Defenders of the Realm: Hero Expansion #1
1-4
13+
90+
Hero Expansion #1 contains: 4 New Heroes with matching character cards, and 6 new Global Effects cards to add to the Darkness Spreads deck - creating more challenges for the players to face.
User Reviews (3)
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Defenders of the Realm is an absolutely fantastic game that has been well supported with both free and purchasable expansions. Here, is the first of three purchasable character expansion boxes. In addition to the characters you will receive, a new Paladin figure that is better scaled to the other characters (you do not receive a new card). You will get some random general condition cards that are added to the Darkness Spread deck. These cards set certain conditions into place until another card of that type replaces it. These cards are a mix of storylines that might hurt or help your chances and add a nice flavor to the game. Finally, and most importantly, you get four new characters – the Chaos Wizard, the Adventurer, the Assassin, and the Captain of the Guard – that you can play in the game. The detailed descriptions of these are just below…
Character Specifics (all of them have 5 actions per turn):
Chaos Wizard:
Swiftness Spell – Discard a hero card and move to any location matching the color of the card.
Untamed Magic – Draw a location card and attack any player or minion there and hit with 2+
Chaos Manna – When fighting on a tainted site you can add +1 to the roll but any hero there (including you) are hit with a natural one roll.
Adventurer:
Friends in Low Places: Draw an extra card when ending a turn in an Inn plus choose 2 colors in an Inn rather than just one.
Dungeon Delver: Add 1 extra dice to Quest rolls.
Minor Quests: When the Adventurer ends her turn on a location with a Treasure Chest icon you roll 3 dice and gain 1 Hero Card for each 5 or 6.
Magic Pouch: Keep up to 14 cards in your hand
Assassin:
Sneak Attack: Discard one minion on first attack in a space.
Deathblow: Bonus die roll at +1 against a General with only one life left
Shadow Walk: Use last action to disappear and at the start of her next turn you appear up to three spaces away.
Captain of the Guard:
Battle Steed: Travel two spaces with one action and roll 1 extra die in combat on the first attack at each location.
Military Strategist: Call a color when you draw a darkness spread card and only add one minion maximum from that color.
Command: You may give actions to other heroes that they use on their next turn.
Evaluation:
Generally, the expansion characters are slightly more powerful than the original characters but nothing that throws the game out of balance and not to the degree that you would refuse to go back to original ones. Specifically…
The Chaos Wizard: Can move rapidly which is crucial in the game. The Untamed magic ensures that you have no wasted actions but it is dangerous and not reliably effective.
Adventurer: Good theme comes through and having extra cards to manipulate is good fun but you have to know what you want to do with them.
Assassin: Very powerful character that fittingly is deadly with the automatic hit in first attack. Disappearing allows for rapid movement if you plan ahead.
Captain of the Guard: Another very powerful character that can move and attack with ferocity. Command ability is fantastic in ensuring there is always a valuable action to take. Even the Military Strategy is regularly powerful by limiting the orcs’ and demons’ ability to hit the realm.
Overall: While certainly not essential, if you love Defenders of the Realm you are going to enjoy these characters and cards. The expansion is a bit expensive but the quality of the components is high and augments a fantastic game. This expansion gives you just what you would expect and it is hard to imagine someone who was interested in it being disappointed with this solid addition.
If you like the Defenders of the Realm game you will enjoy this chance to add 4 new characters to the game. In addition to the new characters you get a new Paladin Figure that is in a scale that fits better with the other figures. You also get a package of, unfortunately, randomly packed Global effects cards to add to your game. The Global Effects cards were first added to the game in the Dragon Expansion. Some are good and some are bad for the players and you add some of each to the darkness spreads phase of the game. When one is revealed it takes effect and stays in effect until a new event is drawn. You also draw a replacement DS card for the turn in which you draw the effect card. If the new DS card is a Global card discard the second card without effect and continue to draw until you get a regular DS card.
*************THE NEW CHARACTERS***************************************
The Captain of the Guard-His primary ability that you will use is the fact that he can give unspent actions to other players to use on their next turn. THis is helpful when you have 1 last action and no good use or by planning ahead to help another character who needs 1 more action than they have to accomplish something useful(like joining the group to launch the attack on the general).
The Adventurer-The most attractive ability here is a handsize limit of 14 cards. A 40% increase in hand size is nothing to sneeze at.
The Chaos Wizard-His abilities to rain down destruction all over the board(at random) helps a lot when minions are about to overrun the board.
The Assassin-Shadow Walking(disappearing from the board as your last action and reappearing up to 3 spaces away at the start of your next turn) means this character is a powerful and flexible threat all over the board.
These characters add a lot of new options to your gameplay.
This expansion adds 4 more characters to Defenders of the Realm: Captain of the Gate, Assassin, Adventurer and Chaos wizard.
The box came with the hero cards and their respective miniatures, as well as a bunch of global effect cards.
It is worth mentioning that the box also comes with a new Paladin miniature that is larger than the original.
First of all, the new heroes are very interesting and offers a lot of variety to the base game. My favorite new hero from this expansion, is the assassin. She is arguably one of the strongest hero in the game. Captain of the Gate, adds a lot of strategic planning perspective to the game as he can let other players spend his unspent action tokens, and he has a nice attack bonus too. The chaos wizard, is a very interesting character, he is like the wizard from the base game, except that all of his abilities require card to activate, and sometimes it might cause him damage. The adventurer, can have up to 14 cards in the deck, and has added bonus when doing quests.
Overall, this is a good expansion, and will provide more variety to the base game.