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Overall, I like the unique mechanics, like the horned skulls, but the more normal mechanics are a bit lackluster, and they feel a bit weak. 

Past the spelling errors, the horned skull recruitment is awesome, but you can't do enough of it. If anyone is actually spending their actions to destroy your skulls, your recruitment won't be able to match your need for warriors and battles to build pens, as well as the recruitment you need to sacrifice to get goat pens. I would add some way to get goat warriors besides the horned skulls, on the same turn, so you can't be easily wiped off the map. That or it needs to be easier to make horned skulls on your turn, as each one currently requires a card. Maybe for the Second Wave, make it 2+1 per card, to give a little more strength and choice to recruitment and battles outside salted clearings. Also, as  they take extra hits while attacking the salted clearings, they will need those extra troops just to live. Also make the damned charge clearer, I think just make it clear that they can choose to move and/or attack, not needing to do both.

I actually really like the salted clearings and specifically how you encourage the goats to play around them through the built in mechanics, encouraging them to go and fight in them, then sacrifice the dead warriors to make pens, so that the rest of the warriors don't die, and you get VP, as well as the rams which help you as you move into new clearings and battle, while also giving other factions a chance at countering/playing around them. I would make crafting just any goat pen NOT in a salted clearing, as you aren't likely to have many goat pens in the currently salted clearings. 

Overall the scoring seems actually very balanced, mostly because they are going to be eating cardboard across the board as they attack the salted clearings, so the lackluster scoring in rest for the damned will be mitigated by that. 

Overall, a very good idea, with unique recruitment and I love the salted clearings and how the herd is encouraged to attack them for the vp, despite taking extra hits. Definitely look over the spellings, and help their action economy, specifically with recruitment, and MAYBE, maybe help their vp scoring, if its needed after playtests

Interesting ideas to have your entire action economy based on the deck, but I'm worried that you might simply get screwed over by not getting the actions you need and getting dishonor all over the place for not being able to do them.  That aside, as I really couldn't know how often that happens without playtesting, there are some problems with scoring potential specifically, as well as what you are incentivized to do as a faction by the mechanics. 

Scoring potential: You can't get points from killing buildings, which means that 100% of your vp comes from the glory step, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that you have a maximum number of vp you can get (as you can only have 6 honor in total), and then you become MUCH weaker next turn if you spend more than 3 or so, (as recruiting will be weaker). To win/be a good faction, getting an average of 4 vp per turn is a must, and there is no way to do that as this faction. Either the honor needs to be expanded to be like 8 total and make it a little easier to get honor so that you have consistent scoring, or the scoring itself needs to be easier, or the honor code needs to go. I think the easiest way to balance this without disrupting the overall balance is to change the vp system, the glory step to say "Gain 1 dishonor to score points equal to remaining honor", that way you are incentivized to get maximum honor, but not punished with a significantly weaker following turn by spending all your honor, while also making counterplay more clear (just give them as much dishonor as possible and deny them honor). This change is a MUST, not an option, or you need to change it in a different way.

What you are incentivized to do: bully the weakest faction. This is unhealthy. Glory gives you an honor if any faction has no warriors on the map. It makes sense thematically, but if you are incentivized to spawn camp a faction, that is not fun for that faction in any way. This rule needs to be straight up removed ASAP. You also get points for eliminating all enemy pieces from a clearing, which once again is thematic, but makes them matchup dependent. Imagine playing vs woodland alliance and farming their sympathy for free honor. The Warriors Pride section is confusing, so I would just simplify it to the first bit, gain honor whenever attacking a defended faction, as in they have warriors. Its the same effect, so long as you aren't bullying anyone. 

Setup for clarity: Just go ahead and start them off with 3 honor and 3 dishonor, so there's no 'adding to it' time, which will make their beginning turns a little stronger to make up for their still relatively weak scoring potential.

Clarity of rules: Clans: Make it so that each warrior can only be part of one clan by only allowing clan specific buildings to be built in that suit, which is a major nerf to flexibility, but that's the point isn't it? To work around inflexible rules or gain dishonor? To gain honor for doing certain things through tough inflexible actions? If a warrior can be part of more clans, thats both weird, hard to understand, and takes away from the theme. By doing different clans in any order of your choice, you can already transition warriors from one clan to another pretty easily to prepare for the next clan's turn.

Finally the good things: I like the recruit mechanic, it seems good and elegant and well thought out. I like the way the cards in general work, that people can see what options you have ahead of time. The only thing I would change here is to give every clan their random card, then assign the seen cards to each clan, so that you can mitigate the luck element there a little bit and plan better. 

Overall a cool mechanic with cards being your action economy, based on suit/clan, which is both thematic and interesting mechanically. The clans, glory step, and warriors pride mechanics need to be cleaned up and changed to be better thematically and stop encouraging bullying and spawn camping a weak faction. The scoring is currently extremely weak, so make the change I recommended or a similar change. I like the honor mechanic as a currency, with both give and takes for having more dishonor and honor.

The revenant mechanic and scoring lead to a completely new playstyle. My main concern is the scoring potential of the faction, especially if anyone is policing them. I'm seeing the best strategy as running around the map, trying to sacrifice at least a couple warriors at each altar, and once the revenant reaches a too high aggression, just sacrifice all the remaining warriors at the last activated altar, but even with perfect luck and no one attempting to police you but the revenant, it still is an underwhelming scoring faction. You need 4 or so vp per turn, and it seems like you get 1-3 vp per turn for 2 or 3 turns, followed by a turn with 6-8 vp (when you get the +3 vp for having no activated altars left). Assuming everything goes perfect (and you have enough cards to keep up your recruiting and actions), you could get enough vp to outpace other factions, while your revenant polices them with pursue, and cursed paths slow them down, as your main faction can't afford to spend the actions on policing. The problem is that either you don't have enough cards to keep up with your need for warriors and actions, or someone minorly slows you down, and then the revenant catches up with you and destroys all your hopes and dreams, which, while very thematic, isn't great for scoring. I think making recruiting not based on cards and stronger could overcome this, or you could give them a base 3rd action before needing to spend cards. A small good buff to make it easier to get the perfect run to get enough vp. Another help for them would be that you get 1vp + 1 per warrior sacrificed, and make the vp bonus for no activated altars be +2, which would give more consistent vp, while not punishing as much if the revenant kills you very early. 

Also why does the revenant start in the same clearing? I think giving the sect a 1 clearing head start would be a little helpful (revenant on unactivated temple and orb+warriors one clearing adjacent)

What happens if there is a sixth cursed path added to the map?

The theme and mechanics for it seem very well thought out and the revenant is unique and cursed paths are a fun addition. I love the mechanics, they seem fairly elegant. They seem very good at policing through cursed paths and provoking the revenant into killing your enemies, with the trade off that it gets closer. However, they are reliant on cards that don't come that easily and are susceptible to being killed by a very small amount of policing. Even if those go well, they still struggle for vp throughout the game as they currently are. I do love it though.

That kind of action economy is not unheard of, but needs some sort of counterplay. In the WA, when their building gets destroyed, they lose half their officers and have to build back up. Maybe make it so that when a generator is destroyed, you lose that warrior from your pool? When you have the heavy hitting mutation, I don’t think a low warrior count will hurt you as badly (unless you were to reduce total warriors to like 12 or less), so there needs to be some way to slow down your 6 actions per turn, some counter play. Having more actions means you have less warriors to defend generators, so they will be easier to destroy, so you will have less actions, but then you build up again.

I like the idea of your action economy being directly tied to the board itself and buildings on it. My concerns mostly lie with the lack of victory points potentially.

If your own warriors currently visiting your own buildings don’t give you victory points as they leave the building before you can score them, then the only victory points you can receive will be when others visit you, which some factions won’t do, and smart players won’t (to deny you vp). The easy fix to this is to make your own visiting warriors give you point ms before they leave. Then it adds clear counter play (kill the visitor and no vp for you) which is interesting counter play because that visitor doesn’t help the defense. It still might be an underpowered faction like this, but would be playable and interesting like it. The visiting incentives are good enough for others to do it, and the action economy impacts that other factions can have on you is fascinating, by visiting. 

Some of the mechanics are hard without a law of root, but I think I puzzled them out correctly. 

The action economy is also currently underpowered, as I read it, because you either have to spend two cards or visit with a pawn (not a warrior so no vp) to get any actions at all. Two cards might be too many, even with maximum card draw, that’s only 2.5 actions per turn (assuming you visit a card draw one and have all the action pawns in the locals) by cards, but it makes your build up even slower, because off the beginning you only get .5 actions by cards per turn (not counting starting hand), which slows down the already too slow build up. I think make this one card, but make cards harder to get to the +1 cards per draw maybe, by putting it under the third G and C building maybe, not under locals

Speaking of which, somehow the build up needs to be faster. Since you only have the one local, actions will be scarce with which you need to build more buildings, and start more locals up. I think giving extra buildings around the surrounding clearings during set up will fix this, as your current sole starting building is also the worst for starting, the craft one.

My main rules based concern is the L building in develop. How do you draw cards in daylight? What does this mean? How do you do this action in daylight? I think just have it be its normal action, done at the normal time. 

I love the idea of your action economy directly affected by others, while it’s tied to buildings on the board, but it leads to a slow buildup and the card option is underpowered and too slow to get to a normal amount of actions per turn. The victory points, as I read the rules, is not just lacking, but actually invisible and dependent on others completely, but that can be easily remedied to put this faction in a fairly low power level, but at least not corvid level.

Yep, that makes sense for the general mutations, sounds good for that overall.

I didn’t understand the idea of locking away warriors to use for actions. I thought that the number of current mutations you had available controls your actions. I’ll need more explanation on that mechanic, because it sounds like, based on your comment, it will be very easy to get a high action economy, while I thought it was tied to mutations, not sacrificed warriors. That entire interaction was unclear on the board. When I said limited warrior count, I referred to the fact that it will be hard to recruit warriors, getting them from supply to board, as it takes a whole action for only one warrior, that was my concern

Very interesting!!! I like the one time use abilities, especially that other factions will be able to see if you have them to use for the upcoming turn, which allows them to plan around them, which is a nice touch. The mutations mechanic as a whole seems very well thought out. The only concerning mutation is the woodland alliance mutation, which seems EXTREMELY strong, even without the ability to get it by just attacking a lone sympathy. Maybe change it to a free build or MORE FUN IDEA, be able to use it to get guerilla warfare if anyone attacks your mutant (defender gets higher roll), then it could act as an effective deterrent, as well as a strong ability for the one time use. The other mutations seem fairly balanced, with the potential exception of the Lord of the Hundreds mutation (maybe just one less hit in that battle instead of no hits) and the riverfolk one (I would make this a "draw two card and keep one", I think that is more balanced and thematic). It's unclear how you get general mutations. Can you get them in the same battle as when you get a faction specific mutation? Do you have to choose one mutation per battle? Are there four or eight total? Do they refresh as normal? (potential idea: maybe make general mutations  only refresh when mutant dies and hatches again, idk) It seems like a good idea overall, so there isn't ever a clearing you don't want to battle in, as most clearings will probably have at least one token in them, even if it is just a general mutation. Last potential change to mutations: you can't use them in the same time that you gain them. If you attack the hundreds with a basic type mutation, then you can't use the hundreds mutation until the next turn.

It seems that this faction may struggle to recruit enough warriors, but perhaps this is intentional as the mutant is a powerhouse. I would like the necessary and thematic nerf to have the mutant lose all mutations when killed, I think it just makes sense, and then you can maybe make it a little easier to recruit, so its easier to defend your mutant.

The venomous spurs is overpowered. Pick two from these possible changes: 

Make it more expensive - 2 cards for the ability, forces you to know when you want to use them

Make it only work on defense - Platypuses only use this for defensive purposes anyway

Make it weaker - You can only reroll ONE of the dice, not both

Make it more situational/add counterplay - It only works in battles WITHOUT the mutant

Finally, the generators. I think 8 might be just too many... I think limiting it to 6 in total would be a good change. However, with the current rate of recruiting, these might be eaten up on your backlines anyway, and might never even get close to 8 in total, so I don't know if this change is necessary.

Theme - lovely. Platypuses are weird and I like how matchup dependent it is, not because strength changes, but because your ENTIRE PLAYSTYLE needs to change based on opposing factions, which is great

Mechanics - well thought out and elegant. A few changes (some faction ones are overpowered, and the change so you can't use them the same turn you gain them). A little hard to figure out without a law of root, but I'm sure it is easy to understand with one

Sacrifice - Im going to be honest, not really there

Venomous spurs - overpowered

Recruiting - underpowered

All in all, a great, well thought out, unique faction idea. I'd love to see this in the game

I love the theme, and you stuck with it very well, from the sting action to pollinating, the theme is prevalent and fun and affects the mechanics in a meaningful way. The mechanics are nice and easy to understand, with clear counterplay. The sacrifice theme was a little lost, though visible in sacrificing honey and stinging. It seems fairly balanced and I only have 3 concerns: 

Spending cards. At no point other than crafting, are cards truly spent, and yet they are gained freely at end of turn and with mason queen. I think turning pollinate into spending cards instead of just revealing them would easily fix this

Attacking? There is no formal attack action. While stinging does similar things to attacking, swarm a clearing and take out people, I think adding a queen that gives the ability to do a normal attack would be good, as you can ensure that higher roll against certain enemies, but avoid certain things if you want by only stinging (guerilla warfare from alliance for example). This would increase the flexibility of the faction in a positive way, allowing them to sting if it would be more convenient than battling, but with the option to get the higher dice roll if wanted, by feeding a queen, which would be rarely taken as it requires feeding the queen, but in the right situation.

Guard Bees. Maybe a little too strong, maybe rework it into being able to sting once during the ‘ambush’ time in each battle. This would discourage small bands from trying to attack you, and it would allow for more counterplay, still attached to give clearings only.

The second and third are just ideas to allow for more flexibility as a faction, while allowing more counterplay and aren’t necessary, the faction balance seems decent and they seem to be a medium to medium high strength faction that isn’t completely oppressive.

The first suggestion I think needs to be changed, but it is an easy change.

The good things: the theme is incredible and easily seen throughout. The clarity is good, it’s pretty clear how it works. The tradeoffs are good from honey to queen action, from making hive to having bees, from stinging instead of battling. I love adding a new ‘way’ to battle and it seems well done. The counterplay is clear, either attack the honey or the hive. My last concern would be the lack of choice in actions, without queen actions you can only move in the birdsong, so maybe add one free move in the middle of birdsong or make nomad queen power not require honey activation, just gives you it once per turn, and reduce it to one move.

I love the ideas and the theme!

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.

It seems well put together and the capture tokens turning into fear actions starting an action snowball is interesting, but it seems to have one major problem that plagues all birdsong scoring factions (in this case turning in capture tokens in birdsong to get points NEXT TURN), that you can be easily disrupted, but if you aren't, everyone has a big problem on their hands. My main gripe: it takes 3 turns to get any fear tokens used. Turn 1 - get capture tokens, move them to pyre. Turn 2 - burn them at the pyre. Turn 3 - spend FINALLY. 2 turns I can understand, but 3 turns before you can use your main mechanic seems a little much. Now, once you spend those fear tokens you get A LOT of vp, making this a very snowball faction, and if stopped before you get snowballing, it will be very hard for you with some well timed policing to remove capture tokens. 

It's unclear how you put warriors on capture tokens. Is it one capture token per battle? Per warrior? Your choice? If you already have a capture token, can you add more warriors to it? Why would anyone choose anything but single warriors for capture tokens to get as many fear actions as physically possible?

Overall, a good mechanic with no major problems other than the length of time it takes to use fear tokens. Probably not extremely overpowered, just medium to strong

Interesting ideas, but I'm concerned that the entire premise will destroy some factions. I think one necessary nerf so that other factions can play around being infected is for them to somehow pay to remove spores from their warriors. Currently, you are only playing the game with other people's warriors, which is fun for you, but the opponents will not think that their warriors being uncontrollable is fun. Not sure how to effectively change it, because the entire faction is just using enemy warriors and making them battle, building darkspore warriors just to kill them for vp. A fun idea, but I can't see it added to a game without not being fun for somebody. I like the idea of placing buildings on top of propogates, that seems like a novel idea

I also wanted to say how much I love the risk-reward of rolling again for a better or more needed action, with the possibility of being forced to martyr.

I love love LOVE the dice rolling. That is a SICK and unique idea. The mechanics are clear. My main concern comes with how much martyring you'll be doing compared to recruiting. I wish I could see the full dice layout, I wish I knew which side had 2 of them on the dice, or if the sixth side is blank. They seem to have a high board presence and seem to be good at policing, and I love the tradeoff of taking extra hits and giving them away from temples, but battles being more tame on temples. The other main problem is trouble policing them. If you have only a couple of warriors on a clearing with a temple, all except the most militant factions will struggle to kill the temple, removing your scoring potential, but it seems pretty easy to rebuild that temple next turn and regain the scoring. Once you get 5 or more temples, your scoring is nearly unstoppable, which forces others to counterplay you when you are still setting up, with few martyrs. Fanatical will allow the Order to keep policing others (without the obvious policing of building a temple right where they already are), without needing to have too much commitment.

Overall, unique ideas and seems fairly balanced, depending on other factions that are being played. The only reason they won't be completely OP is because even with 7 temples, they only get 5 vp, which is an unrealistic number of temples to start. 

I spent well over 15 minutes puzzling over the board, simply trying to figure out what the heck I was looking at, to be completely honest. It seems like a great idea, with sacrificing to then use souls as a currency to do actions, with the fear that if you sacrifice too much, warriors can be permanently removed if you try to do too much. However, I'm lost as to where you get enough warriors on the board to do all the sacrificing needed. The only two ways to get warriors on the board is to have no altars, and get them when placed, or spend 1 soul per warrior placed. However, throughout the game, you remove warriors from the board for 1 soul. There is no real way to get multiple warriors on the board, the recruitment needs a full rework or something, but it currently doesn't work unless I am blind.

Additionally, the amount of "OR"s is ridiculous. Every action you do needs to be completely simplified down to one thing, especially since you have this many separate actions. This needs to be simpler. My suggestion - make one area where you do all actions with souls, in one area, without all the types of actions (move, battle, etc) being scattered all over the board. Similarly, put all the types of sacrifice you can do into one area and simplified. Instead of a lot of actions that are "Spend X souls OR sacrifice Y warriors to do _____", just sacrifice into souls in one area, then do actions with souls in another. All your action economy goes through souls at one point, no skipping by sacrificing straight up. That should help your clarity immensely.

The good things: Midnight - fun idea and definitely adds, I like it and it seems to work well. 

One-time use ability - Very interesting and adds strategy for when to use it. Adds even more sacrifice thematic things.

Spring of Rebirth - Good idea, make it smaller, like 10 warriors or something, you'll never realistically hit that 15 limit I think, and 10 adds to the strategy of not wanting to go over. 

Ultimately - good ideas, but the theme and fun interesting mechanics are lost in the confusing things, the soul vs sacrifice thing needs to be simplified, and recruiting needs to be more obvious and easier as its impossible to sacrifice enough warriors to do anything without large amounts of recruiting.

I spent well over 15 minutes puzzling over the board, simply trying to figure out what the heck I was looking at, to be completely honest. It seems like a great idea, with sacrificing to then use souls as a currency to do actions, with the fear that if you sacrifice too much, warriors can be permanently removed if you try to do too much. However, I'm lost as to where you get enough warriors on the board to do all the sacrificing needed. The only two ways to get warriors on the board is to have no altars, and get them when placed, or spend 1 soul per warrior placed. However, throughout the game, you remove warriors from the board for 1 soul. There is no real way to get multiple warriors on the board, the recruitment needs a full rework or something, but it currently doesn't work unless I am blind.

Additionally, the amount of "OR"s is ridiculous. Every action you do needs to be completely simplified down to one thing, especially since you have this many separate actions. This needs to be simpler. My suggestion - make one area where you do all actions with souls, in one area, without all the types of actions (move, battle, etc) being scattered all over the board. Similarly, put all the types of sacrifice you can do into one area and simplified. Instead of a lot of actions that are "Spend X souls OR sacrifice Y warriors to do _____", just sacrifice into souls in one area, then do actions with souls in another. All your action economy goes through souls at one point, no skipping by sacrificing straight up. That should help your clarity immensely.

The good things: Midnight - fun idea and definitely adds, I like it and it seems to work well. 

One-time use ability - Very interesting and adds strategy for when to use it. Adds even more sacrifice.

Spring of Rebirth - Good idea, make it smaller, like 10 warriors or something, you'll never realistically hit that 15 limit I think, and 10 adds to the strategy of not wanting to go over. 

Ultimately - good ideas, but the theme and fun interesting mechanics are lost in the confusing things, the soul vs sacrifice thing needs to be simplified, and recruiting needs to be more obvious and easier as its impossible to sacrifice enough warriors to do anything without large amounts of recruiting.

Very unique, I love the quotes lol.

My first user complaint is the randomness of the state partnership, making that a solid number, either 1 or 2 victory points per warrior of them, but not a random roll. 

My other complaint is the weakness of the sign up bonuses. If an opponent is playing to win, they will never use them, because they just aren’t that strong. And they are very faction dependent. By placing a warrior into Clash of Clearings (lol) suddenly woodland alliance gets a stronghold on turn 1. That is the only good signup bonus and only maybe 2 factions would use it. And if no one is signing up, the faction will be so weak to be unplayable. Maybe add some way for you to add extra beavelopers, and if there is one, I didn’t see it. You start the game with 11 warriors, you can go down to ten for the extra actions. Additionally, there are only 2 real actions that you can sacrifice and never do again: crafting and drawing cards, so if no one signs up, you can only have 2 warriors on 2 apptions. I think making a way for you to add beavelopers (maybe in another apption so you can use it a couple times and then sacrifice it, since you’ll never need it again) would be a necessary buff to get around other players trying to win and giving you no signups.

Nonetheless, funny and a good idea. Very fun!

Very well thought out and executed. While I at first thought it would be strong, the territorial NEED to be in water clearings can force you into bad situations and acts as an indirect but extremely potent nerf. Very beautiful. I could see this added as a new official faction tomorrow, and I wish it was to be honest. Clear counterplay, not oppressive, and seems to be very fun and with a great theme. I love the idea of abducting an enemy warrior to go and sacrifice him at an altar, dragging them to a river to their doom. 10/10

Hmmmmm

My love for the fun aspects of this faction temper my dislike for the amount of board-wide control they can easily exert. But nonetheless:

Spores go crazy. Having a single toadstool warrior on a single clearing with a spore means that no matter how many warriors a faction will have, they always lose. Heavily. Unless they attack you to remove the spore first, which gives you more actions and releasing the spore burst. This is extremely oppressive and forces factions to play around YOU and ONLY YOU, which doesn’t sound like fun. The game basically progresses as you see fit, and you get free points throughout. Because you score at the end of your turn, with enough dead warriors, and with very little to start on the board, it’s achievable to get the 5 point mark easily. And while you do this, you actively slow down all factions that require any form of militant dominance, which is about every base game faction. ‘But I will place pieces for them’ no you won’t, metamorphosis gives them only one warrior in a random far off clearing that they probably wish was dead but can’t afford the actions to move away as they have to spend an extra attack on the freaking spore. I love the concept, but spores need to be limited and easily removable, or the control will make the game simply not fun for every other player. 

But it’s all cool, because you can place a couple mole buildings in a random clearings and watch their lords die, which is hilarious. Also needs to be nerfed, but hilarious.

The theme and ways that is executed is perfect, I love the mycelium and composting, as well as a very unique action economy.
In short, great ideas, best I’ve seen, but the control that can be so easily exerted would suffocate every other faction and make it not fun for them

The art is beautiful by the way

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

Some interesting mechanics, but I had to look for a little while to find them. Clarity is a big issue. Nonetheless, the idea is good, very unique for sure, and my only complaint is the scoring seems awkward, and crafting is confusing. Why add the mechanic where people can steal your fuel cards when destroying your buildings counter plays you much better? Only one actual error, where it says 12 warriors on the back and 20 on the pnp, not sure which is true. Removing your own warriors from the game to remove discontent is a great sacrifice for the theme, along with the general theme of burning cards etc. I like how it mashes mechanics of the eyrie and alliance very well. In short, everything is good except clarity of rules