Villain Profile: Aracula

This week we introduce another of the villains you'll be squaring off against in the Realm of Runes Card Game.

Aracula

Aracula is the queen of spiders, with the ability to control all manner of arachnids. Her henchmen include several gigantic varieties of spiders and scorpions, but also some swarms of more normal-sized ones. Aracula herself prefers to hand back and let her henchmen do the bulk of the work, at least until the heroes start eliminating them. Her start and end of round abilities activate the special abilities of her henchmen, while they are still alive, but activate her own special ability if none of them are left.

A Double Villain

One of Aracula's henchman cards is set aside as a second villain at the beginning of the game, before the rest of her henchmen are dealt out to the heroes. This second villain is the Egg Sac. The Egg Sac is not a target, and cannot be dealt with directly, but defeating Aracula herself also defeats the Egg Sac. The Egg Sac represents a secondary failure condition for the Heroes. Every round, the Egg Sac's incubation count increases. If this incubation count reaches its threshold, the heroes simply lose. This means that you have to deal with Aracula quickly.

Fortunately, each time you defeat one of Aracula's henchmen you get to reduce the incubation count by one, buying another round to try to defeat Aracula. This also presents a tough tactical choice. If you defeat her henchmen too quickly, you may not have incubation counters to remove which paradoxically means you have fewer rounds of play to work with. Is it worth it to let a low HP henchman persist for another round to get the full effect for defeating it?

Field Effects

Further complicating matters are Sticky Webs. This henchman is set aside during game set up, like the Egg Sac, but is assigned as a group henchman to all heroes. The Sticky Webs are also not a target, and cannot be dealt with directly. This mean that each Hero actually has two henchmen to deal with on their turn at the beginning of the game. The Sticky Webs stagger heroes, costing them the valuable actions needed for speed, and also force heroes to discard cards, costing them valuable tools.

Epic Defense

Aracula's got a hard carapace, which grants her damage reduction for all damage types. Although she doesn't have a ton of Hit Points herself, it can be challenging to make her lose those Hit Points. This effect scales with the party size, however. A smaller party has less damage reduction to worry about, which is important because the incubation threshold for the Egg Sac also scales with party size. A bigger party has more turns to work with, but Aracula becomes even harder to hurt with those actions.

Keep Calm and Carry On

If Aracula has one weakness, it is efficient coordination and a measured pace. Going too quickly can be dangerous, but going too slowly will lose the game. She doesn't have many strong tools at her disposal, but she doesn't need to. Since the heroes don't have to die for her to win, all she needs is for her tools be just strong enough to run out the clock. Just don't panic!

Next time we'll return to the Tome of Whispers to take a more specific look at some of the alternative game rules, so stay tuned!