Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8584556/micro-hero-hercules

Designer: Léandre Proust
Publisher: Grammes Edition
Artist: Rémi Leblond

You can check out my review of it, but Unstoppable recently convinced me I was a changed person and enjoyed deckbuilders now, despite my usual apprehension with them and general dislike of the system. This game, unfortunately, snapped me back to reality: it’s true, I don’t like deckbuilders except for in specific circumstances (of which I really don’t understand). Don’t get me wrong, this game is actually quite good, has lots of replayability, comes in a super small package, and provides a little twist on the standard deckbuilding mechanic, but it’s not for me, as much as I really tried to enjoy it.

Micro Hero: Hercules is a pretty standard deckbuilder where you start with a basic deck of ten cards that provide either attack, defense, or experience points. You can purchase and/or upgrade cards with the experience points and then attack and defense are pretty self-explanatory. There are two interesting twists, though. First, when you run out of cards in your deck, you don’t shuffle your discard pile, you simply flip it over, allowing you to potentially use strategy to construct your deck as you play. The other, more impressive and clever design choice is the card stacking. Each card you play provides a certain amount of whatever is represented on the card, but the first card you play each turn represents 5x what’s on the card, the next is 4x, all the way down to the last card being 1x. This is definitely my favorite strategic aspect of the game, and the one I enjoyed the most while playing. It’s a fun puzzle to maximize your cards while also balancing what’s truly needed and how to create a cohesive deck.

Besides the unique mechanics and twists, I also really appreciate the thematic touches to the game, most notably how each game has one of the twelve labors as your “enemy”, and if you beat it, you can actually acquire it in a future game via experience points. Each labor is also unique and has a harsh ability making the game more challenging while also making each game feel somewhat different. It can also be played as a twelve chapter campaign which is cool.

On top of the diversity of the twelve labors, there’s also a lot of replay value because four mini expansions are included in the box, and each game and/or campaign will always play out differently, especially if the labors appear in different orders.

Unrelated but definitely worth noting: the artwork is very playful and well done.

Despite these positives, there are quite a few issues I have that really made this game a miss for me. My largest qualm has to do with the luck in this game. In my playthrough, luck was extremely prevalent and it made the game frustrating and significantly less strategic. The initial order of the cards in your deck can make a big impact on the game, especially since the order never changes besides adding cards here and there. It’s very each to get stuck with one bad section of the deck and really never have a chance at succeeding.

On top of that, I found most of the labors in this game to be quite difficult and their unique powers, while really neat, can be devastating depending on when they trigger and, again, the luck of your deck. There were times when there was literally no way for me to keep up with the labor.

I do also feel that since your deck doesn’t change much, the game can get repetitive. It’s very possible to get similar combinations of cards each second or third turn, meaning you know what’s coming and have a general idea of what to do with it, and/or you know that a bad hand is coming and there’s literally nothing you can do about it. After the first few rounds when you’re acquiring and upgrading cards, there’s not much variability in the game or strategic opportunities for fun decision making or puzzle solving. Most everything is determined by then and you’re just stuck cycling.

I also wish there was a way for the player to keep up with their attack, defense, and experience points each turn rather than having to remember them and potentially count them multiple times in a round when you’re going through each action because you forgot the values.

My other problem is with the experience point system. As I just mentioned, the process of gaining experience points and using them to grow and buff up your deck is quite enjoyable in the early part of the game. However, once you have most cards in your deck and/or most of them are upgraded, there’s not really a lot you can do with all the experience points you acquire; I didn’t get the feeling that I could continually really improve my deck besides an upgrade here and there. You do always have the option of placing a card from your discard on top of your deck using experience points, but if there are no cards to buy (or that you want to buy) and your discard is empty, there’s literally nothing you can do with your experience points and I am not a fan of that. It was another aspect that added frustration; there were many turns where I didn’t have enough attack points and/or was lacking in defense but had 10+ experience points and an empty discard pile. That’s not fun and honestly reminded me why I don’t care for deckbuilders.

As you can see, this game is not all bad! I can see why so many people are enjoying it. It has some interesting and original elements and twists, high replayability and variety, and comes in a small, portable package with lovely artwork and a well-integrated theme. Unfortunately, there are some major issues with the design and the dependence on luck that make this one disappointing and unenjoyable for me. I really wanted to like it, and I went in thinking I would, but there were too many times (AKA every game I played but maybe one) where I eventually felt there was literally nothing I could do to keep up with the labor with the order of my deck and how strong the labor was getting. I was putting in effort, but there was nothing I could do that made me feel any different than a car stuck in mud with its wheels spinning. Truthfully, though, this is more of a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation, because it’s a very well designed deckbuilder; it’s just not for me.