Hero Card game series by TableStar Games.

TableStar, a new and rising boardgame company, has released its first set of table top boardgames - the Hero Card game series. Four unique games based on a central core dueling mechanic. Each game is for two to four players and can be played in 30-45 minutes. Each base game comes with two player characters each with a miniature figure, personalized 33 card dueling deck, in addition to the board and other game bits. Some boards are modular while others are traditional fold-outs. Each base set has two expansion character sets available separately with new miniatures and dueling decks. Hero Card characters are transferable between the base games so there are actually 4 possible games with a combination of 16 possible characters!

There are four of these base games presently available, "Rise of the Shogun," "CyberSpace," "Galaxy," and "Champion of the New Olympia." Each base game provides all you need for a two player board game. Expansions are nice but not required and as there is no "collectible" aspect to the expansion sets, there are no overbalancing characters or new rules to learn for each new character. The base game price point seems to be under $20 with the expansions around $8 each. Each base game and their respective expansion sets have nicely thematic art and well crafted bits.

The core to the Hero Card game system is the dueling mechanic. Each player takes on the identify of a hero and uses their unique action deck to battle the other players. Action decks are tuned to each individual hero and gives their game play "personality". Heroes have three attributes, Body, Mind and Attribute "X" (specific to each hero, e.g. the Samurai has 'Honor Power'). Heroes' attributes have limits to the total strength of action cards they may have played at one time on a given attribute. Attacks and defenses can be further modified by additional attribute cards and special powers played up to the limits of the attributes. Once payed, an action card must be recycled into a player's discard deck before being used again. Players must be careful not to overextend their Heroes and "clog" their attributes with used up action cards (e.g. too many attacks played leaving you not enough room for defense cards). Duels are fought between players to resolve various conflicts, player vs. player, capture of cities, cutting of supply lines, recruitment, resolution of secret missions, etc... The dueling remains the same yet each base game has its own continuity and flavor. Once players have gotten the hang of the dueling mechanic, they can move on to the base games.

In "CyberSpace," players use an arsenal of programming tricks, firewalls, links, hacking, and sabotage, to control a collective neural network where elite jackers battle in a turf war for dominance.

In "Galaxy," players battle for galactic domination, explore space, develop technology, and control planets to become the Ruler of the Galaxy.

In "Champion of the New Olympia," villainous gangs are wreaking havoc on the citizens and robotic invaders are destroying the city. Heroes are needed to discover their plots, foil their plans, and to restore order.

"Rise of the Shogun"

Rise of the Shogun has a small folding board map of feudal Japan and comes with the base Samurai and Ninja figures, dueling decks, 14 card treasures, 4 Tori gate shrines, 6 card missions, 8 castles, 60 peasant huts and a rulebook. Miko and the Prince are "Rise of the Shogun" expansion sets. I played a four player game of "Rise of the Shogun" using the Samurai, Ninja, Miko and Prince characters and was pleasantly impressed. The game board is an antiqued map of feudal Japan divided into regions including a central lake and the Emperor's palace. The castles are nicely cast beige stone and the peasant huts are of a subtle rustic design in each players' color. Players win through victory points (20 for the 4 player game). Points are awarded for converting a castle to your side (4), capturing enemy peasants (1 each) and connecting a line of your peasants between your castles (1 each). To claim a castle, an adjacent Hero draws a mission card which details the achievement required to convert the castle to your side. Castle missions range from capturing opponents' peasants to defeating another player in a duel. Tori gate shrines are handled in an elegant way. Heroes landing on a Tori gate collect a treasure card then hand the Tori gate to the player moving before them. That player replaces the Tori gate anywhere else on the board that is at least two spaces from any other object.

Treasures are captured, monsters are summoned, Heroes battle, the Emperor is manipulated and fun is had by all.

There are more games to come in the Hero Card series, "Nightmare" and "Orcs & Elves." The latter is an asymmetrical game that will pit limited numbers of Elvish warriors against Orcish hordes.

Good review!

A couple of questions, if you have time.

1) How long did the four player game last?

2) How good of components do the games have? Card stock, map quality, ect.

3) How different do the different characters play? Do you have to use different strategies with the ninja compared to the samarai?

4) How do monsters work?

Cheers

Judd

1) Perhaps 45 minutes. We had a trial single duel session to "warm up" followed by the full game. Considering 3/4 of us we 1st time players it went rather smoothly and quickly. I'd say with 4 experienced players you could count on 30-45 minutes on average.

2) Map is Alea quality (Clans, etc...), bits are a very nice rustic cast "stone" resin. Peasant huts look like carved huts and not Monopoly houses, etc... The only complaint I had was the cards in the demo game I played were of very thin card stock but the designer indicated they were not happy with them and would remedy the situation (I had the impression the printer had switched card stock on them). The game art (cards, board, bits) was professional and followed the base theme (Shogun art was Japanese wood cuts, etc...).

3) Each character had their own "personality" from the charateristics levels and attribute cards. Ninja was stealthy, Samurai combated directly, Miko was more agile, etc... There was some discussion that the Shogun game was biased toward offensive characters because a successful atack gained VP's but a successful defense gained nothing.

4) IIRC: Monsters were one time use special powers. When you explore a Shrine you get to chose one of two random treasure cards. Treasure cards are either items (they give you special powers) or monsters. You can have up to three teasure cards at a time (face down on the table). They don't count against any hand limits. Monsters function as free base attacks. You can play modifers off of them and they don't cost you attribute slots.

I just tried this game last night, and I too found it to be a good game. We played 3 players, with a TableStar Rep being the 3rd. We played Ninja, Samurai and Prince, and it seemed all three were unique but balanced.

I agree that the game does seem to end quite suddenly, but then again it's hard to really build up to a win in a 45 minute game.

My only problem with the game is you'll probably want to get lots of expansion decks from this and other Herocard games so you can mix and match characters, or even create custom decks. That would add a lot of replayability. Of course I'm sure that's what Tablestar has in mind...