Play Fan Faction
Starsturck Soothsayers's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of this year's theme | #2 | 4.263 | 4.263 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #6 | 4.368 | 4.368 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #11 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
No
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Comments
Tried these guys last night, and they were very unique and fun! We had some concerns about the power level, as it felt very hard to do anything to stop them. By the end of the game, they had won, and everyone else was around 10 points. However, the concept is very neat and the faction is so creative!
It makes me really happy knowing that you took the time to try these guys out! Though I do apologize that they came out so overtuned. I wish I got to playtest them more, since I end up bullying my own factions in self-playtests a lot. Thanks for the feedback!
I think with some careful fine-tuning and playtesting they will be a lot of fun. Maybe something that removed cards from the Horoscope would help. I hope you continue working on them, I know the player who played them had a blast!
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!
This faction is so cool. So cool! I love the uniqueness of each forecast and I could see some interesting combos coming from them. I haven't playtested them, so I don't know if the recruiting numbers / VP numbers would need to be tweaked for balance but they look fun to play. The stack design is very clever.
For rules clarity, there are some cards that say X > 2 and some that say X=1. Those are always the same, right ? Since the card counts itself, so X=1 is the same as X>2 when it's on a forecast? It made me unclear about whether forecasts count themselves when they are in the Horoscope. So rewording a little of the mechanics and numbers would be helpful but overall great faction. And so cute!
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 this! I really love the design and layout of the faction. One thing that I am a little confused about is scry. Are you revealing the top card of the deck or the forecast deck? Are forecasts face down?
I think I was a little confused realizing that the forecast cards are different from the forecast stack but I think that's more on me not realizing there were cards until I got halfway through the board! Either way, love the direction of this faction.
Some clarifications:
1) You reveal the top card of the shared deck for scry.
2) Forecasts and The Horoscope should always be faceup. Forecasts are placed faceup on The Horoscope. The order of cards in The Horoscope along with what Forecasts you have left are public information.
I was really fortunate to be able to follow along as these guys were worked on and developed, and I think that a huge underrated aspect of this faction is just the uniqueness and consideration behind the horoscope aspect of the faction. Not to mention the polish and awesome art compilation of the horoscope cards themselves.
One things that would make things a little easier on my brain personally, if you could have different variable instead of each variable being "x". Just since "x" is usually the number of cards in the horoscope, it threw me off a little when "x" became the number of observatories in daylight. Maybe that variable could be "y"?
That's just for me though, and I really love these guys! :D
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!
I think for sure you should continue to develop these guys as it already has an amazing amount of consideration and polish put into it. You've already got some more ideas to add as well, so I'm excited to see where you take them :D
What are these little creatures?!? :D Are they salamanders? They are very cute :) Always love astrology/astronomer factions! Very fun!
Yeah, they're salamanders! More specifically, they're based off of blue spotted salamanders.
I love this submission. Amazing work with the faction board design. Very well polished. And the faction itself is great, I would love to try playing them and give them a spin.
Also I read over the submission and voted on it before I came back to it and realized that it's a friggin stack. Literally a FILO stack data structure. Feels like the whole thing was a setup for a pun. Ugh. Well, you nailed the theme for sure.
Hey, thanks for checking out my submission! I'm glad to see that somebody got the data structure reference haha. I really wanted to see If I could make a literal FILO 'stack' work in a Root faction and have the order matter somehow.