Summary

Hecatomb is a horror and Lovecraftian themed card game, published by Wizards of the Coast. In the game, you summon minions, stitch them together into larger abominations, and attack your opponents. The game is unique for its translucent plastic pentagonal cards, which facilitate minion stacking.

The game was distributed in starter decks, 13-card booster packs, and promotional cards.

Card Types

• Minion - The basic type of card representing a creature. These can be stacked to form abominations. They have a strength, triggers, cost and type, and may have subtypes and conditional abilities. Each belongs to one of the four dooms (corruption, deceit, destruction, and greed).
• Fate - Cards representing random events. These are either combat fates or regular (non-combat) fates, and have a type, cost, and effect. They may have subtypes. Each belongs to one of the four dooms.
• Relic - Cards representing items. These have a type, cost, and effect. Each belongs to one of the four dooms.
• God - Cards representing powerful beings, limited to one. These have a type, cost, and effect. Each belongs to one of the four dooms.

Sets and Decks

The game saw a total of three sets released: Base Set, Last Hallow's Eve, and Blanket of Lies. There were also promotional cards.

Starter decks were only available for the base set. There were only three card rarities (common, uncommon, and rare).

Deck Composition and Contents

Starter Decks

Starter decks were completely randomized, and contained 40 cards: 2 rare, 10 uncommon, and 38 common. Because dooms can be freely mixed, this is a full legal deck. (A legal deck is at least 40 cards.)

Decks included a rulebook and a punchboard of 12 tokens (with various denominations) for tracking reaped souls.

Deck Rarity Analysis

Perfect. Full randomization and all rarities in the box.

Alan's Thoughts On The Game

This is a very unique game, but mostly because of the cards. I like the minion stacking concept. I like how the cards give a physical representation of the stacking in a way that regular rectangular cardstock couldn't. Any card being usable as mana is great. The soul mechanism more or less guarantees at least 6 rounds of play. Gameplay is straightforward, and enjoyable.

The cards being so unique does give some challenges though. First, they like to stick together. They're also rather difficult to shuffle (both because of the shape and the material), and you can't sleeve them if you wanted to (although the printing seems to hold up reasonably). Holding a hand of them is also a little more awkward than usual. But those are minor quibbles.

Overall, it's good. I recommend checking it out, especially because starter decks still seem to be relatively cheap.