Card Game: Villains & Henchmen

Today we return to the Realm of Runes Card Game to take a look at the primary antagonists of the game and how they work. Every game of the card game is played against one villain, chosen from a roster of options. In the base game, there are eleven villains of varying difficulty. One of these, The Kraken, is meant to be a sort of "tutorial" villain, a simpler experience to facilitate getting the hang of the game. We'll use The Kraken and its henchmen as examples as we explore today.

Villains

Each villain is unique, though there are similarities in their overall structure. Each villain has a maximum Hit Point (HP) value. The villain begins the game with this many HP. Although they may gain or lose HP during the course of play, they can never have more HP than this value. If the villain is reduced to 0 HP they are slain, and the players win the game. The Villain is protected by their henchmen, however, and usually cannot even be attacked until those are dealt with first.

Each villain also has a suite of abilities. One ability always activates at the start of each round of play and another always activates at the end of each round of play. The villain's passive ability is always active and its effects apply constantly. The villain's special ability only activates when called for by another game element. Villains also have an epic effect, as denoted by an icon. We'll talk more about epic effects in the future, but for now The Kraken's effect causes its max HP to scale with the number of players.

These villain abilities collectively determine a great deal of the shape of the game against that villain. By changing the way these abilities operate, each game feels like a completely different experience. The underlying structure is simple enough to learn quickly but has enough flexibility within it to stretch into many different and unusual forms.

Henchmen

Henchmen are the secondary antagonists of the game overall but are the primary focus of the early part of the game. Each villain has its own, unique cadre of henchmen at their disposal. There are more henchmen at a villain's disposal than the maximum number of players, so the specific henchmen in play may be different each time a villain is played. This variety helps the replay ability of the game, especially when combined with different party constructions. During game set up, each player is randomly dealt one of the henchmen. This henchman is assigned to the player, and vice versa. For The Kraken specifically, however, each of the henchmen are identical. This simplicity reduces the number of new things that need to be understood at once, letting basic the game mechanics themselves serve as the primary focus of this villain.

Each henchman has a certain number of maximum HP. If a henchman is reduced to 0 HP it is defeated. When this happens, the henchman's "defeated" ability activates. This effect may be instantaneous upon defeat, or it might be a passive effect that remains effective. For The Kraken's Tentacle, this defeated effect protects a player from being the target of The Kraken's special ability... at least until all of the Tentacles have been defeated.

Each henchman also has an effect which activates at the start of a player's turn and one that activates at the end of a player's turn. These effects are applied on the turn taken by the player to which the henchman is assigned. There is also a passive ability which always applied, regardless of whether the assigned player is currently taking a turn or not. There is also a special ability which, like the villain special ability, only activates when it is called upon to do so by another game element. Sometimes a henchman may have an epic effect, but this is somewhat rare.

The suite of henchmen available to a villain do as much to determine the shape of the game as the villain's own abilities. While the basic game structure has one henchman assigned to each hero, some villains use their henchmen in highly unusual ways that dramatically change the gameplay experience. Some villains have henchmen which are assigned to all heroes at once, causing them to activate every turn. Some villains do not even assign henchmen at all during game set up, instead using those cards for other purposes entirely. We'll see some of those stranger interactions when we introduce more villains in the future!

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The villains and henchmen of the Realm of Runes Card Game are a critically important aspect of the game, perhaps even more so than the player characters. Because each villain has a unique twist on the basic rules of the game, the choice of villain causes each play experience to have a different and exciting feel from any of the others. Next time we'll return to the Tome of Whispers to introduce another of the new classes, so stay tuned!