Stats:
No. of players: 1-4
Amount of time to play: 30-60 min per quest
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 5 min

Heroes of Terrinoth is a cooperative, adventure card game. You and up to four friends must play together to best eight deadly quests and save the realm.

Heroes of Terrinoth Rules Description:

You begin Heroes of Terrinoth by setting up the enemy, location and exploration decks. The cards used in these decks will vary based on the Quest you are playing. Each Quest also has a nemesis. You will need to get their card and place them next to the Quest card. To complete set up you put the peril token on the Quest card, spawn starting enemies, and choose your hero.

Every round is made up of four phases, the hero, enemy, peril and travel phases. During the hero phase, starting with the party leader and going clockwise the heroes activate. Your hero has four cards they can use to attack, aid, explore, or rest. You roll dice based on your activated card to see how well you succeed at the action. You must also roll an enemy die for each enemy engaged with you. A used action card is exhausted and cannot be refreshed unless another card (like your rest card) or action refreshes it.

In the enemy phase starting with the party leader and going clockwise you activate one engaged enemy until all enemies have activated. Each enemy card details the actions they will take. After all enemies have activated and been exhausted you refresh them.

You move the peril token one spot on the track and follow any instructions it contains.

Each location requires a certain number of progress tokens to move to the next location in the stack. In the travel phase if you have enough progress tokens (from using the explore action) you can move. You may also choose a new party leader. Any engaged enemies stay with you at the new location. You spawn more enemies at the new location too.

Then you continue with another hero phase until all heroes are eliminated or the Quest’s victory condition is met.

Some events will let you swap out your activation cards and upgrade your hero. As the Quests get harder you hero will increase in power to match the challenge.

Quick Review of Heroes of Terrinoth:

Heroes of Terrinoth is a fun, cooperative adventure game. I like the skill tree and how you need to balance and time when you will use your four action cards. You can’t simply hack away and attack every turn.

The components are great. Everything looks nice on the table and the chits are durable too. The rules are easy to read and understand.

Using action cards to determine what your hero will do is cool. It adds a bit of resource management to the game. And you’ll need to work with the other players to help maximize your turn and be efficient.

Though combat can be brutal, I like the combat system and appreciate that it resolves quickly. It might take a few turns to learn some of the special conditions you can have (like poisoned or weakened), but there are cards with the specifics on them. Placing these on your character sheet is a good way to remember to play with these conditions applied.

The skill tree is also a nice touch. Each of the base classes can branch off into two directions This adds some interesting choices and replay value to the game.

If your group is looking for a fun, cooperative game, check out Heroes of Terrinoth. It has a good mix of decision-making with some randomness from the dice and should have expansions to enjoy for a while.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6