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You mean the extra point once you have 9+? I did miss that, and that could definitely help if they’re crafting a lot of items.

I like the whole Arid clearing mechanic. It paints a picture of the Heralds moving in and rebuilding the woodland as the woodland tries to fight back by ruling the Arid clearings. The way the non-Herald warriors can't survive unless the clearing becomes Arid by evening is a really cool puzzle that the faction needs to work around.

For the Obelisk track I'd suggest making the boot and sword a little larger like the draw icon. At first it was a little hard to see and I wasn't sure which boot and sword the Move action was referencing.

Very interesting take on the Vagabond. For infamy you have to discard a matching quest card to score the extra point, is this to limit the total infamy points you score? That way you'll run out of quests at a certain point and they wont always match the clearing you're battling in?

For the item abilities do you have a place to keep items before you add them as a building? Is there a way to refresh the items on the board, or are they one time use? I imagine it might be hard to keep them as they could be an appealing target and get removed permanently if destroyed. And how do you keep track of which vagabond's are exhausted or not, do you flip them face down?

I like the aspect of letting each Vagabond take the actions of their listed starting items, that's an interesting way to give them some flexibility but still make each of them useful at different times.

Really cool faction, with a nice flow of spreading spores and using them to build and recruit! I like that you can spread the spores anywhere but it's more costly if you don't rule the clearing. And the Death Burst seems like a cool way to mitigate your damage if you know you're going to be losing you warriors anyway.

I think you can probably simplify some of the wording relating to the spore chamber. Since there are no bonuses or points related to placing them you can probably remove the directions on how to place them in the track. And since you always add 3 in Birdsong and discard any excess above 6 you might be able to get rid of the 2nd phase in Evening as well. Unless there's a way you can use spores outside of your turn that I missed. If you had 6 and discard down to 3 at the end of your turn, you'll be back up to 6 at the start of your next turn anyway. 

I love the artwork on this faction! You really captured the Viking walrus look :)

I like the whole economy of items this faction creates for everyone to use. It is a little complex so I might be missing the downside for other players having the monopoly items in their crafted items box. It seems like they would want to exhaust them every turn to get the extra actions, but Chastise and Refresh makes it seem like the Raiders want other players to have a lot of Monopoly items that they leave unexhausted.

If you've tested them out I'd be curious to know how their scoring compares to other factions. My initial thought is that they might need an extra way to score more points, maybe related to Chastise, because Count the Spoils seems like an expensive way to score points.

I really love the Unyielding ability! It's such a cool twist on the rules to make your tokens less appealing targets, it'll make them harder to destroy and less of an easy point.

The two different ways to score points is also really unique, revealing item cards that you could craft to score one point is really cool and thematic. And scoring where you have large concentrations of pieces really fits the swarm theme.

The drawing is really interesting too, I can't quite picture if it would make it easy for them to get lots of cards or not, but maybe it's a bit of a challenge as you want to have your swarm tokens with your warriors.

And of course, the idea of a swarm of ants animating clockwork animals is just really good! So creative and perfectly fits the theme!

This is such a cool concept! I love the idea of these little guys running around trying to squash bad press while throwing up their own propaganda. I like that you get to reveal your propaganda cards to take actions but can also spend a regular card to take the action again. I like that you have some control over what cards you'll get with the Justice Served card. It's hard to tell how critical it is to get that card though. I could imagine it being pretty rough if someone is holding onto the cards you need, but they might be tempted to use them to get the cool actions.

The cards and art is of course fantastic! The bearcats on the board range from innocently playful to threatening and have great emotion. I also love the cards that feel like newspaper clippings that they are spreading to make themselves appear in a better light. The theme is just so strong, amazing work!

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This is such a cool faction! I really like the aesthetics you went for with the black and white and you chose great characters for each of the turncoats.

I love the mechanics of infiltrating other players hands to make them draw turncoats and then making them decide if they want to discard it for a normal card and give you more actions. Adds some great dynamics to the game. I really want to give them a try soon to understand them even better.

Awesome job, it's easy to tell that a lot of work and thought went into the faction! (p.s.There's a small typo in the flavor text with a duplicate "the".)

Love the way you've added push your luck mechanics for battle and card draw. Very unique! The swarm theme is also really strong with swarms of squirrels pouring in when they spend cards. 

It does seem like they would be really strong in a matchup with the WA and no VB though as they'd have plenty of defenseless tokens and ruins to choose from. But they also give others points when they are removed themselves so that's very interesting.

And of course the art is amazing! The anarchist squirrel is just perfect!

Cool, that’s kind of what I figured it was. I just wasn’t sure if there was a way to upgrade it to make it 2 warriors per recruit or something.

I really like the dynamics of this faction. There are a lot of cool concepts with the swarm threatening other factions and Chitinbane being really good at fighting them. 

With their scoring being based on the forests containing swarms I'm sure they will be stronger or weaker depending on the map that is played on. But that's some of the fun part of the game, figuring out what is going to make a good matchup when you choose your faction.

This faction just makes me smile, the whole premise of little grubs going on vacations hosted by chickens is great. The art is fantastic as well. The whole turn cycle seems very well thought out and I like the different actions you can take with the chickens and grubs. 

The one thing I wasn't sure about was when it says Recruit chickens to the coop, how many chickens do you get to recruit each turn?

I like the mechanics of having a central base, the Rotting Necropolis, and spreading out from there each turn. Adding cards to the deck that infect other players when they draw them is a cool addition and very thematic. I do wonder what the benefit of Deteriorate is to the faction though. Do they benefit from getting items? or is it just a way to add more space to the map for Spore Towers?

I love all the wood and clog puns! Looks like a really fun faction. The different buildings were a little confusing at first but I think I get it now. You need the towers in or adjacent to your clearings to keep your warriors running, you need mills to recruit and craft, and you need dams to score extra vp and move more easily. Seems like a cool puzzle to keep all of that working smoothly together!

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like them, and thanks for checking them out :)

Really cool mechanics! It seems like almost everything relies on shroomlings being on the board. Is there a way to get back in the game if you are boardwiped? Or is that not much of a concern for this faction? I see that you recruit at nurseries, but you can only get nurseries or enlighten enemy warriors if you already have shroomlings.

I really like the idea of having strong warriors to fight for you that you can't completely control and that you have to sacrifice to score points. Very creative, nice work!

Nice work on this faction! I love faction abilities of Office Workers and Paper Work. They are so thematic and fit a boring office job setting! I like how you made a swarm of workers that sort of get in the way and are hard to get rid of, but don't attack you and just pressure you into attacking them or paying them cards.

One thing I'm a little confused about is their scoring engine. Do they primarily score through Mindless Paperwork and crafting? Do they also score a point when a player removes something due to a notice?

I guess if they are drawing a lot of cards they should be good at crafting and scoring through paperwork, but let me know if I missed something.

Ah very interesting, so you have to be really careful if your Training Area is getting full. You can only level up twice per game, right? Or is there a way for your level to go back down? Assuming you start at level 1, wouldn't you only need to spend 2 coins to get to level 3? Not that you'd want to do that right away.

The golem is really cool and I like the concept of building up and repairing the golem to battle with. I'm a little unclear on some of the mechanics though. Are the wrath tokens the same as the head/arm/leg tokens? And when do you get to use their abilities?  Or are these only abilities that other factions can use when they worship?

I like the economy of getting coins to later spend for different actions. It does seem that leveling up is almost too easy though. Of course, it means that you will have less card draw and less warriors in the Training Area, but you'll receive more coins each turn which might make up for that.

Some really cool choices about when to level up and how to upgrade your warriors. And how your warriors get stronger and stronger as the game progresses. If your training area is full and you lose a 3 star warrior do they go back to the supply or can you swap them with a lower level warrior in the training area so that that one gets discarded. It would be pretty painful if you spend a few turns improving a warrior only to lose him when you have no space left.

Really creative ideas here and cool mechanics!

Thanks! That means a lot :)

Yeah the face up action deck is such a mind game. Because you know what action you can prevent them from taking, but you don't know what action you're allowing to take that they wouldn't otherwise have taken. Really cool dilemma there!

Looks really cool! I like the mechanics of the Calamity happening if there are not enough visionary cards. It's a cool way to ensure that people are careful about destroying your clutches. 

For the pecking order, if you only have 2 warriors on the board does that mean you resolve 0 visionary cards or 1? I think it would be 1 since it says empty slot and not empty column, but I just wanted to make sure.

But all in all looks like some really cool mechanics! Choosing the actions the turn before but letting opponents only see the first one is a really nice touch. Then they can decide if they want to remove it, although they don't know what action will be revealed next, very tricky!

Very cool faction! I think the bee icons on the Preserves should be a little larger though, it took me a while to even spot them. If they were centered in the building and the same size as the draw icon it would definitely help.

In the second of the Queen's command would you be able to move the Keep? That seems potentially dangerous, but it is a cool idea.

It seems like it might be hard to get preserves out on the board as it takes a turn to convert conservation tokens to preserves and you can only place one token per turn until you have more preserves.

This looks like a really cool faction! I like how you have 4 different constructs that all do different things. 

I wonder how strong they would be at scoring as they will need to keep all 4 constructs on the board in separate clearings to get their maximum points. 

With the collector you're definitely incentivized to craft as many items as possible and it seems like they would be fairly good at crafting, although they need warriors to craft and might not draw enough mouse cards to have a strong board presence.

The use of mud tokens to build constructs and repair them is really cool!

The faction board looks great, you really captured the feeling of the woodland at night.

I'm a little confused by some of the cards, they seem to be one time effects but some of them could use some clarification. Are concerts the same as the rewards cards? When a concert has the same number of warriors as it's level the concert is held in the Host step? And then any players with tickets can give them to the fireflies to receive the cards as rewards?

Some of the cards have interesting effects, but a lot of them probably need to be reworded to fit in the game. Tremor says "All players take 2 damage or shake their tails", what does that mean?

Very interesting faction and I like the idea of fireflies luring woodland creatures to mysterious concerts.

Really cool and love the theme! I like how they are tending to the trees as they grow. I was quite confused by the Outsiders ability but the Law you included did help me understand. I like the image of them running between the trees to help out with different battles. 8 warriors seems like such a little force but I think it's cool that it makes it more of a puzzle to defend the growing trees until they turn into Mature trees.

Very cool faction! What type of animal are they? I'm picturing squirrels but I don't think it was mentioned.

Thanks!

Looks pretty cool! Does the faction get a benefit for activating waves, or is it more to slow down other players?  There are a few things that I think need a little more clarification on the board. Like when you build do you need to rule the clearing or just have warriors in it? Do they score points each time they place an egg clump building, sort of like the cats?

They might also need a comeback mechanism or another way to recruit. As it is they can only recruit by removing egg clumps, but then when they remove egg clumps that means that they can't build as much that turn. I could see them getting stronger and stronger as the game goes on, but I worry that if they get attacked early it would be hard for them to recover.

I love the art too! Well done :)

You have some really cool ideas here! I think there are a few things that could be worded a little more clearly. It took me quite a while to realize the Festival was a clearing similar to the Burrow, but I think that's a really cool mechanic. I also didn't quite understand Lost to Violence, but I think I get it now. It's a way for enemies to remove their warriors from the Festival when the Revel token is undefended which I think is really clever. Succumb to the Revel is also a little hard to understand on first glance.

But all in all some really creative theming! Nice work!

Really cool idea! I like the theme of the sheep believing blindly and not being able to see their hand. 

I think it would help to put "Score for Enlightenment" or something in the evening section, just as a reminder. Since they have to set aside 3-5 cards for their actions does that mean that they only get 2 actions per turn?

Thanks so much! This means a lot to me, glad you like them :)

thanks! Yeah I definitely want to make a few changes and then work on the law to clarify a few things.

I really like the moth art on this faction! The moth looks so forlorn somehow. The whole faction is very thematic and creative. I like the idea of the moths worshiping the sun and their daylight action changing depending on the weather.

I really like this faction and think you captured the swarm theme! It's an interesting twist to have to use your actions if you want to draw cards. I think the art is fantastic too!

This looks like such a cool faction! I really want to see them in action. I like how they have two different ways of moving: in small numbers ignoring rule or in large numbers bringing cells along with them.

Yeah I really appreciate all the feedback and brainstorming! When I playtested I was stacking them in the reverse order so that all the goals are showing at the bottom, for the reason you stated. That way it sort of reads like a sentence "Visit... a corner clearing... a ruin... in a Mouse Clearing".

Thanks!🙏 Appreciate you checking them out!

I appreciate the rewording! That’s something that I wanted to get people’s opinions and suggestions on earlier but I just ran out of time. I like your suggestions for the itinerary as well!

As for rescoring, you should remove the plan to score the point so you wouldn’t be able to score twice. I tried to word the card in a similar way to VB quests, but it can probably be more clear.

Yeah, maybe I could put part of a card outline at the bottom as a place to keep souvenirs! That could work well.