Heroes of the Three Kingdoms How to Play & Review

Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is a set collection card game.

Title: Heroes of the Three Kingdoms

Year Published: 2013

Designer: Klaus-Jurgen Wrede

Publisher: Korea Boardgames Co.

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~30 Mins

Set-up Time: >1 Mins

Ages: 7+

Theme: The Three Kingdoms

Mechanic: Set Collection.

How to win: Score the most points.

Game Description

Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is a light strategic card game with 75 unique renderings of legendary heroes of the Three Kingdom period.

Set Up & Game Play

Shuffle the castles and deal one to each player, the player with the starting castle goes first…

Shuffle the deck, each player puts 3 cards in front of them by colour, returning contracts to the deck. Reshuffle the deck after making sure to split up the contract cards well.

Each player draws 5 cards.

Game Play

On your turn either…

Play a Hero

Play as many cards as you wish with the same colour or same icon. It’s usually a good idea to declare the colour or icon you are playing as you play it. Then, take 1 card from each player on either side of you that matches the colour/icon you played.

You can only ‘Scout’ the topmost card in a pile this way.

Play a Contract

Play up to 5 contract cards for either of their two abilities one at a time in any order.
Scout – Take the topmost hero from any player.
Secure – Pick a colour and put the contract card on top of one of your stacks.

So you can Scout, Secure, Secure then Scout again if you have 4 of them.

Each time a player ‘Secures’, the player(s) with the most of that colour puts one card of that colour under their castle.

You can play onto the top of a contract card but heroes under contract cards cannot be scouted.

After completing your actions, you draw back up to 5 cards.

If a player cannot draw back up to 5 cards the round ends and play continues until everyone has taken an even number of turns. If the last player is the player that cannot draw, the round ends immediately.

You then score the round…

The player with the most Heroes of each colour still in their stacks scores 3 points, putting 3 of that colour under their castle.
If they have less than 3 Heroes, they score that many points.
The second most for each colour scores 1 point, putting 1 of that colour under their castle.

Ties for the most means each player scores 1 point (1 card into their castle) each, second-most scores nothing. Ties for the second most mean each player scores 0.

Note down each player’s score, pass each castle to the left and start again.
Play one round where each player goes first.

Game End

After each player has played a round going first the game ends. The player with the most points wins.

Heroes of the Three Kingdoms Round-Up

I tend to play this as a one-round filler rather than a 4 round game… no idea why just do.

But, for such a simple basic game this goes down well with everyone who plays it.

It’s funny ’cause all you’re really doing is playing as many cards as possible, stealing two and crossing your fingers that you draw contracts. I guess getting a lot of games out of a few mechanisms should be expected from the designer of Carcassonne.

Back to contracts… you want them, you need them and it’s tough to win without them… They’re a random draw though and you might not have seen one all game while I just drew my 2nd, 3rd and 4th last turn… It happens. But, it’s OK, it doesn’t seem to affect the game.

Rating

A very easy game to play and a card game that everyone seems to enjoy from heavy gamers to casual.

I give it 7/10