How To Play Hero Realms

Let’s Get Playing

In this game you have a few kinds of currency which are all printed on the cards, the gold coins will let you buy new cards from the deck and really enhance your deck to give you the best turns possible. I will talk more about these new cards in the next section, I’ll describe the other types of currency first

You also have the red damage symbol which is the combat that you are able to deal to your opponent that turn. In a two player game you have no choice of opponent, but in a 3 or 4 player game you could play where you choose who to attack. My strong preference though is to always attack to your left instead, this takes away that Munchkin-esque ganging up and taking out of a player.

The final kind of “currency” is the health which is little green potion bottles. This is pretty self explanatory, you stay in the game by staying alive. Getting health points can help you prolong your game and undo the damage you took. Like the phoenix you can rise from the ashes to snag a win.

The gameplay here is incredibly simple, you play all your five cards out in whichever order you wish. Resolving them all in one go and performing any additional actions. Then you place your played cards into your personal discard pile and then draw yourself a new hand of five cards and play passes to your left. On your turn you will be mostly attacking and gaining coins to spend in the market, but there are additional actions on the cards like drawing cards and sacrificing cards for additional attack or a special ability.

At the start, the first two turns will be a little prescriptive as everyone will have almost exactly the same hand from their starting deck, but by turn three those cards you bought from the market will start making an appearance and then it is really game on.

Whatcha Gonna Buy Tho’ Bro?

The market cards cost anything from a single coin up to 8 coins for the mega powerful cards, my favourite of those being Arkaus the Dragon who is quite literally a beast. In the game there are four factions, represented by the four colours; red, green, blue and yellow. Each faction tends to lean towards a certain kind of play, the blue ones help with getting money to buy bigger badder cards. The reds help you to thin out your deck by sacrificing cards. This way you can remove your starting cards and maximise the power of each hand draw. The yellows tend to be about drawing more cards and gaining health. The greens are a lot about damage and getting players to discard a card, these are my personal favourite faction.

I think I play with the idea of the nastier the better with Hero Realms! You will want to have a focus on one or perhaps two factions in a game as the likelihood of you then drawing a powerful hand that creates combo moves is improved. The cards have the innate card ability, but many of them will also have a secondary ability which is triggered if you already have a card of that faction in play that turn. These can trigger serious cascade effects where you can draw 4 or 5 additional cards, just from your original hand of five. For me this is where the really sweet spot of Hero Realms lies, and why I love it so much. You just feel like an absolute powerhouse.

These cards come in two main kinds: action cards and hero cards. The action cards are one time use, once you have used them on your turn, they go into your discard pile and you get them back when you next have to shuffle. The other type are hero cards, these stay out in play until they are stunned by your opponent when they too will go into your discard pile.

Having hero cards out is important as it will help you fire off combos as they remain out in front of you. Hero cards also offer defence to you, keeping you safe or at least safer from the volleys of your opponents. There are both guard heroes which must be defeated before you can be attacked, and non guard heroes who do not need to be stunned to attack the player directly. These tend to remain in play a little longer.