Villain Profile: Anatoli

This week we begin a series introducing the villains in the Realm of Runes Card Game. These villains are the backbone of the play experience and represent the primary challenges for you and your party to overcome. Each villain's play experience is different, with many almost feeling like a different game entirely. We'll go alphabetically through the villains in this series.

Anatoli Smorin

Anatoli is a blue mage, a wizard with a dual specialization in both divination and illusion magic. Spellcasters tend to be glass cannons. He doesn't have a ton of Hit Points as compared to other villains, but he does have a lot of tricks up his sleeve. What he lacks in raw physical longevity, he makes up for with clever tactics, powerful attacks, and making himself difficult to find. You can't hurt him if you don't know where he is.

Anatoli does not assign henchmen to Heroes at the start of the game like other villains. Instead, he uses his henchman cards quite differently. His henchman cards are divided into two different decks: spells and illusions. He regularly draws cards from his spell deck himself, while the Heroes must try to find the real him in his deck of illusions. The odds are not on your side.

The illusion deck contains one copy of the real him, while all the other cards in the deck are just illusions. Each time you try to deal damage to Anatoli, you have to first draw from the illusion deck. The most likely outcome is that you'll find you've attacked an illusion, but there is always the chance that you get lucky and deal damage to the real wizard. Once you find the real Anatoli on your turn, you've found him for the rest of that turn. But once your turn is over, all of the illusion deck cards get shuffled back together. Just because you found him on your turn, doesn't mean your allies will be so lucky.

The spell deck is Anatoli's primary method of changing the game state. While he has the innate ability to deal consistent damage with his end of round and special abilities, these spells are the wizard's best weapons. There are several very powerful effects he can pull from this deck. He might create an illusory creature to harry the players as a henchman which, being an illusion, is impossible to remove by defeating it. He can add an explosive effect to his illusions, dealing massive damage to anyone that fails to find the real him. He can also give himself some temporary Hit Points as an additional buffer that Heroes have to overcome. There are other tricks that you'll have to find out for yourself!

Being a divination specialist, Anatoli can't be caught off guard. He's got Epic Clarity and therefore cannot be staggered. There's no way to stop him from playing his spells, and there's no bypassing his illusion deck. In this way, he can stand up against a whole party by himself as a real challenge. If Anatoli has one weakness, it's good luck. Each time you play against him he might be one of the hardest villains, but there's always the chance that you can see through his tricks and take him down quickly. So... do you feel lucky?

Next time we'll return to the Tome of Whispers to start exploring some of the alternative game rules on offer, so stay tuned!