In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, training Agents (workers) gives Guild Leaders (players) more options and more victory points.

Each Guild Leader begins the game with 10 Agents, 4 trained and 6 untrained. Because most Locations require Agents to be assigned to generate useful effects a Guild Leader may quickly find that 4 trained Agents are insufficient for their strategy.

Fairhollow Academy

Upgrading Agents from untrained to trained is the purpose of the Fairhollow Academy.

The Location itself has no effect. The Advancements it provides is the Academy Trustee, which  has an either/or effect. First, it allows a Guild Leader to assign Agents to the Fairhollow Academy. While there they contribute nothing to the overall success of the Guild Leader. But the Advancement has an “or” effect – when not being used to assign Agents to the Academy, the Advancement can instead be used to return an Agent from the Academy to the Guildhall, and at the same time, upgrading an untrained Agent to trained status.

Not only do trained Agents give the Guild Leader possibly crucial flexibility, at the end of the game each trained Agent is worth 1 Victory Point!

The Blight

The Threat on the back of the Academy Trustee is a Battering Ram – a terrible monster capable of doing massive damage to the City.

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(Art & Graphic Design not final and subject to change.)

In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, Guild Leaders (players) need to be able to change their strategies to react to the actions of their opponents.

Generally speaking one of the best ways to win Edge of Darkness is to select a strategy early in the game and try to optimize your cards and worker placement to achieve it. But the actions of other players may interfere with your plans. When that happens you need to be able to inject some flexibility into your strategy.

The Forge

The Forge Location is one of the ways you can do that. The Forge Location itself has no effect. But the Advancement that it provides, the Blacksmith, is quite useful.

When you have a Blacksmith in your hand you have the choice to either use it to generate Coins or Combat Strength for a Hunt. You can only do one or the other with each Blacksmith you activate on your turn.

You’ll always have a positive net income if you choose to generate Coins even if you have to pay another Guild Leader (player) for using a card they own.

The Blight

The Threat on the back of the Blacksmith is  the Shade Knight, a heavily armored champion of the darkness with a bloody reputation.

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(Art & Graphic Design not final and subject to change.)

In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, crafting amazing cards and getting those cards into your hand is one of the secrets to victory.

When the game begins each Guild “owns” a small set of cards but most cards are unowned. After each Guild Leader (player) completes their turn they discard their cards. Cards owned by their own Guild or unowned cards go into a common discard pile. Cards owned by another Guild go to that Guild’s Guildhall. At the start of each turn a Guild Leader fills their hand first from their Guildhall before drafting from the shared tableau. So over time you will get cards you own more frequently. (Also, if a card you own is in the Threat Tower and it attacks the City or is defeated in a Hunt, it is sent to your Guildhall instead of the common discard pile afterwards.)

When scoring Victory Points at the end of the game a Guild Leader gets one Victory Point for every Advancement sleeved into the cards their Guild owns. So “claiming” an unowned card automatically gets you extra VP, and the amount of VP you get increases if you Craft that card with even more Advancements.

You can’t claim a card owned by another Guild, and you can only claim a card in your hand.

Capital Hall

One way to to claim an unowned card is to use the Capital Hall Location. It’s Advancements allow you to assign Agents (workers) to the Capital Hall.

The Location itself allows you to return Agents to your Guild Board and pay a fee in Coin to claim an unowned card in your hand.

The Power of the Blight

The Threat side of this Advancement is the Deceitful Councellor who speaks poison into the ears of any who will listen, corrupting the politics of the City from within.

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(You may have noticed that some of our icons and graphics have been upgraded! We’re continuing to work on the visual aspects of the game. Illustrations, graphics and icons are not final and may change before publication.)

In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, the city of Aegis suffers constant threat from the Blight, but the Guilds may be able to take the offensive and send their own forces to hunt the threat!

When an attack by the Blight is negated by reducing the damage of the attack to zero or less each successful Guild Leader (player) scores a point of Reputation. But proactively hunting the threat and destroying it before it even affects the City provides the successful Guild even more Reputation and other rewards.

There are two Locations in the initial recommended Location list that work well together to actively fight the Blight. You need to send Agents to the War Council to get permission to attack (Politics even in the most desperate of times) and then you can summon help from the Deephollow Border town to crush the threat.

The War Council

One Location that allows Guild Leaders to do this is the War Council.

The War Council’s Advancement, the War Council Member, allows the Guild Leader to assign Agents to the War Council Location.

The War Council Location itself allows a Guild Leader to return Agents to the Guild Board to trigger a Hunt Against the Threat!

Notice that you’d have to use the ability on the War Council Member twice before you’ll have enough Agents at the War Council to use the Location’s ability. You might use the ability on the Advancement when sleeving the Advancement, then wait to get it in your hand again in the future (after drafting another copy sleeved by yourself or some other player), or you might arrange to sleeve the Advancement twice on the same card, enabling you to trigger the War Council every time you had that card in your hand!

But by itself, the War Council does nothing except cause the Hunt to begin.

In order to be effective, the Hunt must have its own Battle Strength. Battle Strength is accumulated through the use of other Advancements and Locations.

The Deephollow Border Town

For example, the Deephollow Border Town Location provides Advancements that allow a Guild Leader to dispatch 2 Agents to the Deephollow Border Town. (The Location itself has no intrinsic abilities).

This Advancement also alternately allows a Guild Leader to recall 2 Agents to the Guild Board to generate 3 combat power for the Hunt. (The work of the Agents in the Border Town is assumed to have successfully recruited heroes willing to venture into the darklands!)

Several of the Advancements and Locations in the game can generate Battle Strength for a Hunt, the Deephollow Border Town is just one. For example, one of the starting Advancements in the cards as the game begins, the Citizens, also generate Battle Strength.

As the game begins the Citizens don’t provide much value when they’re in your hand. Until you’re ready to initiate a Hunt a Citizen card without any other Advancements isn’t advancing your agenda. Deciding how and when and with what Advancements to upgrade Citizens is a critical part of the strategy for victory in Edge of Darkness.

Conducting the Hunt

Each card in the Threat Tower has a combined damage represented by all the forces it displays. If a Guild Leader is able to launch a Hunt with enough Battle Strength to equal or exceed the damage of one of the Blight cards, that card is defeated! All the Threat cubes on it are discarded, and the card itself is also discarded. It will generate Reputation (and possibly other benefits!) based on the information on all the Advancements on the Blight side of the card.

If a Guild Leader is able to defeat more than one Blight card at the Tower, they can! Each card defeated soaks an amount of Battle Strength from the Hunt, but any left over can be used against a second (or even a third) threat!

After your turn ends all the Battle Strength you’ve generated dissipates even if you didn’t use it all. You need to generate new Battle Strength every time you want to conduct a Hunt.

The Power of the Blight

Sleeving Advancements is powerful but also dangerous. Each Advancement that is sleeved is double-sided so that the reverse side of the card increases the power of the Blight.

The Blight is represented on these two Locations as follows:

On the War Council the threat is a fallen Wizard, a figure once revered for great power now turned to the darkness and bent on the city’s destruction.

On the Deephollow Border Town the threat is Witches of Deephollow – childsnatchers who have been the bane of the Deephollow families for generations.

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In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, The Blight constantly terrorizes the inhabitants of the City.  When enough Threat cubes have accumulated on a card in the Threat Tower, that card attacks the City. The Guild leaders (players) can try to block The Blight’s attacks.

There are two Locations available to the Guild Leaders to resist The Threat: The Watchtower and The City Watch.

The Watchtower

The Watchtower provides access to an Advancement that allows the player to assign an Agent (worker) to the Watchtower.

The Watchtower Location permits each Guild Leader to return one or more of their Agents to their Guild Board when The Blight attacks them.

Each Agent returned reduces the Power of The Blight’s attack by 3.

The City Watch

The City Watch provides access to an Advancement that allows the Guild Leader to assign up to 2 Agents per use of the Advancement to the City Watch.  

The City Watch Location indicates that each Agent assigned to the City Watch reduces the Power of The Threat’s attack by 1. These Agents remain at the City Watch until recalled by another kind of action.

There are also other Locations planned that can defend in other ways.

If the Power of the Blight’s attack against a Guild is reduced to 0 or less The Blight’s attack is blocked. The citizens of the City take note of these successes and award 1 Reputation to the Guilds who succeed in nullifying the attack. In the cases where the Blight is attacking multiple Guilds at the same time it is possible for the Blight to be thwarted against one Guild and succeed against another. Only the Guild(s) that fail will see the Terror of the City increase, and only the Guild(s) that negate the full power of the attack gain any Reputation.

Of course, as always, even sleeving defensive advancements will still make the threat side of the cards more dangerous.

The threat on the Watchtower is a Silent Watcher capable of bypassing the city walls and striking fear into the population.

On the City Watch the threat is the Corruption Within reflecting the fact that even in the most stalwart defenders there are those who will seek to abuse their positions of authority.

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(All images, icons, values and titles are not final and are subject to change before publication)

In Edge of Darkness, coming to Kickstarter on February 20th, players take the roles of leaders of important Guilds inside the city of Aegis. The Guilds are all rivals and each believes the others will lead the city into disaster. Only by ensuring your Guild wins the support of the people can you make sure Aegis will resist the Blight.

There are four Guilds in the game:

	The Gilded Leaves, a mysterious group that primarily recruits among magicians and druids in the city. Their color is green and their symbol a leaf.
	The Carnival of Shadows, a cabal that primarily recruits among noblemen and women of the city. Their color is red and their symbol a mask.
	The Annointed, a group that primarily recruits from the ranks of the devout (regardless of their stature) in the city. Their color is white and their symbol a chalice.
	The Fede Cartel, a mercantile group that primarily recruits from the working class in the city. Their color is purple and their symbol a pair of hands shaking.

The four Guilds play functionally identically and don’t have special Guild powers.

Each Guild has a Guild (player) Board used to track various information and hold resources.

Guilds have Agents (workers). At the start of the game the Guild has 4 trained Agents ready to be deployed, and 6 untrained agents. Converting an Agent to Trained status requires the use of certain Locations and Advancements. Trained and Untrained Agents have their own locations on the Guild Board.

Each Guild independently tracks the terror level in Aegis. When The Blight attacks a Guild and the Guild cannot block the attack, the people of the city lose some confidence in that Guild. The worse the terror level the fewer victory points the Guild will score at the end of the game. Each Guild Board has its own Defense Track where the Guild’s reputation for defending the city is tracked.

The Guild Board has a Guildhall where discarded cards drawn by other players are placed, ready to be drawn at the start of the next turn.

The Guild Board also has reservoirs to hold Coin, Influence and Goodwill/Prestige accumulated during play.

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(Guild icons and colors are not finalized and may change before publication)