Let's get the bad news out of the way first: The supply mechanic is unlikely to undergo any drastic changes. Tweaking the interludes would require a significant word count, so we're not going to see any replacements there unless they bring back the card-based "mini campaign guides" we got in Rougarou and Carnevale. That said, we are likely to see new encounter cards that check for some of the less useful supplies (such as the canteen and pocketknife), so we'll get some rebalancing. Ideally they'll take a page from No Turning Back and Creeping Darkness, where having supplies lets you skip a skill test, since that feels more like a reward than "At least nothing bad happened to you."
On the plus side, exploration is almost certain to get a revamp, seeing as Matt's expressed regret about its scaling in the past. The exploration treacheries come from a variety of encounter sets, some of which are likely to get replacement sets, and we're probably going to see entirely new treacheries from the "Return to [Scenario]" sets shuffled in as well. To account for groups that mix old and new sets together, they'll need some sort of instruction to gather certain treacheries, then randomly choose X to put in the exploration deck. At that point, it's the simplest thing in the world to include a <per investigator> term in X.
Replaced Core Sets
Ancient Evils
This one's probably a gimme. Everyone making sadistic choices, right? Or at least the devs love making you make sadistic choices, which is why both full-campaign Return sets so far have included a Peril version of Ancient Evils that offers you a painful way out of the generic doom accelarator. The two scenarios that include Ancient Evils really only have the exploration deck in common, so my money's on a "Forgotten Evils" card that lets you dodge the doom if you take some punishment (say, 2 damage or an extra encounter draw) and shuffle the treachery into the exploration deck.
Dark Cult
The most common of the core sets if you manage to anger the Brotherhood, these guys can show up in up to three scenarios depending on your choices. It's a bit disappointing, then, that they're just generic cultists, even to the point (in Shattered Aeons) of screwing over their own side by accelerating an agenda deck that wipes out all factions. Perhaps the new set of cultists could have parley options, with bonuses for drawing tablets and penalties for drawing cultists or elder things.
Chilling Cold and Locked Doors
These are the other core encounter sets that show up in at least two scenarios, and for both of them, one of those scenarios is City of Archives. For that reason, I think we're not going to see a replacement set. The fact that City of Archives contains no TFA sets whatsoever is a big part of its alien, isolated feel. Besides, it's tough to come up with a theme that fits in Pnakotus as well as Arkham or the Eztli Temple.
Replaced TFA Sets
Agents of Yig
They replaced the Agent sets in the last two campaigns, and those were comparatively rare. Agents of Yig shows up in five scenarios, making it the second most common encounter set (behind Poison, which would be difficult to swap out since the Poisoned weakness is referred to by name in many other cards). It's pretty much the baseline for Vengeance punishments, much like Delusions was the baseline for Hidden cards, so changing it is a great way to change the feel of the whole campaign. Plus, it has a rather obvious countermeasure, since the Broods are extremely vulnerable to Handcuffs, regardless of Vengeance, so it'd be nice to counter that a little.
Temporal Flux
This set consists of two different treacheries: One is a slightly nicer version of Rotting Remains, and the other is arguably the most brutal asset hate card in the game. Spicing up the most basic treachery in the game is always nice, and it's a little disappointing that Timeline Destabilization's thematic action loss is rarely a good choice. I liked Voice of Tru'Nembra's multiple effects, though I wouldn't want to see a straight copy; perhaps TD could take a page from Ultimate Chaos and include a tiered resolution (eg "If you fail, lose an action. If you fail by 2 or more, take 1 horror. If you fail by 3 or more, shuffle TD into the exploration deck").
As for Lost in Time, it's extremely brutal, but a replacement shouldn't necessarily be nicer. Giving some choice in the matter would help make it seem less of an arbitrary gut punch, even if the final result was technically harsher (eg "Choose from the following list 3 times: Move all damage and horror from an asset you control to your investigator / Place an asset you control with no damage or horror on it on the bottom of your deck / Discard the top 5 cards from your deck and shuffle the topmost weakness in your discard back into your deck").
Rainforest and Serpents
These two encounter sets are, strictly speaking, redundant. You could merge them into one set with no mechanical consequences, since both appear in the same scenarios (Untamed Wilds and Heart of the Elders Part 1) and nothing explicitly refers to either set beyond the "Gather the following encounter sets" instruction. We've seen this before with the Decay & Filth and Hastur's Gift sets, and that turned out to be a convenient way to make some minor adjustments in the Return box. Now, I'm not saying that's why they're separate sets--The Carcosa sets are thematically different, and I wouldn't be surprised if they cut a few uses of Serpents late in development in favor of other Vengeance cards--but if you have the knob available, you might as well turn it.
I personally think the Serpents set is perfect just the way it is: It gives you vengeance and poison without directly following up on either, leaving you to suffer for it later, much like how a viper's bite is but a couple of pinpricks before the venom takes effect. More importantly, swapping out the Rainforest set would be huge, replacing the maps of two different scenarios. They might leave the connections unchanged for the sake of those who combine sets, but changing what you find will make for a much fresher experience.
Enhanced Scenarios
The Boundary Beyond
After its release, this scenario quickly gained a reputation as the most brutal scenario in the game outside of The Devourer Below. Its infamy is well-earned: Exploration is costly, a certain treachery can shuffle itself into the exploration deck, the locations come with very high shrouds unless you fulfill certain conditions, even successful exploration can hurt you, and, depending on your campaign choices, you'll find yourself facing either a significant amount of testless damage or some nasty doom acceleration.
Now, Return sets generally don't make a scenario easier outside of clearing up specific oversights (cf Base of the Hill). Still, they can tone the perceived brutality down a bit without necessarily putting on the kid gloves.1 For the Boundary Beyond, perhaps they could print new versions of the Ancient locations (preferably without enters-play effects) and add them to the encounter deck, making the costly explorations less likely to fail while still making the challenges less predictable.
1 The Essex County Express is a good example: Adding a hard-hitting, immortal Hunter doesn't make the scenario easier per se, but splitting the first agenda to spawn it makes it less likely that an early run of doom acceleration wipes out the players.
Heart of the Elders (Part 1)
Of all the scenarios in TFA, this is the one most in need of an overhaul. Currently, it suffers from two major problems. The first is that it is quite literally a hard-mode retread of The Untamed Wilds, to the point where the scenarios even have the exact same map. Even aside from their settings, both scenarios are exploration races against a very short doom clock with lots of Vengeance enemies. The only real difference is that Heart of the Elders (Part 1) forces a bit of backtracking at the end and contains a few terrifying encounter cards like Ants! and Basilisk. The second major problem is the frankly baffling campaign guide decisions: Forcing players to replay a scenario until they win is just cruel to those of us with schedules, and allowing players to do so with no penalty leads to degenerate play (cf the "infinite mulligan").
It's probably impossible to completely reverse the first problem, but they can definitely spice it up a bit (which should be fine; not every scenario can be unique). The biggest upgrade would be a new set of locations with the same connections as the Rainforest set (or any replacement thereof), with a setup instruction to randomly choose one location for each location symbol. That would leave us with some of the old locations, to keep the idea that we're back in the Mexican jungles, but we'd have enough new ones to make the scenarios meaningfully different. For a secondary change, we could use a new Act card with a more interesting enemy. The Winged Serpent isn't particularly special when you've already got Boas and Basilisks chasing you around with their Vengeance scores making them effectively just as invincible. While they're at it, they could make advancement mandatory; currently, there's little reason to advance the act before you're ready to solve all the pillars.
Fixing the second (and arguably larger) problem has two key steps: First, we need some sort of punishment for failure. Doom of the Eztli starts you with one doom for each retry (plus it kills off investigators who can't resign in time). Heart of the Elders could do something similar, perhaps with doom that follows you into Part 2, or it could come up with its own thematic punishments (say, giving you a chance to become poisoned, or take physical trauma if you're already poisoned, as snakes infest your camp). Second, we need a way to force our way past the scenario at a penalty. Doom of the Eztli actually has two of those: You can either dynamite the temple for 10 Fury, or you can get your entire party killed, leaving Alejandro to get the Relic himself. My suggestion: Let us blast our way into N'Kai, at the cost of carrying two Vengeance into the second part for each missing pillar.
The Depths of Yoth
Let me preface this by saying that this scenario is great the way it is. It's a solid scenario that tests every aspect of your deck, and the clever standalone rules make it perfect for testing high-level builds. My one nitpick is that it's the scenario that brings Yig's Fury to bear, but the actual rewards for low Fury are pretty lackluster.
Managing the impressive feat of getting no Fury whatsoever (which involves forfeiting 7 experience points from cards with both Vengeance and Victory) means that Yig and the Pit Wardens don't show up. The Pit Wardens are only minor nuisances if you've got a half-decent evasion tank (which you do, if you've got zero Fury), essentially only relevant with Serpent's Ire. As for Yig himself, you have 19 rounds before Fury That Shakes the Earth advances; odds are very good that you'll end the scenario by then anyway.
Meanwhile, the 6-10 Fury bracket only shaves 3 rounds off your clock, giving you a very generous head start before Yig spawns. Yig's Fury is only really meaningful if you're at 11+ Fury, letting you get all seven Vengeance + Victory points and still have enough leeway to get an extra point in each of Untamed Wilds, Doom of Eztli, and Heart of the Elders (it's usually a bad idea to go above that level, anyway).
So, what's the solution? The obvious one is that "strange liquid" you can collect. It's only available if Yig's Fury is 10 or lower, and only if you bring along the otherwise-subpar canteen, and it does absolutely nothing. Perhaps that liquid could be given some sort of benefit that grows more effective as Yig's Fury is lower. For instance, imagine a persistent treachery (shuffled into the deck after Agenda 3 advances) with "[Action] If an investigator at your location collected a strange liquid: Test [Int] (1); this test gets +1 difficulty for every 2 tally marks next to Yig's Fury. If you succeed, remove this card from the game."
Alternatively, they could make Yig's Fury more meaningful in the next scenario...
Shattered Aeons
Let's get the obvious out of the way first: It's possible to literally break the scenario. If the Relic of Ages gets eaten by Yig's Fury or somehow removed from the game, you'll never be able to find it and thus will never be able to win. That said, that's more of a matter for errata to resolve, but errata has yet to come. Hopefully it will come out once they revisit this scenario for the Return box.
Only slightly less obvious is this: Alejandro and Ichtacha don't scale to player count. Much like exploration, they're tough-but-fair at high player counts and downright absurd in true solo. Getting new versions of Alejandro and Ichtaca would also allow them to correct that oversight in the Yithian ending, where pacifying the cultists doesn't do anything about the doom on them.
Player Cards
Kerosene
The trouble with Kerosene is that it's very cumbersome. An action to heal two horror isn't an unreasonable cost, but usage restriction is quite burdensome. You usually have to spend actions just to enable the ability (either by killing an enemy yourself or moving to a location where one's been defeated), and while that might be okay if the enemy's quite flimsy and needs to die anyway, it's not what you want when you're desperate for a horror heal. I'd like to see a level 3 version with a free trigger, instead.
Venturer
Not a card that needs rehabilitation per se, but TFA's player cards are actually quite solid. For a card like this, I'm looking at extra functionality to enable new decks. For instance, perhaps the Venturer could "recycle" other assets, discarding them and taking their tokens for himself.
Ancient Stone
It's pretty much a given at this point that we're going to see a new version of the identified stone. As for what it's going to do... I'm going to guess scrying. After the trigger, "reveal that many cards off the top of the encounter deck, and put them back on top in any order." This would require a bit of trickery to exploit, but it'd be more fun than Markings of Isis if nothing else.
Unearth the Ancients
Speaking of Markings of Isis, here's the card that's does exactly what it does, but is somehow even worse. The upgraded version pretty much needs to be Fast. Probably even "Fast. Play when you successfully investigate by X or more," so you can use it when you overcommit to get a free asset out of the deal. That would probably be worth 3 XP.
Treasure Hunter
The idea of Rogues getting mercenaries that run off if you can't afford them is actually a cool one, but the nature of actions in the game makes them inefficient. An upgraded version could boost both will and intellect (making it handy for defense) and take horror instead of being discarded if you can't afford him. That would guarantee you a couple of rounds of stat boosts, at least. It probably still wouldn't stand up to Lola Santiago, but she's a very good ally.
Colt Vest Pocket
The trouble with this gun is that you need to combo it with Sleight of Hand or Fence, and even then its attack bonus is too low for any Rogue besides Tony to make much use of it. It'd be worthwhile to see an upgraded version with +2 combat and Fast (possibly increasing its cost to 2, as with Blackjack). Perhaps it could even shuffle itself back into your deck instead of being discarded, so you can whip it out again after your enemies have forgotten about it.
Enraptured
The Mystic cards in TFA are, for the most part, very good. Enraptured is one of the few that isn't, outside of certain investigators (ie Daisy). Still, having it follow the lead of Vicious Blow and Deduction (giving it 2 icons and adding 2 charges/secrets if you succeed by 2) could potentially tempt some 3-4 intellect Mystics into giving it a shot (to say nothing of it becoming great for Norman). If nothing else, it'd be stronger in its own niche.
Protective Incantation
Again, most of the Mystic cards are good enough that we're getting in to new functionality, rather than rehab. Sealing is a Mystic thing these days, but so is playing with forces beyond their control. I'd like to see a new version of Protective Incantation that keeps sealing more tokens while increasing the upkeep cost. You wouldn't be able to hold it as long, but you'd make the chaos bag very safe in the meantime (though bear in mind you would increase the odds of the autofail).
Dumb Luck
Success-by-failure is a strong archetype, letting you punch well above your weight class or just save resources on skill checks knowing you have a backup plan. Dumb Luck tends to be less popular than, say, Look What I Found, mostly because Survivors tend to be good enough at evading anyway, but it's got some fun encounter deck manipulation that could use some more love. Increasing its window to 3 (as with the upgraded Oops!) would likely be good enough on its own; at that point, you're automatically dodging the majority of non-Elite enemies in the game. If it needs more to justify an upgrade, it could also gain "The next time that enemy would spawn, it does so disengaged and exhausted."
Old Hunting Rifle
Okay, this one's a total pipe dream. The last Card Council might have had a level 4 Survivor card approved, but there's a world of difference between a beta and an actual product. Still, it would certainly be nice to get a rifle that doesn't treat the skull as an autofail. It could probably do with one extra ammo, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment