After going through the Starter Trials and the new campaign-based Frost Ring Arena with a human-based white deck, I realized that its idiosyncrasies are mostly subtle: gems don't really act precisely like mana as I thought at first glance, there's a fourth legendary rarity tier, and numerous cards improve a creature's power, defense, and cost permanently even if it goes into the graveyard or returns to a player's hand.

Over the course of multiple matches, though, Hex gradually becomes distinct. I could go on about starter decks, packs, and whatnot, but I think you get the point by now. As for similarities, let us count the ways: both are based on whittling down an opponent's life points of 20 to 0, both have five colors, each player draws 7 cards at the start of the match with mulligan rules, gems are essentially mana, basic action cards are sorceries, quick action cards are instants, and “ready/exhaust” is just the “tap/untap.” You could point to many more analogs between Hex and MTG, from the sequence of phases per turn to the name-swapping of creature abilities like flight (flying), crush (trample), and lifedrain (lifeleech). But after my hour-long interview and about ten hours of play with the beta build for Hex: Shards of Fate, I've discovered how it expands on the MTG ruleset, innovates on top of it, and ultimately turns it into a far better video game experience than all of the MTG games have done thus far.īut just to play devil's advocate, Wizards of the Coast does have a case against Hex if just in the court of public opinion as far as TCG followers are concerned. So after reading over the quick overview of its core rules and the numerous comments about the game and the pending lawsuit, I walked into a closed-door meeting with Cory Jones with the thought that this was just an MTG clone through and through. That said, I started out quite skeptical as I didn't follow Hex much. Luckily, as someone whose played in Magic: The Gathering tourneys and has played the last few installments of MTG video games, I am luckily one of those people. You can just visualize core gamers shrugging their shoulders with the word “meh” hanging over their heads.Įven the game's head creator Cory Jones, founder of Cryptozoic Games, finds it tough to find a member of the press who knows enough about the genre to understand what it's trying to do. That's two niche genres seemingly coming together to form a genre that's even more niche. After all, Hex: Shards of Fate is a self-described MMOTCG (what the hell is that?), a combination of traditional paper-based trading card games and the digital world of multiplayer MMOs. So by the end of that first paragraph, I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't still reading this. Either that, or you haven't heard anything at all about Hex, a digital trading card game that may look like Magic: The Gathering and talk like Magic: The Gathering, but proudly walks its own path of success. You may have heard of the free-to-play Hex: Shards of Fate in one of two ways: first as an extremely successful Kickstarter-funded project that amassed over $2.2 million in contributions, or second as the defendant in a lawsuit by Wizards of the Coast who believes the game is infringing on the ancient pillar that is Magic: The Gathering.

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