Upcoming Valve card game, with the creator of MTG designing it. He was apparently making the game already when gaben approached him and they turned it into a dota card game.

Should come out in the second half of 2018.

First tournament of 2019 will have a million dollar prizepool, with tournaments getting some funding from a portion of the game's sales.

Known informations from reddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/Artifact/co...e_know_so_far/

All currently revealed cards

https://imgur.com/a/mKuVZ


There are also a few short first turns gameplay videos out.




Lots of interesting mechanics like 3 lanes everygame where you choose where your units and heroes are deployed. Some abilities can cause some swaps, etc. Can also buy items(buffs and heals, etc) on some rounds with gold (gold is not mana).

Pretty HYPED

"Will not be free-to-play or pay-to-win." So tbd. I would expect something to line up against hearthstone? If so, sign me up.

Seems like they're trying to make the Dota2 of card games: intricate, skillful and not casual friendly. I don't think Hearthstone should be worried.

The preview article also seemed to say that it will have no F2P elements at all and that any cards you acquire will have to be purchased with real money. However, you can trade and sell any of your cards for real money as well.

I don't see how a game in which the only way to acquire cards is to buy them can not be p2w.

I mean, magic is the epitome of p2w and this copies the model. It's a game with buy-in and random packs ffs.

Not free to play and not pay to win means you pay a set amount and you get 100% of the cards. It's the model that all card games should have. Overwatch is another "not pay to win and not free to play" game. But they already said there will be trading and packs. But he also said he wants to divorce the concept that "rarity = power." So who knows what they're doing.

My problem with this game and many others is the way it looks. I can't get into the weeby type of look of Shadowvers and the boxiness of the cards, etc. This does the same thing to me. Nothing compares to HS in that regard, I can't overlook it for any potentially better gameplay.

Spoiler alert

I would be down for this if that is the case. Pay 1 price and get access to all cards. Then have tons of alternate art, premiums, avatars, other cosmetics, etc that are acquired through a pack / loot-box of some sort and have a market for trading.

Sadly based on what they've said so far I don't think this is actually the case.

I see your point but I think its still a lot more pleasing to the eye than games like Gwent and shadowverse. By a lot.

I think it will probably be just enough to grab enough people who get turned off usually and bring them in to the better gameplay

I've read a mini Q&A with the artifact team and it seems there will be a price for the game (30$+?) and you still have to buy packs. Marketplace seems to be fully in play here though so you can probably get most of the cards for much less $ than the average odds per pack

I'm interested in playing just because Valve. They rarely fail when it comes to games. Tho I don't play Dota 2 or Hearthstone. So I wonder if i'll be able to pick it up.

pretty interesting answers from IGN reporters.


Start the game with 3 mana on first turn, going +1 per turn infinitely. Each lane has a full mana bar each turn (aka 3/3/3 mana on turn 1 , not 3 total)

There are 4 colours of cards (you can run every colors in your deck with no limit - I guess some cards/heroes affect only certain colored cards though) , red green and blue are kinda like what you expect from strength, dex, intel (with intel being more lategame big spells while something like red is more about being beefy with high hp and armor, good for early game pushing etc). And the 4th color is black, which is supposed to be more based around doing effects to OTHER lanes, and also black cards are efficient at gaining gold.

Now about gold: creeps give 1 gold, heroes give 5 when you kill them. These heroes respawn 2 turns after death. Except the new Hero (called Rhax or something?), the wolfman guy, who respawns every turn (but is weaker of course).


With this gold, after every(?) turns, you get a random option of item cards from your deck. Each item has a different gold cost and you can put those on heroes (the heroes keep the items after death when they respawn too).


Minimum cards per deck is 40 but there is no maximum (rarely a reason to run more than the minimum cards in most card games tho).


You win by destroying two towers. Towers are like your face, units that dont have an opposing unit will attack through and hit the opposing tower.

IF you own one lane and destroy that tower, another pops back up there but w/ 80 HP instead of 40. I dont know if the first tower you kill gives gold but it seems likely.

Really cool ****. I cant ****ing wait.


ps: there are 10 000 voice lines in the game ?!?!?

game is up on steam (kinda)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact/


Release date 27-28 december . might be a placeholder date tho.

I'm not certain about the business model. Most other games are free-to-play or pay once.

It might be hard to convince people to commit into a new digital card game which success is unknown where you have to buy every set. MTG is such a cash-grab but at least those cards have some resale-value. With a new game, it all might come crashing down.

People are dumping in hundreds (if not thousands) a year into games like Hearthstone with no-resale value whatsoever. I don't really think this is a primary concern of most players.

It's hard not to be skeptical of the payment model, but at the same time, there hasn't really been any Valve game ever that felt like it was trying to gouge it's player base.

theyll also put back a % of the money they make right back into tournaments so expect massive prizepools for a while

Press Release
August 1, 2018 -- Artifact, the digital card game from legendary designer Richard Garfield and Valve (Dota 2, Steam), will be playable by attendees of this year’s PAX West in Seattle, WA (Aug 31 – Sept 3) in the game’s first public showing.

Players will battle each other in a continuous single elimination gauntlet for the right to challenge a champion on the main stage. Everyone who plays will earn Artifact merchandise, including signed prints of artwork and two keys for free copies of the game when it is released.

Targeted for release on Steam on November 28th 2018, Artifact is designed to give Trading Card Game (TCG) enthusiasts the deepest gameplay and highest fidelity experience ever in a fantasy card game. Offering more than 280 cards in the shipping set, players will be able to buy and sell cards on the Steam Community Marketplace.

Release Information:

It's a regular pay to play game. Will there be no F2P elements at all (i.e. no grinding for in game currency or content)?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...tarting-at-20/

Seems like the game might be a bit too hardcore for mass adoption but we'll see. Not only is there apparently no F2P option at all but the game mechanics seem way more complicated than Hearthstone or any of the other popular MtG clones out there currently.

FWIW LifeCoach is playing this heavily and expects to make it his main game at launch. Take that as a vote of confidence that it's deep.

Has the Gwent supply ran dry already?

Gwent is having a major reboot around October time which will change the majority of the game afaict. Will be worth checking out then as it has a ton of potential but for the next couple of months it's a dead game.

This game is expected to be huge. The NDA lifts tomorrow and there should be a flood of Artifact content coming out.

$20 just to download the game on top of what looks like typical pricing for packs seems like a terrible business decision but wtf do I know

It isn't watchable either. I think all the hype goes bye bye after the million dollar tournament.

Yup.. this is a really bad sign

If it's going to succeed it is going to have to pull a significant amount of top tier Hearthstone players/streamers over to it. Almost all the feedback I've read from these types of people who have had access is that it is a pretty high skill cap game, difficult to follow/not good to stream for viewers, and the cost is a real thing. I have a Twitter feed just for HS players and a lot have been saying the game is nice but isn't for them. /Shrug

I also wasn't able to catch any of that tournament stream but it sounds like it was done poorly with very little explanation for the casual viewer.