Villain Profile: Lord Demeterios

This week we continue our exploration of the villains in the Realm of Runes Card Game. Today's villain seems fairly straight-forward at first, until you realize that simply defeating him is not enough to win the game. Unlike other villains, you can defeat this one over and over again, and you'll almost certainly have to!

Lord Demeterios

Lord Demeterios is a powerful lich, and his henchmen are all undead. Being already dead, his decrepit body is somewhat easy to defeat. He's got the fewest Hit Points of any villain and even has less than some characters. If all you had to do was defeat him, he'd be easy. But if you know anything about liches, you know that they come back again and again and again, looking for revenge. Defeating Lord Demeterios merely stops him from acting, for a short time anyway!

Double Villain

One of Lord Demeterios's henchman cards is set aside at the start of the game to represent his phylactery. The phylactery functions as a second villain, and it contains the essence of Lord Demeterios's soul. As long as the phylactery survives, it can keep bringing Lord Demeterios back to full strength over and over again. Destroying his phylactery is the true goal for beating Lord Demeterios once and for all, but it isn't easy. As long as Lord Demeterios is active, his phylactery is not a target. Hit phylactery is also highly resistant to damage and constantly regenerates itself.

A More Proactive Villain

While most villains with henchmen do not get personally involved against the heroes until all of their henchmen are defeated, Lord Demeterios is more proactive. Flush with the confidence of knowing that any defeat is merely a temporary setback, Lord Demeterios immediately becomes a target for any hero that has already defeated their henchman. This makes Lord Demeterios a particularly dangerous villain, and one that you're going to fight early and often! Even though Lord Demeterios himself can be targeted early, his henchmen still protect his phylactery. While you can put a temporary halt to Lord Demeterios's actions if any of his henchmen are defeated, you still have to defeat all of them in order to destroy the phylactery and win the game.

Epic Divinity... and Epic Defense and Epic Hit Points

Thanks to his powerful and foul magic, Lord Demeterios has epic divinity. This removes all of the good deities from the deity deck at the start of the game. His phylactery is also epic, however. It has epic damage reduction, gaining damage reduction for all types that scales with the number of players. Even some of Lord Demeterios's henchmen are epic. The Zombie Horde, for example, has epic hit points that scales its health with the number of players. Lord Demeterios may not have a lot of health himself, but the Zombie Horde is second only to Cadmirex in terms of Hit Points to get through!

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Lord Demeterios presents an interesting inversion of the normal play experience. Instead of having to get through a bunch of easier henchmen to get to the harder villain, Lord Demeterios's undead thralls are just as much of a threat as he is, and many are harder to defeat. If Lord Demeterios has a weakness, it's over-confidence in his phylactery. So... do you have what it takes to put him down for good? Next time we'll return to the Tome of Whispers to continue our exploration of army combat, so stay tuned!