Heretic: Ruins of Roanoke Board Game Review

Last week I introduced you to the Marvel Dice Throne card and dice mix. This time we will look at a purebred card duel, in which on one side stands a hunter, and on the other a very dangerous prey. The following lines will tell you how this set plays and whether it has a chance to impress even the less experienced.

Number of players: 2

Play time: 60 minutes

Price: 869 CZK (Alsa)

Age: 12+

Heretic: The ruins of Roanoke present the perfect tug of war for the fate of the colonists.

Roanoke is a dark legend that shows that colonizing America was not an easy task and few succeeded. Heretic: The Ruin of Roanoke will show you a potential reason why things can go wrong in a settlement that does not have a dizzying population. Since this is a duel, you are offered two roles. The witch, hidden among the people, wants to perform a dark ritual, and the hunter wants to prevent her from doing so at all costs, and when I say “at all costs”, I mean by setting boundaries and various corporal punishments. Without some methods, this is simply impossible.

Each player has a specific board, actions, and cards that their soku does not control. For example, a hunter might place investigation cards on the locals where the witch is hiding, making visits to certain people more pleasant, while a soku might make them difficult enough that he doesn’t want to deal with them or think twice about it. Both characters use three tokens to visit people and perform actions. The hunter only has a basic format, while the witch has two “basic” formats and one with a raven head representing the helper.

In essence, this is perceived as a stronger token at certain points, moreover, after placing certain cards on the board, the witch actually shapes the shape of the game, for example, by distributing more secret tokens to people, which the villain can transform into favor tokens needed to perform a ritual. Both characters generate profession-specific tokens when they visit locations. While the witch is gaining favor, the hunter wants to clear the locals, so the population gives clues and eventually evidence leading to the ultimate discovery of the villain.

What’s interesting is that you don’t place tokens on a given character, but rather place them according to a small icon on the card. This indicates not only the color you’ll be laying on, but also the volume. Some people generate more tokens, but again, they’re not as attractive in terms of the effects that activate after you visit them. The cards you work with are sometimes one-time use, but you mostly work with them long-term. Through them, the hunter builds his shelter and hires companions. The witch then hires the aforementioned servants, brews potions, and casts long-term curses that the hunter can deal with by spending a set amount of resources and thus removing them.

Basically, you can always take three actions during your turns, so the pace of the game is smooth and players have a chance to think about what they want or prepare some of their moves during the moments when the opponent plays. Then the game ends when the witch performs the ritual in Heretic: Roanoke Ruins, is caught by the hunter, or when three innocents are burned. Although the hunter can burn the locals more or less as he pleases, every cup can overflow and after a series of failures, the villagers will no longer let you act in their “chicken coop”.

As for the base game, it has a relatively decent amount of storage. But once you start adding expansions, of which there are quite a few, you will find that it is not so easy to fit them into the basic box. And for such cases, there is an option to insert an insert into the box. Personally, I chose the piece from Kalkarad, whose execution seemed excellent to me, regardless of whether I worked with the base version only or put all the additional expansions into the whole. His idea is based on a decent storage of cards and tokens, which can be in both the normal and improved versions. Although it is not a complex concept at all, I actually played with it much better, so I have no problem recommending it for myself.

The clash of irreconcilable juices in The Heretic: The Roanoke Ruin will captivate both experienced and inexperienced players.

Heretic: The Ruin of Roanoke is a great card duel where one player tries to find the evil and the other player has to disguise their actions as best as possible and lure the hunters out of their way with tricks and well-chosen moves. I was a bit scared of the difficulty at first, but once I got a chance to play a few games with a teammate, it went really well and the game time was significantly reduced because each of us had an idea of ​​what and how to play for our cause. I really like the fact that everyone is built differently, so just because you are an experienced Inquisitor doesn’t automatically mean you will be as successful as a Heretic, and vice versa.

You may be surprised by my words, but in my opinion, Heretic: Roanoke Ruin can be a very worthy activity even for inexperienced players. If you are looking for a duel that has a really interesting theme and has an acceptable playing time, I would say that this deduction card game might be for you. At least, I am fascinated by it even after a number of games.

We would like to thank Czech distributor REXhry for providing us with a copy of Heretic: Roanoke Destruction.