How to play the fantasy card game Xemytica™ Fate of Heroes

Not many people have heard of the new Collectible Card Game Fate of Heroes. Therefore I will here first present the game a little further, before introducing rule questions and ideas on game play.

Fate of Heroes is a fantasy CCG (Collectible Card Game) released in 2009 by Xemytica™. Xemytica™ is a card game rule system that is very fast paced and quick to play. It is simple and minimalistic, but instead, very fast and easy to get into.

Xemytica™ is used by Fate of Heroes as the rule system, but other games (as 1910) also use the same rules (with slight modifications).

Fate of Heroes comes in a Starter Pack (you will need to buy this first to play the game) and add-on packs (which adds more cards to your starter pack). The Starter Pack has 17 Fighter cards, 17 Fate cards and 17 Gear cards. The Fighters are blue, the Fate cards red and the Gear cards purple.

The game play is very simple. Everyone first creates a deck with a value of 30 points. To do this, you look on the top right corner of each card. There you will see one, two or three dots. This is the value. You add cards together until you reach 30 points – no more. This will create a deck for you with between 10 to 30 cards. Each player then places the deck in front of him (or herself – I will use he/him for the rest of this article, but always implies she/her), facing down. Then draw eight cards.

You may draw cards at any time, and you can even discard to draw new cards. However, you may never pick up a discarded card.

Now, the battles begin! And this is how you play it (and now I will also show you a few inside tricks).

First place out a Fighter (a blue card). On the bottom of this card are three squares with a point value for Strength, Speed and Skill. These are your Attack Values, or Action Values. The purpose of the game is to get one of these values as high as possible – it doesn't matter which, the Fighter with the highest in any of these values wins that battle.

Now place a Fate card (red). Add any modifications listed on the card, or do as the card rules say. Sometimes, card rules contradict main rules (for instance, there are cards that actually allow you to pick up discarded cards!).

Last, play a Gear card (purple). Add modifications and now see which Fighter has the highest value of any of the Action Values. That Fighter wins.

The beauty of Fate of Heroes (and the Xemytica™ rule system) is that each player plays out their Fighter, Fate and Gear cards simultanously! You play each card at the same time as the other players! This makes it more real time, and you can't change you mind ones you have played out your Fighter. This really adds to the fun of the whole game!

The player that wins the battle can place all the played cards back into the deck. The loser(s) however, discard all played cards.

When there is only one player with Fighter card(s) left, that player wins the whole game!

This is how easy it is to actually play Fate of Heroes. But now, how do you really trick the other player so you can win all the time? It all comes down to two things: creating a killer deck and playing the cards in the right manner.

For instance, if you have a Fighter with Strength 7, Speed 5 and Skill 3, your opponent will probably believe that you will boost the Strength value. Hence, he might put out a Fate card that actually lowers your Strength!

But if you have been prepared for this, you can already in the Fate phase play a modification to Speed – and actually win the game because you have the highest score on Speed, and not Strength!

Playing the game like this actually creates a more living and fun game session.

Also, carefully check the Fate cards that can be played before the Fate phase, or that can actually be played at any time. These are valuable cards and can seriously confuse your opponent's strategy.

There are a lot of things you can do with Fate of Heroes, and since the rules are so simple and easy to understand, you will very quickly find it a powerful game and start tweaking your deck.

Now have fun and go out there and play a lot of card games!