New Novella!

[Duciris 1,347]

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/1/9/the-blood-of-baalshandor/

New novella & Dexter Drake!!!

Same author as Ire of the Void, which I very much enjoyed!

Quote

 April of 2020

 

Edited January 9 by Duciris

[Duciris 1,347]

 

All three pieces of art are phenomenal.

Edited January 9 by Duciris

[phillos 1,518]

so it was Molly as his signature asset.  Awesome.  Her ability is very interesting.  More useful than Arcane Initiate, but with more of a downside potentially since she could reveal weaknesses and she will eventually drive herself insane without healing.

I like that Dexter gets an asset discount considering mystics are asset heavy usually and he can do it as a free action. That makes an asset heavy deck much easier to play without losing too much tempo.  Interesting that it needs to be a different asset than the one discarded.  I guess Molly can help you fetch stuff.  So maybe the most optimal strategy is alot of singleton spells in Dexter decks.

The free action for playing assets seems really good considering he can reactively put a weapon in hand to attack rather than dodge or take an attack of opportunity.  He could throw Mists up to dodge and move all for 1 action.  Pretty snazzy.  He doesn't need to prepare his board other than prime it with at least one asset.  He does need to prepare his hand with options.

3 combat means Enchanted Blade is not terrible for him so he could use his spell slots for more utility spells and to help investigation.

Edited January 9 by phillos

[CSerpent 520]

9 minutes ago, phillos said:

 but with more of a downside potentially since she could reveal weaknesses

I don't think that's true.  Despite the name, Revelation abilities trigger on draws, not reveals.

If a weakness had the trait you were looking for, yeah, but Arcane Initiate does that as well.

Edited January 9 by CSerpent

[Allonym 954]

Would it be churlish of me to call the reveal of Dexter's stats and signatures disappointing? Even boring?

You could do some interesting plays with his ability, and his deckbuilding might be interesting, but really he seems like a very middle-of-the-road Mystic - not really any more interesting than Akachi, and has a very similar statline (just 1 less Agility). High willpower, an ability that mostly just means "you're better at subbing in new Mystic assets" and with a "normal" statline (total 12 Abilities, total 14 health/sanity) which usually indicates a pretty normal deckbuilding (I wouldn't be surprised by 0-5 Mystic, 0-2 Rogue). And why does he have only 2 Agility? He's a stage magician, performing sleight of hand, escape artistry, and so on.

The signature asset is really cool, she can do a lot of fun stuff and make for a great "dig for a solution" mechanic as well as some nice "magic" flavour and rewarding you for knowledge of your deck. However, if he is 0-2 Rogue, she won't see much play because Dexter will already have Leo de Luca and Dario el-Amin to fill up his Ally slot(s).

The signature weakness is really boring. Turns off your ability to play assets or use your ability, two actions to get rid of it. Absolutely phoned in. And given that it seems to be an eldritch curse and possibly a living entity, it's even worse. Compare to like, To Fight The Black Wind or Dreams of the Deep, which are really creative bits of design.

I dunno, y'all. I am completely uninspired by this design. Seems like "just another Mystic with a gimmick", like Akachi and Agnes and Jim and Mateo, all of whom are more or less "Do the Mystic thing, and maybe lean into your ability a bit". Maybe it's because the three most recent Mystics have been far more interesting, with Luke and his utterly unique playstyle and signatures, Diana and her various unique and fascinating playstyles and control focus and ability to play without using the standard spells, and even Marie and her statline that allows you to play without just relying on Mystic spells.

There was the possibility to do something very different and it seems to have been wasted. But who knows, maybe his deckbuilding will turn out to be far more interesting than I thought.

[CSerpent 520]

@Allonym, that's all fair, but I think we're never going to get the more unique investigators in the novels as long as they're doing the Replacement thing.  Diana and Luke are tightly bound to their signatures and would take a serious overhaul to create Replacements for.

[Allonym 954]

Just now, CSerpent said:

@Allonym, that's all fair, but I think we're never going to get the more unique investigators in the novels as long as they're doing the Replacement thing.  Diana and Luke are tightly bound to their signatures and would take a serious overhaul to create Replacements for.

Hmmm...I don't agree. Certainly, it would be hard to do so for an investigator who is built around their signature cards, but Silas, Carolyn and Norman, the three Novella investigators who were not available any other way upon release (with only Carolyn since being released elsewhere), are all extremely unconventional, fascinating pieces of investigator design.

That said, much of what makes Norman's design interesting wasn't clear until we knew his deckbuilding (his Replacement signatures are, after all, very pedestrian). So perhaps time will tell. I somehow doubt it, though.

 

[Soakman 987]

I do think it was smart not to go for an overly escape artist build though. At this point I really do not think anyone will be able to out escape artist Luke without verging on broken. I do find his design a bit uninspired but it’ll at least maybe offer new synergies with mystic rogue? Not having a reliance on events and a will of 5 assures he’ll build much differently than Sefina.

Edited January 9 by Soakman

[phillos 1,518]

1 hour ago, CSerpent said:

I don't think that's true.  Despite the name, Revelation abilities trigger on draws, not reveals.

If a weakness had a trait you were looking for, yeah, but Arcane Initiate does that as well.

Maybe not the best parsing of rules language on their part unfortunately.  That's interesting.  How many cards actually tell you to Reveal cards from the player deck rather than Draw or Search?  I feel like this hasn't come up much.  Certainly Norman has effects that "reveal" cards and he has a forced effect that makes you draw weaknesses revealed in this way so that should have been my clue.  Molly seems like a very specifically worded effect.  I guess they didn't want her to have the flexibility of a search x cards effect.  Also I guess Molly and Mandy will never be friends.

Just like Marie and Preston, I feel Dexter will make more sense once he gets more cards printed with his abilities in mind.  Right now he feels like he wants to be a toolbox asset deck.  One that reactively plays assets rather than waste time playing assets down he doesn't need.  While that isn't Preston or Carolyn level different I do think he has his own identity.  The closest he comes to is Akachi and she has very restrictive deckbuilding and a restrictive ability.  We have yet to see Dexter's deckbuilding rules, but it feels likely it will be some flavor of rogue cards as a splash.  It would be interesting if it was something unexpected though like all item and spell assets level 2 or lower or something like that.  That way he's have access to more generically useful cheap assets to prime his investigator card ability.  Also more diversity to make Molly's fetch ability more powerful.  I think if you wanna make him feel unique and interesting compared to other Mystics you really gotta figure out how to lean into that ability such that you are leveraging it every turn.  If you do that I honestly don't think we have a Mystic that plays that way.  Akachi like assets, but ones with charges.  Also she's not getting the action compression and flexibility Dexter is getting with his ability.

Also I don't think every investigator needs to be a revolutionary design that shakes up the way we are playing.  As long as they are fun and thematic to play I put that in the win column. 

Edited January 9 by phillos

[KBlumhardt 378]

1 hour ago, phillos said:

Maybe not the best parsing of rules language on their part unfortunately.  That's interesting.  How many cards actually tell you to Reveal cards from the player deck rather than Draw or Search?  I feel like this hasn't come up much.  Certainly Norman has effects that "reveal" cards and he has a forced effect that makes you draw weaknesses revealed in this way so that should have been my clue.  Molly seems like a very specifically worded effect.  I guess they didn't want her to have the flexibility of a search x cards effect.  Also I guess Molly and Mandy will never be friends.

The rules are perfectly clear on this one.  From page 18 of the Rules Reference, under 'Revelation':

"When a weakness card enters an investigator’s hand, that investigator must immediately resolve all revelation abilities on the card as if it were just drawn."

I understand the confusion due to the similarity of the words 'reveal' and 'revelation', but there's no issue of rules language that I see here.

Edited January 9 by KBlumhardt

[CSerpent 520]

1 minute ago, KBlumhardt said:

The rules are perfectly clear on this one.  From page 18 of the Rules Reference, under 'Revelation':

"When a weakness card enters an investigator’s hand, that investigator must immediately resolve all revelation abilities on the card as if it were just drawn."

Yes, but having "Revelation" not trigger when a card is "revealed" was a poor choice of terminology.

[KBlumhardt 378]

2 minutes ago, CSerpent said:

Yes, but having "Revelation" not trigger when a card is "revealed" was a poor choice of terminology.

Again, I understand the confusion... but the rules for the Revelation keyword are pretty brief and very straightforward:

  - 'Revelation' Encounter cards trigger when drawn.

 - 'Revelation' Weakness cards trigger when they enter the Investigator's hand.

 

Edited January 9 by KBlumhardt

[phillos 1,518]

12 minutes ago, KBlumhardt said:

The rules are perfectly clear on this one.  From page 18 of the Rules Reference, under 'Revelation':

"When a weakness card enters an investigator’s hand, that investigator must immediately resolve all revelation abilities on the card as if it were just drawn."

I understand the confusion due to the similarity of the words 'reveal' and 'revelation', but there's no issue of rules language that I see here.

Not an issue with the rules language.  I took exception with the language they chose to use with the rules.  It's a nuanced complaint.  Sorry if I wasn't being clear.  I wasn't asking for a ruling or anything.

Edited January 9 by phillos

[KBlumhardt 378]

2 minutes ago, phillos said:

Not an issue with the rules language.  I took exception with the language they chose to use with the rules.  It's a nuanced complaint.  Sorry if I wasn't being clear.  I wasn't asking for a ruling or anything.

They certainly could have come up with a different keyword than 'Revelation' or a different way to go through a deck than to 'reveal' cards (maybe 'flip'?), yeah...

Edited January 9 by KBlumhardt

[Buhallin 4,563]

Not every investigator can or should be something off the wall like Luke.  Mystics are always going to be dependent on their spells, so more that focus on managing spells in different ways are a natural bit of variety, and "fundamental" is not necessarily the same thing as "boring".

And from that point of view I think he's going to be very interesting.  He'll be able to shift back and forth between different spells very well, keeping them charged by replacing them at will.  Based on that I'd actually be surprised if he ends up being Rogue - the big limitation there is going to be resources, and giving him access to Rogue's income will remove the one constraint he really has.  I'd actually think Akachi's deckbuilding would suit him well, though I doubt they'll duplicate it.  Probably a version of Mandy or Tony's limited 0-1 choices.  Especially since he can do incredible things with assets I have a hard time seeing him getting full 0-2 access to another class's cards.

[phillos 1,518]

This is the first time we do this particular action I think on Molly.  Doing a quick search it looks like most of the time we draw, look at or search cards in our player deck.  Somehow I didn't question it with Norman's Reveal ability, but he tells you exactly what to do if you hit a weakness.  So I guess that cut me off at the pass before I could get confused.

Add:  There's an argument to say he also fits with a Seeker's motivation since he's looking for knowledge.  So maybe he'll have something like Finn's 5 other level 0 Seeker or Rogue cards and then some trait like Tome, Spell or Trick cards 0-5.  I could also see them doing Dexter like they did Mandy or Tony.  We didn't get a Mystic version of that yet though they target events and a Dexter deck probably doesn't want to have a ton of events preventing him from playing an asset a turn.  Also maybe he'll key off a seemingly worthless keyword like Mateo and Marie did when they first came out.  Something like include Prop cards level 0-5.  That would make me laugh.

Edited January 9 by phillos

[Iuchi Toshimo 230]

We can always ask Molly to find a Curse or Pact and just choose when we want to take care of this weakness (provided it's the only one of those.)

Molly isn't a search so there's no Astonishing Revelations or other research.

Molly is definitely the most interesting part of this package.

I'm waiting for deckbuilding options before judging Dexter himself.

That weakness is disappointing design.

[KBlumhardt 378]

1 minute ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

We can always ask Molly to find a Curse or Pact and just choose when we want to take care of this weakness (provided it's the only one of those.)

Molly isn't a search so there's no Astonishing Revelations or other research.

Molly is definitely the most interesting part of this package.

I'm waiting for deckbuilding options before judging Dexter himself.

That weakness is disappointing design.

I thought the same thing, in regards to searching out the weaknesses when I first saw her... unfortunately, it doesn't work.  Molly only grabs assets.

[Iuchi Toshimo 230]

2 minutes ago, KBlumhardt said:

I thought the same thing, in regards to searching out the weaknesses when I first saw her... unfortunately, it doesn't work.  Molly only grabs assets.

Nice catch, ty.

[phillos 1,518]

I agree the weakness is pretty uninteresting, but it's also the replacement weakness and it's relatively easy to deal with considering a 2 action tax on an investigator with action compression isn't the end of the world.  That means if his primary weakness is horrific at least we always have this to swap to make him a bit easier.

Maybe his primary weakness will be an asset.  Something that forces it's way into asset slots like his spell slots or something.  Molly would certainly save the day in that scenario.

[CSerpent 520]

1 hour ago, phillos said:

Maybe his primary weakness will be an asset.  Something that forces it's way into asset slots like his spell slots or something.  Molly would certainly save the day in that scenario.

Ooo, that seems likely.  Maybe it will be a double Arcane slot holder, which we still haven't seen despite it being in the rule book.

[Spritz Tea 39]

I could imagine building around Molly: A toolbox style deck with one-of copies of assets that are ordinarily too situational to make the cut. Clarity of Mind? Mists of Releh? And a Calling in Favors package, with Renfield perhaps, to find her and/or refresh her horror. Edit: Actually you need assets with unique traits, which makes it much more difficult.

Edit 2: Actual one-of asset ideas: Bulletproof Vest Armor - you don't need damage soak until you do, and then you really need it. Four of Cups Tarot - the second copy is a dead card. Fine Clothes Clothing - Sometimes you turn up to a party underdressed.

Yaztaroth has fantastic art. Its text reads like it was a rejected design for a core set basic weakness.

I wonder if Dexter is going to want to run Switch Blade to fast play a spell when there's nothing in play he wants to discard. Or, if he doesn't have Rogue access, have we finally found a use for Grounded? (Probably not.)

Edited January 10 by Spritz Tea
Remembering what the cards I want to discuss actually do is helpful.

[Faranim 63]

I would think his actual signature Asset would be a Sword-Cane of some sort.  Especially considering the 3 Combat stat and its presence in the Arkham 3rd edition board game.

It will be very interesting to see which (if any) Fast Assets Dexter will have access to in his deckbuilding rules.  Within the Mystic card pool, there's just Sign Magick right now (oh, and the various Composure assets).  But if he has access to Joey the Rat, Fence, or any other source of Fast assets, he can potentially build up his tableau without spending any actions at all (assuming he has the economy to pay for it).

Even in the current card pool, combos like Alchemical Transmutation + Torrent of Power are quite good for Dexter.  It does feel very similar to how you might build Akachi, without needing to get Spirit-Speaker into play first.

[cheapmate 182]

Novella investigator art continues to be excellent

[DarkFate 70]

How interesting he is will depends on his deck building restrictions. If he is a seeker secondary, he could make use of the various allies with come into play ability. Survivor wise has a lot of cheap assets to abuse. Rogue will be making use of fast and/or illicit assets to save on actions. Can't think of anything for guardian except maybe he can trade ammo-less guns for something more useful.

In any case, he will have a good way to get rid of arcane initiate and get a discount for his battery-less torchlight.