Star Realms is an award-winning deck building card game designed by Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour Champions and Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle and Rob Doughert. The game won the 2015 SXSW Tabletop Game of the Year award, four Golden Geek Awards for Best 2-Player Game, Best Card Game, Best Indie Game and Best Handheld Game, two Dice Tower Awards for Best Two-Player Game and Best Small Publisher, and Best Card Game: Fan Favorite at Origins 2015. So yeah, it’s pretty great.
It left a lot of fans begging for more, but specifically, they wanted a fantasy version of the game. So you know what they did? White Wizard Games delivered exactly what fans wanted with Hero Realms. Players can make decks based on a Wizard, Thief, Ranger, Fighter, or Cleric. Now you could play against another player, but Hero Realms also offers a co-op option in which a group of players can take on a dragon or a lich boss deck. Beyond that, you can even develop the game into an adventure campaign that lets you take your adventurers on missions with their own special skills and gear.
FROM WHITE WIZARD GAMES:
The Hero Realms base game, like Star Realms, combines the fun of a deckbuilding game with the interactivity of trading card game style combat. Each player starts with a ten-card personal deck containing gold (for buying) and weapons (for combat). Each turn you get a new hand of five cards from your personal deck. When your deck runs out of cards, you shuffle your discard pile into your new deck.Shared between all players is an 80-card Market Deck. The game begins with five cards from that deck revealed, creating the Market Row. As you play, you use gold to buy champion cards and action cards from the Market. These champions and actions can generate large amounts of gold, combat, or other powerful effects. You use combat to attack your opponent and their champions. When you reduce your opponent’s score (called health) to zero, you win!
There are several purchasing options depending on how you want to play. The $20 base game includes 144 full-color cards and rules for various multiplayer or 1-on-1 combat. From there, each $5 character pack offers 15 cards to create a starting deck as well as major and minor ability cards, a score card, and rules. The dragon and lich boss decks are $10 and include 30 cards. Each boss is unique, having different numbers of cards in their starting decks, different ability cards, and even brand new card types. And finally, the $12 campaign starter kit offers 55 cards, rules for solo and cooperative gameplay, skill and gear cards, and 3 missions.
The Kickstarter campaign reached its $100,000 funding goal in just 7 hours and is well on its way to doubling that goal. Backers can earn themselves copies of the game, expansions, and Kickstarter-exclusive promo cards. The campaign will continue until July 13, so there’s still time to get your hands on them. Any remaining exclusive items will be available through conventions and special promotions.
What do you hope to see in the Hero Realms game? Tell us in the comments!
Featured image credit: White Wizard Games