Villain Profile: The King in Yellow

This week we return to the Realm of Runes Card Game to introduce another of the game's roster of villains. Today's villain brings the game into the cosmic horror genre.

The King in Yellow

Last time we introduced a villain with no Hit Points at all. This time, the villain has infinite Hit Points. You cannot defeat the King in Yellow by dealing damage. No amount of damage can ever be enough. This does not stop the elder god from dealing damage to you, of course. You have to find an alternate win condition, but the King in Yellow can just drive you to madness and death while you struggle. Is it fair? No, but that's cosmic horror for you.

The Ritual

If you can't defeat the King in Yellow by dealing damage, then what are you supposed to do? There's a ritual that your party can collectively perform to seal the King away. The trouble is that the ritual is in fragments, and you have to find the pieces. The ritual instructions, and the specific steps required to perform the ritual, are hidden amongst the King in Yellow's henchman cards.

The King in Yellow does not assign henchmen at the start of the game as normal for most villains. Instead, it shuffles all of its henchman cards together to form a henchman deck. Any player can use an action to draw a card from this deck, but most of the cards are trouble. You might draw out a group henchman to cause trouble, or worse, while searching for those ritual instructions. Scouting the deck is a very helpful strategy but not fool proof. The deck periodically gets shuffled whether you want it to or not, and the King in Yellow itself sometimes draws from the deck, too. Some cards have different effects depending on whether they are drawn by a player, or by the King in Yellow.

At the start of the game, only the ritual instructions are hidden in the henchman deck. When you find it, it gets permanently displayed and one of the ritual steps gets shuffled into the deck to replace it. Each time you find one of the steps, it also gets displayed, and the next one is shuffled into the deck. This continues until you have found and displayed all of the steps. The order the steps are discovered is randomly chosen, so even if you know what each of the steps are, the order in which they must be performed changes from game to game.

Ritual steps involve sacrificing important resources, drawn from your collective character resources. You might have to sacrifice a magic item, or some of your own Hit Points. Each of the steps must be completed in the order they are displayed on consecutive turns. If, for any reason, you are unable to complete a step on the turn it is required, you have to start the whole thing over again. Any sacrifices you already made are lost, though, so make sure you have what you need to complete the ritual before you start it!

The World at Stake

Sealing away the King in Yellow and winning the game might seem straight forward at first, but this is unlikely to last. One of the cards in the King in Yellow's henchman deck starts a countdown to the apocalypse. Once drawn, whether by the players or the King, this card remains permanently displayed. When first displayed, it comes with a fixed number of apocalypse counters. From then on, a counter is removed during each player's upkeep phase. If a counter must be removed this way, but there are no counters left, the game is over, and the players lose.

Elder Signs

Not all of the cards in the King in Yellow's henchman deck are bad. When drawing cards, you might also find an elder sign. These cards get taken into your hand when you find them. Although they take up space toward your hand size, they are of critical importance. There are two ways that you can play an elder sign. One way adds more apocalypse counters to the current total, buying you more time to find and complete the ritual. When played this way, the elder sign gets shuffled back into the henchman deck, so it can be found and used again later. The other way an elder sign can be used, is to provide whatever sacrifice is needed to complete a ritual step. If your party does not have a magic item, for example, you can sacrifice the elder sign instead to keep the ritual going.

Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?

While scouting the henchman deck to search for the ritual steps or elder signs is a very helpful strategy, it is not without its dangers. Two of the cards in the deck are Yellow Signs. When encountered, these cards are permanently displayed. Each displayed Yellow Sign doubles the damage dealt by the King in Yellow. However, a Yellow Sign does not need to be drawn to come into play. Even just examining the card activates it. By the time you've seen the Yellow Sign, it's too late to do anything about it!

Epic Divinity

As an elder god, the King in Yellow's power tips the scales of divinity. All of the good deities are removed from the deity deck before the game starts. This means that divine intervention can be mixed, at best, and the likelihood of it being actively harmful is significantly increased. If one of your party members succumbs to the King in Yellow, there's no chance of The Shepherd bringing them back.

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The King in Yellow is a unique experience in the card game, and in many ways almost feels like a different game entirely. If the King in Yellow has one weakness, it's the luck of the draw. You might search forever for the ritual steps you need, but sometimes the King in Yellow might draw it for you. Truly, the elder god's motives are inscrutable. So... are you ready to stand against madness itself? Next time we'll return to the Tome of Whispers to continue exploring army combat, so stay tuned!