Settlement Events 5#: You've Been a Bad, Bad Card (Patreon)

While, not as (potentially) settlement destroying as the Ugly cards and also not as prone to turning new players away from the game - the Bad cards still negatively impact on your settlement, but in a more fair manner. You can usually take the lumps that these cards deal out on the chin without too much of a soul destroying experience.

The game needs some rough patches, otherwise the way that showdowns are so strongly slanted towards survivor victory would mean that the games would always devolve into a rofflestomp of the monster once gear concerns were under control. These cards are bad news, but they are fair. 

 Skull Eater

Threat Rating: Varying between ✰★★★★ and ✰✰✰★★  

Initial Impact: "But Fen, Skull Eater causes Murders to happen in your settlement, that's really bad! Hey everyone look what Fen wrote, they think that Skull Eater is just a 'bad news' card. It's way worse."

Facetiousness aside. Skull Eater is a pretty okay card. The worst result is that 1-2, but one should have sufficient mitigation to be able to reroll that (you did pick SotF right?) 3-7 causes murder to turn up the following year, but Murder when you have advance warning of it happening is not as bad. In addition the freshly created Marrow Hunger survivor can be either the murderer or the murder target if you want. 8-9 &10 all read "Do you want to tutor Murder for some beneficial effects? No then you can cancel it).

Lingering Effects: Nothing much, except a change to a survivor and possible impending Murder. Honestly if this was the only way Murder got introduced to the settlement, I'd be fine with it. #MakeMurderATimelineEventOnly

Mitigation Strategies: Rotate your hunters, I can't stress this enough people. You should not be running the same 4 survivor out every single hunt, at a minimum you should be rotating 2 of them per showdown and spreading out your hunt XP & Proficiency gains. Think of the settlement development, prioritize that over individual survivors, it is how the game is designed to be played and it is the best way to play with cards like this and not get crushed by them. 

Also get Giant's Blood and slap it on your sculpture, that works too. 

Never. Put. All. Your. Eggs. In. Four. Hunters.

Rivalry

Threat Rating: Varying between ✰★★★★ and ✰✰✰✰✰ 

Initial Impact: So this one can be kind of a big ooof, especially if you are still on the 'all my eggs in one basket' strategy. The major issue that causes this is the 4-8 roll, which for some inexplicable reason is the worst roll on the table but is not the lowest numbers (bucking the usual trend for Monster's tables). The 1-3 forces your two survivors to not depart to the next showdown (which is fine) and the 9-10 is +1 understanding and survival.

However, that 4-8 is slamming not just a return of rivalry the following year, but it is also inflicting a gaping chest wound on one of the two survivors. That's -1 permanent strength to a Hunter with a 50% chance the following year that it'll repeat. It can be a very poor situation to be in, because while Strength is not a major important stat for survivors (gear makes up most of your strength), the margins between reasonable successes on wound rolls and failures are often 1-2 points of strength. So this threatens to burn through your settlement for years and years to come. You can, of course, mitigate the serious injury if the survivor who suffers it happens to be carrying Dried Acanthus, but that is not a viable strategy due to the randomness of who gets into the rivalry and who is injured.

Lingering Effects: For two endevours, one can have the two rivals duel it out. Now the aim here is to remove Rivalry from the timeline, but this is also an opportunity to innovate Partnership for free. If you are playing with Till Death Do Us Part, then Partnership is an incredibly powerful innovation that provides huge benefits (Especially Enduring Legacy). 

If you are aiming for this, you should be aware that the odds are not in your favor, 20% of the time both survivors will die, 60% of the time one of them will randomly die and the other gains +1 strength and just 20% of the time will you get Partnership for free (and they will both become partners, which is great!) Still, as you can see, even with OWL's +1 these odds are not good, so unless you are willing to invest in rerolls, or you don't care about the two survivors involved in the rivalry (say because they were going to retire anyway, or they were sent out as sacrifice fodder because Rivalry is now on your timeline) then you'll probably pass on this one.

Mitigation Strategies: Just like so many of these events, if you are rotating hunters in a regular fashion and avoiding having just 4 with all the hunt XP/Proficiency then this event is nowhere near as bad as it is for an 'all eggs, one basket' player. 

However, if Rivalry is on your timeline, you can plan to remove it with minimal damage by taking 4x Plebs out on the next hunt, because most power comes from gear, Plebs are capable at hunting (though you may want to scale back on the monster difficulty to be safe if you're not confident in them without personal bonuses/fighting arts). When they return, two of them will fight and you can just slam the Duel without much concern for their safety. They'll either die, become Janitors or succeed and get Partnered up! It's a similar strategy to the method used to mitigate the worst of the Hooded Stranger (and another reason why deep population numbers are very important for success).

Outside of that, like most tables the best mitigation is Otherwordly Luck (OWL) and Lifetime Rerolls. 

Glossolalia

Threat Rating:  ✰✰✰✰★  (unless you are in desperate need to endeavor for say, population, then it is crippling).

Initial Impact: Right off the bat this Settlement Event allows you to choose who is going to be responsible for this (and suffer the possible negative), if you can - you should choose someone who cannot encourage anyway, either a survivor with a Shattered Jaw or you can pick someone with some Understanding in the hopes of gaining the 8+ result.  

The worst result is -3 endeavors, that's quite a bad situation (30%) for any settlement, but the situation is not so bad if you've been concentrating on population gains and have Collective Toil (plus Cooking). Endless Babble is no issue at all in People of the Sun (or if you have a broken jaw or do not hunt).

It's also not a large issue if you have Fist & Tooth Mastery, in fact this ability is a decent trade off for a Hunter. 

Lingering Effects: This is the part that can cause issues, unless you have rolled an 8+ on the table, all Science and Education endeavors are disabled for the year. There is some good, useful stuff in amongst those innovations, but if you don't have them or use them, then it's not a problem. Overall what Glossolalia tends to do is mess with your ability to endeavor, that is annoying, but not often dangerous.

Of the two bonus endeavors on the event, Automatic Writing is... okay. Nothing to write home about really, but if you didn't lose 3 endeavors when the event hit, you might use this because Crazed is... fine. There are some Perfect hit builds that benefit from it, but it is a fighting art with low power.

Deep Listen is not something you would use most of the time, while movement is exceedingly powerful, paying 2 resources on top of the endeavor is a pass for the average settlement, it's just the 1%ers who would consider investing in this, and mostly for tough/problematic nemesis fights. So because you don't have much control over when this event happens, you'll need to judge how useful +1 movement will be for the upcoming fight. There are certain monsters (such as The Butcher) where it can allow for easy Dash Cancelling of their attacks, but others where it is probably useless. I'd advise taking a moment, testing out how +1 movement works on the board vs. your next monster opponent and seeing if a Dash would cause the monster to be out of range when you have that extra point.

Mitigation Strategies: Relatively basic, ensure you have access to the table roll mitigation abilities if possible. get Collective Toil + Cooking and keep your population high enough that being caught without many endeavors for one lantern year isn't crippling. 

Acid Storm

Threat Rating:  ✰★★★★

Initial Impact: Anything that can cause gear to get archived is a threat to be taken seriously, the fortunate part of this 10% chance is that each returning survivor gets to choose what is lost, but every single survivor loses something. 40% of the time the most insane survivor must skip the next hunt (no big deal) and 50% of the time you gain a scrap. 

Most of the threat rating here comes from being hit by this event if you've not got good gear grid practices (builds that require 8 or less essential, expensive gear cards) as on the whole the initial impact is otherwise low.

Lingering Effects: No music is a big hit to your power, Drums and Forbidden Dance are huge buffs for turning Plebs/Potentials into Hunters. So you lose that ability for a while and in exchange you get +2 to art endeavors. You know what rather broken endeavor is an art one? That's right, Face Painting. You know what to do here right? It's time for lots of babies!

Both of the event specific endeavors are interesting, Acid Storm Exercise can allow you to build a powerful Fist & Tooth survivor, but it should be done with a Pleb or Potential if you do not have the re-rolls to spend. If you hit Acid Palms early on in a settlement's timeline, it can be a massive boon and make gaining F&T Mastery a lot easier.

Acid Storm Distillation is just a straight up 'spend endeavors to get Founding Stones 50% of the time' and Founding Stones = Monster Resources when used correctly. So, spam this with as many endeavors as you have available! Very large settlements with Collective Toil can clean up here a huge amount, but also the combination of +2 to Face Painting rolls plus this location can result in some crazy things if you are running the classic Great City combo:

More on that here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/building-great-17453563 

Mitigation Strategies: I have long advocated 8 gear card builds, with a single slot for a disposable support item, and Acid Storm is one of the reasons why this is the case. Having a disposable, low cost gear card like Stone Noses or an Organ Grinder gear card is very beneficial because many events, not just this storm, archive a single piece of gear of the survivor's choice. 

Clinging Mist

Threat Rating: ✰✰✰✰★  

Initial Impact: Ah Clinging Mist, a card on my 'I would remove you from the game if I could' list (alongside Deja Vu and the Harvester). Clinging Mist is dominated by its ability to reset your campaign, but give you a huge boost up by letting you keep your 4 "best" survivors (returning hunters). In order to ensure that one happens, you want to rip up the Guidepost as soon as you can (if you get given it by the King's Man). This part of the card is well known, well explored and I'm going to move onto the rest of it.

1-3 is not to bad a result, as mentioned before many times, one should be rotating Hunters  so benching them all for a year is fine. The 4-7 result can be pretty bad if you're unfortunate with your disorder draws, hitting 4 of them at the same time has the potential to wreck your returning survivors, but this is something one just has to deal with on a regular basis, disorders happen.  However if you have ammonia, you've got an opportunity to trade -1 luck for +3 understanding. This is bad for a Hunter, but it is a window to turn a Pleb into either your Augury expert (to help with Intimacy) or turn them into a Support survivor or Perfect Hit Acid-Tooth Dagger/Counterweighted Axe survivor. Luck is an important stat for sure, but not every survivor needs or uses it, you just have to be creative.

Lingering Effects: None.

Mitigation Strategies: If you want to reset your campaign, get rid of the Guidepost, if you are happy with how it is progressing, keep the Guidepost jammed in the ground. Otherwise get Ammonia and have a Pleb soak themselves in Urine when needed. Simples!

Gorm Climate - Gorm Expansion

Threat Rating: ✰✰✰★★  

Initial Impact: And the storm keeps coming and it just keeps coming and it just keeps coming.  The first thing you'll notice is when you get this card, it's staying for keeps and under the official rules, this card should be in your deck if you own the Gorm expansion regardless of whether or not. Which means that sometimes you'll draw it and there is no Gorm to hunt, them's the breaks (but you can use it as an opportunity to introduce the Gorm into your campaign, it's very thematic).

The 1-3 result is the one that everyone obsesses over, it's actually not that bad. Now lets cover the first mistake people do, you cannot endlessly sacrifice Nigredo to the climate and then get it back by hunting the Gorm - getting Nigredo happens the first time that you kill a Gorm, not every time. So don't do that.  

As for losing the resources, honestly while Gorm Climate is in play you shouldn't be stockpiling too many resources in the first place, spend everything you can as soon as you can and if you're saving (say for a Riot Mace), that's where Lifetime Rerolls come in. The 1-3 is an inconvenience that exists to teach you how to properly manage your settlement in scarce resource situations, just change the way you play - it's good practice for getting around other resource crushing situations that do happen.

4-7 pushes for you to get Hovel so you can avoid the 'No' condition, but as I've mentioned several times, if you've finally adopted a rotating Hunter strategy there is no downside to this and it is not worth spending precious innovations on Hovel early on - Hovel's tree doesn't come into strength until the mid game where you are looking to make a new generation of Hunters - that's when Family, Partnership and Clan of Death matter. This isn't People of the Stars, you do not need to rush these out early on in Lantern. (Also 40% of the time the arrival of the Gorm gives you Hovel anyway).

8-10 is a great set of results, if you don't have storytelling a Pleb or Potential is gaining +1 courage, if you do they're getting +1 understanding, both good results. But be aware that eventually you may run out of 0 Hunt XP survivors, especially if you get Saga (which you should, it's really good and needed) so you might want to deliberately have a 0 hunt XP Pleb/Potential to take advantage of this for as long as the storm is around).

Lingering Effects: None, except the knowledge that the storm will be back again like an all star.

Mitigation Strategies: Good resource management, don't sacrifice innovations over resources (except in corner cases, such as when you have all 4 gorm innovations and a gorm brain to allow you to special innovate it back out immediately), build hovel when it's appropriate and get Storytelling when you can. Overall Gorm Climate is an irritation, but it is not as bad as people would try to make out.

Plus you can always get rid of it via Song of the Brave & beating a Gorm, and the Music tree is the strongest tree in the game anyway. So get on with it!

Sword Hunter - Promotional

Threat Rating: Varying between ★★★★★ and ✰✰✰✰✰ 

Initial Impact: At the wrong time, this promotional event is absolutely devastating because the Sword Hunter will slay the survivor who last wielded Excalibur. If you just picked up the sword and a key Hunter had it last, then she'll gut a vital resource, if you insist on going out while wielding it on a key Hunter, you risk this happening every year.

After she's done that, she will interact with every single sword in your settlement. Some of them she steals (10%) and most of the time nothing happens (60%), but 20% of the time a survivor who departs with that sword will get a strength buff and 10% of the time she'll permanently improve the sword. 

Lingering Effects: None.

Mitigation Strategies: Once you have Excalibur, your next hunt should involve a red shirt Pleb wielding the sword as a buffer for the rest of the settlement. You can improve Excalibur a lot by having an endless stream of sacrificial lambs wield the sword and there is a fair number of benefits to having a disposable survivor every hunt.  Or you can just have it used by a Pleb once and then leave it in storage, it's up to you - it's a sword, they're rather basic.

Next Friday we'll look at the good stuff, the really good stuff before moving onto a look at the various Timeline events and how to leverage/mitigate those!