How to play - Legions: Realms At War

The Nine Realms

Heroes

Heroes are your valiant warriors and dashing rogues. Heroes largely focus on Armaments: equipment that buff up your warriors. These armament strategies are bolstered by Heroes access to uniquely powerful disruptive tools.

Orcs

Orcs are your fantasy staples, whether the proud and brutal Orcs of Orcbane and the Outer Rim, or the mechanical scheming of Orcs and goblins. Whether aggressive or slow, Orcs make craft use of various synergies with their discard pile, and destruction effects.

Demons

Fallen angels and followers of black magic make up the terrifying denizens of the Scorch Realm. These demonic forces can leverage powerful and swingy discard or eradication mechanics whilst disrupting their opponent and using their own warriors against them.

Angels

Holy and otherworldly, angels seek to enact their divine laws and blessings. These strategies revolve around Holy Counters: counters placed on your cards which protect them from destruction and damage.

Undead

The land of the undead is one of death and reanimation, looking to churn through your deck to fill your discard or eradication, whilst sacrificing and reviving your army of grimm and putrid thralls.

Titans

Legends of mythos and lore, the Titans revolve around eradication synergies, whether for going for an early aggressive swing with buffed up goliaths, or choking a board state down with the power of the earth and elements.

Mythical Beasts

Dragons, Phoenixes, Jinns, Sprites, and endless other beasts born of fire and magic make up the habitants of the Magical Realm. Mythic beast archetypes leverage both strong token synergies and and explosive destructive abilities.

Dwarves

As cunning as they are short, the Dwarves prioritise tricky tempo game play focused on bouncing cards on both sides of the board. With tempo tricks, Dwarves can tilt their bigger opponents onto the back foot, and keep them there.

Bounty

A land of fortune and prosperity, the Bounty realm provides gifts for every one of the realms. Every deck can run Bounty cards. These can take the form of useful bounty synergies, or powerful disruptive tools they may otherwise lack.

The Left Side - Veil | Warlord | Synergy | Guardian

The Veil - Your path to the power of your realm

Your Left side of the board kicks off with your Veil/Realm card. This double sided card starts on the Veil side, with 3 counters. At the start of your turn before you draw, you remove one counter, and when the last counter is removed you Pierce The Veil! When you Pierce The Veil you flip over to the Realm side and activate it's effect. You cannot use your Warlord, Synergy, or Guardian's consume ability until you Pierce The Veil.

The Realm activate ability (any and abilities that are triggered by the realm) are unstoppable, functioning through hate cards, and giving you the opportunity to break through. They cannot be responded to.

Your Warlord - Your Champion Of The REalms

Your Warlord is your champion on the battlefield, largely defining your strategy and goal. Your Warlord has 4 intrinsic characteristics.

DCM is your Damage Counter Max, and counts up whenever you take damage or pay bloodborne until you reach your max.

Your Warlord also has a Special Ability. Each warlords ability does something unique, and has a cool down before it can be used again.

The last two abilities are your Magical Attack and Physical Attack. Your Physical Attack deals damage to an opponents warriors or warlord, whilst your Magical Attack provides other utility or removal. You can only activate ONE attack every turn, whether Physical or Magical.

As previously mentioned, you cannot use your Special Ability or your Physical/Magical Attacks until your veil has been pierced.

Your Synergy - Powerful Lands & Utility

Your Synergy is similar to your Warlords Special Ability, providing a unique effect with a cool down. There are however a variety of Synergies meaning you can customize which Synergy you use in your deck. Some cards can also only be played alongside a specific Synergy, so pay attention to that when choosing your Synergy, and the cards that work alongside it.

Again, your Synergy cannot be used until your veil has been pierced.

Your Guardian - Your Second In Command

Your Guardian is the last piece of your left side, and unlike your Warlord and Synergy, your Guardian has an ability that will trigger at the start of the game, after mulligans have been declared. These abilities can customize and define how you start the game and how your starting turns play out.

Your Guardians also have an additional ability that can be activated, depending on if your Warlord has used their Attack/Special Ability on the same turn.

Guardians are the only piece in your arsenal not included in the initial Starter Decks, but are included in the newer Structure Decks. Additionally, Viviana, The Festival Royalty, and Galterius, The Wayfaring Knight can be easily picked up for around 5$ or less.

Your Main Deck - Warriors | Unified Cards | Fortified Cards

Warriors - Your front-line In The Battle

Your 5 front-most board spaces are for your warriors. Your warriors are your main ways to attack your opponent's warlord, and to protect your own. Warriors have a few key characteristics to pay attention to: the first is their attack value or ATK. This ATK value can be increased or decreased by either players effects, and if reduced to or below 0, a warrior will die. Warriors can attack a Warlord directly to deal damage equal to their ATK to the opponent's DCM, but if there are any Warriors in play, you'll have to attack those first. When two Warriors attack, they'll deal damage to each other equal to their attack, which will reduce their attack for the rest of the turn.

For example, lets say you have an Okora's Vessel, The Majik Mage, Sir Valon, Marksman Of The Resistance, and Lord Asher, Power Of The Resistance in play, and your opponent has a Ragon, The Great Mystic Fire Dragon in play.

You can start by attacking their Ragon with your Majik Mage. Your Majik Mage will take 5 damage and die, and their Ragon will take 2 damage, and its ATK: will be reduced to 3 until the end of the turn.

You can then attack their Ragon with your Lord Asher. This will deal 4 damage to their Ragon, killing it, whilst your Lord Asher will take 3 damage, being reduced to ATK:1 until the end of the turn.

With no warriors in play, you can then attack their warlord directly with your Sir Valon for 3 damage. At the end of the turn, your damaged Lord Asher will heal back to 4 ATK.

In addition to an attack value, Warriors will also have a plethora of keywords. Some of these abilities will affect the warrior during battle, whilst others will give the warrior an effect on entering the battlefield, leaving the battlefield, or an effect that activates in a different zone.

Unified Cards & Fortified Cards

Alongside your board of warriors, your deck will contain two other types of cards: Unified cards and Fortified cards. The main difference between these is that Unified cards can only be activated on your turn, while Fortified cards can only be activate on your Opponent's turn. The one exception to this is Static Abilities. Once a card with a static ability is face up in play, it's static abilities will trigger regardless of player turn.

Both Unified and Fortified cards come in a few different flavours.

Regular Unified/Fortified cards are unmarked and activated in one of their respective board spaces. They will sometimes have a cost, but will have some effect that will help lead you to victory. After resolving, they will go to your discard pile.
Active Unified/Fortified cards have the ACT text in the middle right side of the card. When an Active card is first activated it can either activate it's initial effect, or skip to activate another ability. After this ability resolves, the Active card will stay in play, usually having either an activated ability that can be activated once a turn, or some form of static ability that provides you with a bonus whilst it stays on board.
Armaments are another type of Unified/Fortified active that function slightly differently. Armaments are equipped to a warrior in play, and provided some bonus to that warrior. Unlike other Active cards, once the Armament has resolved, they will be attached to the warrior and will not take up a Unified/Fortified card space on the field.

It's important to also note, that while you cannot normally activate Unified Cards on your opponent's turn or Fortified cards on your turn, some of them have effects that trigger, like Demon cards that trigger an effect when discarded from your hand, or Titan cards that trigger an effect while eradicated. These effects happen whenever they're triggered, regardless of player turn.

Unified Cards -- The Centre Of Your Strategy

Unified cards are pretty simple, you activate them during your Main Phase in your turn. You can play any number of Unified cards, but watch out for two things.

Some Unified cards have restrictions on how many can be activated in a turn, a card like Help From The Chaos Divine can only be activated once per turn, while Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine has two effects, each of which can only be activated once per turn.
Watch out for your Unified Card zones. Whenever you play a non-Active Unified card, you play it into an Empty Unified Card zone, and it goes into your discard pile after it resolves. When you play an ACT Unified card however, it stays in the Unified Card zone it was played in, until some effect removes it from the field. If all of your Unified Card zones are full, you won't be able to play any more Unified cards until you make some room.

Fortified Cards - Your defensive Backline

Fortified cards work somewhat similarly to Unified cards, with a slight difference. To play a Fortified card, you first set it face-down in an Empty Fortified Card zone on your side of the field during your turn. Then on your opponent's turn, you can turn those face-down cards face-up to activate them.

Building Your Deck

Now, when it comes to building your deck, you'll be using a combination of all 7 of those card types. As mentioned, your "Left Side" will feature:

1 Veil//Realm Card
1 Warlord
1 Synergy
1 Guardian

From there, your "Main Deck" will consist of anywhere from 50-60 cards. No more, and no less. You have access to a "Side Board" too if you choose, a selection of 15 cards to change up your strategy in competitive matches.

If you're looking for help with choosing a deck, the Decklists page right here on LRAW Snapshot shows off some of the most recent decklists for any Legion from any Tournament! If you're looking for a little more guidance, check out the Top 5 Beginner Decks article, to see some great cheaper options for starting out.

Another great resource for choosing your deck is the Intro Deck Techs page in the LRAW Snapshot New Player Resources. These Deck Techs help break down many of the decks in the meta to make it quick and easy to figure out what they're all about!

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