itch.io

She always loves comments from another artist as talented as you!

Thanks again for the compliments! I’ll let you in on a (very minor) secret - Fraaab and I are brothers, so my wife/his sister-in-law is the same artist! Just since you always acknowledge her art!

Hi!!! Their setup leaves them with many warriors on the board (as many as Cats!) and they ignore rule when moving from Gaze, so they don’t really need many more warriors. The balance has to be struck between enough warriors to hide, but to be reasonably whittled down to have enemies actually be able to deduce the location of the Talon!

The daylight loop of play is essentially ‘how many times can you reveal the Talon in clearings matching Initiates’ whilst still being able to hide effectively with Conceal and further permeate moves? The flow of cards is the real limiter/ gameplay puzzle here, with cards initially entering the Initiates before being drawn to the hand (inducted), to be recycled or spent for conceal and manipulation. With Gaze, you can select which/ how many cards you draw from your initiates per turn, so there’s a real balance to be struck between revealing several times and allowing enough actions to hide the Talon again.

As well as contributing to the feeling of paranoia and uncertainty, the manipulation abilities also allow extra moves/ recruits/ defence against battles/ card draw to help out with any action limitations you may be facing!

Thanks so much!

 Yeah didn’t have time to a ‘law of root’/FAQ entry. Yes bird cards play as usual for 2.1.1 - Birds are wild and II - Reverse substitution as usual. Bottom one is any two cards matching clearing with Gaze. 

All effects apply to all clearings with Gaze, regardless of suit. The Manipulation markers cover the suit to (hopefully) make that clearer in play.  The suit of the manipulation abilities is only relevant for discarding cards matching Gaze in ‘selection’ of which abilities will be active. 

Hope that’s a reasonably clear explanation!

Thank you! Yes, enemies knowing most of the cards in your hand provides crucial counterplay, as you know where recruits/ swarms may be occurring. As overflowing is fairly predictable, some measure of planning for the next turn’s potential swarms can be made. Because of the risk of going ‘bust’ on drawing, often I found that I would take one fewer action per turn to guarantee at least two cards in hand at the start of the next turn, to prevent it from being a completely lost turn!

Dagger hits are only dealt when specified, so yes, on a 1-0/1-1 roll, only those hits are dealt and any ‘banked’ hits are lost. The syndicate particularly hates battling the WA as the odds are flipped. The 0-0 roll being so savage to the Syndicate both serves the thematics of a disorganised rabble sometimes being easily dispersed, as well as increasing the jeopardy in continued ‘push your luck’ rolls. The most fun part of any push your luck game is the tension as the active player wills for dramatic success while the rest of the table hopes for complete failure - increasing the punishment for being too greedy magnifies this feeling. Might end up being too swingy in the end with further playtesting, but we shall see!

Thanks!

Swarms work best with two or more factions with cardboard in the clearing, so that even if you ‘overshoot’ and remove one, there’s going to be something you can score. Ruins are easy sources of points in non-vagabond games (LOTH can often be fought off and mobs removed). Easy points are also scored by squatting on sympathy tokens (although they hate haemorrhaging cards to the WA) or lightly defended cardboard like plots or tunnels.

Like LOTH, this is not a racing faction, but one that scores steadily and needs to slow enemies down. Overshooting and killing cardboard at least slows your enemies scoring down, so it’s not the end of the world Way more playtesting would be needed to stabilise the faction though!