I featured Shards of Infinity a while back, a card game where players compete for victory by lowering their opponent's life points. This time, I'm going to introduce you to the first expansion of the game called The Relics of the Future which brings its share of new features for the base game. With us, this extension is localized by the editor IELLO.
Base Game Reminder
If you don't feel like re-reading the previous article in its entirety, I'll give a quick summary of the base game mechanics. Shards Of Infinity is an exclusively card game where each player starts at 50 points and the winner is the last one left alive. Each one starts with the same deck and the heroes, although not from the same faction, are similar.
The originality of the game comes on the one hand from the common river system where players will be able to fetch cards each in turn to improve their deck, and on the other hand from the mercenary system (cards with red edges) which can be either recruited to go into your deck or played in one shot to take advantage of the effects of the card without however taking a place in your deck. The game is made up of different factions with, each time, its own theme or mechanics. For example, the Spectra (purple cards) are very damage oriented cards while the Maquis (Green) faction is healing.
The symmetry
The big novelty of this expansion is eight cards called relics. These will bring the asymmetry that was sorely lacking in the basic game. At the start of the game, each player must take the two relics linked to the hero of the faction he has chosen (referenced by the color code). Once he has reached ten mastery points during the game, he can recruit one of the two relics to include in his discard pile/deck.
These relics have pretty strong effects and will really require players to use all the mechanics of the game as well as being really responsive to other players' choices on their cards and the selected relic. If I take the example of the "Heart of Nether" relic if you do not protect yourself when activating the card or you leave your opponent with too many direct damage cards, the fact that he draws three cards extras at the end of the turn could become really annoying as the game progresses.
Two game variants concerning the relics are also quite possible and make the game also more interesting whether in terms of gameplay or replayability:
- Draft of relics : At the start of the game, two relics are revealed per player, regardless of faction. Players take turns choosing one until they have two.
- Hidden relics : the relics are randomly distributed at the start of the game face down. Players read it and can, at ten mastery points, choose one of the two to include in their deck, but without necessarily revealing the one they didn't choose.
These two variants are really interesting because they allow you not to go in circles with the game while providing real flexibility to players in the composition of their deck and their game plan to achieve victory. It is, I think, thanks to the Draft variant that we can take real pleasure in the game by measuring the strengths/weaknesses of each card/faction combo.
New game modes
This new extension also brings many game variants to several but also solo. For the latter, I will explain it in more detail a little later. The multiplayer variants are not things that will revolutionize the game but they still bring something to it. It is quite possible to mix different variants, whether those described below or those concerning the relics:
- 2v2 as a team : only with four players. Players can attack any champion on the opposing field; however, if the player wishes to deal damage to a player, they will only be able to target the opponent in front of them. If a player is alone in his team, there are no more restrictions for both teams on the targets.
- Three player arena : the rules are the same as for a classic game except that your two opponents take all the damage you inflict. If a player subsequently defends it is only for this damage to him and not on the whole attack that will have been launched.
- Health Auction : this variant is used to determine the first player by sacrificing life points at the start of the game. The advantage for the first player is that he will be able to choose his hero and his relics according to the river of cards.
The solo mode will allow you to measure yourself against a nemesis where the goal will remain the same as in multiplayer (reduce the opposing points to zero). Apart from an additional card, the setup is the same as a two-player game. The nemesis does not play cards from his hand (quite complicated for a fictional character) but will gain many resources thanks to the cards of the river or the card of the draw pile which will be revealed. Depending on your luck, the game can be quite rough because the nemesis can really take hold very quickly. The most annoying mechanic for the player will surely be that of card banishment where she can banish a number of cards from the draw pile according to the number of crystals she could have won.
The nemesis will really start to get troublesome at 15 mastery points as it will be able to use all of the game's keywords without restriction and therefore draw the full potential of all cards in the river on its turn. Besides the fact that you lose the game if you reach 0 life points, a defeat is also possible if there are no more cards to draw in the deck. With the nemesis banishment mechanism and the fact that you too will take cards from the river/draw, the games are over fairly quickly (20min).
Conclusion
This extension really brings what could be missing from the base game thanks to the asymmetry mechanics introduced by the relics (classic or draft version). The game variants and the single player mode bring a lot of renewal to the title by offering players to play in different ways and by offering various challenges. The solo is also a very good introduction to this extension offering to discover a new facet of the game while not being so easy to complete. For players who love Hero/Star Realms, playing with this expansion is a great alternative to this title.
The extension is available in all specialist shops for a price of around 10 euros.
