Fantasy Realms

Fantasy Realms is almost absurdly simple to run and surprisingly deep to play. There is no board and no resource management. You hold seven cards, and each turn you draw one and discard one, hunting for combinations.

Nothing scores until the game ends — and it ends abruptly.

Setup

Shuffle the deck and deal seven cards to each player. Pick a first player however you like; play proceeds clockwise.

That is it.

How a Turn Works

On your turn you must draw one card, then discard one card.

You may draw either:

• the top face-down card from the deck, or
• any face-up card from the discard area.

Your discard always goes face up into the discard area, where it becomes available to everyone.

One exception: the very first player of the game must draw face down from the deck, because there is nothing in the discard area yet.

Reading a Card

Every card has a unique name, a base strength, a suit, and a bonus, a penalty, or both.

Two pieces of terminology do a lot of work in this game:

Blanked

A blanked card is stripped of everything — its suit, its bonus, its penalty and its base strength. Treat it as though it is not in your hand at all.

For example, Smoke is blanked unless you hold at least one Flame card. On its own it is worth nothing. Draw a Flame into your hand and Smoke is suddenly worth 27.

This cuts both ways: a blanked card also stops inflicting its own penalties, and stops counting toward other cards that care about suits.

Clears

When a card says it clears something, it removes that penalty from your other cards.

For example, Swamp loses 3 points for each Army and each Flame in your hand. A card that clears the Army penalty removes that half of it — but you would still lose points for your Flames.

How to Win

The game ends immediately the moment there are 10 face-up cards in the discard area. Not at the end of the round — immediately. Then everyone scores their hand.

Add up the base strengths of your cards, apply every bonus, and subtract every penalty. Other players’ hands have no effect on your score whatsoever. Blanked cards score nothing.

A worked example

A hand scoring 216 points:

Card	Base	Adjustment	Total
World Tree	2	+50, as every non-blank card is a different suit	52
War Dirigible	35	Needs an Army (has one), blanked by Weather (none)	35
Elven Archers	10	+5 for no Weather in hand	15
Fountain of Life	1	Adds the base strength of a Weapon, Flood, Flame, Land or Weather — here the Dirigible’s 35	36
Warlock Lord	25	−10 per Leader or other Wizard; there are none	25
Bell Tower	8	+15 for a Wizard	23
Dragon	30	Would be −40 with no Wizard, but the Warlock Lord covers it	30

Note the Bell Tower’s bonus: with two wizards in hand you would still only score the 15 once. Bonuses like that do not stack.

Strategy Notes

The cards in your hand have to work together. Chasing high base strengths alone tends to lose to a lower-strength hand that combos cleanly.

Just as importantly, get rid of penalties early. A single card that is quietly costing you 40 points is worth more to discard than most cards are to draw. And once you know what you are building, only pick up cards that actively help — the discard area is visible to everyone, so what you take tells the table a lot.

Variants

Two-player

Neither player starts with cards. Instead, each turn you either:

• draw two face-down cards from the deck and discard one, or
• take one face-up card from the discard area.

Continue until you have seven cards in hand, then play normally — draw one, discard one — until there are 12 face-up cards in the discard area.

Chaos (3–7 players)

Deal seven cards to each player and agree a time limit; five minutes suits experienced players. There are no turns at all. Start the timer and everyone trades cards simultaneously, one for one, with anyone willing.

When time expires, score as normal. If you hold a Necromancer, you may draw three cards from the deck and add one of them to your hand before scoring.

Common Mistakes

• Playing on after the tenth discard. The game stops the instant the tenth card hits the discard area, mid-turn if necessary.
• Forgetting to discard. Every turn is draw one, discard one — your hand is always seven cards at the end of your turn.
• Counting a blanked card’s suit. Blanked means gone entirely, including for cards that count suits.
• Stacking a bonus. A bonus like “+15 with a Wizard” pays once, however many wizards you hold.
• Ignoring penalties. A −40 penalty erases the best card in most hands.
• Watching other players’ hands. Their cards never affect your score. Only the discard area matters to you.