Hello! I'm Aislyn, one of the creators and designers of Ivion: The Herocrafting Card Game. Thanks for joining us! Our next Ivion Kickstarter is launching very soon, and it's time to introduce the concept of Herocrafting. Now, you may be wondering: what's a 'Herocrafting' card game? It's not a term used elsewhere, but does it have any substance? Does it mean anything specific, or add anything to the genre? The answer to these questions is yes!
First, let's start with context. Oftentimes, when folks think of a card game—especially a competitive one—they think complex, difficult to learn, and even more difficult to enjoy 'properly'. Making your own deck in these games is very difficult, requiring immense knowledge of the game's mechanics. It's easy to accidentally create a deck doesn't even function. It can be even more painful with smaller card games, as you can't look up a meta to learn what's best or most fun.
Because of the myriad hurdles to make your own deck, you may not even enjoy making your own deck, which can be a huge turn-off to the entire game. Originally in our first product, we had no means to overcome this challenge—Ivion suffered from the problems laid out above. However, our soft '2nd edition' addresses this with the Herocrafting system.
When creating an entirely custom deck in Ivion, you must choose two classes, one specialization, and two special powers to compliment your character. Each card choice is yours, and you'll need to ensure you have enough attack cards, as well as enough defense, destruction, movement, and counter cards to make your character powerful. It's all a lot to take in.
Enter Herocrafting. Instead of picking each card yourself, you simply must choose your one specialization that looks or sounds cool, then two classes to compliment it. Those three choices define a new character that you can construct. That's it.
After you've chosen your three 'archetypes' (one specialization and two classes), you'll need to find each card within those archetypes that has the Herocrafting icon—the forging hammer. There are exactly enough cards within each of these archetypes to create a complete deck, cutting out the choice paralysis of constructing a deck from scratch.
We've meticulously chosen each of the Herocrafting cards within each archetype to ensure any combination will have enough attacks, defense, counters, movement, anything you'll need to be an effective hero on the battlefield. And the greatest beauty of all of this is that you don't lose your agency. You still make choices and create your own hero, but you don't need intimate knowledge of the game to do so. Picking up all three products among our new boxes that include it net you the necessary cards to utilize the Herocrafting system. Within those boxes are thirteen combinations, creating the possibility of many characters right from the start. Even with one more Kickstarted set of boxes, we'll unlock dozens of more possible Herocrafted characters waiting to be unleashed!
I hope that the Herocrafting system appeals to you! Thanks for reading, and may you find the most absurd and amazing characters made possible by this feature. We look forward to you joining us in our Kickstarter, launching September 1st, 2020, and as always, thank you for your support!