Update #4 - Hero Deep Dive
about 3 years ago – Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 07:35:45 PM

Hey guys! 

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

Warlock

Don’t be fooled by the advanced years of the Warlock, as his sorcery manifests in his ability to summon the dead. Using demonic and shadow magic, he relishes in the slow demise of his foes.

Warlocks Hero Ability

Our hero abilities are those in the top left of a hero board. We can see here that the Warlocks unique hero ability is called Funnel Conditions. This allows the Warlock to remove any negative conditions from as many enemies as he chooses in exchange for 1 HP per condition removed. Power this together with the Warlocks corruption spell and that HP gain will keep him ticking over nicely. 

 Support Spells  

Gloom - Reducing an enemies defence, strength and intellect values by 2. What a perfect way to open up combat.

Heart of Darkness - Spreading the area in darkness, all enemies receive a darkness condition for 3 turns. Darkness is a condition that deals 8 un-defendable damage when an enemy unit dies. This includes ; Heroes, Totems, Pets & Gadgets. The second half of the spell grants 1 ally +2 Shadow Damage for 3 turns. If placed directly onto the Warlock himself, this will increase the power of his Soul Shatter, Shadow Blast and Shadow Flame spells. 

Demonic Armour - Grant 1 ally a +2 HP regeneration and a counterattack condition for 3 turns. Counterattack is an ability that allows a hero to automatically cast their CD:0 spell when hit by an enemy. This combos nicely with the Warlocks hero ability Funnel Conditions.

Demonic Ritual - This seems to be a fan favourite spell already :) All our preview/reviewers loved it. Transforming into a Demon is a big feat for a hero, so beware as when the Warlock transforms he can't transform back. The Warlocks demon form board would now be placed over the Warlock board which grants this hero 6 new spells and 1 new heroes ability. 

Army of the Dead - Summon an army of the dead. Add x1 army of the dead card to your ability tab. See below the army of the dead. 

Attack Spells

Soul Shatter - This is a ranged, shadow elemental type spell that deals 1 damage to a single target enemy, which also applies a 'can't be healed' condition on them. This is extremely useful for stopping enemy bosses and heroes in the arena from regaining HP. 

Scourge - A ranged attack that deals 2 damage to all enemies and inflicts poison 

Corruption - A powerful spell that places 3 damage over time affects on an enemy, Burn, Bleed and Poison.

Shadow Blast - A ranged attack that deals 2 damage to all enemies and is the only spell in the game that can penetrate the damage immunity buff.

Shadow Flame - The Warlocks most powerful spell. A ranged attack that deals 5 damage to all enemies plus an additional 50% if the enemy has a burning condition on them. 

Demon Form 

When one hero isn't enough, this hero has another board. This new board gets placed on top of the Warlocks existing board, transforming him image, stats and 6 of his spells.

Demon Form Ability 

Demonic outburst deals  2 damage to all enemies and 1 damage to himself. This damage can't be prevented. This ability triggers during a heroes upkeep which comes before the main phase. 

Support Spells 

Demonic Offering - This is a unique and different type of spell from most hero boards as you'll notice there is no circle. This spell forces each enemy player to choose an offering from the Demon, choosing Master or Demon. Each offering gives the enemy player a buff, in return the Demon get's an even bigger buff. Never make a deal with the devil they say! 

Immortality - Exactly what it says on the tin. Damage immunity for 2 turns.

Demonic Ritual - This spell gives the Warlock 6 different buffs over 6 turns, 1 each turn. A slow but very powerful affect. 

Attack Spells

Betrayal - A melee attack that deals 2 damage whilst also paralyzing the enemy and stopping them for healing for 2 turns. 

Cruel Tactics - Another melee spell that deals 2 damage, but this time removing a positive buff from an enemy. 

Shadow Strike - A shadow type, ranged AOE (Area of attack) spell that deals 1 damage to all enemies. Notice the 2 attack modifiers for this spell taking it's default value to a total of 13 damage.

Warlock Skill Tree

Each hero not only has their own hero board which houses 10 spells and 1 unique ability, but they also have their own skill tree. It is within these skill trees that players find their own path. All heroes start at level 1 so one of these spells or abilities can be unlocked right away. The rest will be unlocked as a hero levels up and progresses through a scenario. For Arena mode we recommend heroes start at level 5 so they can max out one of these paths. You can see here that we have 3 paths. The red path on the left called Decimation, the green path down the middle called Demon Form and the purple path on the right called Soul Harvesting. Let's dive into some of these paths and how they affect the Warlocks play style.

Decimation 

This path helps the warlock focus on direct damage by buffing his shadow damage and giving him 3 new attack spells called Death Coil, Incinerate and Shadow Storm. 

Demon Form

It's kind of in the title :) This path focuses on that epic demon we have access too. Allowing the Warlock to transform into his demon form as early as turn 1, whilst massively improving his HP. This path also supports the Demon with 3 new spells to cast. 

Soul Harvesting

A person favourite of mine. This path helps improve the Warlocks damage over time ability corruption, whilst heavily improving the slow life gain from your Funnel Conditions ability. Slow and steady wins the race. 

That's a wrap for this update guys. 

We hope you enjoyed learning more about the Warlock. This is the level of depth we have put into every single hero, with a grand total of 21 heroes, 22 if we include the demon. Now with all this information, which Hero do you think the Warlock 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 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 all for all your support. This is going to be a great campaign! 

Update #3 - Wandering Merchant
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 02:52:23 PM

Hey guys!

We continue to smash through these stretch goals like there's no tomorrow! As always we love to start these updated off with a huge big thank you to our backers for making this happen. 

 Now lets dive into some of the stretch goals unlocked yesterday :) 

The Wandering Merchant!

Our Wandering Merchant artwork isn't finished yet, so here's an outline of the artwork. How cool does he look on a scale of 1-10? Comment below. 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. 

The Elemental Board

Many heroes have an elemental type. This is displayed underneath their heroes ability on the left hand side of their board. Our elemental board brings another layer of strategy to scenario mode by offering an increase or decrease in damage to certain element types. In this example, lets use the Cleric who is a Light elemental type hero. Looking at the Elemental board if we cast our eyes on the Light column, which is the yellow star. We can see by looking down that column, Light is effective vs Ice type characters but weak against Shadow type characters. The +1 and -1 refers to the increase in damage given out or the decrease of damage received from those elemental types. The bit where people may get confused is thinking that because the Cleric is a light elemental type hero all her abilities trigger the above affects. This is not true. Any hero can have an elemental type spell. See below our example of what we mean by an elemental type spell. 

Here we can see that Inner Chaos has no elemental type, as the elemental type of a spell is displayed in the upper left corner of a spell box. We can see that Flash and Blinding Light are both Light spells. This means that only the Clerics Flash and Blinding Light spells would be effective vs an Ice type character. 

We will update the stretch goal graphic later today to reflect the new goals unlocked today. 

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.

We're getting close to completing our social goals. Don't forget to check them out near the bottom of the campaign to help every get more epic goodies :)

Thank you all for all your support. This is going to be a great campaign!

Smashing through the stretch goals!
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 01:15:10 PM

Hey guys! 

It's a little over 48hrs since we went live and what a response we've had from the community. Thank you all very much for your continued support. Yesterday evening when we got 10minutes to put our feet up, we came across a video of an old man playing a guitar in his bedroom on YouTube, and somebody had posted in the comments "this is what YouTube was made for" and it really struck home! It reminded us that this, what we are doing here today is exactly what Kickstarter was made for. Helping indie companies find reach and allowing backers to find unique products that sometimes would never make it to market. 

With our thank you's out the way, lets dive into some of the stretch goals unlocked so far and how they help improve the game. 

The Backpack! 

During game setup, players elect a party leader. This party leader is in charge of opening treasure chests and distributing loot amongst the group. The party leader must also be the Hero that holds the backpack token. This token allows any player in the party to store unwanted or unequipped loot items found within any scenario. The maximum capacity for a backpack is 8 loot items. For every 2 loot items held, the player wearing the backpack (holding the token) receives a permanent -1 agility.  A full backpack containing 8 loot items will reduce a hero's agility by a maximum value of 4.

What can you do with these loot items? Tomorrow in our update we will spoil the wandering merchant. The backpack ties in directly directly into the wandering merchant. 

Stretch Goals

We've just updated our stretch goals on our campaign to reflect new targets. You'll be pleased to see we've added an additional 4 Action Cards at 50k pledged and 4 brand new trash mobs for 60k pledged. We've also added a 100k celebration goal, which will implement an entirely new Shadow scenario. This scenario will bring with it 24 new Hexes, 3 new bosses, 15 new trash mob cards and 15 new action cards. With 27 days left to go we can reach that! In the meantime, you can unlock some more freebies by completing our Social Goals. Here's an update on how we're doing so far.

Kickstarter followers - 34/300

BGG fans - 31/150

Facebook shares - 8/100 

IG followers - 38/250 

Boss Battles

Several members of the community reached out and asked us how boss battles worked. We decided to make a graphic to explain best. This graphic is now live on our campaign. 

And that's a wrap for this update! 

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.

We're getting close to completing our social goals. Don't forget to check them out near the bottom of the campaign to help every get more epic goodies :)

Thank you all for all your support! This is going to be a great campaign!

Funded in 26hrs
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 01:13:36 PM

Hey guys! 

This is literally a dream come true for me and our small little team here at Senior Games. In many ways it’s still hard to believe that it’s happening, we reached 95% funding by the end of day 1, and now 2hrs into day 2 we're FUNDED! thanks to all of you. We can't wait to bring Heroes of the Shire to your tables. 

You can see the first 4 stretch goals on our Kickstarter page. Each time a stretch goal is achieved, a new one will be added. Almost all of our stretch goals will be available to all pledges so you need not worry you're missing out. 

We’ve got lots scheduled for this campaign, so be sure to sure to check out our updates, live gameplay, streams with the creators, hero reveals, community challenges and so much more!

To celebrate, we’re going to kick it all off by highlighting our exclusive hero.

The 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.

Our Shieldmaiden hero has a unique board layout, the Warrior being the only other Hero to share this layout. At the beginning of each turn the Shieldmaiden may equip a weapon by adding the correct card to her ability tab. She may choose from her mighty Sword,  bludgeoned Axe or her trusty Spear. With her weapon of choice equipped she dives into her main phase. The Shieldmaiden can only cast spells related to the weapon she has attached to her ability tab. On her first turn if she chooses to equip her Mighty Sword! She can only cast the 4 spells in the bottom left of her Hero board. These are Helix Strike, Swords Presence, Maidens Call and Culling Blade.  The Shieldmaiden also has x2 spells on each of her Weapon cards. These spells can only be cast if that weapon is equipped. In the above example with her Mighty Sword equipped she now has an additional 2 spells, War Paint and Gracious Swing that she can cast. A total of 6 cast-able spells with the Mighty Sword Equipped. This is also true for the bludgeoned Axe, having a total of 6 spells, but only 4 with her trusty Spear. You may notice in the bottom right of her board there are only 2 spells in her Spear column,  Spear Throw and Impale, not 4. The Shieldmaiden spells don't look very powerful in comparison to other Hero boards, but we'll spoil her weapons very soon and you'll see why! Comment your guesses down 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.

We're getting close to completing our social goals. Don't forget to check them out near the bottom of the campaign to help every get more epic goodies :) 

Thank you all for all your support! This is going to be a great campaign! 

Damian

Heroes of the Shire creator