the "bones" were masks... so again.. what are those tokens for... hidden perks for the Raven's Veil mercs?
like you pay your gold to hire the swordsman, I mean "striker" and then turn over a token to see ... oh... extra movement bonus.
maybe like I was saying on the stream that there's a benefit to playing with the Knight (or any hero, it's probably "any hero" like Into the Northlands) the solo quests and you unlock more abilities, like you can pick more perks
or maybe that's the scalable difficulty. like fewer quests completed gets more bonuses to help vs. experienced heroes get less since they brought more with them already (potions, equipment, gold, artifacts)
maybe the token just says "draw X card" or something
alchemy card, equipment, treasure...
Maybe between quests you don't get to freely hire mercs. maybe you just draw random tokens, flip them and that's who is available. of course if there are only five tokens... not a big surprise who you are getting. but one of them might be the "bad guy" and so that's another monster for Zargon to add to the quest
maybe the rooms have asterisks meaning there are variable monsters there. or perhaps Zargon can just put them anywhere
maybe you see a "blip token" of a mask moving around the board and when you see it... it's either a friend you can recruit... or it's the bad guy (the elf with the chain dagger) to fight. Like HispaZargon's idea (from Space Crusade's blip tokens)
all of those homebrew ideas could be used even after we know the real function for them
the caltrops are pretty obvious, since we have those cards explaining. but what's on the other side? could be blank, or the same image, or it might be something else entirely
what other perks could there be? could be anything: Steal enemy weapon, move/hit/move, diagonal strike, ranged attack, healing, discount
move through enemies, extra movement, extra defense/attack/body/mind?
tiles are small though so can't fit much text on them. so it might be as simple as one word or a card symbol
or maybe there's nothing on the reverse side, maybe it's just a counter and the quest book explains what golden Raven Shields, monochrome crescent moons, and domino masks signify. If you were drawing them randomly out of a bag your fingers can tell the difference between the shapes, so it's probably not that
placing them UNDER figures to represent who controls them was my first guess.
seekhasem: That seems likely.
Kurgan: Instead of having a special die, like you roll it and "boom I guess this faction controls that newly revealed figure"
maybe there's a candy tray box inside with a slit in it and you shake the tile out and whatever falls is it? probably not
the crescents would be the hardest to keep from getting stuck
7 moons, 5 suns, 4 masks
4 masks for the 4 raven's veil members. 5 suns for the 4 raven's members plus the chain elf badguy?
there's 8 blue figures
(representing 4 types of enemies... we assume they're always enemies, but we can't know for sure... rarely they could turn good in the EQP)
4 cultists
2 each of she-elves with chains, big armored elf warriors, elf archers, elf swordsmen
3 specters. 1 wraith
wraith is surely a boss, but we've seen big enemies before. the fact that there is only one of it makes me think "boss"
and the image on the cover. it could be a recurring monster for all we know, like the gargoyle
only two statues makes me think furniture.. magical or not
the furniture is probably just cosmetic, other than the "Magical basin" or whatever it is with the fake water. that must be something special
MOTM had no special rules for the elven furniture, and if you put the sets together you would have almost a full set (no torture rack)
the mirrors are probably teleporters... gateways to the "realm of reflection"
what a terrible night to have a curse? or probably just going from Quest 9 to Quest 10 (the familiar two parter like in EQP/BQP)
the entrance/exit doors are self explanatory. I think we'll see returning conventions from the other hero themed packs. but hopefully this time fine tuned a little better so it's not just a slog even for advanced players
The two ornate trap doors I think will just be like the trap doors we've seen before
they can't rely on the players owning anything but the game system. on the other hand "If you own X you can use it" would also seem to be likely. MOTM didn't require anything extra but it invited you to use the alchemist shop cards from other packs and mercs if you had 'em (but could be played without)
the Alchemist Deck they are hinting replaces the Alchemist shop this time. but we've seen gold prices so you can buy those potions (or maybe only the ones from revealed cards? another possible scaling mechanic?). but you could keep any potions you picked up from other packs. but if they let you freely buy you're going to buy the cheapest ones probably
8 dread spells? and we only know 1 (channel dread)
4 mercenary cards (one for each Raven's Veil member)
4 monster cards ? but there are 7 monster types (treating the mirrors of the Elf Archer and Elf Warrior/Swordsman as one type each)
we know at least two of those cards are Elf Archer and Elf Warrior and we've already seen the Specter card
so what's the fourth one? Unless the image isn't literal and there's more than 4. the Wraith might not have a card
Frozen Horror got his own card, Sinestra did not (they ran out of room on the card sheet in '92)
the Frozen Horror's mercs could be good or bad, but they were all on monster cards (with the gold values for when they were mercs)
hard to tell, but only 8 Alchemy cards? I was hoping for 12 at least
We know three of the cards already and one is Heroic Brew (GS Treasure, "Crafted"), Frost Skin (Frozen Horror, 300 gold) and Potion of Dexterity (KK/ROTWL, 300 gold).
if they were just gathering up the alchemist shop potions thus far I'd expect to see 12. the treasure deck has 3 more potions. and then there's the two "equipment" cards they added for the remake game system which were formerly in the EU deck (Holy Water and Potion of Speed)
they might not all be back. and in the blog Doug made it sound like you could still pick whether you bought the old versions you owned between quests
the Knight has his hero card and 3 skills. no changes there. maybe he doesn't get another shortsword and shield card this time (just for fun, since cards don't limit stock of equipment under these rules)
Doug wrote "You will see some old favorite elixirs, but without previous hero limitations. "
so doesn't mean they will all be back. but if there's only 8 that doesn't leave a lot of room for growth
5 unknowns
"When playing an older quest, Zargon can price potions as they are presented in that material or use these new costs if their Dread powers command it."
also from the blog. the "Alchemical Experimentation" wasn't made clear. now we know there's something about "reagents" and "crafting"
what's the meaning of 'reagent'? american heritage dictionary says "A substance used in a chemical reaction to detect, measure, examine, or produce other substances."
this is magic-tech so could be anything but...
but does it automatically change into the option you want? or do you need one card to change the other card into the thing you want? (gotta make a sacrifice... )
combine 2 cards to make one thing?
after all, the heroes do stockpile treasures but not as fast you as might think
let's say there are 10 rooms, that's 10 opportunities for treasure, but you gotta subtract the ones that have a special quest treasure. still, overall, every room will yield 3 treasure cards, and IF it's a potion...
Then again... would a hero have the choice whether to grab an alchemy card instead of a treasure card for searching? is "searching for alchemy" going to be a new action that can be performed on top of the other searches? (making the game longer)
Or is it only in special cases? like the quest notes say you get an alchemy card. or maybe when you search a room with an alchemist bench (and no notes) you get to draw one? or maybe only magical characters get to choose to search for them?
or maybe you get a special magical item that lets you do the special search?
are there any bad alchemy cards? there don't seem to be enough for that if there are only 8
maybe it's not a random draw at all...
Maybe you can take them along on a quest and hopefully find treasure that lets you activate them?
and it's still luck of the draw because the treasure cards will be added all to the deck
but the quest will determine how many searches are possible (usually enough to exhaust the deck of good cards under the old system... every hero gets one treasure search per room). Or maybe bad guys drop them when defeated? "Searching for orc allies" was an extra action added to some quests of the Spirit Queen's Torment
maybe there's some kind of magical item or artifact that lets you generate the alchemist cards
and whichever character has it uses an action to draw one. but you'd think you could get through those 8 cards pretty fast. maybe there is one "bad" card in there to make it more risky. Otherwise you park the wizard (or whomever) in a corner and have him keep cracking at it each turn until he's gotten them all
makes me think of the Japanese version (keep using first aid until everyone is full, even though it takes a looong time)
someone mentioned "Weapon attacks" wording in Heroic Brew... I missed that. so you can't use it unarmed? (bummer)
4 artifacts, with one revealed...
Here of course I am assuming those images of stacked cards we've seen in the pictures of the box contents are literal. Sometimes there are errors (one more or one less card than there really is inside).
