No surprises here, the Fighter is all about more Combat all the time. After all, you are bringing them back to life and not playing the part of a Necromancer, right? If they’ve been dead too long, you’re animating the dead… a really nice touch with that condition on the power that you’ll find frustrating rather than useful because there will always be that Champion you want that didn’t just get Stunned. Finally there is the Resurrect, which can be Sacrificed to bring a champion from your Discard Pile into play – but only one that has been Stunned since your last turn. It isn’t an ability you will use every turn, but it is an ability worth using any turn where you have that Gold not being spent elsewhere. It also boosts all of that player’s champions by 1 Defense until the end of their next turn, providing an excellent benefit at a cost of 2 Gold. Yes, most of the time it will be yourself as the target but keeping it open is a nice touch, either against the boss decks, in a team format, or when simply trying to delay an opponent’s victory so you can steal it for yourself. The Expend ability for the Cleric is a Bless, which lets you choose a player to gain 3 Health. Go figure that those two Followers are in the starting deck, making it a possibility to get that boost from Turn 1 if everything goes right. However, if you have two or more Champions in play you get both, which is something you will always want to strive toward. The Prayer Beads are incredibly appropriate for the Cleric, offering you either 2 Gold or 5 Health – they are either getting alms or healing themselves. The Spiked Mace is a nice item in the deck, adding 2 Combat every time you play it from your hand. With a meager 1 Defense, they are easily defeated but their Guard ability can make them an extreme annoyance to your opponent. Two different Followers are here, each adding one Combat if you Expend them. Three of the unique cards in the Cleric deck involve adding some damage production. This is why I have to declare the Hero Realms Character Packs as not just great expansions to an excellent game, but I have to call them essential – even if you have no intention of playing the campaign, they are absolutely worth the purchase. And oh how I love that.īy providing every one of those upgrade cards in the Thandar box, it allows you to choose wisely from the start where you want to branch, giving control to the players up front rather than trying to spread them out across multiple boxes in order to get a little more story into the first campaign box. With branching decisions on both trees, at some point you’ll need to decide where your focus of that particular area of the character will go, something that cannot be undone moving forward. These allow you to further upgrade your characters by replacing some of their weaker cards with stronger variations that enhance the flavor and provide decisions to make for the characters. Each class has a Skill Tree and an Ability Tree they can upgrade along as they move through the campaigns. And while we haven’t seen the full results of where those campaigns will take us, Thandar was enough to provide a taste of things to come and I love it. But they have taken it all a step further, providing a campaign experience that begins with the Ruin of Thandar box and will continue in future adventures. It also creates a stronger draw for a new player, allowing you to ask them what sort of character they would prefer to play, and it provides some level of impact on the overall gameplay experience.Īnd if White Wizard had left it at just that, it would have been enough to make the character packs a worthwhile addition to any Hero Realms collection. By not only adding a few unique cards to each deck, but also providing two abilities for each class, they opened things up for variability and customization. But they have just enough uniqueness to give some flavor to each player’s approach toward the game. Yes, most of them are still similar enough to each other that they are capable of playing out the same. The best thing about the character packs for Hero Realms is that they introduce asymmetric starting decks. My Thoughts on Character Packs in General And one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with Hero Realms was the introduction of the character packs and so I felt it was fitting to give the five of them a sort of mini-review/overview to kick off my White Wizard focus. I had Star Realms, after all, so why did I need the same exact game? My introduction to the company, like many, was through Star Realms which remains a fast and fun deckbuilder at an excellent pricepoint (until you want more…) and its sequel game, Hero Realms, was one I honestly avoided for a long time. Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many focuses on games by White Wizard Games.
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