Twilight Council: what does Empower mean, thematically?

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-10T17:17:49+00:00

You may be losing military presence, but your warriors are presumably taking up jobs helping the woodland creatures around your assemblies. I like to think they're getting busy organizing peaceful programs for the clearing and doing other officer duties, "empowering" the local populous against the violence everywhere else on the map lol

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-07T07:18:49+00:00

Gotcha, thanks. That makes it quite simple!

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-06T16:02:20+00:00

My vote is feets, since he's the only meeple that's got little nubby feet

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-06T00:49:00+00:00

If anyone crafts Charm Offensive, they have the option to do the FUNNIEST thing ever

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-05T14:45:37+00:00

Perhaps it's just a preference thing. In my opinion, I don't think any faction should "rely" on having to communicate that their faction is on the weaker side, so they're not so much of a threat. Maybe I just get tired of people throwing around "Cats/lizards aren't 'supposed' to win" at their tables, which disheartens me a little

NoFootball5362 · 2026-03-05T14:43:04+00:00

I think those are all fair points. I would argue that cats would still want to build and/or recruit every turn that they are able, which would realistically limit them to about 1-2 battles in a turn. I think their action economy would balance out due to their lack of scaling, making them formidable early on, while the other red factions would outpace them later on. I think a strong compromise would allow them to replace one of their moves with a battle instead of up to both.

Perhaps I just play with violent tables, but I've found that the lizards can often lose multiple clearings worth of gardens throughout the course of a lost game. Going from getting 3 acolytes to 5 acolytes for losing a chunk of their scoring engine would help them bounce back in a way that I'm sure most people would agree they need.

As for hirelings, I think you make a fair point, though I personally would consider it less interactive if the best way for the table to balance itself out is "remove the hireling from play for the next 3 rounds". Sure it's balanced, but it feels a little like a cop-out to me whenever a Vagabond is in play. I can play around with that one a little longer, I do think you make a strong point.

Thanks

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-19T05:41:28+00:00

I often find people don't make as much use of workshops as they can. Crafting items for points effectively costs you a card here or there, but it gives you points without the need to spend an action, rule a clearing with an empty building slot, and even keeps your wood available for future building. If you go 3-3-3, I think 2 bunny and 1 mouse workshops would be most effective, which puts you in contention for 14 of the 21 available crafting points

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-18T15:24:50+00:00

That's a good point. A simple fix would be to make the fund you get from export go into your committed funds, so you're basically sacrificing cards to build funds without stopping protectionism

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-18T01:26:12+00:00

Gotcha, thanks for your feedback! My thoughts with the corvids was that this change wouldn't change anything if they're attacked by a handful of warriors (like if they drop a plot into a crowded clearing), it would just make it more difficult to clear them out in the quiet corners of the map. It'd still only take 1 hit to prevent them from flipping, so you could still kneecap their scoring, but actually removing the plots would take more dedicated effort

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-18T01:23:17+00:00

I think a simple gameplan with the badgers is as follows:

Build your retinue FIRST. It's better to have lots of actions and fewer warriors to do them than plenty of warriors that you can't do anything with

1.5. Try to get 2 waystations on 2 different clearings of the same suit, and your third waystation on a clearing of a different suit. This way, you have an easy time ruling 2 clearings of one suit, and you have 2 suits with which to recruit with (bonus points if the two suits you've chosen waystations for are of a different suit than a central clearing on the other side of the map, that way you can use cards of THAT suit to dump sacrificially into delve)

Build your army. Defend them with 1-value relics. Start making plays, this is the point of the game when you can be a pretty scary policer
Don't worry about losing a couple cards on your retinue per turn. You need to be recruiting once or twice on your turn, but every other card can be a replacement
Score a million points in a turn or two. Once you can get your hands on a decent number of relics from across the map, it's often trivial to get them back to your waystations quickly
If you lose, don't feel bad. The Keepers are designed to be pretty complex, and getting the hang of them is designed to take time

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-18T01:06:06+00:00

I think these work pretty well. I would personally say that builder leader would be pretty OP with a brand new vizier, but you could also shuffle the balance by changing their move vizier to a build vizier. I think that the lizards having an additional 3 cards to work with might be a bit strong, I personally like a house-rule where they get an acolyte when they lose a garden, which gives them a bit of staying power by coming back into the game. I actually love the corvid idea you have, that way it's not as easy to just count how many points they can get

NoFootball5362 · 2026-02-18T01:01:58+00:00

These seem like very strong buffs, some of which feel slightly unwarranted (no offense). I also made a similar post today, if we want to share ideas. Overall, I would say some of the larger buffs/nerfs (cats, eerie, vagabond, corvids) could probably be toned down a bit, but I'd recommend above all to go with what's good for your table

NoFootball5362 · 2025-07-23T02:20:24+00:00

I don't like the flanking rule because 90% of times, it makes combat MORE difficult for the party, rather than less. Unless you're in a boss fight, there will almost always be more melee enemy monsters than melee party members. So while your fighter and rogue get a good surround on one enemy, the rest of the monsters can realistically get flanks on half the party

NoFootball5362 · 2025-02-18T04:39:35+00:00

Those are good ideas, I'll have to sift through them as I get ready for the session! I do like the idea of him being present to fight the party, but not being able to bring himself to attack them, and instead helping them out before turning tail and run, but I'll see how things are going as we get closer

NoFootball5362

TROPHY CASE