Update #9 - Hero Deep Dive
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 03:49:59 PM

Hey guys!

If you missed our previous Hero deep dives, please checkout the Blood Mage one here and the Warlock one here. 

In todays update we will take a deep dive into a hero, suggested by one of our community members SketchyGargoyle over on our discord channel. Which hero did they pick? Let's see below.

War Drummer

The War Drummer rouses morale amongst his allies during combat, by beating on his drums. He always has the back of his brothers and sisters in arms and he will even take a few punches for them with his large health pool.

War Drummer Hero Ability

Our hero abilities are those in the top left of a hero board. We can see here that the War Drummers unique hero ability is called Drums of War. This allows the War Drummer to to beat his drums in order to give himself and his allies beneficial conditions. During each hero upkeep the War Drummer must decide how many times to beat his drums, choosing anywhere between 0-4 times. However many beats are selected, will determine which buffs are distributed that turn. See below the buffs associated with each beat tier.

1 Beat - All allies gain +1 STR for 2 turns.

2 Beats - All enemies can't be healed for 2 turns.

3 Beats - All allies gain +2 DEF and +1 HP regeneration for 2 turns.

4 Beats - All allies reduce their cooldown dice by a value of 2. 

All this moral boosting comes at a price, by exhausting the War Drummer! Each beat of his drum costs him 2 HP. Thankfully the War Drummer has a large health pool to facilitate his Drums of War ability. Keep his health topped up and he'll beat those drums all battle! 

 Support Spells 

Healing Orders - Granting all allies +2 HP regeneration for 3 turns. A grand total of 9 HP spread across 3 turns. 

Taunt - A familiar condition to most RPG players. This forces an enemy to target the War Drummer with single target attacks. 

Final Push - This spell grants a strength and agility buff to all allies. If the War Drummers health points are below 15 these buffs are increased. Don't forget to manipulate your own HP during the War Drummers hero upkeep with his Drums of War ability. 

Demoralising Roar - A beckoning roar that strips away an enemies strength and intellect.

Reinforce Defence - A strong defence buff for yourself and all allies. 

Attack Spells

Inspiring Strike - A melee attack that deals 2 DMG alongside adding an attack modifier. This unique spell allows the War Drummer to use his hero ability Drums of War for a second time that turn. 

Counter Spikes - This is our very first introduction to a new type of spell that can be cast on an enemies turn. Counter spikes will place x2 bleed conditions on the attacking enemy.

Bash - A less than impressive attack from our mighty War Drummer. Best he stick to beating those drums! 

Penetrate Defence - An AOE attack that can penetrate an enemies defence. Penetrate is a condition that reduces an enemies defence by 50% for the incoming attack. If an attack deals 10 DMG to an enemy and their defence value is 4. Usually this would mean 6 damage is taken, but penetrate defence reduces their defence from 4 to 2 (50%) meaning the attack would deal 8 Instead. This is a important attack to save for when an enemy increases their defence value and you need to find a way though. 

Planned Attack - Whilst not dealing a huge amount of damage without buffs, a mass AOE disarm spell can certainly upset the War Drummers enemies. 

War Drummer Skill Tree

The War Drummer has 3 paths to follow. Drummer down the left, Battle Comrade in the middle and Survival on the right. Each path gives the War Drummer a different playing experience as you'll see below in our summaries for each path. 

Drummer

This path really focuses on the War Drummers unique hero ability Drums of War. By increasing his drumming skills in this path, not only can he benefit from increasing the duration of these buffs but he will loose significantly less health making this a desirable path to follow when in a team.

Battle Comrade

If you're playing in a team with other support type heroes, why not take this mighty War Drummer down the path of Battle Comrade to improve his fighting skills! This path grants the War Drummer 2 new attack spells and 1 support spell in the form of bringing a Mercenary into battle with you. We will spoil the Mercenary card another time, but this guy packs a punch! 

Survival 

Without a healer, beating those Drums will take it's toll after a while. Keep your health topped up in the Survival path to be more independent. When dropping to low health this survival path really kicks in. 

That's a wrap for this update guys.

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

We'll be back tomorrow with another update. 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 all for all your support. Let's make this a great campaign.

Update #8 - Stretch goals updated & more!
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 09:07:23 AM

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 

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.  See below the results so far from the community voting process. 

Earth Scenario 

Forgotten Forest - 11, Silk Road - 1

Water Scenario

Pirates Ahead - 8, Eternal Stench- 4

Fire

Lava Eruption - 3, Footprints in the Ash -9

Ice

Eyes in the snow - 10, Ice Cave -2

Update to the stretch goal graphic

We have also updated our Kickstarter graphic to include some more goals. One of which we are currently 1 more pledge away from at the time of writing this. Our upcoming stretch goals, include a Linen finish to the box, the new inclusion of Event cards to scenario mode, more epic rarity loot, the new inclusion of quest cards to scenario mode and much more!

Condition Tokens - Community Vote

We've had a couple of mentions that some of our condition tokens are the same. This is only true for the following conditions. Burn, Bleed & Poison. Each one deals 1 damage to an enemy when placed on them, and 1 damage each turn during their token upkeep, a total of 3 un-defendable damage.  

These condition tokens are thematic to hero classes and scenarios. Examples : The Witch Doctor and Assassin use poison, the Dragon Knight and Scholar use fire, whilst bleed effects are predominantly from melee type heroes. We don't intend to remove these conditions as they play a large role in the combat mechanics for heroes those that utilize these conditions. Another example : The Witch Doctor has a Toxic Strength spell that allows him to deal 50% more damage to any enemy that is under the influence of poison. Instead we have put forth some suggestions below. 

Suggested changes 

Bleed - No change, staying the same because this condition is 1 of only 2 conditions that can be stacked on a hero board.

Burn - Staying the same for the most part, but adding a -1 resistance to incoming fire damage. If any FIRE elemental spell hits you whilst your burnt, you take an additional 1 DMG. 

Poison - Staying the same for the most part, but adding a permanent -1 AGI buff whilst you're poisoned 

Please let us know your feedback on these. Are you happy to keep things the way they are, less complicated? Or do you approve of the suggestions and want them implementing? Either way, let us know in the comments or voice your opinion over on discord. 

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. 

Kickstarter followers - 65/300

Follow us here

BGG fans - 60/150

Become a fan here

Facebook shares - 15/100

Share our FB post here

IG followers - 70/250

Follow us here 

Blood Mage 

We took a look into the Blood Mages spells and abilities yesterday in our deep-dive. If you missed it, click the link here to check it out. 

Up Next

We'll be doing another hero deep-dive later today. Please comment below with your suggestions. Over the weekend we will also be recording more playthrough footage. We'll be taking a look at a scenario and if we have time we'll try and squeeze in a 2v2 Arena battle as requested by our community Discord.

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 #6 - Hero Deep Dive
about 3 years ago – Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 08:57:11 AM

Hey guys!

In todays update we will take a deep dive into a hero, suggested by one of our community members Stefan Andersen in the comments section. Which hero did they pick? Let's see below.

Blood Mage

Lured by the power of blood magic, the Blood Mage brandishes dark rites to revive his allies. However, such power comes at a price as he must sacrifice his own health, making him dangerously unpredictable to all players.

Blood Mage Hero Ability

The Blood Mage's hero ability is called Blood Offering. Without reading on, we know it's going to involve blood! This hero offers up blood in the form of his own heath points. By paying 1 HP per target, in exchange he may add a bleed condition to his attack. Meaning if the Blood Mage is only targeting one enemy he may choose to pay 1 HP. If he is targeting 3 enemies with an AOE spell during a scenario lets say, he must pay 3 HP in order to add the bleed condition to the spell.  If there are 3 targets and the Blood Mage only wants to put a Bleed condition on one of the enemies, this can't be done. He must target everybody or nobody. When a condition is added to a spell it's affects are distributed to each target and the spell would read as if the Bleed condition was printed on the board. So using the Plasma Wave spell above, it would read: Deal 6 DMG plus bleed to all enemies + you gain 2 HP. 

Support Spells

Benevolent Sacrifice  - This spell can't be cast unless you sacrifice your Blood Demon pet. In exchange for making this sacrifice you gain 4 HP, +3 INT for 3 turns and advantage for 2 turns. Advantage is a condition that increases your next attack by 50%.

Internal Bleeding - You receive a bleed condition. Whilst there is a cooldown die on Internal Bleeding (CD:3) you Blood Offering heroes ability grants a Lacerate condition instead of bleed. Lacerate deals 2 DMG per turn for 3 turns. 

Blood Pact - You may sacrifice a target (green stick man, ally target). You receive +2 DEF & INT for 3 turns and you are able to cast another spell right after this one. 

Dark Ritual - This dark summoning allows the Blood Mage to bring back from the dead any Hero he has sacrificed this game. The summoned hero comes back with 18 HP, +2 DEF & STR. Pair this with the dark ritual and the Blood Mage is on his way to victory. 

Through Darkness - Summon a Blood Demon. Add a Blood Demon card to your ability tab. See below the Blood Demon

Attack Spells

Sacrificial Support - A spell that deals more damage if cast directly after a sacrifice has been made. This melee attack adds both Intellect and Defence attack modifiers with only a cooldown of 3. This might get the Blood Mage out of a pickle should he ever get frightened (a condition that stops ranged attacks being cast).

Shadow Wounds - A shadow spell not to be overlooked. Small direct damage but with the inclusion of Bleed and Lacerate. Damage over time conditions that can't be defended against, perfect for getting yourself out of this sticky situations when a Hero or Boss has a really high defence value. 

Siphon Life - Sucking the life from your enemy and granting yourself a heal over time. Stack several of these on yourself to keep the life flowing in to support your Blood Offering ability. 

Plasma Wave - This ranged spell deals high damage to all enemies and grants the Blood Mage a small amount of life gain. 

Bloodbath - High risk, high reward. This bloodbath not only targets all enemies but it targets all allies too. Time your bloodbath right and destroying your own pets, allies or allied pets can be devastating to the enemy is they are holding a darkness condition. A condition that deals 8 DMG to the enemy when an allied unit dies.

Blood Demon Spell Mastery

You can see here that the Blood Mage has 3 paths to follow. Down the left column we have Dark Arts. Down the middle column we have Blood Magic and on the right we have Corrupt Blood. 

Dark Arts

This path helps the Blood Mage take advantage of his sacrifice ability, turning him into somewhat of a strange support hero. The Dark Bindings spell brings the condition Darkness to the battlefield which is essential to any sacrificial build. 

Blood Magic

With not one, but two new spells to help strip the enemies defence away, this build will open up a direct damage focused build. Pair this build with another DPS hero and go in all guns blazing or hide behind an allied tank and be the star of the show yourself. 

Corrupt Blood

The path of regeneration. Perfect build for solo play or 1v1 Arena battles. With no healer or tank, DPS builds can often be fragile. Have no worries in this build as health regeneration is plentiful in the form of stacking as many bleed conditions on your enemies as possible. With the Demon Deja Vu spell, those bleed conditions should stack up in no time. 

That's a wrap for this update guys.

We hope you enjoyed learning more about the Blood Mage. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Blood Mage would work well in battle with? And also which hero would you like to see us dive into next? Please comment below. Heroes with the most votes so far are the Illusionist, Bard, War Drummer and Runesmith. 

We'll be back tomorrow  later today with another update covering new unlocked stretch goals with an update on how the social goals are going. 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. This is going to be a great campaign!

Update #5 - Wandering Merchant Art
about 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 04:24:11 AM

Hey guys!

As always we love to start these updates off with a huge big thank you to our backers for making this happen. We've started to build a little community over on Discord. Feel free to hop in and join us if you want to talk all things Heroes of the Shire. 

Now let's dive into some more of the stretch goals.

The Wandering Merchant!

Our Wandering Merchant artwork is now finished. What do you guys think? Comment below. Here's a quick recap of how the Wandering Merchant comes into the game and what effects he brings.  

During scenario mode setup, the party leader should take 4 random loot items (don't peep) and place them face down adjacent to the scenario tiles, placing the Wandering Merchant card on top. This forms the Merchants shop. To visit the Merchants shop players must bump into him on their travels through action cards. Once you find the merchant you will be able to access his shop, which allows heroes to trade any 2 loot items they currently own or are stored in the party leaders backpack for 1 of his.

New Action Cards

Congrats! We recently unlocked 4 new unique action cards for scenario mode. We will add x1 of these for each scenario. Please see below some samples of action cards we have in mind. Please vote on one of the options below for each scenario and the highest voted from each will be turned into an action card. 

Fire  - Lava Eruption or Footprints in the Ash

Ice - Eyes in the Snow or Ice Cave

Earth  - Forgotten Forest or Silk Road 

Water  - Pirates Ahead or Eternal Stench 

Social Goals 

Here's an update on how we're doing so far.

Kickstarter followers - 59/300

BGG fans - 55/150

Facebook shares - 9/100

IG followers - 50/250

Up Next

In our next update we will be deep-diving into our Blood Mage hero. We intend to do a deep-dive into most of our Heroes so if your favourite hasn't come up yet, don't worry I'm sure we will cover it :) However if you would like to vote down below, please comment with the hero you're most excited to see.

We'll be back tomorrow with the Blood Mage 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 your support. This is going to be a great campaign!

Scenario mode update - We've listened to your feedback!
about 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 03:41:56 AM

Hey guys!

After careful consideration and listening to feedback from our amazing community here and over on our discord, we have decided to make some changes to our scenario tiles to help our worlds become randomly generated. See below our proposed changes.

Removing all scenario symbols from our hexes

We propose to remove all the current icons that are displayed on our tiles, which include loot, action cards and trash mob summons. Instead we will create an adventure deck which will house these symbols instead. A simple yet effective change. 

Adventure Deck

We propose to add all the symbols removed from our scenario tiles and place them into a adventure card deck. This adventure deck will offer the same ratio of trash mob summons, loot items and action cards as the existing scenarios. 

Sample of cards found in the Adventure Deck

How will the Adventure Deck work? 

The elected party leader will take a card from the adventure deck and resolve its action whenever a scenario tile is explored. These will include loot items, keep exploring actions, trash mob summons and action cards. Thus creating a randomly generated world for our scenario actions, making each play through uniquely different to offer even more replay-ability than before. This will allow us to keep our beautiful matching artwork for each tile as the scenario progresses. Bosses will be the only icon that stay exactly where they are, attached to certain tiles. Bosses are scaled in difficulty, typically those being further away from the starting Shire hex being stronger to compensate for the adventures found along the way. 

Each card in the adventure deck will be numbered. This will allow us to manipulate the deck according to each scenario. We also intend to alter some existing action cards to also manipulate this Adventure Deck.

Thank you for your feedback

We hope you enjoy these new proposed changes! Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

We'll be posting another update shortly covering new unlocked stretch goals with an update on how the social goals are going. 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. This is going to be a great campaign!