Preparing for combat is obviously the main motivation behind building your deck, but you can find yourself seriously wanting if you focus solely on Attack cards. There is a wide variety of gear in the game.
The most important piece of equipment are the weapons as the weapon you wield not only provides some small amount of attack power, but also determines how well you can prepare for battle ahead of time, and how hard you can hit when the fighting starts. Gear, weapons and items can also be purchased, and reside in the same Dealer deck as the cards you add to your pool, but they are equipped directly to your character when you buy them, and can improve your defense and attack power, and they can even grant you some interesting special abilities. Most cards are added to your deck, via your discard pile, as you purchase them, and cards can also be worth points which are added to your total at the end of the game. Hand of Fate: Ordeals' deckbuilding system is fairly standard, but it adds a fun layer of equipment gathering to the mix. Image courtesy of Defiant and Rule & Make Interesting characters and encounters can be discovered during your adventure. The enemies and Pain cards (which can have a variety of negative effects, including damage) are also drawn randomly, and there can be a bit of swingy-ness if you draw a slew of tougher monsters, but for the most part the law of averages is in effect and you can do well in combat if you attempt to prepare. There are also multiple bosses per level, dealt randomly of course, although you do get to see which boss you will be facing, and what effects they will bring in to play once you finally find them. There are a more cards per level than you'll use each time, and the board layout is dealt out randomly each level, so the sense of adventure, and replayability, remain high from game to game and level to level. The sense of progression in Hand of Fate Ordeals is spot on. Powering up and collecting new gear feels really good. If the total number of player deaths ever equals the number of players the game ends immediately.
Alternatively, the game can end prematurely if the players aren't careful. The process repeats after the Queen has been defeated until the players finally locate and slay the King in which case the game ends and the player with the most points wins. After the Jack is defeated, the board resets and players have to adventure out from the town again to find the Queen. The encounters that players face become more difficult with each new level, and the bosses themselves usually have some kind of global effect on their level when they are revealed. The levels themselves are a randomly generated distribution of cards that players can visit, and thus reveal, in order to fight battles, power up, and locate and dispatch that level's boss. A game of Hand of Fate: Ordeals pits players in a race to find and defeat the Jack, Queen and King in order, which function as the boss of the game's three levels.