Along with the new Minions rules I am also changing a number of spells that are confusing for new players. Also, now that players are no longer eliminated I am trying to make the spells more violent and “Life” altering, while sticking closely to the Tarot theme (so that I don’t have to re-do any of the artwork).
Renewal
Return all dragons back to their starting positions, facing directions of your choice. Shuffle the discard into the draw pile. Take all player’s hands face down, shuffle them together, and deal them out clockwise, starting with yourself.
Wanting to do something more potent with the card based on Wheel of Fortune (see below) I decided to turn this card into the ultimate reset by combining the old Upheaval spell (shuffle all players hands together and deal them out) with this spell’s original text. Since we generally play through the deck a few times each game anyway, it doesn’t make sense to have more than one “reset” style card.
Wheel of Life (formerly known as Upheaval)
All players pass one life card left or right, your choice. Players replace their old life card with the new one, face up or down, whichever the old one was. No life stones are exchanged.
I found the original spell for this card and saw that it was once much more powerful, directly influencing the Life cards themselves, so I decided to give it a shot and see how something like the old spell worked in this new multi-player environment.
Reckoning
Cast only at the beginning of your turn. Forfeit all movement. Attack each of your opponents as if you had landed on their dot. Follow normal combat sequence.
The 2.1 version of this spell was pretty mediocre when compared to Teleport, which was a far more versatile card that could be used offensively, defensively, and even put you into the position to attack multiple dragons and fly away to safety, whereas Reckoning just gave you a single attack and left you a sitting duck. The new spell has clearer wording, “Forfeit all movement” and “follow normal combat sequence” and is far more potent in multi-player games.
Foresee
Keep this card face up in front of you until it is removed by another spell. At any time you may use it to look at the top card of the draw pile, except when a player is in the process of drawing a new hand.
When hands were only 4 cards, being able to access the next 6 cards let you manipulate the next 1 1/2 hands. When hands became 5 cards this spell lost a lot. The new spell in early playtesting has a delightful “constantly cheating” feel to it.
Temperance (formerly known as Cache)
Gain 1 life. Do 1 damage to a dragon of your choice. Select one the following: discard a card or draw a card.
Cache was a confusing little card or moderate power. It did let you snag the best 2 of the next 3 cards, but in a game where all you have to do to get a new hand is play all your cards, I’m finding the hard manipulation cards to be less interesting. The damage and healing aspects of the new spell are fairly obvious, the remaining hand manipulation options are more interesting. The ability to discard in this game can be is extremely useful for flushing those 3s and 4s out of your hand, and the ability to draw a card as a Bolt can pull you that vital combat spell to use in defense, or when attacking.
Psychic Whip, Cauldron spell (formerly known as Paralyze, a Bolt spell)
Force a dragon to move 1 or 2 dots closer to you (flying forwards or backwards) and do 1 damage to that dragon. Or, if a dragon was on your dot at the start of your turn do 3 damage to that dragon.
Being the victim of a Paralyze spell just plain sucked in multi-player. Individual turns are longer, with more dragons to encounter, and there are more turns to wait through until your next. Given the distinct unpleasantness of this card, and my desire to make the spells more violent, I came up with this “whip” concept, that both moves and damages an opponent. Details are still being playtested and worked out (I just added the on-your-dot condition).
Lightning Tower
Place face up inside one of the 7 circles on the board (you may move the draw or discard pile). When cast, any dragon on a dot bordering that circle takes 1 damage. Place 1 life stone on the dot of each damaged dragon. Any dragon moving onto a dot with 1 or more life stones is turn around 180°. This spell and the life stones remain until removed by the Blank spell.
Update 2: Charged Lightning was looking too much like an annoying little brother of Firestorm, so I’m removing this line: Any dragon ending their turn on one of those dots takes 1 damage.
and replacing it with, big surprise, the “whirlwind” inspired text above (see previous update).
Update: Here’s one idea that I had, but I’m still accepting suggestions. My thought was to get the board itself involved in a spell. There used to be ghost ships, whirlwinds, and other fun spells that engaged the movement system, which I think is one of the strengths of the game. Oh man, I just remembered how cool the Whirlwind spell used to be, maybe it should make an appearance. It basically created two permanent Wingovers placed on two dots. It was over-powered in that you could surround your opponent with them and fly in to attack them like 5 times, but the concept was cool.
Original Post: I haven’t decided exactly what this will do yet, only that it will change. The existing card is difficult to understand, often forgotten, and rarely actually “goes off” before somebody casts Blank.
I’m open to suggestions on this one. The spell should be inspired by the artwork, which is based on traditional artwork for the Tower card in the Tarot deck. Here are some keywords that might get you started: destruction, lightning, storm, tearing down.
