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By Nate French

In the next couple weeks, the third Chapter Pack in the A Time of Ravens cycle, A Change of Seasons, will be shipped to stores near you. In anticipation of its release, we’ll 

be spending the next few weeks taking a look at some of the cards you can find in the set.

The main idea behind the Change of Seasons chapter pack was to flesh out the Summer and Winter mechanics that were introduced in the “A Song of Summer” and “The Winds of Winter” Chapter Packs. For those who may not be familiar, the Summer and Winter mechanic is built around the concept of the long seasons that occur in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga. Powerful Raven cards allow the game to be played during either Summer or Winter, and some cards “prefer” (which is to say they are more powerful) one season over the other. So controlling the season of play can become something of a game within a game, especially in a match-up in which one player is playing a Summer deck and the other player is running Winter mechanics.

In the A Change of Seasons chapter pack, you will find a number of cards that support both Summer and Winter, and some, like Demon’s Dance, that focus more on the act of change itself than any particular seasonal condition. A card like this can be used offensively, in anticipation of a change you are planning on instigating, or defensively, if you’re happy with the current season and want to dissuade an opponent from changing it to something else.

Another new card that helps facilitate the seasonal mechanic is the aptly titled plot card, A Time For Ravens. This plot card will help any deck built around the Summer or Winter mechanic run a little more consistently, but beware! It also provides your opponents the opportunity to counter any seasonal move you might make.

Winter is coming, but Summer will not give up its grasp without a fight. Next week, we’ll take a look at one of those characters we all love to hate, the Late Lord himself, Walder Frey

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On the smoky battlefields, a thundering pace reverberates in the distance.  You thought the fight was over, but this was just round one.  In the hazy fog, a silhouette appears of a creature so large and oddly formed you can only think of it to be one thing.  The one thing you were warned about when entering this field.  The one thing people only dared whisper about-the Troll!

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce a new exclusive Troll web-scenario for BattleLore.  This brand new scenario has been created by the original designer of the game himself, Richard Borg.  In this scenario, you and your units are on water detail when, to your horror, you encounter the Troll.  As the Troll is startled and charges directly into your troops, droves of English soldiers accompany the assault with this awful creature.

You can find this new Troll scenario in the BattleLore support section.  Also, in the Support Section you will find the Troll Unit Cards which you can print out and add to your collection.  Enjoy! 

Click on this button for the Talisman Revised Fourth Edition Rules

Introduction

During the following weeks, FFG will release a series of articles that explores the new improvements and additions to the Talisman Revised 4th Edition. In this article, we will take a look at a few characters and how they compare to previous incarnations.

Characters

The most obvious change in Talisman Revised 4th Edition compared to the edition released by Black Industries, is that each character is represented by plastic miniatures instead of cardboard stands. Even if a character gets turned into a slimy little Toad, he can hop around the board with a special Toad miniature. There is just something very cool and visceral about moving a finely sculpted miniature around the board. Miniatures also allow players to further customize their characters and show off their painting skills. (Stay tuned for more information about our Talisman miniature painting contest!)

Astute Talisman fans that jumped ahead to look at the revised Character cards will notice that a new box was added on the right side of the card called Fate. This is a new feature introduced in the Revised 4th Edition and will be discussed in greater detail in the next article. For now, it is enough to say that fate values vary from character to character.

Prophetess

Let’s first take a look at the most controversial character in the game; the Prophetess.

The Prophetess is a powerful magic user and always has a Spell ready to cast. However, her real power comes from the ability to discard unwanted Adventure Cards. In previous Talisman releases, the Prophetess allowed you to draw an extra Adventure Card and then discard one card of your choice that you do not want to encounter. This let’s you pick the best cards and discard the worst, and proved to be so powerful compared to the other characters that many gamers to simply banned her from play.

The Revised 4th Edition features a small adjustment to this ability but that small adjustment makes all the difference in the world. Now the Prophetess does not automatically draw an extra Adventure Card. Instead, you may choose to discard one Adventure Card that you drew but you must then draw a card to replace it, which you must encounter. This leads to many interesting decisions that the Prophetess player must struggle with during the game.

Let’s pretend that you just drew the Phantom card which grants a wish to the first evil character that visits him. While the Phantom is not helpful to the Prophetess who’s alignment is good, it certainly does not hurt her either. You could choose to discard the Phantom and draw another Adventure Cards as a replacement. Then again, the replacement card might be a fire breathing Dragon which could be devastating if you are low on life.  Should you play it safe and keep the useless but harmless Phantom, or take a chance and draw a replacement card which may help or hurt you?

As you can see, the revision to the Prophetess’s special ability adds an exciting push-your-luck twist and still maintains the unique flavor of the character.
 

Click on the images for below for an enlarged view.

Troll

The Troll is one of the most straightforward characters in the game. He does not bother with tricks and fancy special abilities, he simply stomps around the board and bashes things with his brute strength. In fact, the only Enemy cards in the Adventure Deck with Strength high enough to pose much of a threat to the Troll are Dragons, and even then he has a fair chance of defeating them.

The main drawback of the Troll is his low Craft value. This not only restricts him from holding Spells, but it also makes him very vulnerable to Enemies that fight with Craft. The Troll’s low fate value limits his options even further. To help compensate for this, his life value is increased to 6.

The Troll also gained an additional special ability to spice things up. If the Troll rolls a 6 for his move, he may skip his turn to heal one life. While the option to regenerate is not particularly efficient, the special ability at least offers the Troll player a few decisions during the game as opposed to just mindless bashing and smashing.
 

Click on the images for below for an enlarged view.

Druid

The Druid is one of my favorite characters because the ability to change his alignment at will seems very thematic and interesting. Unfortunately, the ability is very circumstantial and limiting in nature, so it also felt like I was playing an underdog. While the Prophetess has the power to cast Spells every turn and the mighty Troll can cut through Strength Enemies like butter, the Druid has to wait for an opportunity to use his special ability. Being able to change your alignment in itself is not useful, you need to encounter an alignment based card or board space to reap any real rewards.

The main limitation of the Druid’s ability really kicks in when he finally gains an alignment based Object. If the Druid gains the Runesword for example, he can no longer change his alignment to good without the penalty of ditching the powerful Runesword. Is praying at the Chapel really worth surrendering such a magnificent weapon?

In order to give the Druid a much needed boost, he has a new ability that grants him Spells whenever he lands on the Woods space. This ability is also fairly circumstantial since it only really pays off if the Druid is out of Spells and can land on the Woods. However, a skilled Druid player will always try to maximize the reward so that it is well worth the extra effort.
 

Click on the images for below for an enlarged view.

Thank you for joining me on the preview tour for the Talisman Revised 4th Edition characters. My next article will take an in-depth look at the much speculated and anticipated fate tokens.

Until then, happy gaming!

- John Goodenough

By Marius Hartland

Cultists, Servitors! Let us welcome some Initiates into our world of gibbering madness! Today marks the fifth revelation of our future, being almost half-way through the new Story Deck. The card on display tells us about the Great Race -- yes, few species would name themselves the Mediocre Ones, I suppose. Their planet, Yith, was dying, but the Yithians had one trick up their sleeves: The ability to swap their minds with the minds of other beings across time and space. The Great Race escaped their fate by inhabiting cone-shaped bodies of an earth species almost 65 million years ago. Their most well-known base of operations is the The Lost City of Pnakotus, beneath what would become Australia's Great Sandy Desert. From there they still temporarily swap their minds with other beings; Humans from our time and place: Arkham, 1928.

"It may be that centuries of dark brooding had given to crumbling, whisper-haunted Arkham a peculiar vulnerability as regards such shadows - though even this seems doubtful in the light of those other cases which I later came to study"

- H.P. Lovecraft – The Shadow Out of Time

Great is their power, that they appeared in a special event before, as the dread Yithian Deck ignoring all deck-building rules and offering a challenge to the best of players in special tournaments. Then, things went quiet around the mind-swapping monstrosities. Maybe a little too quiet. Let us go back in time a little more.

Evoking the Ancient Ones

Eric Lang designed this card game. Besides being designed to offer a myriad of heart-breaking choices to players, making the Call of Cthulhu a game where skill is the most important part of gameplay, there were other philosophies distilled into it. An important example of such a philosophy is that of Evocation.

Evocation is the train of thought that brings the Cthulhu Mythos and pulp setting atmosphere into the game. In the rules there is something like "Flip a card over" when a Terror struggle is lost. Calling it "Going Insane" brings the strategy in line with the evocation of cosmic horror Call of Cthulhu is going for. When Nate French took over as lead designer, these philosophies were not forgotten. Because when there is a Story Card to reference the temporal tricks of The Great Race, it works exactly as advertised: Swapping the mind and knowledge with that which is long lost and buried:

The Shadow Out of Time story card is where tactics and evocation meet. It allows for a few simple one-two tricks with some of the other story cards. The first revealed card "The Call of Cthulhu" allows you to make your hand bigger, potentially digging more lost gems out of the discard pile. "Opening Night" works a lot better if your whole discard pile is characters and you'll be able to cure their insanity quickly. And- Oh, we are still in linear time. Once we transcend the boundary of tomorrow, we’ll know more about the Ancient Apocrypha, but until then, more on that later. The long and short of it is that there are a couple of threats among the story cards, and The Shadow Out of Time will help you to juggle cards and some great effects by finding these links. Know your deck, and know your Story Cards.

Quality over Quantity

It’s fairly obvious that The Shadow Out of Time will help you boost your hand quality quite a bit in the correct situation. When playing by the 3-card rule it helps you get another use out of your key card that ended up in the discard pile.  It’s not strictly speaking card advantage, but there are numerous ways to finesse the effect and come out ahead. 

The Shadow Out of Time certainly gives you lots of options, and choices on what to get and what to keep. It's not that hard to keep your opponent from making these choices. Getting rid of their discard piles is as easy as playing a Snow Graves on it – exchanges always go both ways, or they won't go at all. You never know when you might suddenly end up in the past.

For now, linear time will proceed again until next week, when we unlock the secrets of the Ancient Apocrypha.

by Kevin Wilson

The ARG, the video trailer, and the website have done an excellent job giving everyone a first look at the world of Android, but now it’s time to talk turkey (appropriately enough, given the time of year) and start delving into game mechanics.

Android is a competitive strategy game for 3–5 players and is playable in 2–4 hours. In it, players take on the role of one of five unique New Angeles detectives investigating an important murder. However, just solving the murder won’t always win you the game. The detectives also try to uncover the conspiracy behind the latest rash of killings and deal with pressing issues from their personal lives as well. The player who best juggles those three things – in effect making the best ‘movie’, wins the game.

For now, let’s talk about solving the murder.

At the start of the game, each detective is dealt a guilty and an innocent hunch card. These cards represent your hunches about the case, and for each of your hunches that turns out to be correct, you’ll receive some points at the end of the game.  So, for example, you might receive Mark Henry’s innocent hunch and Vinnie the Strangler’s guilty hunch. If Mark Henry turns out to be innocent, you’ll receive 5 VP. If Vinnie the Strangler turns out to be guilty, you’ll receive 15 VP. It’s possible that you’ll receive both the guilty and the innocent hunch for the same suspect, but that’s okay. It just means that you’re obsessed with that suspect. In that case, if you can prove the suspect not only guilty, but really guilty, then you’ll receive points for both of your hunches, and a small bonus besides.

But how, you may ask, do you prove that a suspect is guilty? Well, to explain that, I’ll have to talk a little bit about the turn structure first. On a player’s turn, he receives a certain amount of Time that he can spend to do things. The two most common actions are moving around the board and following up leads.

Now, if you’ve looked at the pictures of the game map that have been floating around, you may have noticed that there are a number of locations on the map, but only a couple of them are actually connected in any way. So how do you move between unconnected locations? Well, in the world of Android, most non-cargo vehicles fly, so the detectives don’t have to worry about following the roads. Instead, each detective receives a vehicle ruler. These rulers have a picture of the detectives’ vehicles on them and show how far a detective can move by spending 1 Time. Here’s an excerpt from the rulebook explaining how that works.

Ok, that explains how to get around, but what about following up leads? Well, there are three types of lead markers in the game: documentary, physical, and testimonial. These are placed at various locations around the map and represent different types of evidence the detectives can find. Documentary evidence includes paperwork trails, security videos, and so on. Physical evidence includes DNA remnants, footprints, fingerprints, etc. Finally, testimonial evidence includes any testimony given by witnesses. By moving to a lead’s location and spending 1 Time there, a detective can follow up a lead. The lead is then moved by the player on the detective’s right to a new location of the same color while the detective draws a piece of evidence from the evidence pool and places it on a suspect of his choice.

As you might expect, not all evidence is created equal for all suspects. Testimonial evidence is much less effective against Vinnie the Strangler than documentary evidence, for instance. After all, would YOU want to testify against someone named Vinnie the Strangler? To represent this, there are 3 areas on each suspect’s sheet called ‘files’. One for each type of evidence. The evidence type at the top of the sheet is strong against that suspect, while the evidence type at the bottom of the sheet is weak against that suspect. When you follow up a lead, you place the evidence you get from it in the corresponding file on the suspect of your choice (i.e. if you follow up a testimony lead, the evidence from it must go in a suspect’s testimony file).

On top of that, each individual piece of evidence ranges in importance. This is represented by its value, which ranges from –4 to +5 (there are also some special pieces of evidence, but I won’t get into that). The higher the value, the more incriminating the evidence (with negative evidence actually working against the case against a suspect). Since evidence is normally placed facedown on a suspect sheet, this helps the players conceal which suspect they’re trying to convict. Why does that matter? Well, the players can arrange for suspects to be killed, and if a suspect gets bumped off, neither of his corresponding hunches pays off!

At the end of the game, the murderer is the suspect with the highest total value of evidence placed on him. This is modified a bit by strong and weak evidence, as shown in the example from the rulebook below.

Investigating the murder adds an important bluffing element to Android, and provides a framework for everything else that goes on in the game. But the question remains, since you’re controlling where the evidence goes: Are the detectives discovering evidence, or are they planting it? Well, that depends on what you want to believe about your detective. In Android, there’s no easy black and white answer – only shades of grey.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Next time, join me as we piece together the conspiracy behind the scenes...

Fantasy Flight Studios proudly presents the video trailer for Android, a new board game of murder and conspiracy in a dystopian future.
 

Allies are a big part of Cosmic Encounter. Who to invite, who will accept, who you trust not to stab you in the back? The Human is an excellent addition to almost any side. The ability to add 4 to your side's total power can be powerful, but the Human really shines when his side can zap his power. Holding on to a zap until you can invite the Human can pay off big, especially if your opponent drops a 40 card.

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Taking the number three to the limit, the Tripler makes all cards worth 10 or less worth triple their points. Have a hand full of low cards? Not anymore, as the ability applies to every numbered card you have! Beware the counter to the power, as all cards 11 or more will be divided by three. Suddenly that 40 doesn't look so appealing, but the 10 looks excellent!

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