Game Engine[ | ]
The HEX team is filled with people that have been playing and working on TCGs for the better part of their lives. When it comes to stuff that ain’t broke, we don’t want to fix it. Veteran TCG players will find plenty of innovations that have never been seen before, but we also felt it was important that many rules will feel familiar.
For those that are new to TCGs, fear not! HEX is designed to show you the ropes with a comprehensive tutorial.
Building a Deck[ | ]
There are hundreds of cards to choose from. You’ll build a deck of a minimum of 60 cards, using your card collection. Then, you’ll choose a champion to pair with that deck. Each of the 20 different Champions in HEX have unique Charge Powers that fit different styles of play.
You can play with up to four copies of any given card in your deck, except for basic resource cards, of which you can play an unlimited number.
You can use the in game Deck Editor to help analyze the properties of your cards, and construct the best deck possible.
The Basics of Game Play[ | ]
Each champion in HEX has 20 Health. You’ll win the game if you can reduce your opponent’s Health to 0.
You’ll start the game with a hand of 7 cards, and you’ll get to draw one new card on each of your turns. Note that if you don’t like your opening hand, you can shuffle it back into your deck and redraw a new hand of one fewer cards, and this can be done any number of times (re-drawing one fewer card each time).
You’ll be able to play one resource card on each of your turns, and the more resources you play, the easier it will be to play the other cards in your hand.
Those other cards consist of action cards that create powerful one-time effects, constants and artifacts that create ongoing effects, and troop cards that fight for you every turn on the battlefield.
The Resource System[ | ]
In HEX, we have streamlined the resource system so you don’t have to mess with resource cards at all after you play them from your hand. There’s no turning resources sideways, figuring out WHICH resources to turn sideways, any of that nonsense. Playing cards in HEX is fast, intuitive, and simple.
We built it that way because we know you’re not here for “the resource system,” you’re here to kill people with dragons, create ultimate combos, and use Blood Magic to murder every last troop on your opponent’s side of the table. That said, I’m going to go into the details of how resources work, because I know some of you will be curious.
You can play one resource card a turn. When you play a resource card, three things happen:
- You charge your champion. You’ll expend these charges to trigger your champion’s charge power throughout the game.
- You gain one of five different Thresholds: Wild, Blood, Ruby, Diamond, or Sapphire.
- You gain a resource point.
Then, your resource card disappears. So what do Thresholds and Resource Points do for you? They let you play all your other cards.
How to play a card[ | ]
There are two parts to playing a card:
- The first part is checking to see if you meet the threshold requirement. If you don’t, you won’t be able to play the card, period. If you do meet it, you can move on to part 2. Fortunately, it’s usually not too tough—most cards only need one or two threshold symbols out of you. Once you gain a threshold, you have that threshold forever. It never gets “spent.”
- If you successfully meet the threshold requirement, you can spend resource points to pay the card’s cost. Your maximum number of resource points goes up by one every time you play a resource, and then you can spend those points to play the cards in your hand (as long as you meet the card’s threshold requirement). If a card in your hand costs 5, you have to spend 5 of your resource points to play that card. Once spent, your resource points aren’t gone forever—your resource points all recharge at the start of each of your turns.
If the last several paragraphs didn’t make a lick of sense to you, don’t worry–the computer takes care of all of it for you. If you meet a card’s threshold requirement, and you have enough resource points to play it, the card will light up in your hand. If you don’t meet the requirements, it won’t light up. Just click the card, and the computer automatically spends your resource points for you.
Card Types[ | ]
There are 5 card types. Those types are Resource, Troop, Constants, Basic Action and Quick Action.
Resource - Played once a turn to build up your threshold and resource pool so you can play cards.
Troop - Can be played anytime during your turn as long as you have enough resources and meet the threshold requirement.
Constant - Can be played anytime during your turn, again as long as you have enough resources and meet the threshold requirement. Constants remain in play for the rest of the game, unless they are remove either by your action or your opponent action.
Basic Action - These action cards can be played during your turn as long as you have enough resources and meet the threshold requirement. Basic action can be anything from dealing damage to your opponent or giving one of your troop more attack to removing a troop from your opponents side of the board. Basic can only be played during your turn.
Quick Action - Quick action cards are special, as they can be played during your opponents turn when he/she passes priority to you during the phase cycle. For example before combat your opponent will pass priority to you. Lets say you have a Burn in your hand which is a 1 casting cost 1 threshold ruby that deals 2 damage to a champion or troop. Your opponent has a Thunderbird in play and you really want to get rid of that card before he gets to much out of control. So at the point when you have priority you can cast your quick action and kill the Thunderbird before he is able to deal damage to you. You can think of quick actions as "Responses to what your opponent is doing"
Combat[ | ]
One of the main components of HEX is troop combat. On your turn, any troop cards that you’ve played will be able to attack, and any troop cards your opponent has played will be able to block. However, troops can’t attack the turn that they enter play.
You get one chance to attack during your turn, and when you attack, you choose any combination of your troops, and they all attack together. When they do, they become exhausted, which just means they won’t be able to block on the opponent’s turn, if they decide to attack you back.
The defending player can take any number of his troops (as long as they aren’t exhausted from attacking on his or her previous turn) and “block” your attacking troops. When that happens, the troops will do battle with each other. If a troop’s ATK value is equal to or greater than the blocking troop’s DEF value, the blocking troop will be killed…and vice versa. Any attacking troops that the defending player chooses NOT to block will do damage to the champion, and knock the champion’s health down. Finally, by the end of the turn, all of the damage on troops will “fall off” and they’ll be fresh again for the next turn.
That’s basically all you need to know! There are a few more little details here and there but that is the essential mechanic of the game. The rest is up to you and the cards in your deck!