A Fighter’s Perspective, Part 1: The Basics

Welcome to A Fighter’s Perspective, a series of articles about my thoughts and experiences playing a Fighter in the deck-building card game Hero Realms by Wise Wizard Games. In this series I want to start off discussing the basic Fighter deck, move on to a deeper analysis of upgrades and abilities, then discuss how opponents will try to counter your strategies and how you can counter the strategies your opponents will use. While S_Freak has a very nice overview of the Fighter, my focus here is is a bit different. You can find part 2 of my series here.

The base fighter deck (level 3 in app) is made up of :

• 6x 1 gold
• 1x Ruby (2 gold)
• 1x Longsword (3 dmg)
• 1x Throwing Axe (2 dmg + draw possibility)
• 1x Shield Bearer (3 Guard)
• 1x Shoulder Bash (2 dmg for 2 gold)
• 1x Crushing Blow (Trash for 8 dmg)

The Fighter starts at 60 base health, the most of any hero. When we look at the starting cards, we can see that the Fighter is built to output damage quickly and consistently. This can be very appealing and seem quite easy to new players, but excelling with this hero is not as easy as it seems. High level play requires some forethought and understanding. You cannot only buy aggressive damage cards and expect to beat a tough opponent.  You must learn when and how to change your strategy when either the market row or your opponent don’t allow for an easy aggressive damage rush. 

I just said that you can’t just blindly aggro your way to a high win rate with the Fighter, but in Hero Reams you win by reducing your opponent’s health to zero. You want to quickly take control and set the pace of the game, smashing your opponent before they have a chance to complicate things. A lean, high damage deck is a great way to do this. The longer the game goes the larger chance your opponent has to throw a wrench into your plans and take control. A smart opponent will force you to adjust (or lose), but an aggressive application of damage is our goal #1.

You have an exhaustible Skill, Shoulder Bash, that does 2 damage for the price of 2 gold (available once per turn). Your once per game Ability, Crushing Blow, is a one time use effect that does 8 damage. Shoulder Bash is something you want to use whenever you have the 2 gold available. It will depend on the game state and class matchup whether you want to get a cheaper card from the row in order to also use this ability, or get the more expensive card and skip the Shoulder Bash. You need to weigh the value of using it compared to the options on the market row that can improve your deck. This sort of decision point is a great example of the simple, but not easy decisions that separate the best Fighter players from the rest.

Ideally, we want to save Crushing Blow for 2 different possible uses; taking down a champion wall (or even a single large guard), or a killing blow to finish off the game. This ability effectively gives your opponent 8 less health and absolutely speeds up the tempo of the game. The two other common situations that you may want to think about using it is to trigger a draw with your Throwing Axe, or getting an opponent’s health below the durability threshold for their level 9 armor upgrade. It can be highly effective to use this to trigger a draw with Throwing Axe, keeping weak starters bottom decked when you have a discard pile full of your stronger cards. It can also let you squeeze out one more gold to get that bomb from the row. Shutting off an opponent’s armor upgrade can really give you an edge and make your opponent change their game plan. In the second part of this series, I will get into the class matchups and when it is most beneficial to use Crushing Blow for this. While saving your Crushing Blow to take out champions or deliver a killing blow is a great use, don’t be afraid to sack it if the situation warrants that play.

As you level up in the app, you get to to improve your Skill and Ability and gain or replace cards in your deck. You can increase your damage output and can drastically speed up the pace of the game, pick upgrades to help deal with your opponents champions, or a few defensive options as well. The first two upgrades are forced, and they bring your deck/skill/ability to the same makeup as the physical character pack we just discussed. After this you get to pick from various choices. Let’s begin by looking at what happens in the app at each new level and then analyzing the options available afterwards. 

Which options we choose can greatly affect our Fighter’s playstyle. I am definitely biased here as to what fits my personal tastes, but you need to play what is most fun for yourself. Whatever choices you make, there will be certain matchups or individual games where the other options would be better, so you need to figure out which choices fit best with your personal deck building biases and will help you more in the majority of the games you will be playing. 

Don’t be afraid to level more than one Fighter (either by making a new character or using the prestige option to reset a level 12 back to level 1) in order to try out new builds and see if different choices make the game more enjoyable for you. If you don’t agree with my assessments here, I would love to hear some discussion on why you think I am wrong!

I think it is prudent to get this somewhat early on when leveling. Having an extra 9 health will make a bigger difference in lower level games than 4 more damage (Devastating Blow) or is fairly equal to a longer game where you get 9 uses out of Shoulder Smash. Yes, you miss out on getting a second Ability (Precision Blow) at level 12, but that isn’t nearly as valuable as the first one you will have already upgraded. The health upgrade will absolutely win you mirror matches against another Fighter that doesn’t have it, and it helps against other classes as well. This is why I would recommend getting it somewhat early.  The extra 9 health is a bigger factor than other upgrades while leveling, and once you hit 12, it’s so much better than Precision Blow that I wouldn’t think twice about this. In my experience, it gives you one or two more turns than you would have had without it. These turns happen in the endgame when your deck should be humming along nicely, and allow you to finish off a tough opponent. In a mirror match that can be enough to keep them from lethal when you have it in hand, and against another class it can give you enough time to finish them off or make up for a bad shuffle or two. 

I did some data collection in Beta on game length (with multiple players who play multiple classes adding data) in a data set which was about 3000 games the average game length for a fighter was 15 turns (total by both players). If you use Group Tackle instead of Shoulder Crush, that would be  about 16 damage in a game you miss out on over the course of the game compared to the right side of the tree. If  you aren’t using the Skill every turn that would still be around an 8-10 damage difference. Picking Knock Down would cut this difference in half. This could be more or less depending on the game length and matchup, but it is a decent way to gauge the difference in our options. 

Here the choice would be whether the difference in damage is worth the chance to expend champions. I know there are many games an opponent doesn’t have many champions, but in our worst matchup (Cleric) they most certainly will have some. I almost always pick Shoulder Crush and any time I have tried Group Tackle overall performance was much worse. Knock Down is a good via media (middle road) though if you are interested in using the expend.

Your Item upgrades are no longer random at levels 5 and 7. You get to pick from two of the items at each level. The level 5 items replace something in your deck (Hand Scythe and Seasoned Shield Bearer). The level 7 items are added to your deck (Jagged Spear and Double-Bladed Axe).  This has changed the combinations possible for us, and unfortunately has made the best combo unavailable.

The Seasoned Shield Bearer (SSB) takes the Guard 3 to a Guard 5. In deck 1 and often in deck 2, a guard 5 is tough to get rid of for most heroes. Even in the mid/late game soaking 5 damage (or a stun proc) is still doing some work. The SSB can also synergize really well with the Helm of Fury upgrade when you get that. This is a solid upgrade, though it’s value will differ based on the skill and ability upgrades you take.

The Hand Scythe does 3 damage to a guard. I find this the underwhelming option of the bunch, as I have found it is only better than the gold it replaces about 40% of the time you see it (and in some games that is actually 0%). The benefit of picking Hand Scythe over SSB is that the scythe adds another weapon to your deck, while the SSB does not. This can be a factor for later upgrade decisions (Sharpening Stone vs. Rallying Flag).

The Double-Bladed Axe is interesting, base 3 damage, but +3 PER guard your opponent has in play. This is wonderful against anything Guard 3 or less, as it negates their soak and can even add damage to your pool beyond that (in the case of Guard 1 or 2). It is still quite helpful for bigger guards as well. I would rate this as the second best item upgrade available here in most Fighter builds. 

The Jagged Spear does 4 damage and will self-sacrifice for 4 more (to your opponent or non-guard). There are some nice “tricks” you can pull off with the Jagged Spear when using it’s sack ability. It can get you that last 4 damage to reach lethal regardless of your opponent’s guards, or to take out a non-guard with 4 health or less hiding behind some guards. Much like Crushing Blow, this could also be used to get your opponent below the hp threshold for their armor upgrade. It can give you a bit of breathing room in a close game. At 4 damage +4 more when trashed it’s a very solid addition to the Fighter deck. In my opinion, this is the best fighter upgrade available at this stage.

The last item two upgrade options (available at level 11) would be the Rallying Flag and Sharpening Stone. The Rallying Flag replaces a gold and gives 1 gold and 2 damage. It does help a little with damage, and 2 damage per deck over something like 5 or 6 shuffles is 10-12 damage. The Sharpening Stone is basically a cantrip that has a chance to proc for +3 damage, if your item upgrades were all weapons, that gives it four cards as a base that will trigger the bonus damage (worst case scenario that is 4 in 13, or nearly 1 in 3, of your base cards).The Sharpening Stone has the highest possible additional damage, but RNG can definitely make it less consistent. While the Rallying Flag helps with consistent damage, it’s value can decrease when your deck gets better. Because it replaces a gold, it doesn’t thicken your deck. The stone will always have a chance to proc, this chance just gets worse as your deck gets bigger, but because it draws it has no effective change to your deck size. The stone will always draw. There will be times you don’t want to cause a shuffle with it, and times you do. I have tried out both options here and I think either is viable, but one thing to consider here is how many weapons you have in your build.  If you picked up the Seasoned Shieldbearer, then there is one less weapon for the Sharpening Stone to possibly trigger the damage from and the better call might be the Rallying Flag. Really, The Sharpening Stone has the highest potential, and the Rallying Flag is most consistent. No matter which you pick there will be times the other option would be better for a specific game. So go with whichever seems more appealing to your specific build and playstyle.

Like every other hero we have a choice between two armor upgrades at level 9. Helm of Fury is +3 damage when you have a guard out and are above 20 hp. The Spiked Pauldrons are +1 damage when above 10 hp. One is consistent, one is conditional. There are good synergies for both choices. An early Shield Bearer (especially an upgraded one) can make the helm pretty consistent early on and improve it’s value. The +1 damage from the pauldrons is active pretty much the entire game (let’s face it, if you are below 10 health you are probably dead, even with the best of luck, you can only hope for another turn or two). It isn’t as much damage per turn, but using the same data points as we discussed with Shoulder Bash, it would be 8 damage. That means you need at least 3 turns above 20 hp with a guard out in order for the Helm to be slightly better overall (3 turns would be about even, and 4 would give it a solid lead). Also, +1 damage is enough to help you get to the 7 damage often when playing your Throwing Axe, and this can be vital in some situations. I think the Spiked Pauldrons are the best pick here usually, but Helm of Fury can be better when luck is on your side.

Here are a few sample builds to try out: