Defenders of the Realm - Tips & Strategies

When you start to draw hero cards, plot out who to go after, and share the cards with people that have a better chance character-wise of winning against a general. For example, the Dwarf is great against Dragon-kin. Get him as many cards as possible to go against Sapphire. But don’t focus on only one character going against the general. Remember, there is strength in numbers. If you have 4 characters on the field, try to plan it so there are always two ready to attack the general.

I find a good strategy for the game is to have the wizard as part of your party. This is for 2 different reasons: 1) The wizard can travel to any spot on the board for 1 action due to his teleportation ability and 2) The wizard’s fireball ability – This can be extremely powerful, as it allows you to discard a card of any colour minion you are fighting at the time, and destroy all minions on that spot for a result of 2 or higher on each die you roll

A lot of people tend to forget that Hero cards can speed movement if used. Hanging on to Hero cards for that big battle can be important, but when you have a flight card in hand, you can cover a lot of ground. If a problem area comes up and you’re not sure if it can be handled by other players in time, expending cards to get to that location may be your best bet. In Defenders of the Realm, time is a crucial element, so taking care of problems quickly and efficiently is vital. Forming gates can also be helpful, but should only be done on relatively trouble-free turns; prepare for trouble before it happens, not when it happens.

How many dice do you need to attack a general and hopefully kill it?
RED GENERAL- 12 is minimum, 14 is good. Not because you need that much, but because you will lose 1 or more cards to his special ability before you attack.
GREEN GENERAL-Max 12 or 13, no more and 10 is probably optimum. This is because with his special ability, the more you have the more parries you will probably roll.
BLACK GENERAL-12 is the minimum. Due to his ability you cannot re-roll or use your character’s special powers, so with 50% chance of hitting you want a little cushion against one player rolling badly.
BLUE GENERAL-10 Dice minimum. Statistically 12 should be the minimum but 10 usually works out.

The rulebook doesn’t seem to mention this, but the designer has said elsewhere that the game was balanced for 4 heroes, and that playing with less than that is a challenge.

Smaller groups have more trouble covering the board and can’t hoard as many hero cards for the big general fights. When you get below 3 heroes, you’re going to have a hard time even holding enough cards to reliably kill a single general, due to the per-hero hand limit.

If you have fewer than 4 players, consider having some play multiple heroes, especially if you don’t have much experience with the game.

Defenders of the Realm benefits from a designer who actively supports updates to the game. There are a number of expansions available for purchase.

Additionally, there are a set of five official scenarios, set as a continuous story, that are available for FREE from the Eagle Games website. They are .pdf files that contain all the rules needed. There are lots of cards/tokens/creatures that are new which you will need to cutout, but again, it’s free!

They can be found on the product page under the DOWNLOADS tab from Eagle Games. At the time of this comment, the first three are there. Having played through a few, they definitely add a challenge, while keeping true to the main game. Highly recommended for experienced players looking for a challenge!

http://www.eaglegames.net/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=EGL1000

The designer has posted a large FAQ here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/58401/defenders-of-the-realm-faq

The FAQ is 19 pages long and contains a lot of clarifications and background commentary, but it also contains a number of rulings that I would consider “errata” – things that I don’t think could reliably be deduced from the stuff that comes in the box, even with extreme thoroughness. Since the FAQ is huge and doesn’t separate these out, I’ve made a list for easier review…

1. Varkolak’s general ability prevents the use of the quest reward from “Amulet of the Gods” (+1 to dice rolls), but does NOT prevent the rewards from “Find Magic Gate” (+2 dice), “War Banner of Valor” (ignore effects of losing), or “Amorak’s Blessing” (cancel general’s ability).

2. The Cleric’s “Turn Undead” ability happens before taking damage for ending your turn (in conjunction with #16 below, this implies that it happens at the end of the daytime phase, NOT at the end of your turn as printed.)

3. The Cleric’s “Turn Undead” ability is optional.

4. The Cleric’s “Sanctify Land” ability rolls only 1 die per action.

5. The Eagle Rider’s “Ground Attack” style can only be used to reroll ALL dice in an attack or NONE of them, not just some of them.

6. The Ranger’s “Archery” ability attacks all minions in one adjacent location, not in all adjacent locations.

7. The Sorceress’ “Ambush” ability grants a bonus on the first attack made during a turn AND the first attack after each movement (e.g. you can ambush minions in your current location, move somewhere else, ambush again, move back to your original location, and ambush again, all in a single turn).

8. If you run out of minion tokens, you can take the minion on the Sorceress’ character card representing her shifted shape, BUT she suffers 1 wound if you do so.

9. If the Sorceress is forced to return to Monarch City as a result of losing a battle against a general, she automatically shifts back into human form.

10. The Wizard’s “Fireball” ability can be used by discarding a card matching the color of any minion you are fighting, and works against all minions you are fighting.

11. The Wizard’s “Teleport” ability can be used to go to any location on the map, even locations that aren’t reachable by actual magic gate travel (such as inns, or Monarch City when there is no gate built there).

12. If the Wizard uses his “Wisdom” ability to discard the Monarch City darkness spreads card, you still reshuffle the decks. If the Monarch City darkness spreads card is drawn for a “general movement only” step, you still reshuffle the decks. (There is nothing in the FAQ that says what happens if you discard it as part of the “Dark Vision” purple card–I would guess you reshuffle, though the order of steps becomes important.)

13. The purple hero card “Magic Gate” cannot be used to place a gate at an inn.

14. When performing two consecutive “Rumors at the Inn” actions, you may change your called color between the two actions if you wish.

15. Minions defeated by the “Battle Fury” purple card count towards quest requirements. Minions defeated by other purple cards do not.

16. Wounds for “ending your turn” in a space with minions actually occur at the end of the daytime phase, before drawing cards.

17. Participating in an attack on a general is optional. A hero is considered to participate if they contribute 1 or more dice (whether from hero cards or otherwise).

18. Balazarg’s general ability corrupts all cards used against him, not just red cards as the rulebook says.

19. Balazarg’s general ability requires you to roll separate for each card you are using and discard that card if a 1 is rolled, not just “a card”.

20. Gorgutt’s general ability “parries” an attack for each natural 1 rolled (that is, for each physical die that shows a 1, before applying any bonuses or penalties from abilites).

21. If a general has multiple red wound boxes, they heal at the slower rate (one per round, rather than one per turn) as long as their health is in a red box, not just for the first wound.

22. Consistent with the text on the “slayer” cards, but not the rulebook, a hero with a “slayer” ability can spend a single action to defeat all minions of that color in his location AND perform a normal attack against other colors of minions in the same location.

23. The “slayer” cards do not work in combination with the Ranger’s “Archery” ability. (Note: the reason the FAQ gives for this appears to be in error. It’s not clear whether that means the answer is wrong, or the answer is right but the reason is wrong.)

24. If the active hero is wounded as a result of losing a battle against a general, wounds are taken first from that hero’s unspent life tokens for the current round, meaning his number of remaining actions will also be reduced.

25. At the end of the Evening Phase, all players must discard down to 10 cards in their hands, not just the active player (this can come up due to the extra cards drawn when defeating a general).

26. Minions are never placed on an inn location, even if an adjacent area has an overrun.

27. When adding 2 minions at once to a single location, a maximum of one taint and one overrun can occur in that location (even for demons).

28. When a darkness spreads card calls for 1 Orc to be placed in each “empty” location, a location with heroes or generals is still considered “empty”, but a location with ANY kind of minion is not.

29. However, when a darkness spreads card calls for 1 Orc to be placed in each location with “1 Orc and only 1 Orc”, that affects all locations that have exactly 1 Orc, regardless of the presence of other minions.

30. The purple card “Battle Luck” allow the “active player” to reroll his combat dice. When fighting a general, the “active player” is considered to be whichever player is currently rolling, not necessarily the player who is taking his turn.

There is no carved in stone order to kill generals in. They are all 4 spaces away. That being said there are priorities when possible. The 2 most common ways to lose are by not being able to put out green minions when needed and by having all 12 taint crystals appear on the board. So going for the red and green generals first is usually a good choice. Once you kill a general you will move to midwar status(more darkness spread cards drawn at end of turn) so you want to try to get your second kill as quickly as possible thereby giving you more “safe” cards to be drawn for general movement during Darkness Spreads. You will then have some time to complete quests and reduce the # of minions on the board as much as possible. When you go for the 3rd general try to have some of the cards if not all you will need to attack the final general.

You can get Official Defenders of the Realm variant cards here.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/673912/click-to-buy-artscow-deck-of-official-defenders-of

Note: These are legal until Eagle decides to print them.

Technically you can keep track with a suggested scoring system to determine which defender of the realm would be honored at the end of the game as the top defender. I heartily encourage you to not do that. Frankly, it is the one thing that seems out of place in this great co-op game. Defenders of the Realm gives you a role-playing feel in a true board game and in the tradition of heroes, typically all get recognized and celebrated at the end for their unique contributions rather than being divided and ranked. I think the great co-op spirit of the game really deserves to be protected and consequently we always ignore figuring who was the “winner” – we win (or go down fighting) together.

I might note in addition, that by not worrying about the scoring you can more strategically determine who the slayer (the character who strikes the killing blow) is likely to be of each general and thereby put your team in a better position to ultimately win (i.e. the special abilities gained from striking the killing blow are best utilized if each character has one rather than one character “hogging” them all).