Fantasy Realms Game
$19.99
Fantasy Realms at a Glance
| Game Type Fantasy Theme, Card Drafting, Set Collection | Play Time 20 mins | Skill/Complexity (1.8 - 5) Light |
| Age 14+ | Publisher(s) WizKids and others | Published 2017 |
| Categories Family | Players 3 - 6 | Cost $19.99 |
| Our Rating 9.5/10 | Rules Official Rules |
About – Description
Fantasy Realms is a quick-playing combo-building card game designed by Bruce Glassco and was first published in 2017. Since its release, it has gained a considerable amount of buzz for a couple of reasons. First, it is a game that was applauded by the famous designer and president of Stonemaier games, Jamey Stegmaier (Scythe, Viticulture, Euphoria) – to the point that he used the game’s core mechanisms as inspiration for his most recently-released game, Red Rising (giving the designer of Fantasy Realms full credit in the rulebook).
Second, the game was recently nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021 award (Connoisseur Game of the Year), an enormous accomplishment for any game.
So is the game any good? Is it worth picking up? Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the different aspects of the game to help you determine if it is right for you.
Best Suited for a Wide Range of Gamers
Fantasy Realms is a game that is very well suited for an enormous range of gamers and situations, including family game nights, work lunch break with friends, and regular game nights with fellow hobby gamers. While the game has a fantasy theme, people who aren’t even necessarily a fan of the genre will still be able to find many things to like about this game.
From my experience, Fantasy Realms has been a key staple in my collection for playing at work with friends during our lunch break – I keep a copy of the game at my desk at work. It is quick to set up, quick to explain, and very quick to play (you can get a round in in about 10 minutes).
Skill/Complexity (lightweight)
While the rules of Fantasy Realms are not particularly difficult to grasp (more on gameplay below), the complexity in the game comes with trying to figure out which cards work together (and don’t work together) to try and build the best possible combination of cards in your hand by the end of the game. This is the only aspect that might be slightly intimidating for people who don’t play many games, but since a game round is super short, the way scoring works will easily click for new gamers by the end of the round.
This game is lightweight and has a complexity rating of around 1.8 out of 5.
Gameplay and Insights
The goal of Fantasy Realms is very simple – gain the greatest number of points by having the best possible combination of cards in your hand at the end of the game. Each player begins the game with a hand of seven cards, and over the course of the game they will be exchanging cards from their hand with cards from a common deck and face-up public display – and thereby making cards they discard available for other players to snag.
Each card has the potential to help a player score points. On the top-left corner of the card is a base point value for the card, and then many cards also include bonus scoring conditions (typically bonus points awarded for the player holding other specific or types of cards in their hand at the end of the game). There are also ten suits of cards in the game, and many cards either provide bonus points for having cards of certain suits, or can potentially blank cards of certain suits meaning that their value gets reduced to zero.
Here are some examples of card scoring conditions:
- The Shield of Keth is worth 4 points. However, it is worth +15 points with any card from the Leader suit, OR it is worth +40 points with both a card from the Leader Suit and the Sword of Keth.
- The Wildfire is worth 40 points. However, it blanks all cards except the suits Flames, Wizards, Weather, Weapons, Artifacts, as well as specific cards Mountain, Great Flood, Island, Unicorn and Dragon.
- The Candle is worth 2 points. However, it is worth +100 with Book of Changes, Bell Tower, and any one card of the Wizard suit.
On a player’s turn, they first draw a card (from the face-up public display or from the draw deck), then they must discard a card to the public display. Play continues in this way until there are ten cards in the face-up public display (discard) area. At that point, the game immediately ends and players score the cards in their hand at that moment in time.
You can check out the official Fantasy Realms rules HERE!
Versions/Editions/Expansions
Fantasy Realms was first released in 2017, and received a 2nd-edition printing in 2018 with the only notable changes being on the box art cover.
So far, there has only been one expansion released for the game: The Cursed Hoard, released in 2021. This expansion adds two modules for the game. In the Cursed Items module, plays gain access to one special ability that they can use at any point in the game. For instance, the Lantern allows a player to name a suit and search the deck until they find a card of that suit (or draw 10 cards). The Crystal Lens allows a player to look at the top card of the draw deck before they decide where to draw their card from (the draw deck or face-up public display). The big caveat to using a Cursed Item, however, is that once used the card becomes worth negative points at the end of the game.
The New Suits module simply adds three new suits to the game: Buildings, Outsiders, and the Undead. Each of these suits mixes in some fresh and exciting new flair to the game.
Player Count
In my experience, Fantasy Realms is an excellent 3 and 4-player game. There is a two-player variant, which many people claim works very well. I have not personally tried this game with 2 players, but for me, part of the fun of the game comes with having multiple players swapping out cards from the middle of the table, leading to some increased tension of not knowing if a certain card will be available when it becomes your turn again – do you take that card now, or do you risk it and hope that it stays on the table for just one more round because there’s another card on the table that looks equally as good?
Likes & Dislikes
- Quick gameplay – As mentioned earlier, Fantasy Realms for me is the perfect lunchtime game with friends at work. In the span of 30 minutes, you can easily get in at least two rounds of the game (and you will hardly ever want to stop after playing just one round).
- Simple yet interesting turns – I absolutely love that the turns in this game are extremely simple: draw a card and discard a card. Yet within those two very simple actions, you can encounter so many agonizing moments in the game. For instance, by drawing a card from the draw-deck, this propels the game closer to the end because that means there will be one additional card in the discard pile at the end of your turn. By drawing a card from the discard pile, however, this can slow down the game. And which card to discard? Sometimes every card in your hand seems awesome, or there’s a card that you specifically don’t want to discard because you know an opponent is looking for it.
- Satisfying combos – If you like games that provide points for building combos, this is the game for you. The combos in this game can be absolutely insane (with bonuses of 100+ points for gathering specific cards). Because rounds are so short, this can make you more willing to try and pull off a seemingly impossible combo, which can be quite a bit of fun.
- End game trigger – I always love when games give players a chance to determine when the game ends, and Fantasy Realms does this in a unique way with the end-game trigger being 10 cards in the discard pile. Sometimes when you end up with the perfect combo in your hand, you may just decide to start drawing from the draw deck in order to get more cards into the discard pile. In fact, some of the most exciting moments in this game for me have come down to there being 9 cards in the public display and sitting in agony as you desperately hope the player to your right draws from the discard pile and not the draw pile so you can have just one more turn!
- The scoring process is time consuming – In fact, sometimes it can feel like scoring player’s hands takes about as long as the game itself. The game comes with a very well-organized score pad, but scoring still requires you to evaluate every single card in a player’s hand, taking into account blanks and combo bonuses. There is one enormous fix to this issue, however, and that is the fantastic app from WizKids. In this app, you simply select the cards in a player’s hand, and the app does all the scoring for you! You can figure out scoring in just a couple of short minutes, and then be on to another round in no time.
- Turns can be less interesting toward the end of the game – This doesn’t happen all that often, but every now and then you may end up with what you think is a perfect combo of cards in your hand, and spend your last few turns simply drawing cards from the draw deck to end the game. I don’t see this as a huge negative, just because the game is so short and it can also be fun to watch other players get upset when they realize you are trying to end the game.
Final Thoughts
I don’t say this about many games, but Fantasy Realms is a game that I think should be a staple in most gamers’ collections. Because it is so fun and satisfying, and so short and easy to explain, it’s hard for me to imagine many people not liking this game. I’ve played the game countless times at this point, and I would gladly play it anytime with just about anyone.
The bottom line: Fantasy Realms is so much fun. Go buy it!
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