Hooked On Class Decks

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

By now you may have heard that we're restarting the class decks line in August. We took a break after the Summoner Class Deck to reassess the decks we wanted to make, making sure we could come up with fresh new concepts in the wake of our success with Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! We think we got there.

We've been playing around with some of the older classes lately. We debuted a new Rogue, Cleric, Druid, and Magus in the Mummy's Mask Base Set and Character Add-On Deck, giving new life to some older playstyles. We decided to keep that trend alive in the next wave of three decks.

Is It "May-gus" or "Maag-us"? Or Maybe "May-juss" or...

"I make everything look good."

First up is the Magus Class Deck, starring our emo elf Seltyiel. You know he was saying, "What does a pasty-skinned heartthrob have to do to get in a class deck? Put on a shirt?" Wait no more, Selty. You'll be showing up in August.

Magus was the biggest oversight in the first 20 class decks. At no time in all those decks did we make a decent Melee/Arcane deck. The closest we got was the Bard Class Deck, and that wasn't very close. But now not only do Seltyiel from Skull & Shackles and Ahmotep from Mummy's Mask have a deck they can call home in the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild, but it probably won't be long before you read the words "Each player unlocks the ability to play Crowe" in an organized play scenario near you.

Seltyiel will be accompanied by a couple of new Magus associates—though to quash some speculation on the forums, Ahmotep will not be making a second appearance here. We like her just fine in Mummy's Mask, and we've got some more wrinkles we'd like to try with the Magi.

And that's the only deck in this first wave that features exactly one iconic character.

As You Can See from My Example, Persistence Has Its Rewards

We're finally getting to do something I've wanted to do since we started working on the game. At the early stages of expansion, we limited ourselves to decks based around the iconic characters that Pathfinder fans have come to love.

Every now and then, though, we'd grab a character from our favorite pieces of Pathfinder fiction. First up was James Sutter's Salim from Death's Heretic and The Redemption Engine, by way of the Inquisitor Class Deck. I am a head-over-heels Elaine Cunningham fan, so when we got the green light to do non-iconic characters in Mummy's Mask, her druid Channa Ti from Dark Tapestry was the first in the door. We also dropped Howard Andrew Jones's cleric Drelm from Stalking the Beast into that set as well.

But with the Wizard and Rogue Class Deck already out, it seemed I wasn't going to get to include my favorite Pathfinder novel characters unless we came up with something very clever. So, we did. For our September deck, we're unveiling a new theme concept: the Pathfinder Tales Deck. It stars the only two characters ever to merit the phrase "the new Fafhrd and Grey Mouser": Dave Gross's Count Varian Jeggare and Radovan Virholt.

I'm just here with the boss.

Dave and I go back almost a quarter century, back when he was the editor of Dragon Magazine and I was but a humble freelance writer. (I'm still a freelance writer, of course. Just less humble.) He's since distinguished himself as one of the most talented writers in the game industry. With these two characters, he's created something legendary. It's about time you get to play them.

And here's the best part: Dave's coming along for the ride. It's his third time dropping in with us: He did a brilliant fill-in for me as the story writer for Season of the Righteous's Adventure 1-3—Lexicon of Paradox, which featured Varian and Radovan as cohort cards. Dave also wrote the flavor text for his character Alase in the Summoner Class Deck. I'm excited that we're finally going to bring his great creations to PACG character form. Thanks, Dave!

Oh, there's a third character—one that's not Dave's—from the Pathfinder Tales novels in the deck along with Varian and Radovan. When we began to consider all the possibilities from the series, the debate was over when I said only two words to the team. More on that in a few months.

Enough with All This Hero Nonsense

Finally, here's a quick look at our third class deck in this wave. In Season of the Runelords, we spent a lot of time with the Hollow Mountain comics, in which Seltyiel, Oloch, Meligaster, and Damiel are a bad-guy team. The writing team on that series (Messrs. Mona, Schneider, and Sutter) clearly had a blast writing from the villainous perspective. As we designed alongside them, we thought we want that too.

So, I'm happy to announce that we're taking a break from all this "goody two-shoes" stuff and donning our best, um... "baddy no-shoes" stuff? for October's Hell's Vengeance Class Deck. Wait, scratch that: It's the first of two sets of those. (Eventually, anyway.) For now, we're focusing on three of the six iconic villains from the Hell's Vengeance Adventure Path, lovingly illustrated by our deity-status artist Wayne Reynolds.

Left to right: the human Hellknight Linxia, the pitborn assassin Emil, the human torturer Zelhara, the human cleric Lazzero, the dwarf antipaladin Urgraz, and the dhampir necromancer Nyctessa.

Which three are we doing first? Well, I need to keep some secrets, don't I? After all, telling you would probably be the good thing to do, and with this deck, I have no business doing that. But if you have a favorite, go ahead and list your top choice in the comments. We'll be watching.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer