Review: Hera & Zeus

Hera and Zeus is a two-player card game which is really hard to learn at first, but once you figure it out, it is a lot of fun to play. The gist of the game is that each player takes on one of the eponymous roles from Greek mythology. As the story goes, each of the gods has kidnapped the other’s favorite mortal: Argus and Io respectively. Players build up their gods’ armies by laying cards of varying strengths facedown into three attack columns as they attempt to locate Argus or Io in their opponent’s deck.

Your cards consist of numbered “fighting cards” which are placed into the three attack columns, as well as “mythology cards” that give you special functions but cannot attack. The initial difficulty comes from the fact that there are a lot of cards to keep track of, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and special skills. The Pythia card, for instance, has a strength of zero which means anybody can kill her. But, if Pythia attacks Poseidon or Nemesis, the two strongest cards in each opposing deck, then she wins the fight. In addition, rather than attacking, Pythia can also be used to spy into an opponent’s hand or reveal all the facedown cards in any one column. With me so far? Don’t worry, we weren’t either.

The first time Lauren and I tried playing this game we got fed up and quit before we were even two turns into it. There were just too many cards to keep track of and we kept getting confused about who did what and what went where. To be fair, we were exhausted at the time and didn’t have the energy to figure it out at that exact moment. The next night we did it right. We went through each card one by one and figured out what they did, who they could beat, who could beat them, and any special circumstances where their special powers wouldn’t work. That gave us a good perspective on how to proceed and even though we still referred back to the directions and “cheat sheets” several times in the first few games, we at least had a working knowledge of the game’s mechanics and flow. Since then, we’ve had nothing but fun.

There are so many different strategies that one can use in Hera & Zeus, not the least of which is the use of bluffing. Placing cards facedown in a certain way so that your opponent thinks you’ve got a stronger card on the table than you actually do; hiding your Io or Argus card behind weaker cards so that your opponent won’t think to attack it; holding onto really powerful mythology cards for a long time in the hope that your opponent won’t attack it in your hand… these are all typical “bluffs” that one will employ.

But beyond that, and in my opinion the mark of a really good game, strategy is a consistently fluid thing and you find yourself constantly reworking how you fight and counteract your opponent’s likewise evolving methods. Lauren and I have been on similar learning curves with this game and are constantly figuring out how to exploit the inherent weaknesses in the other person’s strategy. No game is ever the same and the tension is palpable during those close matches that get down to the very end. Sometimes a game has literally been decided by a single card left in somebody’s draw pile.

And just to sweeten the whole pot, the artwork on each of the cards is beautifully rich and dark and complements the theme of the game perfectly. There’s a lot to love about this one and we pick it up often.

VITALS: This is a two-player card game which tends to last an average of 30 minutes. It’s definitely one of the harder games to pick up on so I trust the box’s appraisal of ages 12 and up.

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