How to Play

Hero Realms

2-4 players 20-20 min 7.5 Board Game Geek Rating

Hero Realms is a fantasy deck-building game where players begin with basic gold and weapon cards. Each turn, draw five cards to buy powerful champions and actions from a shared market row using gold, then attack opponents with combat. Reduce enemy health to zero to win through strategic deck improvement and tactical combat decisions.

Published 2016

Get Ready

Setup the game with these step-by-step instructions before diving into your turn.

Prepare the Market Deck

Shuffle the Market Deck and place it face-down on the table

Create the Market

Deal the top five cards of the Market Deck face-up in a row next to the deck

Place Fire Gems

Next to the last card in the Market, place the 16 Fire Gem cards in a single stack, face-up

Create Sacrifice Pile

Leave a space next to the Market Deck for a Sacrifice Pile where some cards will end up during the game

Build personal decks

Each player begins with a personal deck containing a Shortsword, a Dagger, a Ruby, and seven Gold cards

Shuffle and place personal decks

Each player shuffles their personal deck and places it face-down in front of them, leaving room for a discard pile

Determine first player

Randomly determine which player goes first

Draw starting hands

The first player draws three cards; the second player draws five cards

Set starting health

Each player begins the game with 50 Health, tracked with pencil and paper or included health-tracking cards

On Your Turn

What you can do during your turn.

Main Phase overview

Perform any of the following actions in any order, as many times as you are able during this phase

Play cards from hand

Place any card from your hand face-up on the table at no cost

Use expend abilities

Turn a prepared Champion sideways to gain the effect listed after the expend icon; usable on the turn the Champion is played

Use ally abilities

Activate when you have two or more cards of the same faction in play; each ally ability may only be used once per turn

Use sacrifice abilities

Place the card in the Sacrifice Pile to gain the listed effect; works only once per card

Acquire cards with Gold

Subtract Gold from your Gold Pool equal to a card's cost (upper-right corner) and put the card into your discard pile; refill the Market from the Market Deck

Attack with Combat

Subtract Combat from your Combat Pool to deal damage to opponents or their Champions

Discard Phase

Lose any remaining Gold and Combat; put all in-play Items and Actions into your discard pile; put any cards left in hand into your discard pile; prepare all your Champions

Draw Phase

Draw five cards from your personal deck; if your deck is empty, shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck

Winning

How to claim victory.

Reduce opponent to zero Health

When a player has no Health remaining, they are out of the game

Last player standing wins

The last player with Health remaining wins the game

Free-For-All variant (3+ players)

Anyone can attack anyone; first player starts with 3 cards, second with 4 cards, others with 5 cards; last standing wins

Hunter — First Blood variant (3+ players)

Players may only attack the player to their left and Champions of players to their left and right; game ends when a player is eliminated; the player to the eliminated player's right wins

Hunter — Last One Standing variant (3+ players)

Same as Hunter — First Blood, but game continues after elimination; eliminated player's right neighbor gains 10 health and draws a card; last standing wins

Hydra variant (4 players)

Two-player teams share 75 health; when a team's health reaches zero, all players on that team are defeated; surviving team wins

Emperor variant (6 players)

Teams of three with one Emperor; when an Emperor is defeated, their team loses the game