post and Guess the “Rush” Surprise!
HexVault
September 3, 2013
Gwaer managed to catch up with Chris Woods immediately after the HexTCG PVE Design Panel. He got Chris to answer questions on the following topics (questions sourced from the HexTCG.com forums):
- Whether or not PVE content would be retired over time
- Health pools in raids and alternate loss conditions
- Whether or not any equipment would be Bind on Equip (BOE)
- Treasure chest contents
- PVE progression
HexVault
September 2, 2013
Note: the images in the slide show at the top of this post are 4x the size of the ones I posted previously – higher quality card images FTW!
HexVault
September 2, 2013
The DragonCon 2013 HexTCG PVE Design panel featured Cory Jones (President & CCO, Cryptozoic), Chris Woods (Magical Creature, Cryptozoic), and Ben Stoll (Game Designer, Cryptozoic). I’ve posted the audio from the panel to SoundCloud. You’ll find quite a few PVE card spoilers (dungeon [Arena of Souls, Information Control] and raid [Vengeful Figment, Ruby Golem, Voodoo Doll, Gront's Favorite Pet]), a walkthrough of the plans for the “Junkyard Dog” dungeon, information about “Pudgington Hallow”, a spirited Q&A session, and much more!
You can also see all of the slides (thanks, Cory!) Chris talked to in the slideshow above this blog entry – they are displayed in the correct order starting with the HexTCG Key Art slide and ending with the HexTCG logo. Notably, compared to the PVP panel slides these are much less easier to follow without the context of the panel audio. In a day or two I’ll upload a video to YouTube marrying the audio and the presentation to make it even easier to follow along.
HexVault
August 31, 2013
The DragonCon 2013 HexTCG PVP Design panel featured Cory Jones (President & CCO, Cryptozoic), Ben Stoll (Game Designer [PVP Lead], Cryptozoic), and Chris Woods (Magical Creature, Cryptozoic). I’ve posted the RAW and UNEDITED audio from the panel to SoundCloud. You’ll find quite a few card spoilers, and lots of new info about CZE’s plan for the game, including the news that Alpha will last for “months” before it switches to Beta (rather than the oft-repeated “3 weeks” comment that Cory made during the Kickstarter).
You can also see all of the slides (thanks, Cory!) Cory and Ben talked to in the slideshow above this blog entry – they are displayed in the correct order starting with the HexTCG Key Art slide and ending with the HexTCG logo. Sometime tomorrow I’ll upload a video to YouTube marrying the audio and the presentation to make it even easier to follow along.
After the panel I had the chance to catch up with Cory. He provided a couple of additional interesting tidbits. There are well over 20K backers at this point with more than 14K unique – that’s definitely higher than I thought given our perception of how many multi-pledgers there were. Also, Alpha access will be granted in phases. However, there won’t be an appreciable time difference (no more than a couple of days) between the different phases. They’re still working out the details on who gets slightly earlier access – some combination of level of Kickstarter tier and when you made your pledge most likely.
Remember to enter our iPad giveaway!
Audio Highlights (thanks, Shadowelf!)
- 0:00:50 No 3D World
- 0:01:45 AIDA
- 0:05:35 Sets Balanced Around Draft
- 0:12:38 Set 1
- 0:24:55 Shard of Fate
- 0:28:40 Gem Socketing
- 0:31:15 Transformation
- 0:36:05 Alpha end of September
- 0:36:10 4x every card in Alpha
- 0:36:32 Beta Several Months After Alpha
- 0:39:05 Policy/Plans of Banning/Nerfing
- 0:41:15 Emulating Print Sheets
- 0:42:00 Boxes-RNG
- 0:43:50 Differences With MTG (Resource System)
- 0:48:00 Tournaments (Hobby Retailers)
- 0:55:50 Security
- 0:58:35 Tablets
HexVault
August 31, 2013
The DragonCon 2013 Kickstarting Videogames panel (AKA “How we Kickstarted Hex with special guest star Chris Avellone”) featured Cory Jones (President & CCO, Cryptozoic), Chris Woods (Magical Creature, Cryptozoic), Ben Stoll (Game Designer, Cryptozoic), Chris Avellone (Creative Director, Obsidian Entertainment), and Chris Polk. I’ve posted the the RAW and UNEDITED audio from the panel to SoundCloud. No HexTCG card spoilers or new information, but worth a listen to relive the first 30 days or so of HexTCG’s introduction to the world through Kickstarter, explore the teams’ motivations, and get their views on their relationship with their backers.
I’ll create an edited version later in the week with just the HexTCG Kickstarter-related questions and comments!
HexVault
August 30, 2013
Luckily I got my DragonCon 2013 badge in time to make it to the MMO Design 101 Panel featuring Cory (as well as Eric Bakutis [Game Designer, Elder Scroll Online], Jonathan LeCraft [Senior Game Designer, WoW], and Alex Mayberry [Lead Producer, Diablo III]). I’ve posted the the RAW and UNEDITED audio from the panel to SoundCloud. It’s not necessarily specific to HexTCG, but there are a couple of interesting points made by Cory that definitely relate to HexTCG.
DragonCon 2013: MMO Design Panel
I’ll create an edited version later in the week with just Cory’s HexTCG-related soundbites!