This weekend is shaping up to be a perfect storm of gaming for me, so this is going to be a more sporadic update from me as opposed to the general Hex strategy article. Hex is certainly headlining the weekend though. If you haven't read the official news, you can find it here, but I am proud to announce that I can finally add the PvE tag to the blog. The short of it is Cryptozoic is opening a Test Server that players currently in the Beta will have access to for the weekend. The Test Server will be available from Thursday, February 5th to Saturday, February 7th with mirrored accounts that feature your current collections, but with the added bonus of 20,000 platinum and some PvE cards.
If you haven't played Hex since Alpha and want to try out some of the new cards in Shattered Destiny without having to cough up the cash, that 20,000 platinum will easily buy 100 boosters (and maybe a few Primal Packs) for you to tear through. You won't get to keep the cards you buy during the Test Weekend, but on Saturday at 3:00pm Eastern Time there will be a Free Sealed tournament for those in the Test Server. Participants will get a Free Constructed Queue Entry Ticket and up to 10 Shattered Destiny Boosters based on the number of wins you manage to get in the tournament. This is another massive stress test for the Tournament Servers as they look to expand the maximum tournament entry beyond its current 128 players.
The main reason people will be (and should be) playing is that PvE content will finally be available to test. Players will be able to build PvE decks and equip gear to their champions. Gear gives bonuses to certain cards in your deck while they are equipped to your champion. Each card has between one and three pieces of equipment specifically tied to it, but each champion can only hold six pieces of gear, which adds another strategic wrinkle to deck building in a similar way that gems and socketed cards do.
The last and biggest addition is that participants will get to test out the Frost Ring Arena. We've been getting bits and pieces of the arena sprinkled in Friday Updates for the past few months, but this will be the first time we actually get to try it out for ourselves. Hex has warned that this is very much an unfinished version of the Arena, and the new UI and improved AI won't be incorporated. For those that haven't faced the AI in its current state, it will do random things like play Suppressive Fire with no targets or Bombsmith their own Troop. It has improved somewhat since Alpha, but it is far from where it needs to be to make PvE an enjoyable experience.
This sort of launch is the best thing Hex could have done for me personally. I've wanted to test out the Equipment and PvE Cards in Hex for ages, since that is what really drew me into the game, and where I think the game really stands out from other CCGs. While the MMO part of this MMOTCG has seemed to ebb further and further away, the full deck building experience was cut short with the exclusion of equipment. Getting to have access to equipment for a weekend of hands on testing will help innovators to find combos that don't exist in PvP, and with the community compiling lists of equipment we see, it will give players something to talk about long after the Test has ended. I want Hex to take their time with the Dungeons and Raids, particularly the AI, because I want a good degree of polish when this content is officially launched so I can enjoy it without having to worry about getting bogged down by bugs. But I also want to try this stuff out while it's still broken and tinker with it, so the Test Server option is the best of both worlds for me.
If you don't feel like playing but still want a peek at what's going on with this Frost Arena Test, there's a day long stream from some of the personalities in the Hex community on Wednesday (today) on the HexTCG Twitch Channel. I will also try to stream the Arena during the weekend if/when I have time on my Twitch Channel.
Guild Wars 2
This past weekend was also a big one for Guild Wars 2. At PAX they announced the first official expansion Heart of Thorns to be released later this year. I played this game quite a bit the first year it was out, but gradually phased out of it do to school and lack of people to play with. My friend recently picked up the game when it was on sale for $10 during the announcement of the expansion, and I've been teaming up to carry his little Asura through the leveling process (which isn't long, and is actually very enjoyable). I have some Season 2 Living World stuff to catch up on and three more characters to get to 80 (My Elementalist, Mesmer, and Guardian are already there). It's been a while since I've played, and in September they overhauled the daily system. You get rewards just for logging in, and only have to do three relatively easy to complete daily quests, so despite the Arena I'll probably be peeking my head in there during the weekend as well.
LCS
While I'm playing in the Hex Sealed Tournament on Saturday I will have the NA LCS on Twitch in the second monitor. This split is shaping up very well and I'm 2-0 in my Fantasy League, thanks in part to focusing on CLG (3-1) and SK Gaming (4-0) during the draft (first pick Aphromoo baby). I started following it pretty heavily at the tail end of Season 3, and since I always cheer for the eternal underdog, I'm hoping CLG finishes well. They have a lot of strong players on their team with the addition of Zionspartan in Top Lane and XSmithie in the Jungle. CLG fans are wary of being disappointed by a team with unlimited potential but that always finds a way to fall short, though (and it's been said before) this might just be the year.
The two newest teams to the NA LCS, Team 8 (2-2) and Gravity (3-1), have also been doing surprisingly well, stealing games off TSM (3-1) and Cloud 9 (1-3) respectively in the first week. Cloud 9 has been performing very poorly this split, though they are facing Team 8 and Coast (1-3) this week, so if they are still the caliber of team from Worlds they should be able to even up their record after this weekend. Dignitas is another veteran team that has been performing poorly, and it's unlikely to turn around soon. Their jungler Crumbz stepped down from the team earlier this week, and they face TSM and Liquid (2-2), two very strong teams looking to cement their place among the top teams.
Matches to watch this week:
Thursday 2/5 Match 4: Roccat (1-3) vs Giants (2-2)
Friday 2/6, Match 5: Elements (3-1) vs SK Gaming (4-0)
Saturday 2/7, Match 2: Cloud9 (1-3) vs Team8 (2-2)
Sunday 2/8, Match 2: CLG (3-1) vs Gravity (3-1)
I didn't even get into the new chapter of Telltale's Game of Thrones that launched yesterday, which I probably won't get to play until after the weekend. I also haven't mentioned a few board games I had the opportunity to play recently (Kanban, Archipelago, Fields of Arle), but that requires its own article. Next week I'll probably have an a reaction to the Frost Arena Test Server.
Card Images from Hex TCG Browser
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