Thank you for the lovely feedback, I'm glad you enjoy the mechanics I've thrown in, and also that you like my silly art ^^
5 passives is a lot I do agree, my hope was that the relatively simple remaining board compensates a bit for that, but I do quite like your idea of just putting it into the Battle action! (Though that would be slight buff in battling through other means, like LoAM).
Also, yes! Buying from the riverfolk was a big issue in the early tests. Originally I had them have 30 warriors in the supply, (because a 30-stack of sheep scoring from 0-30 is such a funny visual), but I lowered it down to 25 after feedback that purchases were essentially free. I feel at this level purchases really start impacting your recruiting (you'll lose value recruiting twice with less than 24 supply for example), and the more warriors held by the Otters the less you're able to march into the rift. Plus, over-feeding Otters is hopefully a good disinsentive, especially as you'll probably rule a lot and cause easy TPs with your funds. Not certain though, for sure Otters are a nice matchup for the Herd, similar to Moles I suppose :)
Finally, yeah I intentionally limited their crafting heavily. I'll be open and say I'm pretty much only balancing around the E&P deck, as that's what I'm used to, and there's a bunch of good 1-cost cards in there for the Herd (False Orders, LoAM, Charm Offensive and Swap Meet come to mind). Plus, I really didn't want them getting Coffin Makers. Ever. Please oh God don't give the Sheep Coffin Makers!