Recently the Rise of the Realm Runners Kickstarter campaign utterly smashed its funding goal, meaning we will be seeing this set arrive some time around the end of April/beginning of May.

We’ve seen a number of cards publicly spoiled for the set so far, via Kickstarter and discord, so I thought I’d review the cards and think about what their impact might be on the card pool. Before getting into that though, a big caveat: all the cards that have been shared by Realm Runner Studios are prototypes. There’s a very good chance that there will be significant changes between now and official release.

Before we look at the cards, let’s look at the numbers:We know that there will be 400 cards in this release, of which there will be 136 unique new cards. 112 of these will be realm specific, meaning there are 28 realm specific cards per realm. 1 of these cards per realm will be a rare action, and the rest will be uncommon (15 per realm) and common (11 per realm) objects and actions.
There will be no new realm-locked locations or characters.

24 of the new cards will be cross-realm cards, comprised of 12 legendary realm runners (characters) or rifts (locations), and 12 rare realm runes (actions) or relics (objects).

So far, each realm has 6 legendaries, 12 rares, 18 uncommons, and 24 commons. That means that if you’re building a palette you will have:
An 8 card jump in the number of legendaries you can choose from (133% increase),
A 2 realm-specific and 12 non-realm specific increase in the number of available rares (117% increase),
A jump from 42 to 68 uncommons and commons available (a 67% increase in that card pool).
Those are large changes, and should throw the door wide open to a much wider range of builds moving forward. However, the fact that we’re getting no new uncommon or common locations or characters means that the impact of this card pool increase will be somewhat tempered.

Now, onto the cards themselves. First up, the realmless cards:

Niimi, Ray, and Phisto are 3 of our legendary realm runners, and fit the same mould of cheap but high impact. Niimi has a killer ACTION, but is far too situational for my playstyle. She could be a lot of fun in a multiplayer though. Ray is a gift for Chroma decks, giving you +5 for 1 shard AND he can’t be attacked. Obviousy weak to claim, but I could see him cropping up in a lot of decks. Phisto (possible reference to Mephistopheles?) has a passive ability that could be extremely powerful, especially in decks with sacrifice or board wipe cards. He’s very vulnerable though, so don’t expect him to stick around for long.

I can’t quite imagine myself ever playing Golden Apple of Eris (the goddess of discord), though it’s a fun effect. Mask of Mysterium however is a very good card, that really allows you to play with relative impunity as you know what’s coming, though it is expensive. The Jamshid Orb is a very strong card for most decks, but is weak to restrain, claim and poison, though since poison characters cap at 2 strength, this essentially gives you a 1-up.

Haruto gives you a once per turn on-tap erase, which is a very potent effect. He is very vulnerable, but you are guaranteed to get to use his ability at least once, and it forces the opponent to take action on him. I could see him being included in both achrom and chroma decks.

Mutans is probably going to be the source of some frustration. Being drained 2-4 shards per turn just for playing the game will hurt, and he is immune to a lot of tricks like claim or poison. If you don’t have a character-erasing action soon, this could be utterly game changing. Note that if you have a card on your canvas that gives Mutans protection, you can still play an action to erase him, as protection doesn’t protect you from your own actions.

Hissano is the ultimate board wipe, and a get-out-of-jail free card if you’re on the back foot. Hod is a great character, though he does have the problem that if he gets erased before the opponent’s next resolve step, he will never pay for himself.

Of the 7 Realm Runners in this expansion, Mutans or Ray are probably the ones I’m most likely to include in a deck in place of an existing realm-specific legendary.

Brisingamen (Freyja’s necklace from Norse mythology) is a great boon to character decks, as the opponent will do the job for you next round, and be forced to attack your characters. It’s kind of like getting around the fact that characters cannot attack on the turn they’re deployed.

Dyrnwyn (the white-hilt sword from Welsh mythology) is pretty amazing as a location killer, you can play it and attack in the same turn, and since it has power 4, it’s pretty much guaranteed to take out any location you attack (unless it’s on a 1 strength character and the opponent has a pesky 6 shard location).

Club of Dagda is a peculiar effect, and while I could see it being devastating against the right deck, I feel it is probably too situational to be worth the rare slot in a deck.

Cintimani Stone (a stone of power from Hindu and Buddhist traditions) is a new but maybe better Murky Manor. The ultimate universal tutor. I imagine it’ll be clarified that you can’t play this card after having played other cards, so it really is just this and one more card from deck in a turn, but that’s not going to put me off slotting this card in almost literally every deck I ever build from now on. It just feels utterly broken to play this for 5 shards, tutor Murky Manor and play it for free, tutor Otrix or Issadora and play them for free, and suddenly I’ve got a massive board state out of almost nowhere. However you can only play this on a character, and if it’s your character you have to have played that character on a previous turn. That does make it less flexible, but it’s still amazing. The obvious exception to this is the Otrix play. Deploy this on an opponent’s character, then claim them with her. That’s crazy value for 5 shards. Oh, and it’s got a steal 1 on it.

Of the 7 Realm Relics, Cintimani Stone is hands down my favourite in terms of power, though my favourite design is probably Brisingamen.

Orium Fracture and Achrom Breach are both legendary realm rifts, cost 5 shards, and have exactly the same effect, albeit one for pink and one for achrom. The REVEAL keyword is new and works as follows:

Turn over the top card of your deck. If it matches the requirement of the REVEAL (in this case, has a shard of the right colour) place it in your hand. If it doesn’t match the requirement, turn over the next card and repeat until you get to a card that does, add it to your hand, and shuffle your deck.

This means that essentially you’re drawing 1 extra card every single turn, containing a colour of your choosing, which is a very strong effect. Additionally, the ability to get a +1/-1 for every card on your canvas is pretty potent, assuming you buid around it, though you don’t especially need to thanks to the REVEAL ability. It may not however be as good as some existing legendaries in terms of pure value, like Issadora, who gets a steal for every character/occultist on your canvas. Sure, that’s more specific, but I feel I wouldn’t currently be using my legendary slot on these cards.

Algiz and Isaz are rare realmless actions, cost 4 shards, and again, have the same effect as each other but for different colours. Paying 4 to play a card for free isn’t exactly a great deal if you can’t be sure what that card is going to be. However, if you have a yellow/blue heavy deck, these cards also net you a few extra shards on play. You’ll likely be triggering this for +3/4 most of the time in the right build, meaning it costs a net of 0-1 and you play a random free card, putting this in the realm of a situational but stronger Abundance of Quintessence or Full Palette. Given these cards are rares, I could definitely see them getting play, especially in a build with only a few high cost cards of the right colour.

That’s 7 runners, 7 relics, 2 rifts, and 2 runes spoiled. This means there’s 3 runners/rifts, and 3 relics/runes that we haven’t seen yet.

That’s all for now. Realm-locked card reviews to follow very soon, and reminder: these are prototype cards, so may change between now and release day.