Wild Realms Review

Wild Realms, from Daywalker Syndicate, is a game that I first saw at Gen Con this year and it immediately caught my eye with its unique artwork. In the game, each player is playing animal cards from their hands to discover and close realms. Makes sense so far, right? It will. Each turn, you'll add cards into a realm (the section on top of your board) as long as you have its land card. You can also play cards at the bottom of your board in the alliance section. Once you've played cards, you can attack the other players. There are 3 options here. Attack a realm, an alliance, or a realm battle. When you attack a realm or an alliance, you'll do so with your own alliance cards. Select one that matches the realm and roll the amount of dice it says. If any die matches an animal in the realm, it is discarded. If you attack an alliance, roll all three dice and remove any matches. Then discard your attacking card for both scenarios. Realm battles are resolved differently. You must each have a sealed realm and you'll pick them to go head to head. Each player rolls a die and the lower will discard a card and then both rerolls until someone has no more cards. The winner can make the other player discard their realm or steal it from the opponent. Finally, you can lock realms. This is done by having one of each 5 symbols on a realm. Simply put the land card on top and it is locked. In order to win, you must have all 4 realms locked. The first to do it is the victor. One last thing you can do at the start of a turn is play a legendary animal card. This will let you draw one from the deck and resolve its powerful effect immediately.

The Good: This game may be in contention for my favorite artwork of any game. Jeremy Gulotta knocked it out of the park here. There are so many different types of animals and the illustration is so well done. The gameplay holds up just as well if I'm being honest. For as bizarre as the theme sounds, it makes sense and after a couple of rounds, the game flows beautifully. You'll find yourself trying to figure out what cards you need to put in a realm or keep for battles later. It's surprisingly deep.

The Okay: I can see this game with 4 players becoming very cumbersome to manage. Having to keep track of 3 other players and what they're doing on their boards while watching your own may be a bit much for some. I think it plays best as a duel.

The Not So Good: The game could probably have fit into a box about 1/3 the size of what it's in now. To me, this is fine, but for people who are big on space, it could be a bit annoying. There were also some imperfections with the rulebook that left me with some questions.

Final Thoughts: I am so happy that I decided to stop at the booth and get a demo of this game and bring a copy home. There's so much here that I enjoyed; set collection, beautiful art, powerful cards, and an insane variety of animals. I was impressed with the game from the moment I opened the box and have continued to be impressed with each playthrough of the game since.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.