Update #11 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 04:04:14 AM
Hey guys!
If you missed our previous Hero deep dives, please checkout the Blood Mage one here, the Warlock one here and the War Drummer here.
In todays update we will take a deep dive into a hero, suggested by one of our community members Sh8p6 over on our discord channel. This is a hero that we've kept quiet. Which hero did they pick? Let's see below.
Illusionist
In human form, The Illusionist’s fragile defence is powered by the elements of Frost magic. However, don’t be fooled by his apparent vulnerability, as if you are deft enough to slay him, you will witness how he shatters into a myriad of illusive forms, enabling him to avoid damage and turning him into an unexpected power force.
Illusionists Hero Ability
This unique hero has a restriction above his heroes ability which reads; You can't use any CD:5 or CD:6 spells until you're in illusive form. Illusive form you say? Tell me more!
Shattered Illusion : Our illusionist shatters upon death into an illusive form. This form brings him back to life with vengeance. Illusive form allows the Illusionist to cast all of his spells, including his CD:5 & CD:6 spells, but not only that! He can cast 2 of these per turn now. With a very low defence value, how will the illusionist stack up against our other heroes? Lets take a look at some of his Support spells below.
Support Spells
Smoke Screen - Forcing an enemy hero to go last in the turn order can really upset combo plays. Allowing for a more controlling play over some dominant heroes.
Freeze - This spell makes an enemy think twice about attacking you. The after effects of their damage will leave them frozen, thus giving you two turns in a row unless cleansed.
Cold Touch - A support spell that increases all allies intellect value by 2.
Counterspell - Only available to cast on an enemies turn and when the illusionist is the target of a spell. This powerful counter magic spell comes at a price by dealing 2 damage to himself. Being able to counter any enemies spell is a fantastic way of evasion.
Ice Block - The illusionist freezes himself inside a wall of ice to make himself immune to damage for 1 turn. By doing so he harms himself by 3 health points.
Attack Spells
Screech - A ranged AOE (Area of attack) spell that strips away an enemies defence.
Phantasmal Image - What's better than casting your own spells? Casting your enemies! The versatility of this spell is fantastic. It's definitely a creators favourite of mine. If you cast an enemies CD:3 spell, you would place a CD die of 4 on Phantasmal Image as this spell follows the CD+1 of the enemy spell you cast.
Frost Bolt - A ranged frost elemental type attack, dealing 1 DMG to a single enemy with an added Intellect modifier. This spell when buffed and cast twice in a row can pack a punch.
A Great Chill - Similar to the frost bolt, A Great Chill is a ranged frost elemental type AOE attack that deals 2 damage to all enemies.
Ice Blast - A powerful single target attack that deals 2 damage plus knockback to an enemy.
Illusionists Skill Tree
The Illusionist has 3 paths to follow. Frost Magic down the left, Deflection in the middle and Illusive Strength on the right. Each path gives the Illusionist a different playing experience as you'll see below in our summaries for each path.
Frost Magic
This path really focuses on increasing the damage potential of the Illusionist by buffing his Frost elemental type spells. Summoning an icy wind during combat will most certainly leave your enemies feeling the chill, a powerful effect in PvP combat.
Deflection
Deflection focuses on evasion by adding a new spell called Ice Deflection alongside permanently reducing the cooldown of your Ice Block spell. With a new deflection spell and the ability to now reduce stats, the Illusionist is surely on his way to victory against his enemies.
Illusive Strength
This path homes in on that illusive form. Allowing the illusionist to stun and knockback his enemies when he shatters into his illusive form. Bringing with it 2 new attack spells and 1 great healing spell, the illusive form will no doubt want to make it's appearing as quickly as possible.
That's a wrap for this update guys.
We hope you enjoyed learning more about the Illusionist. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Illusionist 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 hero deep dive! 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 #10 - Tabletopia updated
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 03:55:59 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. With that out of the way, let's jump into today's update.
Stretch Goal Unlocked
We recently unlocked x4 new trash mob monsters for scenario mode. One for each themed scenario. See below a sample of our new Ice scenario monster, the Snow Leopard. For the water scenario we have a Coral Snake, for the Earth scenario a Goblin Shaman and the Fire scenario a Burning Raptor, of which all will be revealed soon.
Creator VS
We will be hosting a series of creator VS sessions over on Tabletopia Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th Nov. These sessions will allow our backers to join Damian, our games creator & Chloe, our logistics manager to battle it out in the arena, either in a 2v2 or a free for all brawl style mash-up. We will run 2 sessions each day at different times to try and fit as many of you in as possible. First event will be held at 3pm GMT and the second at 8pm GMT on each of the days. If you would like to register your interest for the event please comment below the words 'Count me in : 3pm' or 'Count me in : 8pm'. We will contact several of you at random to join us prior to the event. We apologise in advance if you don't get an invite, but we'll do our best to fit as many of you in as possible. In order to ensure a smooth event, we ask that you are able to join us on Discord and use Audio to chat. We will join one of our voice channels in the Heroes of the Shire discord group, so please make sure you have a microphone or the ability to communicate via voice.
Creator FAQ
Who is your favourite hero?
This is a tricky one because there are so many different amazing heroes! But if I have to pick it would be the Engineer, because his gadgets are so cool. Why cast spells when you can use a rocket launcher?
Do you have a favourite spell?
Again there are so many! Our next deep dive will cover another of my favourite heroes and 2 spells from there I absolutely adore. If I was forced to pick though I think I would go with Hex from the Witch Doctors hero board as I do love a good crowd control spell :)
Which scenario is your favourite?
Flavour wise I love the ice scenario, but my favourite has to be the Earth scenario because of the bosses there. We have baby goats evolving into warrior goats, what more would I want from a scenario.
What makes Heroes of the Shire unique?
We have a purely deterministic combat system with no dice rolling, allowing for a more strategic based approach. Being able to calculate your enemies board state ahead of time, allows for a math based approach to victory.
Up Next
We'll be covering several hero deep dives over the next few days. We will post one Monday and one Tuesday, allowing you learn more about our heroes and their play styles. We will also update you on the social goals and action card voting process.
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 #9 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 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!
over 4 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
over 4 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!
