Interviewing Team Rankstar: An Artifact Story

In our continued series of blog posts getting to know our Official Digital Card Game Team, Team Rankstar, we are happy to present TRS's Artifact Team Interview!  Release is on Wednesday!  See you on the servers! - Inked Gaming

We are right in the thick of the Artifact closed beta and not too far away (about a week) from the full release. Considering most players are still finding their feet with the game (providing their feet have access to a beta key), I concluded that the perfect first article would be an introduction to the basic mechanics of the game. Unfortunately, everyone and their grandmas have done that at this point so adding to the tidal wave of introductory pieces wouldn’t make much sense, would it? So, you’re stuck with a sort of interview piece instead, which is likely to be more interesting anyway. Fear not however, this article is not going to be the life stories of nine professional Artifact aspirants, rather it will serve to answer what I believe to be some of the more personal and thought-provoking opinions that the roster has towards professional Artifact. Despite the step away from full-length biographies, I do feel it necessary that each of the players briefly introduce themselves.

 

So, there’s the team, they’re bright-eyed and ready for competition and I couldn’t be more eager myself. If you’d like to know more about anybody’s background, then there are longer bios on Team Rankstar’s website for each of the players. Speaking of competition, let’s find out what they all think of Artifact’s potential as an esport.

You’ll have noticed that I’ve slipped in my own thoughts as if I too am being interviewed, the more you may get to know me (and I hope you do), the more you’ll realize that I take any opportunity I can to speak, and write, my thoughts, even if that means infiltrating my own content.  A nice easy one next, what are our team’s favourite cards in Artifact?

I’ve realized that compiling so many responses is quickly firing up the word count of this piece, so I’ll finish with a concluding question followed by a tease of what’s to come from Team Rankstar vis-á-vis Artifact in the future. I asked my obliging interviewees to think of something which an aspiring top-level player needs to do in Artifact that they may not necessarily think of straight away, in other words, are there any shiny nuggets of information, not widely appreciated, that they can share with the readership to help improve their game.

So, now that you’ve gotten to know us all a little better and received some tips and tricks to improve your game, the last thing to do is talk about what’s to come. This is the official announcement of Academic Artifact, a weekly podcast featuring BradfordLee and I in which we’ll discuss both the news and the economy (to clarify, of Artifact, not general societal news and economics) as well as a more in-depth discussion of some deeper aspects of Artifact game play, hence the Academic part. For the first episode, we’ll be discussing the most relevant cards in draft, not just the most powerful (sure, Annihilation is a great card, but drafting one is rarer than finding an alpha Black Lotus during a total solar eclipse on the body of deceased monarch in a car park – serious bonus points for anyone who gets that reference). I’m also going to be releasing an article series called Stats & Strats which will present a different high-level strategy in Artifact, usually utilizing some rudimentary statistics, each week.

 That’s it for this one, thank so much if you read until the end (and tolerated my 'humour') and thanks to our sponsor, Inked Gaming; they make custom, high-quality PC and table top gaming accessories as well as hoodies for your winter warming needs and you can use the code "Al12" if you want a slick 12% off, supporting me in the process.

*Occasionally you may see some Leather Armour.