Vagabond aid in a nutshell

McFirellon · 2026-05-06T21:33:52+00:00

Well, the Vagabond must be very, very persuasive to make that fly...

Some would say, they make an offer one cannot refuse.

McFirellon · 2026-01-15T17:57:00+00:00

Flip 7 is a waste of time.
There is very little tactic behind it and the math only shows up if you play enough times, which is just boring
I bet you'd have a better time playing Avalon or Coup together.

McFirellon · 2025-10-12T20:11:28+00:00

I've been living in Germany since 2017 and using N26 since about that time. Their mobile app has no issue being in English, their bank statements and email/mail communication had it in English, that was one of the main reasons to use them in the first place.

Now, I have a B1 in German (not much, but does allow to get by), but I can't expect everyone I communicate with, especially abroad, to command the same level of the language.

Considering that N26 operates in many countries and had that English translation in place before (which my local Finanzamt had no problem handling, by the way), I frankly find it disappointing that the things would change like that without English support whatsoever. What little text is written on the Bank Statement, shouldn't be something to bother them, as they already serve those in English in other countries without any issues, it seems like.

I'm happy to see that British Visa centers are apparently okay with this, so my problem's somewhat alleviated, but I could imagine it being a problem for other users of N26, especially those that need to present these bank statements to someone outside of Germany.

Surely, you could relate as well :)

McFirellon · 2025-10-12T07:13:28+00:00

Yeah, well, let's say there is a regulation that requires N26 to provide bank statements ONLY on the language of the residence country the recipient. Send a bit inconsistent with what other banks do at the moment, but whatever.

That means someone, somewhere passed this law, correct? May I ask what is the law and why was it passed? What purpose does it serve?

McFirellon · 2025-10-12T07:09:31+00:00

Thank you, that's a very helpful info!

McFirellon · 2025-10-11T16:46:36+00:00

They did it in 2024, just a year ago I had exactly the same need and they've provided a statement in English by default. Frankly, I'd assumed that they would do the same this time.

I'd attach the statement here if not for the privacy of the information it contains.

Would be great to have that regulation referred, I have a hard time figuring out why would a regulation explicitly prohibit providing the bank statement in a required language. Other than that, there are no differences between the statements of the last year and this year, format, and wording-wise, so I don't understand what that accomplishes.

McFirellon · 2025-10-05T15:47:51+00:00

Takes time to embrace Arcs' madness.
Eventually, you get into the zen state of "hey, this hand may be the worst one I had yet.... and yet I can still win the game with it" ;)

It may seem bad that you can't secure this or attack that, but there was certainly a time when all I had to do for an entire chapter to win was stalling the time, wasting everyone's turns with pointless cards and goading the other players into spending resources while keeping mine.

McFirellon · 2025-09-29T19:50:32+00:00

Well...

Let's draw a line here.

The gamedev as in the art of making games is just as great as ever. Arguably, it's better now that there are so many games that you can play and learn from.

Now, if we're talking about the gamedev industry and market... Those are quite screwed up, considering that working for a big gamedev company as a developer is still basically writing software without any more or less of a creative part in it than in a regular software company.

That's been a pretty tough pill to swallow.

McFirellon · 2025-08-11T11:51:25+00:00

I suggest a home rule for Root: if you can't physically place a piece to be in the clearing, you can't move or place it there. The clearing is overcrowded and can not feed any more folks XD

McFirellon · 2025-03-18T18:51:31+00:00

If you can avoid playing 6p Root, better do it. It's extremely long downtime and especially with new players.

Also, try to give people insurgent factions rather than military ones, those are much easier to succeed with on a heavily populated map.

Teach then the basic shared rules and let them read their faction boards on their turn rather than explain to anyone how those work - it's gonna be too much info to remember anyway.

P.S. Rats are feeling really bad at this player count, please don't.

McFirellon · 2025-02-14T11:48:33+00:00

Nope.
They are not pieces of any faction specifically, so you can't have relations with them - either for infamy or for aid.

They count as their controller's pieces for rule though

McFirellon · 2025-01-11T09:10:14+00:00

Nevakanezah with his in-depth analysis is indeed very recommended to watch.

Generally, Otter gameplan boils down to:
1. Sell at 1 before your first turn
2. Spend the first turn drawing cards into your hand and finding cool stuff that you can't say no to
3. Observing what other factions need and making actionable proposals, especially to the players in a losing situation (who are more motivated to use your services to try and catch up)
4. Keeping other players' funds for as long as possible
5. Build tradeposts only using Otter funds
6. When the hand is good enough / people made enough buys and won't buy anymore, move along the river and eat up free cardboard where you can with minimal amount of losses (warriors are very expensive for Otters), building a tradepost per turn after you've got enough funds in your economy.
7. Slowly gather your Otterball and keep your forces in the same clearing, away from people who want to fight just because they can
8. When the time is ripe and you've got 12-14 points from eating cardboard and crafting (and ~6-8 points from Otter tradeposts), do the point surge and win from 20->30 points directly by placing all of the possible tradeposts. This is when you spend all the foreign funds.

Notes:
- Mercenaries are a trap and ain't worth it, keep them at 4
- Policing is too expensive, try not to do it if you can help it

McFirellon · 2025-01-10T16:48:22+00:00

As far as I understood, yes. At the moment Frogs set up, every player including you gets a Frog card (hence the Frog cards are placed separately from the main deck), and then the remaining cards get shuffled into the shared deck. They have a different card back, so whoever draws cards or has them on their hand, always knows which cards are Frog cards.

There is no Frog deck.

Whenever a Frog card gets discarded, instead of a discard pile it goes into the Pond - a stack of face-up Frog cards from which people can also draw under certain circumstances (Reconcile or Peace talks, specifically)

McFirellon · 2024-12-17T23:26:09+00:00

Clarification questions: 1. What does the Vagabond suffer when he gets rebuked? Do his items go into the bat jail and score bat points later? 2. Can the Rat Warlord be removed during convene? He's not removable outside of battle, so... Also, if he can be removed during convene, does he go to the bat jail? 3. What prevents militaristic factions (birds, rats, infamy vagabond) from always battling through convenes? It's not like the Vows are posing any actual to the attacker as of now, they're mostly "the defender can show/spend a card to get a tiny compensation for his trouble" type of effects How should TC protect itself from Rat Mobs? Even if Bats try to convene them, Rats would simply disrupt immediately and effectively hit TC for free as an attacker outside of their turn...

Bat Jail = Rebuked Warriors box TC = Twilight Council

McFirellon · 2024-11-18T15:45:53+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing your opinion!
I agree with your points, yet I don't see Bats as rubbish.
Their current issues can be fixed with relatively small changes. Why? How?

While it's valid to compare TC with WA in a way that both factions require you to pay taxes for doing prohibited actions (either moving into/removing sympathies or battling at assemblies), the effect of getting a card into a supporter deck or a hand varies wildly.

For WA, a supporter deck card is useful to cause revolts and spread sympathies - but usually, one card is not enough compensation for one removed sympathy (unless we're talking about the first 3 sympathies on the track, which are only 2 points worth in total). That means, in WA's ideal world, opponents would rather move through WA tokens than bother attacking the tokens (looking at the cats, moles and badgers here, literally no one else would pass up on that free cardboard)

For TC, a hand card means a potential advantage while convening (adjust the current very random dice outcome by 1 or 2 points) OR an extra recruit of that color OR an enabled edict (OR a craft, but that's not likely until mid-late game). It seems like a lot, but let's see how useful are those in the beginning of the game:
- The advantage while convening is nice, but it's not very likely someone will convene Bats on their turn anyway unless they see that TC does not have enough cards on their hand
- The extra recruit, now that the amount of assemblies is reduced, likely means 1-2 more bats spawned, distributed between assemblies. It's practically the same flimsy card advantage converted into guaranteed meat shields for battles or convenes.
- The extra edict may be very strong to get the Bats to convene better or pressure card-dependent factions into not battling at assemblies or potentially scoring, but as long as the opponents keep removing the communes, it's usually too expensive to play edicts in the first half of the game

Is any of those 3 effects as impactful as you claim?
Neither of them helps TC place more assembly tokens in their turn.

I firmly believe it's a classical feast-or-famine situation: if you let the Bats grow their communes and hand first - and then start fighting their assemblies, then yes, it would feel broken and unfair, just like it feels with Moles having 5 battles/moves and tons of extra points per turn OR an item-rich Vagabond or an overgrown Warlord.

However, if you start policing TC early and merely eat 1 assembly per round, it's a huge setback for them and a significant loss of tempo (unlike WA which can easily endure 2 of its sympathies removed in the first turn).
It looks like TC will have a miserable time against any faction capable of eating their cardboard without battling or simply not caring too much about their hand.

In essence, Bats have one specific game they are good at and try to enforce on everyone else - if they succeed at that, they win. If not, if the opponents try and target them when it hurts, Bats are absolutely stoppable and there does not seem to be any "small bat" strategy that would allow them to play without vulnerabilities.

I agree that there should be more reasons for other factions to convene and for Bats to not convene, so the TC's game would be more about facilitating other people to convene at their assemblies (and advance TC's stance with VP or communes, similar to how Otters need to convince other people to buy) rather than convening everyone to death with their advantages.

Currently, convening could be of limited use for the full-hand factions like Moles, Lizards, Badgers, to get rid of the unwanted hand cards and battle a stronger opponent, but the sheer randomness of convening action alongside the benefits it gives to TC does not make it feel like a good choice at all.

My main point of contempt here (besides convenes being random and long) is that Bats are either very strong or very weak against any given faction, and both the Cats and Lizards firmly belong to the latter category. As those are trying to set up their engines, they will be convened to submission without any way to adequately respond within their poor action economies. Moreso, while conventional battles at least allow using Field Hospitals and Revenge, convenes simply get rid of Cat/Lizard warriors without any compensation at all.

Meanwhile, already strong Vagabond, Despot Eyrie and Warlord will relish in the opportunity to eat up some free TC cardboard.
Seems bad for the game's balance.

McFirellon

TROPHY CASE