![]() ![]() In Hex, decks are sixty cards, with around a quarter dedicated to resources that are played for free and increase your total mana pool, allowing you to cast more powerful spells. In turn these resources govern what types of cards can be played, each providing a colour threshold along with its mana. ![]() In general, cards have a threshold that must be met to be cast - so for example a card may have a cost of five and a red threshold of two, meaning at the most basic level you must have played five resources, two of which were red, to cast it. You can only play one resource a turn and your mana refreshes at the start of each of your turns. The nature of Hex is that there will be cards that break all these basic rules - giving you more mana or putting resources into play from your deck - which is where the fun begins. If you're familiar with Hearthstone, this may seem overly complicated in comparison and it only increases from there. Hex uses a priority system that allows players to react to every action an opponent takes with any of their own cards and effects, as long as the card doesn't have the "Basic" rider which means they can only be played on your turn. This means a finer degree of control is possible, with counter and kill spells that deal with opposing forces while protecting your own strategy. The depth this adds is immeasurable, particularly when combined with the concept of cards and creatures - Hex calls them Troops - which have a permanent place on the board but aren't focused purely on attacking your opponent. Unfortunately, it's also the first of Hex's major problems. The developers have done their best to streamline it but it's so slow compared to Hearthstone's superb ability to match whatever pace you wish to play at. While it does a better job than Magic Online or Duels of the Planeswalkers, it takes so many additional clicks to get through a turn, going between combat and casting phases, allowing opponents spells to resolve or activating legions of abilities. Against an auto-responding AI it's managable and Magic's real life equivalent gets away with it because body language, intuition and common sense speed things along. It's an excellent system from a card and game design point of view, just not one that was ever meant to be used in an online setting and after seeing alternatives, no matter how simple they make the game, I think I prefer them. It can't be understated how much this additional complexity adds, however. Unlike its peers, Hex immediately has you doing powerful, near-broken things with starter decks. You're unlikely to be competitive at the highest level, but there's strategy and decision making to be done even early on, at least with the blue sapphire and red ruby dwarf deck I picked up.
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