He’s called the King of Spines because he carries the team on his back.
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As someone fortunate to snag him for my monthly game run, can confirm.
I’ve found King of Motley and Roses and good combination, as long as you have the prep to carry them. Two months in a row a Motley team with both them and Skins has been devestating. Could have been better with the fool this month, but focusing on companions that use one of the four main stats, then building as large as I can seems to work.
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At last, I draw him and a team to get another king distinction! I got the last season wins only with knights and I forgot how hard can Spines hit. Really hard and Cod makes things easier.
As a reminder to everyone that has all distinctions: hoard 1000 tokens for September to get the two new items!
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Love that you don’t need score a win to get tokens! Mindless clicking is “fun” and helps waste AP when too busy on the Surface.
Now I just need some time for at least more ES from my backlog!
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Yeah, the fact that even losing gets the same profit really defrays potential annoyance from bad draft draws. Hearts’ game would be pretty frustrating if you didn’t make money when you got a bad set of accomplices.
Got myself the distinction of Kings with the Fool of Audacities, the Priest of Briars and the King of Ambivalences. Strange team, but some good luck and the combo of two Aces with Ambivalences’ card pulled me through.
I also was able to snag Motley’s distinction after drafting him for the first time after all this time. It was really fun (and chaotic) playing with 15 accomplices, and I got carried both by Motley and the Page of Gambits. Overall, I like that even if you may be inclined to just search for Motley, when you do not pull him, it becomes a matter of optimizing some other non-ideal course of action.
Now I am sitting at 638 exploits after acquiring Mr Hearts’ Nod, so I will grab the new distinction in September and turn a new Page.
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The season of Devotion has ended.
The time has finally come to collect the very last Gifts from Mr Hearts. At least for the veteran poisoners among us 
.
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RNG and forgetting to switch outfits ended in an abrupt failure! 
But yes, we are “free” from it.
I don’t expect any use of those items for at least 1 year or so though.
Easy victory again with Spines + Skins and Ribs trundling along. Got mah sapling and mah book. Pretty interesting snippets of text I have to admit. Hope I will never be held by time gate again.
There we go, nice and easy with Spines (once again), Audacity, and Skin.
I won’t be touching this again anytime soon, but it is good fun.
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Sixteen months and twenty accomplices later, my final team is exactly the same as my first one: Spines, Livers, Talons. We had the final word: lead totally is a poison.
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Squeaked out a Motley victory. It was my first team attempt and it wasn’t great. I started with Spines… but then there were no good prep accomplices offered the second pick, so I got a priest… and then there were no good prep accomplices offered the third pick either, but there was Motley so I picked him to rescue the run, picked up a clown car. Still didn’t have enough prep accomplices at the end, had to occasionally deal with playing bad options early in a run just to cycle cards to get to the prep cards, but it was enough to squeak out 7 wins.
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It’s a bit annoying that we keep getting Dangerous/KT weapons, how many does a person need? I would love some KT with other stats!
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Indeed. This last item could have been watchful and KT, or why not dangerous and watchful and KT (gasp).
I’m hoping for some later action unlock to differentiate them though, especially considering the text you get when receiving them (planting the sapling somewhere? And the super mega secret and esoteric book…).
Otherwise, quite disappointing indeed…
On another positive note, I enjoy very much Heart’s Game :) there’s a nice balance of tactic and RNG to keep things entertaining, and whole avenues of potential development, mechanical or lore-wise.
Happy poisoning to everybody!
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While the first one, Venom, was Fate locked!
Damn, gotta love these pictures! 
While on the lore subject, what/where do you think we’ll use/plant the sapling?
Not if you’ve got a Hellworm, I’ve gotten 3 venoms so far! 
I guess the Inerrant does make the book a little more special, at least, but honestly, I’m not convinced yet that the new 3 stats are ever going to be as valuable as the old advanced ones, I assume they’ll get more uses going forward, but there’s so many core endgame activities (bone market, cover identities, parabola, etc) that don’t use them that it’d take years and years to catch up, so they haven’t really felt very satisfying to acquire for me. For an item that took such a huge amount of time and effort to achieve, I definitely would have expected something a little more…whelming, at a minimum.
In general, I’ve been finding the new items from festivals and big accomplishments pretty unimpressive this year, I wonder if they decided they were being too free with equipment upgrades in the last few years; some of the prior Estivals, especially, felt like avalanches of awesome equipment to me. I can understand worrying about BiS inflation, but just some different combos of Main Stat/Advanced Stat, without any one main or advanced stat being a new BiS itself, would feel more rewarding than resting primarily on Inerr/Insub/Nthprf or menace reduction, imo.
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Oh, speaking of the tree, I appear not to have saved the text we got upon receiving it, could someone link me to it? I’d assumed at the time it was just flavour, not a genuine suggestion that we’d get an opportunity to plant it down the road, but now that people are suggesting otherwise I’d like to reread.
I have enough to dwarf Jack-of-Smiles killing spree. But of course we will never be allowed to use it freely.
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