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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!

We had fun trying these guys last night! They seem very well-put-together. We had a couple thoughts and rules questions:

Is it possible to remove a barricade even when there's a piece on top? We know you can't remove a barricaded building, but can you battle the Ravagers to kill the barricade, then battle the formerly-barricaded building?

Their recruitment seemed a little on the strong side, as they can pretty easily get to 5 warriors per turn. However, now that I see they must be placed as evenly as possible, it seems less concerning - I know we played that wrong.

I liked the Salvage mechanic, and the way orders worked! It was neat to have a retinue/decree-like mechanism that changes every turn.

Overall, I think these guys are a very interesting faction. We had fun with them!

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!

We tested these guys last night! They were very interesting but surprisingly very weak. Here's some thoughts:

I think you should roll the Omen die every turn to make for some more interesting interactions.

It might be nice for Prophecies to be facedown. In our game, people were intentionally denying them prophecies.

I don't think there should be a limit to Paladins. I was sadly unable to build many turns and only ever had 2 palaces. However, it felt very limiting to not be able to get more Paladins at that point.

Finally, I think they should have more base actions. Maybe Recruit and Score should be a step instead of an action, but either way I think they need a minimum of 3 automatic actions. I never had more than 8 warriors on the map and 2 palaces, since there just weren't enough actions to police, recruit, score, and try to fulfill prophecies.

Overall however, I really like the theme of this faction and think it's very creative and worth finishing up. I'll be excited to hear any future developments!

That makes sense. We tried it and found this faction very fun! Our only gripe was about Double Down...it felt very powerful for your opponent to get double the points. We found that most of the time when attacking a bet, the opponent would automatically go double down for the extra points, even if they thought they would lose the bet. However, getting double points AS the Koalas, and getting double cards as the attacker, was quite fun.

Question: Can a blessed player battle their own blessings?

This is a really neat and creative faction. I only have one question: is there any way to remove tokens from the All In pile? Or once they're there, are they stuck there for good?

This is such a neat faction! I love how you've incorporated the gambling theme, including the randomness of decks and dice. The mechanics are so interesting and out of the ordinary - draw cards in Birdsong, having no hand outside your turn, losing and gaining points so drastically...I'm not sure what I'd think after playing it, but I love the concepts here!!

Thanks! The Rise track definitely makes for some very dynamic and interesting gameplay. I imagine they will struggle a lot against factions with early battle agency. Near the end, just imagine them as a WA that always rolls a 2 and has 25 warriors - so I'm hoping the early game struggles balance out the later game unstoppability (they probably have way to many actions near the end). I also think that with the punitive mechanism being tied to the Rise track, it will hopefully make it more painful to lose monasteries later.

You may have missed the second step of Birdsong, in which they choose a clearing and spread to every adjacent clearing that doesn't contain their pieces. This is a little restrictive in a badly-connected map, but it's still enough to quickly get them to 2 points a turn. I was afraid it would be too powerful and so I had to bump down the scoring track - especially since after the first two turns, getting rid of those single warriors will cost you a guaranteed casualty.

Ah, I see how it works now. My only other notes are that it might be worth clarifying some rules issues like the omen die, whether Prophecies are faceup or facedown, and such. Overall, this looks like a really neat faction that I'm excited to try out! I think it would be neat if you rolled the Omen die at the start of every turn though.

Thanks!

Yep that is how it works right now. However, I have no idea what it would look like after some intense testing. When I did playtest them, they were insanely good simply dealing 2 hits every time as defender in the later rounds - and it balanced out as attacker. It was almost impossible to take out a well-defended monastery because you had to commit so many warriors to do it. That said, I played with pretty non-aggressive factions, and I think their crippling beginning should balance out their later power. It was also before I added some of the newer mechanics (like Wrath of Jaddeth), but you'll still have monks to give a little extra attack/defense. Luckily the Wrath of Jaddeth scales, so though it can be crippling at the end, it's nothing to worry about in the beginning.

They would also struggle playing in a game with a very crowded board. So if I feel like continuing to develop them more after the jam's over, they're likely to get some changes - maybe including something that can raise/lower the Jaddeth track.

How does the omen die work? Do you roll it every turn, or every battle?