Playing cards allows players to take food tokens (for movement), build up money to buy upgrades, or increase attack power. In a very familiar start to anybody who has played Dominion, players begin with a set deck of ten cards, from which they draw five into their hands. This could end up being great, but it’ll have to get past a few things holding it back. It does all right.īefore I get too down on Hand of Fate, it should be noted that I was provided with an early prototype, with an unfinished set of rules that are subject to change. So on the heels of the more recent phenomenon of adventure card games (like Pathfinder or Warhammer Quest), Hand of Fate: Ordeals intends to meld the two mechanics into one smooth game. It has to bring something new to the table (hyuk hyuk) and that thing had better be good.

I say all this to illustrate a point: these days it can take a lot for a deck-builder to get noticed. Some games slightly tweaked the formula to be dice pools rather than decks of cards, but the central progression remained the same. There’s Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Alien, and more. Thunderstone and Ascension took the idea to the (yawn) fantasy swords and magic killing monsters theme, and at this point it seems like every big nerd franchise has got a deck-builder. Once the concept was released upon the world, it blazed through the tabletop scene. With Dominion going on ten years now, deck-building is fairly old hat.

Hand of fate ordeals