Immediately: overpowered. Incredibly overpowered. Chill on two-three nests with phoenixes on them and spam recruit followed by sacrificing all your warriors next birdsong, use the 6x sacrifice boost to get 5 victory points and you have the most free 8-10 vp turns (and you can do them consecutively, consistently, no real counter play or a ‘down’ turn) you’ll ever see. And if you choose to actually play the game somewhat normally, you just have double the hits and no base game faction can hope to keep up with even a single phoenix.
Also: it’s a lot of words. I don’t know how but it needs to be pared down
Additionally: there are many ways to do the same thing it seems
Adding on: there are FOUR, count em FOUR ways to score victory points. One is base game eyries only way to get victory points, but you can also choose to get victory points many many other ways. Without 3+ factions constantly attacking you, you can win in 4 turns or less every single game. There are more actions and things you can do than 2 factions put together. Ridiculous to be honest.
How to fix maybe…?:
1. One phoenix. Not multiple. That’s all you get
2. Remove the ability to score in evening per number of nests
3. Remove ability to score by sacrificing common warriors in the beginning of turn
4. Limit recruitment (each recruit action gives 2 warriors max and can only be done once for instance, since there is another way to get warriors in ashes to ashes)
5. Remove building. Ritual is the only way to make nests. Or vice versa. Why do there need to be two ways to do this
6. Amendment to number 4, change action economy entirely. Phoenix (singular) doesn’t get its own action time, put them together into one “do action” time
I actually really like the crafting concept.
your clarity of rules is pretty good, but those rules are absolutely overpowered. Interesting ideas, but needs more than just some play tests and tweaks