Light Hunters : Heroes Guide — Shalan & Phaenna
By: Sergio Matsumoto
Tags: Game Design, Card Game, Board Games, Gaming, Game Development

This article explain how are designed the heroes from the boardgame Light Hunters: Battalion of Darkness, available here: https://www.dtda.fr/light-hunters.html

Shalan

Guardian of an immemorial Harem, Shalan has a strong partiality for favoring female characters in the game, whatever their side. Support of choice thanks to his Roshan invocation, he ensures the regeneration of many health points to his team.

Maidservant

Summons Roshan to place her next to an allied hero and restore 1 point of life at the start of Shalan’s turn. Roshan’s position can change at the start of Shalan’s turn, allowing him to adapt to any situation.

Cerberus

Deal 1 damage and discard 1 card from all male enemy heroes. The targeted heroes choose which card to discard.

Celebration

All female heroes in game draw 2 extra cards.

Strengths

Restore a lot of health during the game, without consuming Ether

Has several tools to influence the course of the game

Weaknesses

Requires a favorable team composition

His effectiveness decreases as the game progresses

Strategies

Shalan is particularly effective at the start of the game, before the power of enemy heroes is too great, and reduces the usefulness of his handmaid Roshan. Associated with powerful female heroes like Evaki, Nuriyah or Cassandra, Shalan ensures these heroes to inflict significant damage at the start of the game using his Celebration skill, and allows to finish 1 or 2 enemy heroes in the 5th turn of game.

Shalan also has the option of playing defensive and aiming for long-term victory, using his Cerberus skill and regenerating maximum health to his allies. By associating it with Chenguang and Chiharu, it is possible to set up a particularly effective defensive system using Chiharu’s traps.

Counter

Shalan’s power is intrinsically linked to team compositions, selecting female heroes is a natural counter to this hero. It is important to choose a hero whose Dawn skill deals 1 damage to opposing heroes as it is the case for Ludano or Balder, this will kill his summon each turn, which further decreases his effectiveness, and will force Shalan to choose between summoning Roshan or using other skills.

Conclusion

Shalan is not an obvious Hero to optimize, but paired with the right Heroes and with the help of good team synchronization, it is possible to imagine configurations that are particularly difficult to counter.

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Phaenna

A mystical Oracle able to communicate with the entire Pantheon, Phaenna possesses ambivalent skills conferred by the Gods. She is a support that has a broad spectrum of skills.

Amulet

Place 1 Amulet token on the back of the Hero of her choice. When placed on an allied hero, he draws 1 additional card at the start of his turn. When placed on an enemy hero, he discards a card at the start of his turn.

Raid

Unfreeze the allied hero of her choice.

Altar

Place 1 Altar token on the hero card of her choice. Placed on an allied hero, it restores all of his life points during Phaenna’s next turn. Placed on an enemy hero, he will be killed instantly during Phaenna’s next turn.

Strengths

Versatile, she adapts to many situations

Hinders enemies and forces them to make choices throughout the game

Weaknesses

Phaenna has very few offensive options

Requires an Illumination card to be decisive

Strategies

Depending on her opponents Phaenna can apply several strategies. Against enemies requiring many cards, such as Evaki, Weyaya or Atheer, Phaenna can use her Amulet tokens to reduce their number of cards in hand and therefore their ability to set up their game plan. On the contrary, if these heroes are part of her team, or if they have a powerful Illumination skill, Phaenna can use her amulets to accumulate cards, and increase the possibilities to draw Illumination cards.

Her Raid skill allows her to counter blockades sent by enemies, this can be decisive if the blocked hero would inflict a lot of damage as it can be the case for Bergljot or Ludano and his Divine Ray.

Phaenna must disrupt the strategies of the enemies in order to allow her allies to rise in power. The Amulet and Altar tokens also have the purpose of forcing her opponents to make decisions, they will constantly have to choose between attacking a hero or canceling the tokens that Phaenna has positioned.

Counter

Although she has 10 health, Phaenna is still an easy target to defeat. Having little offensive and defensive skills, she will quickly be overwhelmed if she finds herself fighting alone. Aggressive strategies are especially effective against her team, as it requires the accumulation of many Amulet and Altar tokens to be competitive. It also requires several allies to be effective, the loss of a hero will greatly reduce her influence.

Conclusion

Phaenna is a versatile support that allows her team to adapt to many situations, she will in particular disrupt the implementation of opponent strategies, and strengthen her team over the turns in order to achieve an advantageous end of the game. This is why it is important to keep her team alive for as long as possible, without which she will not be able to express her full power.

See you soon

Sergio Matsumoto