Elementile Live Stream Tomorrow 11/10!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 11:52:53 PM

Hi Elementalists!

Mark your calendars – tomorrow, November 10th, we will be hosting a live stream of Elementile via Tabletop Simulator and Twitch!

The 1v1 matchup will be between our own Alex Campbell and Ryan Stock with commentary by Elementile’s creator, Zach Mitchell. If you have any questions about the game mechanics or are curious to see more of the game in action, swing by Twitch at 9:00pm EST/6:00pm PST. Both Alex and Ryan will be streaming the game on their respective Twitch channels, which can be found here:

Sir Snarf (Alex): https://www.twitch.tv/sir_snarf

Ox the Tank (Ryan): https://www.twitch.tv/oxthetank

Should be an exciting match-up and we can’t wait to see you there!

Best,

Darkwood Games

Mechanic Spotlight – Overcharge
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 02:11:00 AM

Hi Elementalists!

It’s time for another Elementile mechanic spotlight! Today we wanted to highlight a unique resource mechanic in Elementile - overcharging elements.

Mechanic Spotlight – Overcharge

Last update, we talked before about Sacrifice, the main resource gaining mechanic, and all the deck building possibilities that are opened up by moving resources outside of the deck.  (You can read the full post here: link). Another unique element of these resources is that they are double-sided - enabling a new feature: Overcharge! 

Overcharge is a mechanic where at the end of each of your turns, you can choose one unspent element to flip over into its overcharged state.

While in this state, your resource becomes a wild element, allowing it to be spent for any kind of element cost in the future.  The first time an overcharged element is spent, even if it isn't used as a wild, it flips back to its normal, uncharged state.

This mechanic was originally introduced to accomplish two things:

1. Smooth out the rigidity in card costs and splashes.

2. Provide an incentive not to spend all of your elements every time on every turn (or at least a consolation prize when spending all of your elements isn’t possible).

The increased agency provided to players by sacrificing cards for resources is counterbalanced by creatures, heroes, and spells having very specific costs, often including multiple elements beyond their main affiliation.  Without Overcharge, if you wanted to splash in an extra element type in your deck for a single card, you would have to commit to gaining a full element of that type in order to do so.  Overcharge allows a clever player to sacrifice tempo on a previous turn in order to have a little more flexibility in what they can play on the following turn.

Secondly, because you cannot spend elements on your opponent’s turn, before the addition of Overcharge there was no reason not to try to spend all of your elements every turn.  In cases where you didn’t have the correct cards to spend all your elements, you were just left playing at a lower tempo with no real recourse.  Overcharge provides a strategic avenue to not spend all elements every turn, and gives players increased flexibility and intentionality throughout the game.  

Thank you so much for all of your support so far and I look forward to seeing you all on the Elemental Plane!

Best,

Ryan The Ox Stock, Darkwood Games

Mechanic Spotlight – Resource Gain
over 2 years ago – Sun, Nov 07, 2021 at 01:20:25 PM

Hi Everyone!

Day 5 and we are well on our way to the first stretch goal with 131 backers! Again we can't thank you all enough, and a special thank you to those that took a moment to share this project with a friend! We have prepared a number of interesting spotlights to highlight the many gameplay iterations of Elementile, starting with some of the core game mechanics  - what they are, how they work, and how they came to be in the game!

Mechanic Spotlight – Resource Gain

In Elementile, in order to gain an element (one of the resources required to play cards), you must sacrifice a card in your hand by placing it face down in the Ethereal Plane (similar to Exile).  When you make a sacrifice you can choose any type of element you want and add it to your Elemental Plane (resource pool).  You can perform this action up to once per turn, and because all elements are refreshed at the start of your turn, as the game goes on you gain more and more resources to fuel larger or more elaborate plays.

While this may not sound like much, giving players full control of when they want to build up their resource pool, what they will sacrifice in order to do so, and what type or resource they will gain opens up a lot of deck building possibilities and adds a lot of consistency to decks overall.  In order to illustrate this point a bit further, let’s take a look at some hypothetical situations.

Let’s say you have a deck that revolves around a specific hero, such as a deck with a lot of ranged units and you want to play around Reginald, Knight Captain.

Unfortunately, you only have one copy of Reginald in your deck.  But if you were to throw in a couple copies of Divine Gift, and you draw those instead, you could sacrifice a little tempo, pick up a light element, and add Reginald to your hand.

Because you have full control of when (if ever) you get a Light element, in games where you need to play Divine Gift, you can dip into Light on the appropriate turn to search for your hero.  If you already draw your hero, or don’t need to use the card, you can always just turn it into fuel for more elements.

Now let’s say you had a deck that was primarily Fire, but had two secondary elements, perhaps Earth and Darkness.

The Earth may be there to provide ranged options in order to pick off weaker back line threats when necessary.  The Darkness may be included in order to answer highly armored units with armor piercing effects.  Depending on the matchup there may be games where you lean into one of these secondaries really hard or don’t use them at all.  There may be some matchups where you dip a little into both.  Because you have complete control over your resources, you never have to worry about drawing mismatched cards and resources.  Additionally, if one of those secondary elements will not be useful, you can sacrifice those cards in order to fuel your other plays.

For the last example, let’s say you have a deck that spans all of the elements, but doesn’t dip very hard into any one of them in particular.  If resources were a part of the deck, this sort of build might be incredibly inconsistent since you may draw mismatched resources and cards.  By moving elements outside of the deck, this allows this strategy to be far more consistent.  A deck like this would also be very good at capitalizing on Triversity, but we’ll have to save that conversation for another mechanic spotlight.

I hope these examples of deck building help illustrate just how many deck building options there are in Elementile, largely due to the core sacrifice resource mechanic.  If these hypotheticals have wet your deck building appetite, head on over to the card library or Tabletop Simulator and start brewing!  I look forward to seeing your creations out there on Elemental Plane!

Best,

Ryan The Ox Stock, Darkwood Games

Fully funded in 2 days!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 07:37:54 PM

We did it! Elementile is fully funded in under 2 days! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making this dream a reality.

What’s next?

There are still 28 days left in the campaign, so that means a lot of time to work toward our stretch goals, including upgraded card and box finishes, a plastic game tray, and token upgrades! There are also some secret goodies we’ve been working on behind the scenes that we’re so excited to share with you when the campaign gets to that point. In the meantime, we would appreciate your continued support if you could share Elementile with any others in the community you think would be interested in the game. Let’s hit these goals!

Thank you again for your support and we hope to see you on the Elemental Plane!

Best,

Darkwood Games

Incredible start! We’re halfway to meeting our goal
over 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 01:01:22 PM

Hello Elementalists,

Firstly, a HUGE thank you to everyone’s support of Elementile during the first 24 hours of launch! We are overwhelmed and humbled to have received so much positive feedback, messages, and comments for Elementile and Darkwood Games.

In just one day, we have reached 50% of our funding goal!

The heroes of Wind, Water, Fire, Earth, Light, and Darkness are waiting, eager to join the battle on the Elemental Plane and lead your forces to victory! If you want to learn more about the elements, heroes, creatures, and spells of Elementile, please be sure to visit www.playelementile.com, where you’ll find the full card library and rulebook.

There is still time to claim your free Sparky enamel pin if you choose the Base game or Premium game pledge tier. This pin is only available during the first 48 hours of the Kickstarter campaign, so don’t miss the chance to get yours!

Our next focus will be to keep the momentum going to fully fund Elementile and bring this game to life.

Thank you again to our early backers. We can’t wait to see you on the Elemental Plane!

Best,

Darkwood Games