Update #26 - Hero Deep Dive
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 03:34:05 AM
Hey all.
Thank you for joining us on this adventure, we can't wait to bring Heroes of the Shire to your table next year. Even though we're working hard behind the scenes to get the game wrapped up and sent off to the manufacturing press, we're still making time to showcase our Heroes in these deep dives. Today we have the Dragon Knight hero for you.
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 | Bard | Shieldmaiden | Druid | Witch Doctor | Berserker | Forest Troll | Armoured Crab.
Dragon Knight
This heavily armoured Knight, uniquely draws on his Dragon training, to temporarily increase his short-term power with his gift of casting fire spells. He’s a fiery character who is capable of dealing consistent damage.
Dragon Knight Hero Ability
Dragon Aid : You gain +2 Strength and Intellect for 2 turns after casting a Dragon spell. The Dragon spells are the 4 spells in the bottom right called Dragon Rage, Siphon Fire, Dragon Fire & Flame Blast.
Support Spells
Ignite Armour - Whilst there is a cooldown die on Ignite Armour you and your allies gain HP from burn conditions instead of taking damage. You may also cast another spell right after casting Ignite Armour.
Light 'Em Up - This spell burns everybody including allies. The red and green mixed target means all players. Works perfectly with Ignite Armour.
Knights Pledge - All allies deals 50% more damage on their next attack. A powerhouse of a support spell. Note : Percentages are not added to the attacking numbers, but rather the final amount of damage dealt after the targets have defended. For example 10 DMG plus 50% is not 15 DMG as it may seem. It would be 10 DMG minus the enemies defence of lets say 5. Total of 5 DMG plus 50% would equal 8 DMG. We emphasize this often as it's an easy mistake to make when adding up the damage, and if done in-correct can make a big impact on the damage.
Dragon Rage - Whilst you have a CD die on Dragon Rage your attack spells deal an additional 2 damage. This is also a dragon spell which would trigger your Dragon Aid ability.
Siphon Fire - You receive a counterattack condition for 2 turns. Whilst there is a cooldown die on Siphon Fire your counterattack spell changes from your CD:0 spell to Fireball.
Attack Spells
Fireball - A classic RPG spell that no game can be without and our trusty Dragon Knight takes this honour. Fireball is a ranged fire elemental attack that deals 2 damage with an intellect attack modifier.
Burning Strike - A melee attack that deals 5 damage plus an additional 2 damage if the target is holding a burn condition, which shouldn't be hard to pull off.
Rapid Thrust - A melee attack that deals 1 damage plus an agility modifier. This can be a solid DPS spell if imbued with fire in the Dragon Knights spell mastery. Note the agility modifier here, making spells like the Huntresses Horn of Agility even more terrifying.
Dragon Fire - A ranged fire elemental type spell, that deals 3 damage plus burn to all enemies.
Flame Blast - A ranged fire elemental type spell that deals 6 damage plus buffs your fire damage type spells by +1 for 3 turns.
Dragon Knight Spell Mastery
The Dragon Knight has 3 paths to follow. Fire Magic down the left, Knights Path in the middle and Dragon Service on the right. Each path gives the Dragon Knight a different play style as you'll see below in our summaries for each path.
Fire Magic
This path helps reduce the Dragon Knights defence in exchange for buffing his Intellect, turning him into a Pyromancer. Following this path will be sure to leave a burn or two on your opponents.
Knights Path
Flaming Aura gets to shine in this path with the arrival of 2 new melee attacks. Retribution is one fine way to penalise your enemies for attacking you, leaving them feeling nullified after their last strike.
Dragon Service
With 3 new Dragon spells the Dragon Knight will be sure to have those +2 buffs from his Dragon Aid ability almost permanently. This path helps increase the Dragon Knights survivability with his Dragon Energy ability and did we mention that he can now call upon a Baby Dragon to aid him in battle?
And that's a wrap for now guys!
We will be back soon with more updates and deep-dives. Until then, keep theory crafting coming, we love hearing all your hero ideas and compositions over on Discord.
Thank you for all your support.
Heroes of the Shire
Burn & Taunt Condition Update - Plus Future Deep Dives
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 08:58:09 PM
Hello everyone!
Thanks to you guys we're over that first hurdle which was the crowdfunding stage. Now we move into the final stages of production that we anticipate will take 3 months. We will keep everybody updated along the way as promised. See below some info regarding the updated Burn & Taunt conditions, alongside some information on future deep dives.
Missed Stretch Goal - Added
We were so close to reaching that £90k Stretch Goal that we've decided to include it as an extra thank you to all of our backers. So, our Dragon Knight hero will have a new pet to play with, a Baby Dragon! We will be taking a deep dive into this hero in the coming days so stay tuned.
Burn Token - Update
As you may remember earlier in our campaign we spoke about some changes with our burn and poison condition. Whilst we updated you with the poison conditions, we still had some tests with our burn condition. We can now share with you the updated burn condition and we hope you like the changes.
Old Burn - Target immediately receives 1 damage and an additional 1 damage per token upkeep.
New Burn - Target immediately receives 1 damage and an additional 1 damage per token upkeep, this is now the first phase of burn. Instead of being discarded, burn is now passed to another ally (excludes yourself). The receiving ally places the burn condition on the yellow side up to represent that the burn is on its second course and will finish after this hero has taken all 3 damage. Only the regular flame burn (phase 1) can be passed on, the yellow flame burn (phase 2) can NOT.
Taunt Token - Update
Our old taunt condition allowed AOE (multiple targets) spells to still target the enemy of their choice, as long as the enemy with taunt was included in this selection. This meant single target attacks were forced to target a taunting enemy but AOE attacks could still get round this. Whilst this makes sense thematically as AOE affects hit an area, it made taunt less effective. This is due to lots of heroes and bosses having AOE spells. Thematically a taunting hero is taking all damage and keeping the aggro on them, so we have made the new condition more inclusive of this.
Old Taunt - You must be the target of attack spells.
New Taunt - You must absorb all effects of a spell on behalf of an ally.
Example 1 : There are 3 players vs 1 boss and the boss casts a spell that deals 8 DMG to all enemies. The hero with the taunt condition must take all 8 DMG for each hero. Each instance of 8 DMG can be defended.
Example 2 : Arena mode 2vs2, the Witch Doctor enemy casts confusion ray that confuses all enemies and reduces their defence. The hero with the taunt condition must take both instances of the confusion ray, meaning they would receive -2 DEF and confused for themselves, then another -2 DEF and confused on behalf of their ally. Whilst confusion can't stack there would only be one confusion token placed, the reduced defence value does stack so this would be the outcome.
These changes make placing a taunt condition a more important part of a teams strategy. This can sometimes be very detrimental to the taunting hero so may not always be wanted, but this can also save a team from nasty damage and conditions, bringing the taunt condition to the place we want it.
Deep Dives
Over the course of our campaign we have completed several deep-dives for our heroes, helping our backers understand all the unique skills and spells each hero has to offer in Heroes of the Shire. Whilst covering many heroes over the 30 days, we haven't covered them all. Our deep-dives won't be coming as frequently as they did during our crowd funder, but rest assured they are still coming and will offer all our backers plenty of opportunity for theory crafting. Our next deep dives will be the Dragon Knight and Engineer heroes.
Adding in all of the Stretch Goals
We will be testing all of the new cards from our Stretch Goals over the coming weeks to ensure they work as intended, from the Event cards to the extra loot items and trash mobs. This might add a few extra weeks to production, but we're pretty confident they won't add anymore.
Follow us on Social Media
If you haven't already, please join us on as many social media platforms as you have access too. Whilst we will always update you here on Kickstarter, using our Discord, Facebook or IG are other great ways to communicate with us and stay updated.
Facebook - Follow us
Instagram - Follow us
Discord - Join us
That's a wrap for this update.
We will be back in a few days with a hero deep dive. Thank you all for joining us on this epic journey. Until next time.
Heroes of the Shire
Big Thank You!!
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 08:09:16 AM
Hello
First off, we want to give a huge thanks to you, our backers and supporters, for believing in Heroes of the Shire. We're so excited to bring this game to your tables next year. Heroes of the Shire has been a dream of creator, Damian, for a long time now. We feel incredibly humbled and grateful that so many of you have joined us in helping to fund the project turning this into reality with many stretch goals unlocked. We're bursting with joy at the thought of thousands of you worldwide having access to what we've been playing here in the Shire for almost 2yrs now. However none of this could have happened without you! We are especially grateful to those members of the community who have been with us along the journey, answering questions for other backers. Those of you that have helped reply in the comments section on our campaign and our growing community over on our discord channel, we are so very lucky to have you here with us. All of your contribution to the game, the feedback, the support, the playing on Tabletopia, we see and appreciate everything you have done to help our game come to grow in this short space of time. We can’t wait to share the final product with you soon.
Thank you all.
Please see a link here to a google drive where you can download the above 2 images and our thank you banner at higher resolution should you wish to print them out or use them as a desktop background.
Final Challenge - Update
Thank you to all that participated in our final challenge. Some of you that took 11 turns defeating the War Drummer must have spent a long time on this challenge so it's really appreciated. Competition aside we hope you enjoyed learning the combat system and how all the upkeep phases and conditions work. With so many different variables from each hero on the table, hopefully this will shed some light on how different each and every game will feel when your pledge arrives.
The results are in for the competition and the answer was 3 rounds. We will break this down in our next update, but the Warlock placing a Darkness condition with his Heart of Darkness spell, was for the most part the most important move here. Congratulations to sh8pe who was our winner. Please see our IG story showing us spinning the wheel to randomly select our winner.
Kickstarter Payment Processing
Kickstarter will be charging your credit/debit card associated to your Kickstarter account sometime soon now the project has now funded. Kickstarter are usually pretty good at trying to resolve any payment issues, however if you still need support, please contact them directly at support(at)kickstarter.com.
The Pledge Manager
Over the coming weeks, we will be testing the pledge manager and adding all the bits we need in there. As we are coming into the holiday season and after a very busy campaign, we will have a few days off. Our Pledge manager will be open in a few weeks at the very beginning of January.
When we have finished, you'll be sent a survey link from BackerKit. In that survey, you'll have the option to confirm your pledge, upgrade your pledge, pick add-ons, add additional copies of the game, provide your shipping address and take care of shipping/taxes.
Missed the Campaign?
Stay tuned as we will be opening up the pledge manager to accept late pledges soon. Please note : late late pledges will not include the KS exclusive hero the Shieldmaiden, however late pledges do include all stretch goals. Orders received after the pledge manager closes in February will not receive any stretch goals.
Future Updates
We want to keep our backers up to date with all the news and updates, so we will continue to publish updates until the games have been fulfilled.
Follow us on Social Media
If you haven't already, please join us on as many social media platforms as you have access too. Whilst we will always update you here on Kickstarter, using our Discord, Facebook or IG are other great ways to communicate with us and stay updated.
Facebook - Follow us
Instagram - Follow us
Discord - Join us
One last thank you to everyone that's been involved in the project, our creator Damian for all the tremendous amount of work he's put in, Chloe for all the liaising back and forth with fulfilment companies and manufactures, Edwin for all the gorgeous artwork produced and to you the backers and the retailers who pledge projects like ours, helping create more than just a board game. Turning aspirations and dreams into reality.
Heroes of the Shire team
Update #23 - Hero deep dive & more
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Dec 08, 2021 at 11:33:50 PM
Hey all.
As we close in on these final few hours, we want to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining us on this adventure and for supporting our project, really does mean the world to us, so thank you.
We have another deep-dive for you today covering the Witch Doctor as voted for by a community member BravoEcho.
Before we take our deep dive, lets have a quick update on that Hyena form we were waiting for from our artist. See below the updated graphic for the Druids 3 forms, which now includes the Hyena.
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 | Bard | Shieldmaiden | Druid | Forest Troll | Armoured Crab.
Witch Doctor
The Witch Doctor draws on his wisdom to cure afflictions dealt by dark forces. However, be wary of his draughts of potions, as foes may be blighted with deadly poison and pernicious curses.
Witch Doctor Hero Ability
Healing Wave : You may heal 1 ally for 2HP and another ally for 1HP.
Energy Force : You may ignore the effects of taunt.
Support Spells
Healing Broth - All allies gain 2 HP regen for 3 turns.
Hex - All enemies receive a hex condition for 3 turns.
Toxic Strength - Your next attack deals 50% more damage if the enemy is poisoned. You may cast another spell.
Confusion Ray - You strip away all enemies defence by 2 and confuse them for 3 turns. A very powerful effect not to be overlooked.
Voodoo Worship - All allies gain energised for 3 turns and 3 HP immediately.
Attack Spells
Poison Curse - A ranged poison type spell that deals 3 damage plus poison to a single target.
Curse of Darkness - A ranged attack that deals 4 damage to all enemies and places them in darkness for 3 turns.
Spider Plague - A poison type AOE spell that deals 1 damage to all enemies. Great CD:0 spell for cleaning up multiple small enemies.
Undying Force - A split spell with the first half reducing an enemies defence by 2 for 3 turns. The second half of this spell deals 3 damage to a single target.
Acid Cloud - A ranged poison type attack that deals 4 damage to all enemies and leaves them feeling the wrath of your poison.
Witch Doctor Spell Mastery Board
The Witch Doctor has 3 paths to follow. Curse Anthology down the left, Venomous in the middle and Voodoo Healing on the right. Each path gives the Berserker a different play style as you'll see below in our summaries for each path.
Curse Anthology
Curses are frustrating to deal with and our Witch Doctor isn't any exception to this when following his Curse Anthology tree. This path increase the damage of all curse spells whilst unlocking a new curse. If your opponents have no cleanse abilities, this path will proof to be extremely useful.
Venomous
Unlocking new spells that pump out more damage to poisoned enemies makes this path great for burst damage. Keeping yourself poisoned whilst in this path proves to be very useful by increasing your defence and reducing your cooldowns. With cooldown dice dropping off quickly, the Witch Doctor can can be a deadly damage dealer.
Voodoo Healing
Following this path will pull the Witch Doctor away from damaging his opponents, instead becoming a great party healer. Whilst there are no additional healing spells unlocked, this path offers some amazing abilities to keep the Witch Doctor up there with some of the Shires finest healers. Following the voodoo healing path also grants the Witch Doctor access to a new Zombie Cat pet. This pet combo's with your curse of darkness spell to help
Social Goals - Update
We're now into the final stretch 20hrs of our campaign so please make sure to complete the stretch goals if you haven't already. This helps yourself and the community unlock some extra goodies.
Yesterday we posted our third and final challenge. This is a tricky one and will take some time working out. By participating you have the chance to win a free playmat and pack of sleeves so checkout our post on how to enter.
We've had a couple of backers mention they would like the Elite cards to have a gold border. At present we have our regular framed monsters with the gold border and our elite monsters with a borderless card. We were asked why we chose this method as we've played RGP's for as long as we can remember and we're familiar with how many of them represent a stronger monster with that gold border. As big Magic the Gathering players our decision to go borderless with elite monsters was because in magic, the borderless cards are the more sought after and more exotic cards so to speak with the regular cards getting their regular frame. We've done something similar. We're happy to look at this further if the community would prefer the gold frames on the elite monsters instead, so please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. See an example here of the 2 different types. As it stands we have the gold framed as standard trash mob's and the borderless as the elites.
Wait What...There's More?
As we close in on the last 24hrs we thought we'd treat you guys to second deep dives in the same post! This time looking at our might Berserker who can pump out huge damage. Enjoy.
Berserker
If you are planning a violent ambush upon the Berserker, take heed that he will inevitably channel his uncontrollable rage to strengthen his mettle, enabling him to unleash devastating strikes upon his enemies.
Berserker Hero Ability
Uncontrollable Rage : Anytime you receive damage you gain +1 Strength for 2 turns.
Support Spells
Bandage - One ally gains +3 HP regen for 3 turns.
Self Inflicted - You receive a burn and bleed condition. You also receive +1 Defence for 3 turns after a cooldown die leaves this spell. Remember that Uncontrollable Rage ability above, this spell plays nicely into that.
Punishment - One ally gains a counterattack condition for 3 turns.
Avengement - Your attack spells deal an additional X damage where X is the amount of damage you receive during your heroes upkeep. This can be a power house of a spell if used correctly.
Hostile Manoeuvre - Your next attack deals X damage where X is the value of the last CD spell cast by the defending enemy.
Attack Spells
Finishing Blow - A strong melee attack spell that deals 3 damage to enemy, plus an additional 4 damage if the enemy is below 12 HP.
Devastating Blow - A split spell that deals 2 damage to a single target on the first half of the spell. The second half of the spell leaves an enemy with -2 agility for 2 turns.
Stomp - A single target spell that deals 1 damage to an enemy. Don't under estimate this CD:0 spell. With lots of buffed strength from your uncontrollable rage ability you can save your higher CD spells for when they are needed.
Cleave - A strong melee attack that deals 5 damage to an enemy whilst immobilising one of their spells of your choice by a value of 2. Immobilise is a condition that forces a player to place a CD die on one of their spells by a value of whatever the immobilise spell states. If a player already has a die on their spell it instead is increased by a value of that number instead.
Exhaust Armour - A strong attack that strips away an enemies defence by a value of 2 prior to attacking.
Berserker Spell Mastery Board
The Berserker has 3 paths to follow. Power of Rage down the left, Close Combat in the middle and Reckless Fury on the right. Each path gives the Berserker more spells for dealing great damage. Whilst this hero doesn't follow our regular system of each path offering a different play style, his 3 DPS paths are all unique in the sense that your combat strategies will differ. Thematically it didn't feel right giving our Berserker a support path, he's a damage dealer at the core so all 3 paths represent that :)
Power of Rage
This path helps improve the Berserkers agility value a great deal. By adding +1 agility to the Berserkers Uncontrollable Rage ability, this means he's not only be more powerful when he attacks but he will be able to go before most of his enemies. Cleave Upgrade is a fantastic ability for neutralising one of your enemies spell.
Close Combat
What sort of Berserker would he be without a classic headbutt. Making yourself bleed will prove to more more useful than you think. Knuckle Buster is a great addition for scaring off those frustrating casters, alongside Healing the Mighty being able to keep you alive much longer when working as a team.
Wreckless Fury
Vigor is a powerful effect that can permanently reduce one of your spells cooldowns by a value of 2 prior to battle. Meaning you can keep an enemy at bay by pumping the power level of one of your spells based on what your opponents heroes/build are. Whilst in scenario mode a new spell can be chosen each and every battle so the effects of Vigor are what we would call semi-permanent. This path also offers some protection and HP regen, but instead of relying on allies to protect you like the Close Combat path, you can rely on yourself by attacking.
And that's a wrap for now guys!
We will be back tomorrow 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.
Damian - Creator
Update #22 - Final Community Challenge
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Dec 08, 2021 at 03:22:14 AM
Welcome to our third and final challenge. Difficulty - Medium/Hard
1 Lucky winner will grab themselves a free playmat and a set of sleeves, so let's jump right in!
…Then, he was alone….looking around in hopes of seeing just a single familiar face in this field of death and bloodshed. His war drums beating slower and slower knowing his enemies are closing in….it is then his gaze meets that of two foes….both encircling him, closing in for the kill. Two formidable masters of the dark arts, each with one goal in mind. The War Drummer realised at that moment, hope was dwindling…this was to be his final stand….this was to be his end.
In what round can the Blood Mage & Warlock defeat the War Drummer? A round is complete after each hero in the turn order has taken their turn, including pets.
Note : When taking the turn for the War Drummer, act in his best interests. We have also removed the War Drummers, Drums of War 2 beats intentionally for the purposes of this challenge. If you need a better look at each hero board, please checkout each of these heroes deep-dive updates.
We will select one winner at random with the correct answer on Thursday 9th Dec. We will comment on your post asking for the workings out, if you respond back within 24hrs with a correct answer consider yourself a lucky winner to receive a free playmat & set of sleeves for participating in this challenge. If we get no response within 24hrs we will move onto the next comment chosen at random.
Good luck to all.
Damian - Creator
