Losing heroes in Artifact isn't always a disaster explains Magic creator Richard Garfield

"After the flop—BAM—they're dead before they even had a chance to cast anything". Richard Garfield describes the pain of losing a hero in Valve's upcoming digital card game, Artifact. Though this is an understandable reaction from new players, high-level Artifact players may intentionally sacrifice their heroes for the opportunity to redeploy to a different lane.

As Garfield says, you only need to win two out of three lanes, so ditching one to get a power surge in another could be useful, depending on the circumstances. Garfield also mentions that hero upgrades are designed to last for the duration of a game, so the actions you've spent upgrading a hero aren't necessarily wasted.

The Necrophos combo he shows is neat. Sometimes it's worth playing an upgrade on a hero that's about to die, because when the hero comes back the damage-on-deploy upgrade triggers and clears some enemies.

Check out Tim's explanation for a thorough overview of how Artifact's three-lane structure works. Artifact is out on November 28 and there will be an invite-only beta starting November 19.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.