Does anyone have a table with the new cards? Wiki’s was lost and web.archive’s last snapshot is from early June.
I’ve also managed to win easily with a triple Watchful team with Lures/Skins/Flames. Lures/Skins is already a pretty strong combination by themselves, and the Flames’ tolerance reduction helped to win much quicker (one win took only 10 actions).
I’m currently doing quite well with a combination of Teeth and Knuckles (gets stronger as elusiveness increases). Both have dangerous checks, Teeth is good early on while Knuckles gets better later in the round. You do need a decent prep source to support them, as Knuckles needs 5 prep to be usable and neither have any options to give preparations.
Yeah I am winning right now with similar team. Ribs + Knuckles (Dangerous outfit) and Skins. It would work without Skins, but it will take 2 more actions to get to 5 prep.
Anyone have any idea how tolerance reduction shapes up compared to “scales with elusiveness”? It seems to me that tolerance is not a big issue in this season.
I have used these options with 6 elusiveness and 6 tolerance, they give good amount of progress. I think Knuckles is strong and worth taking in many teams
Tolerance reduction is very strong too, keep it at 0 and even weakest cards provide good amount of progress.
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My first draw was a useless team that I got rid of, but then I got spines/gambits/skins, kill in 7 moves.
Roots still pretty good, my first team was roots/lures/tallow and it was mostly no-skills no-prep, with occasional one-prep actions from tallow, used on either root cards (if I got 2-3 prep) or with lures. The team wasn’t great but it did ok. I had 1 loss and 7 wins, but 2 of those 7 were on the last possible turn (elusiveness got to 8 at the same time as progress did) so it wasn’t very efficient. It feels like this was a very inefficient version of this strategy and it still got wins so either better no-prep options or better ways of gaining prep would make this into easy wins rather than close ones.
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Wait, the targets are volunteers?
The Shames in the basement are certainly shedding some minor, incomplete light on what the heck is going on. The idea that they are volunteers is, I believe, posited in early seasons but now confirmed. I’ll add my own speculation.
One of the defining parts of Hearts’ character is his quest for immortality (a capital-T Treachery), as also seen in Skies (under his other alias). I think the Shames we see are part of that. It certainly informs his dialogue, about flesh vs rust. But also I think when the targets die permanently, he’s disappointed because it’s a failure in his work towards that goal.
This also provides a possibility for the targets’ motivation: they are test subjects for some sort of immortality experiment. They are allowing themselves to be transformed, in an as-yet-indefinite way in a manner which, if it woks, will much benefit them. At the cost of having to test whether it works or not. I can imagine there would be takers.
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And perhaps we will soon see more of those implications, as it does say that more shames will accrue in new seasons! Which also gives a good incentive to play every season other than the vanity medals.
The fact that they can die permanently from what seems to be just a light poisoning shows that perhaps it’s actually a permadeath poison being used, in tiny doses or some admixture.
It is honey laced with Cantigaster venom, which is permadeath inducing, and very dangerous even in tiny doses as the Cheery Man shows.
Yeah, I always wondered about the coup de grace text, because I had thought that cantigaster venom was unsurvivable even in minute doses, but I haven’t been racking up loads of bringer of death ranks here or anything.
Dosis sola facit venenum.
Cute, but I did specifically say “even in minute doses”. In fact the core substance of that proverb is rather the opposite of this case, suggesting that even ostensibly benign things are harmful in excess.
John Schmit already cited the Cheery Man, who survived a dose. If even a drop of Cantigaster Venom can be lethal, you can always dilute the drop.
Oh yes, that’s true, he did survive some exposure. Half a drop, wasn’t it?
When I read that post I just thought of certain events that take place during play, rather than before.
Is perhaps the honey doing something extra here?
Like, partially transposing the death into parabola, where a person’s will has more to say about whether they live or die?
Rather than being mere dilution…
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Is it perhaps … red honey?
That already has transfigurative properties, or at least certain batches did, whether by design or by accident.
Have to say King of Knuckles is the first king-type character I’ve genuinely considered OP and not a massive liability. Being able to treat Elusiveness like a “secondary resource” is really good because it lets me mess around with ~75% chance progress cards up to the halfway point-and then whenever I start rolling badly, as long as my Dangerous can cover Knuckles’ costs I can easily overshoot to victory.