FissureVerse: 8 More Refreshed Cards

Yet eight more refreshed cards! The train keeps on rollin'...

Click to see bigger if you wanna.

Twister loses the funny way I put the text in the previous version (looking like a twister itself), but it gains clarity in the picture, and now you can see a lot better that there's two little people huddled by the twister! Also, I reduced the Endurance stat on it by one. I think of the rules text as a good thing for Red and a bad thing for his opponent, although there are particular circumstances where it would be beneficial for the Opponent to discard a card. In any case, the total of an average card with no flavor text is eight (Servants, for instance), so I usually lower the stats on a Crusader with a good bonus. This probably won't hold true forever, especially with some rules being subjective in how good they are, and not all the stats are quite created equal in the first place (you'd want to avoid Killing when you can, and be very careful when Tormenting).

Originally special rules text that made you pay attention in odd instances had the text color altered, so since Starving requires players to play attention when Enlisting, the text color was green. The text color might not be noticeable to color-blind players, it looked ugly, and green is a faction color, so there was plenty to be confused about. I didn't want to have a keyword like Magic: The Gathering does for common rules, so I've instead opted for a new icon. The icon on Starving in the rules text shows a card being drawn off a deck, which is precisely what Enlistment is, so it works. Hopefully the icon is large enough to catch a player's attention, but playtesting will see to that.

With the Fishes and Path of the Righteous get simple refreshes. Nothing to report except that I'm happy Location card art gets so much more room to shine.

Similarly, Prophet of Prophets gets a new icon for when to pay attention to it. Originally red text meant to pay attention during a Crusade, so now I've made that a winged sword. Crusades, like Rogations, are kind of difficult to come up with an icon for, so hopefully that makes sense. I also upped the Endurance stat of Prophet of Prophets by one. I think it's important to give the card a hair of longevity if you're going to try to play it, so giving it a chance to survive a round is important, at least long enough for a Frenzy to get stuck on it.

Earthlings was quite difficult to get the text just right (and I don't think it is; it's pretty clumsy, much like this sentence). I opted to remove the Solidity icon from the special rules and just put the word 'Solidity' instead. This card is also particularly tough to balance. A card that becomes more powerful in another player's Field is a tricky card to even desire to play, but I kind of think I want that to be a theme of Yellow, in fact that already is the theme of Yellow on other cards. Crusaders actively flee Yellow, and thematically, and in a story sense, that's pretty neat. But we'll see how playability factors into things.

Dichotomous and Cavernous get simple refreshes. I feel like Dichotomous is particularly powerful, and Cavernous is particularly weak, but I guess it all depends on the Frenzy that gets used with it. I can't wait to playtest this stuff.