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REVIEW: Heroes & Hordes
- Game Author: Lloyd Krasner
- Genre Type: Fantasy
- Mechanics Type: Card Game (No Dice)
- Name of Reviewer: Brian Peterson
- Date of Review: May 27th 2005
- Link to Game Rules: http://www.angelfire.com/games2/warpspawn/HH.html
- Time To Play: 1 to 2 hrs.
- Target Audience: Fantasy gamers and gamers who can enjoy CCG game mechanics minus the really cool graphics
- Number of Players: Solo
- Overall Rating: 8 - (No graphical cardset provided, rating based entirely on game mechanics and theme.)
- Complexity: Easy, requires basic math skills.
- Description of Game Mechanics: Pick a card from the deck. If it is a hero (man, elf, or dwarf) add it to the corresponding army (some cards allow you to choose from multiple armies). If it is a monster (goblin, undead, or dragon) add it to the corresponding horde (some cards allow you to choose from multiple hordes). Once a horde grows to 5 cards the horde attacks, you choose which horde attacks which army. Heroes and monsters have attributes such as (magic, bows, troops, etc.) which add to your force values. The more cards you have with the same attributes typically you will get greater bonuses. You may use multiple heroes cards to destroy a single monster (so that the force of the heroes equals or exceeds the monster) or use a single hero to destroy multiple monster cards (if the heroes force is greater than or equal to the sum of monster force values). You continue until you either destroy all of the monsters. If you can not destroy all of the monsters your army is completely destroyed. Events can cause hordes to attack sooner than expected, can allow you can destroy a monster card, summon heroes from the deck, resurrect dead heroes, etc. At the end of the game you count the number of times an army was completely destroyed, this determines whether you win, tie or lose. H
- Analysis of Game Mechanics: It is a lot of fun battling the hordes with your heroes. This is a good example of a game that works without dice. There is enough strategy involved to keep the game interesting. The game is quite long, the event cards add considerable excitement and can change the flow of the game. Overall the game mechanics are very good.
- Novelty Factor: Mining for heroes is a nice twist. Summoning and resurecting heroes is also pretty cool. I like the theme heroic armies versus hordes of monsters. Grouping monsters by type and giving them attributes like troop, etc. works well.
- Game Flaws: I think the game is a little too long and the hero armies can at times get quite large and hard to manage. When summoning a hero or resurrecting a hero the game can slow down a bit because it takes a while to sort through all of the cards. Rather than having spies look through the deck it might be more fun to allow them to affect the play: An example might be to allow them to peek at the next 6 cards and choose whether to leave the deck the way it is or reshuffle it.
- Strong Points: See analysis of game mechanics and novelty factor. I would definitely recommend this game.
- Cardset Availability: Used Peter Cobcroft’s PHP card generator at http://www.curufea.com/games/warpspawn/. Used the PDF format so that all cards lined up and was able to cut all sheets at the same time with a paper trimmer. The small cards took a lot less table space which was nice when the armies became large.
- Difficulty to Make: Easy with PHP card generator. Setup time is 5 to 10 minutes using this method.
- Playtesting Results: Usually if you die, you die early. Near the end you may get armies that are huge and there is really little chance of losing. After 3 games I won twice and lost once. Then I started playing modified versions of the game with diplomacy cards (for hero alliances), added “FLY” as an attribute to heroes and monsters that can fly and added “LARGE” to monsters that were unusually large. Renamed cards with force +2, “LEADER” cards, and created new card types using existing attributes (will be described under the variations section, i.e. Assassin on event cards that took out any one monster card), and changed spy rules.
- Game Winning Strategies: Take out the monster cards that add to force of all other monster cards first and preserve your hero cards that add to force for all other hero cards. Add hero cards with multiple army options to the army with the highest force.
