Very well done. The favor mechanic is unique and seems to work quite well together. I especially love that as a specific suit moves up the track, you are encouraged to slowly work towards getting acceptance down in that suit, then scoring in it. The action cube mechanic was hard to figure out at first, but seems very elegant once I did. My only concern is that everyone else can easily figure out what type of acceptance is about to be your scoring goal, and kill it. Because dispersal happens, these expensive acceptance tokens seem somewhat easy to kill, and the lack of board presence will hurt the elks for sure. Overall pretty balanced, but a generally weaker faction compared to base game, but still fun with elegant mechanics that maybe don't quite line up with the theme, or at least I don't see what the elks are doing to curry favor other than throwing away cards of that suit. The theme might be a little lost on me, but the mechanics seem very good. Even with clear counterplay, they still have good scoring potential nonetheless, which would make them still decent. Clear incentives to police as well with the green square of the first favor area. My main complaint is that I wish the board lined up such that "gather for the" phase was actually above where those cards will be and I wish it lined up with the sacrifice theme a little more, but I like it, the mechanics seem to work very well, and it's not ridiculously overpowered and controlling.
Viewing post in Exiles Of Elk RootJam2024 jam comments
Thanks for the input! This was my first time creating a fan faction for Root (other than as a concept) and I felt pretty good about how it turned out. I agree that I had a hard time mixing the theme in with the mechanics, and sacrificing ended up more as an idea than a mechanic. At first when testing the Exiles were very weak, but could have decent potential to burst at the end game. This is when I made a few changes such as having the acceptance stay removed, so you don't have to re-place it. However, I believe it still came out as a common under dog. As for lining up the "Gather For" section was difficult, and I couldn't find a better way to arrange the board with the token track, the Favor track and the turn actions all there. I was attempting to do all this on Canva, which doesn't have all the tools I needed to make it look perfect. I hope the law page helped clear out the clutter of the rules. Either way, I appreciate the feedback and I hope you enjoyed the Exiles of Elk. Thanks!