Villain Profile: The Cult of the Spy

This week we continue our series introducing the villains of the Realm of Runes Card Game. Today's villain is one of the more unusual members of the roster, and one of the game's toughest challenges.

The Cult of the Spy

The Spy is one of the major evil deities of Realm of Runes. It is pervasive and almost entirely anonymous. When conspiracies pull the strings of the world, the cult of The Spy is almost certainly involved in some way. The cult is almost universally banned in most civilizations, but of course that does nothing to actually put a stop to it. The only way to fight a cult of anonymous and influential members is to root them out and put them down.

Because you cannot simply punch an organization, the Cult of the Spy is the only villain which does not have Hit Points. The villain itself is also not a target, which means that players must accomplish an alternate victory condition. In this case, that means defeating each of the cult's henchmen. But this is not an easy task, as the cult's members have a tendency to escape defeat, only to return again later after recovering.

ALL the Henchmen!

All the cult's henchmen participate in the game, regardless of the number of players. The villain assigns henchmen to players as normal at the start of the game, but those that are not dealt out are kept ready in the henchman deck. When a player defeats their henchman, it is not out of the fight. Instead, it escapes back into the henchman deck. If a player starts their turn without a henchman, a new one is drawn from the deck and assigned. Since this happens randomly, the same henchman will be assigned to multiple different players over the course of the game.

None of the henchmen have an excessive amount of Hit Points. Each one's Hit points is about on par with those of the player characters, and in many ways are dark mirrors of those characters. The cult's members have special abilities which can combo with each other while in play, making every configuration of henchmen feel different than all of the others. Which henchmen come out in which order is always different, making each gameplay experience against the cult play out very differently.

The Graveyard

One of the cult's henchman cards is reserved for the Graveyard. This is a special card that is set aside and displayed before the other henchmen are assigned. As players defeat their henchmen, wound tokens are accrued on the Graveyard as those henchmen escape back into the henchman deck. When the players have enough wound points at their disposal, they can "spend" those wounds when defeating a henchman to send that henchman to the Graveyard instead of letting it escape back into the deck. The victory condition against the Cult of the Spy is to send every one of its members to the Graveyard.

This task isn't as straight-forward as it might sound, though. The number of wounds required to send a henchman to the Graveyard scales with the number of players. The more allies you have, the higher the cost of making progress. The villain's end of round ability also reduces your current wound count, periodically undoing some of your progress. Even getting a henchman into the Graveyard might not be a permanent defeat, however! When the villain's special ability activates, a random henchman from the Graveyard is returned to the henchman deck. One of the cult's henchmen is also able to pull other henchmen back from the Graveyard!

Epic Divinity

Because the cult is backed by its deity, the influence of other deities on the game is diminished. The Cult of the Spy has epic divinity, which removes all of the good deities from the deity deck before the game even starts. When the divine intervention step happens, the best the players can hope for is mixed results, and the chances of actively hostile deities coming out is significantly increased. When you go up against the Cult of the Spy, you're on your own.

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Because it relies exclusively on an alternate victory condition, the Cult of the Spy is one of the more unique villain experiences in the card game. While all of the henchmen you have to defeat over and over again are bad, the order in which you manage to send them to the Graveyard matters. If the cult has one weakness, it's a methodically executed plan. So... are you ready to get dirty? Next week we return to the Tome of Whispers to explore some more alternate rules, so stay turned!