Hi, thanks for trying out my faction! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Currently, the intention is that any recruit action allows you to place any warrior type. I had considered making it department specific, but I was worried it might bottleneck the recruiting power of the Labor department a bit too much. However, if I continue to develop this faction, its defintiely something I'll think about.
Hey, thanks for checking out my faction! I appreciate that you took the time to write out such detailed feedback for me. To answer your question about placing cursed paths: They're supply limited, so if all 5 are out on the map and you would need to place another, you simply wouldn't.
Now, as for your questions about the design/balance:
My main concern is the scoring potential of the faction, especially if anyone is policing them. I'm seeing the best strategy as running around the map, trying to sacrifice at least a couple warriors at each altar, and once the Revenant reaches a too high aggression, just sacrifice all the remaining warriors at the last activated altar, but even with perfect luck and no one attempting to police you but the Revenant, it still is an underwhelming scoring faction.
So far this hasn't been an issue in play testing, though this particular iteration of the faction was only play tested once before submission. Earlier iterations of this faction had fairly monstrous scoring potential in play testing, so It's definitely possible that I've over corrected and reined in their scoring a bit too much. In my experience, this current iteration tends to score 2-3 vp a turn depending on how much you're able to maintain higher Aggression and then get a big burst for around 6-7 vp around twice a game whenever they do a full lap around all the altars. However, they're also surprisingly good crafters (even with birdsong crafting) and can usually scoop up a decent amount of points from it (even excluding coffin makers which is absolutely gross on them). Not to mention, the Revenant can also get you a point here or there from lightly defended buildings and tokens. Tempt Fate also used to give you a point instead of a card in earlier iterations, but I found that it accelerated their scoring a bit too much.
The problem is that either you don't have enough cards to keep up with your need for warriors and actions, or someone minorly slows you down, and then the revenant catches up with you and destroys all your hopes and dreams, which, while very thematic, isn't great for scoring.
I think that this is really dependent on the faction match-up and especially on the map, with the 2-3 cards you draw per turn getting you farther on certain maps than others. If you're playing on autumn, for example, the altar clearings tend to be only a couple of moves away and you can afford to focus on using cards for recruiting instead of actions. That being said, if lizards are in the game, you're playing on winter with cats, or crows decide to ruin your day with snares, I could see it being more of a problem to move around while recruiting enough. My hope is that Distract and Tempt Fate are generally strong enough to deal with some of these issues, though Distract is a fairly inefficient action that I could see draining your hand quickly if you're constantly forced to use it. In terms of policing I think that it's generally hard for enemy factions to get t̵̙̅̕ẖ̸̡͒́ȩ̴͠ ̷̳̃Ö̷̯͍R̶̥͆̔B̶͕̔̒ destroyed by the Revenant unless they really force it, since even if you can't move you can cause it to Flee by attacking it and use your free recruits to stall it. However, that's still not a great situation to be in since you're just barely surviving until its Aggression gets too high and it kills you. Though, you do always have the last resort of nuking the most important clearing of whoever's policing you (or at least threatening to) if you're ever in a situation like that.
Also why does the revenant start in the same clearing? I think giving the sect a 1 clearing head start would be a little helpful (revenant on unactivated temple and orb+warriors one clearing adjacent)
The main reason I started them together is because it leaves a little more ambiguity as to where the sect wants to start heading on their first turn. I felt that starting the sect away from the Revenant might make their intentions a bit too telegraphed right off the bat, since opponents would know that you'd likely just move to the closest altar in the opposite direction of it. And since it starts at 1 Aggression, it tends not to be too much of a threat on the first turn anyways. However, I could see some ways in which a change like that could be helpful.
I think making recruiting not based on cards and stronger could overcome this, or you could give them a base 3rd action before needing to spend cards. A small good buff to make it easier to get the perfect run to get enough vp. Another help for them would be that you get 1vp + 1 per warrior sacrificed, and make the vp bonus for no activated altars be +2, which would give more consistent vp, while not punishing as much if the revenant kills you very early.
I've thought about a lot of these ideas while designing, and if I plan to develop this faction further then I'll definitely be taking these into consideration!
Again, thanks for checking out the faction and thanks for all the feedback!
Funnily enough there actually was a way to remove Forecasts from the Horoscope in earlier versions, but I removed it because I was afraid that they would get completely shut out of the game. If end up working on this faction more, I'll definitely revisit the idea. I'm glad to hear that it was fun to play though!
Thanks for checking these guys out! There is actually a functional difference between X= 1 and X > 2. X = 1 means that the card has to be the ONLY card on the stack for it's effect to trigger. If X is anything other than one, the effect does not trigger. X > 2 just means that the card must be at least the third card on top of the stack, which means it could also be on the 4th or 6th position or something. You're also correct that Forecasts count themselves in the Horoscope.
I love these guys! Really creative use of the theme. I do have a question though, what happens when your special crafted improvements get hit with saboteurs? Are they removed from the game permanently like faithful retainers? Also, I couldn't quite figure out how scrap and scrounge are meant to be used. Can you play them as a 'free' action as long as they're at the top of your stack, or do you need to use the craft action in daylight to use them? Regardless, I really like how the dam is implemented, and the infographic is really helpful!
Thanks for commenting! Yeah, I see how that could be a bit confusing. To clarify: X only becomes the number of Observatories for the 'Scry' action. It's still number of cards in the horoscope for determining if you take on less action in Daylight or not. The intention with Scry is that you get to do a forecast action outside of the horoscope, but I didn't want it to scale with Horoscope size. However, pretty much all Forecasts require an 'x' value of some kind to activate, so I had to temporarily replace the value of x during Scry with something else. Scry was a bit of a last minute addition, so I kind of overlooked how it might affect rule clarity, which is unfortunate. If I had a bit more time, I probably could've found a better solution. This is really good feedback though, and I'll definitely keep this kind of stuff in mind for future projects!
