Update #17 - Hero Deep Dive & Upcoming challenge
over 4 years ago – Thu, Dec 02, 2021 at 12:38:27 AM

Hey guys!

We're diving into another hero today. This deep-dive might be the most important one yet. Later today we will post a challenge that will get your brains theory crafting. Several people will be chosen at random from the comments, directly messaged and asked to give us the full breakdown of their answer to the challenge. If correct they will have a play-mat added to their pledge free of charge. So without further ado lets dive into todays hero, our Kickstarter exclusive the Shieldmaiden. Shout out to Chris Maser for requesting this hero in the comments. 

Shieldmaiden

The fierce and ruthless Shieldmaiden is a guileful Viking warrior. Watch out for her swift weaponry changes during combat, enabling her to gain the advantage over her opponents.

Shieldmaiden Hero Ability

Weapon Exchange : During each hero upkeep (your own) you may equip 1 weapon of your choice, choosing from the Sword, Axe or Spear. Once equipped to your ability tab you are locked in to only casting spells from the chosen weapon for that round. The Shieldmaiden may swap out her weapon during her hero's upkeep by replacing the equipped weapon with a new weapon of choice. See above the Shieldmaiden's hero board and how her spells are split into 3 categories. You can see her 4 Sword spells on the left, her 4 Axe spells in the middle and her 2 Spear spells on the right. The Shieldmaidens weapons also grant her 2 new spells and abilities so lets checkout her weapons below. 

Sword

Static Ability : All your attacks grant Bleed.

War Paint - All allies gain +1 Strength for 2 turns. 

Severe Artery - A wild melee attack that deals 2 damage plus lacerate, with a plus strength modifier. 

Axe

Static Ability : All your attacks strike twice.

Ambush - A deadly melee attack that deals 4 damage.  

Cross Cut - A melee attack that leaves your enemy feeling helpless if they carry a melee weapon of their own.

Spear

Static Ability : All your attacks grant Penetrate Armour.

Javelin Throw - A strong throw of the spear that deals 7 damage to a single target. 

Healing Pike - Gaining HP equal to 100% of the damage dealt is always a quick fire way to top up your HP whilst not leaving attack formation.

 Support Spells 

Sword : Maidens Call - Granting one ally +1 HP regen and energised for 3 turns. Energised is a condition that grants 50% more HP when healed. 

Sword : Swords Presence - All allies gain +5 base HP. This increases the total value of a heroes HP by 5. Meaning if a hero has 40 HP their new base HP value would be 45. This is now the new value that hero could be fully healed too. When increasing a heroes base value, the hero also gains that much HP immediately. 

Axe : Crowd Pleaser - This split spell grants all allies +1 strength and defence for 2 turns with the first part, whilst the second part places a taunt condition on an ally. 

Axe : Battle Hunter - The shieldmaiden lowers her defence by a value of 1 for 3 turns. A nasty price to pay, in exchange for going first next round ignoring agility values. A deadly spell to cast if timed correctly. 

Attack Spells

Sword : Helix Strike - Deals 2 damage to a single enemy

Sword : Culling Blade - A melee AOE attack that deals 4 damage to all enemies. 

Axe : Headshot- Another melee attack that deals 2 damage to a single enemy 

Axe : Shield Bash - A powerful attack that reduces an enemies defence by 1. Coupled with striking twice an enemies defence can soon start to look thin.  

Spear : Spear Throw - A ranged attack with a low cooldown that adds an agility modifier. 

Spear : Impale - A powerful attack that deals 5 damage to a single enemy whilst inflicting them with a bleed condition. 

Shieldmaiden Spell Mastery 

The Shieldmaiden has 3 paths to follow and each one offering her a unique play style. There is Blade Proficiency down the left, Shield Master in the middle and Warmonger on the right. See below our summaries for each path and how they define the Shieldmaidens spells and abilities during her turn.

Blade Proficiency

As you might expect, this is path is all about unlocking some new Sword spells. With a new evasive spell called Duck n Dive available in this path, custom builds will prove popular. However really committing to this path grants it's best spell with that mighty Dual Wield which temporarily allows you to equip 2 weapons, stacking their static abilities. 

Shield Master

This path looks to improve the Shieldmaidens survivability. This is done by increasing her defence base stat  value by 1 permanently and unlocking a fantastic new spell called Stand Tall. Keeping yourself alive for that turn or 2 extra might mean the difference between winning or loosing any given battle. Stand Tall  stops all DOT's (damage over time) in their tracks. 

Warmonger 

What's cooler than having one hero? Calling the help of another! This build brings a Warrior ally card into battle by summoning him to your ability tab. This path focuses on giving the Shieldmaiden burst damage by improving your Axe Swing spell and unlocking repercussion. Whilst deadly trade doesn't look exciting on the surface, remember lots of our spells are born out of interactions with other heroes. 

Note : The Shieldmaiden hero is not a legal hero in tournament play due to her exclusivity. 

That's a wrap for this update guys.

We hope you're still enjoying our deep-dives. We've still got plenty more to uncover.  If you'd like to be in for a chance of winning a free playmat we recommend studying the Shieldmaidens spells and abilities ahead of time ready for our upcoming challenge later today. Until then, please enjoy our Shieldmaiden hero and feel free to post your theory crafting ideas in our comments section. 

Thank you for all your support. Let's make this a great campaign.

P.S. One of our community membersDavid Gustafsson recently posted their battle log in the campaign comments section, if you get chance check it out, it's a great write up. 

Update #15 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 03:29:56 PM

Hey guys!

We're diving into another hero today and as promised it's our highly anticipated Bard. If you haven't caught up on our previous deep dives, you can find them all here. Blood Mage | Warlock | War Drummer | Illusionist | Shaman | Cleric.

In todays update we will take a deep dive into a hero, suggested by two of our community members Ghost Council & Brian over on Discord. This is another hero that we've kept quiet, so lets dive right in.

Bard

The Bard boosts the team’s morale with her lyrical and musical prowess. Her primary role is that of supporting others, as she is rather vulnerable when left to her own devices. Protect her well and she will sing her team to victory.

Bard Hero Ability

Instrumental Aid : The Bard boosts moral by playing instruments during her upkeep. To do this the Bard will place one of her instrument tokens on her conditions tab for 2 turns. During the Bards hero upkeep if she has no instrument token out, she may play an instrument. Choosing from the Mandolin, Piccolo or Drum. Each one of these instruments has it's own unique effect shown below:

Mandolin - All allies gain +1 HP regen for 3 turns

Piccolo - All allies gain +1 AGI for 3 turns whilst using this instrument

Drum - All allies gain +1 STR for 3 turns whilst using this instrument

 Support Spells 

Infectious Words - This strong spell not only reduces an enemies strength, but also their intellect, making it perfect for stripping away the power from your enemy.

Soothing Voice - Your enemies fall asleep for 2 turns after hearing your soothing voice. Whilst one ally enjoys your perfect pitch and increases the value of all their temporary buffs by 1. Not the duration but the value on the number, so a +1 STR for 3 turns would change to a +2 STR for 3 turns. 

Cheer - A CD:0 spell that buffs all stats apart from HP by +1. Whilst this doesn't look like much on the surface, this cheer ability can put in some powerful work when multiplied across a band of heroes whilst playing instruments. 

Lazy Performance - Our Bard hero has lived out most of her days. She is happy to sit back and cheer on her team, literally. 

Song of Rest - The largest healing spell in game. Increasing a teams HP by 50% of their base HP. This powerful song sends our Bard hero to sleep for 2 turns. Time this correctly and your opponents will be forced to wake you. 

Attack Spells

Sword Thrust - A melee attack that deals 3 damage and penetrates armour.

Bamboozle - A ranged AOE crowd control spell that leaves your enemies feeling rather bamboozled. 

Travellers Fate - Whilst not a very strong base attack, Travelers Fate is one of very few attacks in the game that can bypass the Taunt condition. Making it an essential attack for finishing off those heroes that can't otherwise be targeted. 

Musical Intervention - A powerful ranged attack that adds both strength and intellect attack modifiers. The greatest benefit of musical intervention is being able to play a second instrument, continuing to boost moral by showing off your one-man-band skills. 

Charismatic Blast - Another ranged AOE spell with the added value of allowing you to cast your Cheer spell immediately after. 

Bard Skill Tree

The Bard has 3 paths to follow. Musician down the left, Jester in the middle and Persuasion on the right. Each path gives the Bard a different play style as you'll see below in our summaries for each path. 

Musician

The musician path helps our Bard hero become a huge asset in teamed combat, whether that be in a scenario with a big party or running a team in the arena. With a very powerful spell available at the top of this path, mixing and matching skills from different paths has never felt so rewarding. Unlock the Harp instrument for your instrumental aid ability and play it to your hearts content, giving Intellect buffs to all your allies.

Jester

Guide your Bard down the path of Jester to help improve her damage and trickery! Giving her a new set of acrobatic skills might prove to be very useful in those longer drawn out games. This path would see the Bard working well with other physical DPS classes. Constantly playing her drum to keep moral high. 

Persuasion

Opening up a stun effect for the Bard, alongside ways to increase negative and positive buff values. Level the playing field brings all players board states back to how they were meant to be. With the last ability Buff the Soul being a powerhouse, this path will certainly be strong in the Arena.

 We hope you enjoyed learning more about the Bard. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Bard would work well in battle with? And also which hero would you like to see us dive into next? Please comment below.

 Up Next

We plan to do a boss deep-dive to give you a better understanding of how our bosses work throughout scenario mode and how powerful they are in comparison to our mighty heroes. We will also be doing a deep-dive on our Kickstarter exclusive hero the Shieldmaiden as mentioned by Chris Maser in the comments. We will try and cover all our conditions in an upcoming update too as requested by Jason in the comments section.

In the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep up with you in the comments section, as well as in our Discord Channel. As always, a huge thank you goes out to the fans who help each other out with the most frequently asked questions.

Thank you for all your support. Let's make this a great campaign.

Update #14 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 11:59:05 PM

Hey guys!

Here's our second hero deep dive of the day as promised. Seeing as we accidently neglected our female heroes in our first few deep dives, they're coming in thick and fast now! So here's your second female hero of the day with another one dropping tomorrow. If you haven't caught up on our previous deep dives, you can find them all here. Blood Mage | Warlock | War Drummer | Illusionist | Shaman 

We promised the Bard hero as suggested by many of you in the comments and we promise she is coming. But we've had to delay her for a day, so she'll be making an appearance tomorrow. In the meantime have a sneak peak at her artwork to help you visualise what she's going to bring to the table. 

For now though lets focus on our new deep dive which will be our Cleric hero.

Cleric

Amongst the Cleric’s divinely-granted abilities, is her power to heal by wielding light energy. She is a versatile figure, skilled in both combat and the use of divine and curative magics.

Cleric Hero Ability

Group Prayer : All allies gain 1 HP. Simple yet effective. 

Clerics Protection : Immune to healing effects do not work on you, meaning you can still continue to heal.

 Support Spells 

Group heal - An AOE healing spell that grants 1 HP plus intellect to all allies.

Revive - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Revives an ally with 10 HP. 

Kind heal - A basic healing spell that grants 1 ally a small healh. With a cooldown of zero don't sleep on this spell. 

Loosing Faith - The Clerics strongest healing spell. A mighty AOE heal that also leaves her allies with a defence buff for 2 turns. 

Grant Wisdom - A single ally gains +3 Intellect for 3 turns. Don't be shy to place this on yourself to improve the effectiveness of your healing. 

Attack Spells

Blunt Strike - This attack really is quite blunt. A not so mighty melee strike, dealing a total of 6 damage. 

Inner Chaos - This attack spreads chaos amongst your enemies forcing them to attack. With more healing spells than any other hero in the game, the Cleric is well equipped to deal with the attack consequences. 

Flash -  A ranged light elemental attack, that deals 100% more damage if the Cleric has an Intellect buff. A very powerful attack if sequenced correctly. 

Blinding Light - Another light elemental attack, only this time it comes packaged with an AOE heal. A total of 7 damage to all enemies and 7 health points to all allies.

Mind Flay - The Clerics most powerful attack, 8 damage. This attack most often than not jumps the Cleric right to the top of the turn order card, perfect for those sticky situations where every health point matters. 

Cleric Skill Tree

The Cleric has 3 unique paths to follow. Lets summarise them below to help you get a better understanding of this heroes kit. Advanced Healing down the left, Light Force in the middle and Protection on the right.

Advanced Healing 

This path gives our Cleric even more healing spells and abilities just in case she didn't already have enough. Buffing all her healing spells and unlocking 2 more fantastic heal and support abilities will equip the Cleric with enough responses to almost any type of attack.

Light Force

If your party of heroes in a scenario already has a dedicated healer, why not test out the Clerics damage dealing path? Pair her up with the Paladin to take advantage of all her new light elemental type spells and they will be on their way to victory. Any enemy that doesn't take the Clerics shimmering aura seriously, will soon be begging for mercy. 

Protection

The perfect path to increase the Clerics survivability. With the unlocking of a great dice manipulation spell, stalling the game out shouldn't be too difficult for you. With so many healing spells and immunities, a slow and steady game plan might just be the ticket to victory in this path. 

That's a wrap for this update guys.

We hope you enjoyed learning more about the Bard Cleric. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Cleric would work well in battle with? And also which hero would you like to see us dive into next after our Bard? Please comment below.

We'll be back tomorrow with our Bard update but in the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep up with you in the comments section, as well as in our Discord Channel. As always, a huge thank you goes out to the fans who help each other out with the most frequently asked questions.

Thank you for all of your support. Let's make this a great campaign.

Update #13 - Stretch Goals & Social Goal update
over 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 03:39:39 PM

Hey guys!

We love to start these updates off with a big thank you to our backers for making this happen and for the community coming together to discuss all things Heroes of the Shire.

Now let's dive into the update.

Stretch Goals - Event Cards

Yesterday we smashed through the £70k/$93k stretch goal, which brings with it the addition of global event cards. These event cards will be added to each scenario action card deck. Whilst exploring tiles in a scenario you will frequently encounter action cards. Some of our action cards will now be edited to include these new global events. For example, whilst exploring our ice scenario you will encounter an action called Breeze. You'll have some options, similar to a choose your own adventure book. The outcome of your actions could be detrimental to the upcoming battles should an event be triggered via your adventure decisions. See below a sample of our Rockslide and Blizzard event cards (Artwork not final). 

As you can see above, our Rockslide event card makes all players loose HP equal to half of the CD value of spells they cast. This is a global affect from the Rockslide that effects both hero and villain. Through the course of battle several other effects are triggered. Round 3 on the blizzard card knocks all players to the ground. Round 4 on the Blizzard event card freezes all melee weapons, forcing heroes to remove their melee weapon from their equipment board if they have one, placing it in the rucksack. If the rucksack is full your weapons must be left behind for good. These world events will shape battles in unique ways and force heroes and villains to adjust their strategy according to the upcoming event. 

Stretch Goals - Action Cards

We recently unlocked 4 additional Action Cards and in a previous update we gave you some options to vote on. The winner from each category will be the theme for these 4 new action cards. The voting process is still ongoing via update #5 which you can find here. The voting will end this Sunday 28th, to allow our team to prep these new cards as soon as possible and play test them in our scenarios. See below the results so far from the community voting process.

Earth Scenario | Forgotten Forest - 14, Silk Road - 2

Water Scenario | Pirates Ahead - 11, Eternal Stench- 5

Fire Scenario | Lava Eruption - 5, Footprints in the Ash -11

Ice Scenario | Eyes in the Snow - 14, Ice Cave -2

Social Goals

Here's an update on how we're doing so far with our social goals. These are a great way for the community to unlock some free stuff for each other by sharing, liking of following us on a few social media channels. You may notice we've lowered some of our targets to help the community get there. 

Kickstarter followers - 85/200

Follow us here

BGG fans - 75/150

Become a fan here

Facebook shares - 17/60

Share our FB post here

IG followers - 94/200

Follow us here

Up Next

We'll be doing another hero deep-dive later today. 

In the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep up with you in the comments section, as well as in our Discord Channel. As always, a huge thank you goes out to the fans who help each other out with the most frequently asked questions.

Thank you for all of your support. Let's make this a great campaign!

Update #12 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 03:45:54 AM

Hey guys!

We're diving into another hero today. We hadn't realised, but our deep dives by chance have all been our male heroes so far. In our next few deep dives we will cover some female classes :) If you haven't caught up on our previous deep dives, you can find them all here. Blood Mage | Warlock | War Drummer | Illusionist.

In todays update we will take a deep dive into the Shaman.

Shaman

She has the versatile tactics of all forms of combat, commanding the elements by summoning totems. Not only is the Shaman a powerful damage dealer, but she is also a skilful healer.

Shaman Hero Ability

Summon Totems : At the beginning of the Shamans first hero upkeep she may call upon the elements by summoning 2 totems. She may choose from Fire, Water, Electricity, Earth & Ice. To summon a totem she places the correct totem on her conditions tab for 2 turns. These totems last for only 2 turns and then fade away. During the Shamans hero upkeep if she has no active totems she may then summon 2 more totems. The Shaman should choose carefully which 2 totems she wants to summon as this limits the spells she may cast each turn. Notice on the Shaman board near her spells there are columns that say Fire Totem, Water Totem, Electricity Totem, Earth Totem and Ice Totem. She may only cast spells from the totems she has active during her turn. For example if she calls upon the Earth and Ice totems, she may only cast those spells from those totems. Which would be Earthquake and Grounding from her Earth totem and Blizzard and Ice Wall from her Ice totem. 

Totem Bonuses : Whilst the Shaman can call upon any of her elements to summon totems,  she is incentivised to pair up totems in order to receive the following bonuses. All bonuses are semi permanent, meaning they will be removed when the totems fade. 

Earth & Fire totem = All attack spells grant burn

Water & Electricity = You gain +1 Intellect

Fire & Ice = Your enemies receive -1 Defence 

Water & Earth = You gain +1 Defence

Fire & Electricity = You gain +2 Agility 

Support Spells 

Water Totem : Downpour - Grant all allies protection for 2 turns. 

Electric Totem : Alternative Current - All allies gain energised for 3 turns and immediately gain 2 HP. Energised is a condition that grants the ally 50% more HP when healed.

Earth Totem : Grounding - All allies gain +3 HP regen for 3 turns. A total of 9 health spread over the 3 turns. Pair this with Alternative Current and that 3 HP increases to 5 HP. 

Ice Totem : Blizzard - All allies gain +2 Intellect for 3 turns.

Ice Totem : Ice Wall - All enemies receive -2 Intellect and Strength for 3 turns.

Attack Spells

Fire Totem : Flame Blast - A ranged, fire elemental attack that deals 5 damage to a single target.

Fire Totem : Lava Eruption - A ranged, fire elemental attack that deals 4 damage to all enemies. 

Water Totem : Water Cloud - Another ranged attack, this time a water elemental attack with a lower damage output but the added ability to slowly strip away an enemies defence. 

Electricity Totem : Lightning Bolt - This powerful attack leaves the enemy paralyzed for 2 turns after dealing a direct 4 damage. Paralyzed means your enemy can't cast any attack spells, forcing them to only use support spells. 

Earth Totem : Earthquake - A powerful AOE attack that deals 10 damage and stuns all enemies for 2 turns. 

Shaman Skill Tree

The Shaman has 3 paths to follow and each one completely changes her playstyle, maybe more so than any other hero. There is Regeneration down the left, Totem Mastery in the middle and Elemental Power on the right. See below our summaries for each path and how they define the Shamans spells and abilities during her turn.

Regeneration

As you might expect, this is the Shamans healing path. This opens up lots more healing potential for the Shaman by unlocking Osmosis, Earth Shield and a Healing Totem. Alongside 2 fantastic abilities to keep that healing train going. Once the healing totem is unlocked, this is added to the Shamans summon totems hero ability. Meaning she may now choose to also summon the healing totem during her upkeep. Whilst there are no pairing bonuses for this totem, it's a powerhouse on it's own. See below the healing totem. And yes, you read that correctly, Alleviate heals your enemy after hitting them hard. Time it correctly and they won't see much of that regeneration.

Totem Mastery

This path gives the Shaman more DPS, but in a different way and less direct than the Elemental Power path. Totem Mastery increases all her buffs and de-buffs from her totem bonuses alongside offering some really unique and interesting plays with her new unlocked spells. Darkness is triggered off of any sacrifice, so even from a totem getting destroyed. This path also unlocks the powerful Wind Totem. Please see above the effects of the Wind Totem. Same as the healing totem, once unlocked the Shaman is ability to summon this totem via her summon totem hero upkeep ability. 

Elemental Power

Following this path with the Shaman opens up lots of damage dealing potential, taking her into another league with all the top DPS heroes. With spells like combustion, focused attack and bolt connection the Shamans enemies will be overwhelmed by the elements and succumb to her power. As spiderman once told us, with great power comes great responsibility. Don't get caught up in the comment, as this build can also leave the Shaman very vulnerable to a counterattack.

That's a wrap for this update guys.

We hope you're still enjoying our deep-dives. We've still got plenty more to uncover. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Shaman would work well in battle with? And also which hero would you like to see us dive into next? Please comment below. On another note, how would you like to see a deep-dive into a boss board? 

We'll be back later today with another hero deep dive! That's correct, another deep dive coming today so stay tuned. In the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep up with you in the comments section, as well as in our Discord Channel. As always, a huge thank you goes out to the fans who help each other out with the most frequently asked questions.

Thank you for all your support. Let's make this a great campaign.