The Inquisition's Trap Holy crap those trap names: More Than A Ceiling, etc. Don't use your moves other than swarm of bats at all, even to change facing, because you'll be mazed into the traps and it's gg. Save your attacks until the umbers move into range, turn to attack, then swarm to a far VP. Once you're path of knived, just jump two squares instead of four, unless you have a hand full of armour. Easy peasy. Silverwood Camp The archer is key. Try to inflict as much damage with the other two as possible, and keep the wolves busy until you can draw at least one uncanny dodge on the archer. Then, stay in the middle (you'll get mighty charged hard on the perimeter otherwise), and like the umbers in level 1, save your attacks so you can turn to face the wolves in a manner that lets you teleport backwards when attacked. Simples. One Step Forward The (obvious) trick here is to PoK the trogs, turn them back to face the ogres, then bolt the trogs so that the crude plates process and moonwalk your trogs back to the door. Stab, stab, the fumbledore's stone is yours. Always fun (if way too easy this time), always appreciated. Reminder that the Halloween figurines are on sale for 30 pizza each, and the elf vamp priest is one of the best in the game.
I found the first map to be pretty draw dependent. I beat it on the first try on the test server, but it took about six tries this time. I ran it again, and once more got through on the first try. Since it's the first map, this isn't really a problem.
The third map was super funny, the first had a neat puzzle aspect and the middle one had a tight design and some nice powerful creatures to play with and against. I liked getting to use Disenchant . One of my favourite MMs overall.
Battle 1: Inquisition's Trap by @Maniafig Clever and amusing writing as usual. Happenstance summed up the tactics pretty well, so I don't have anything to add in that regard. Umber Bulks have only two additional move cards in their deck of 21 (~9,5 %), so it should be pretty easy to avoid them. Battle 2: Silverwood Camp by @tolkien Nice use of shadows. Three controllable characters is a classic and suitable for co-opping, so that's a plus. Playing against Silver Crossbowmen and Inquisitor was annoying, luckily they're on my side this time. Battle 3: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by @Scarponi Ah, the Trog Toboggan minigame is back! Sdrawkcab Klaw was a clever name idea that also serves a hint. Nice end scenario for the MM issue. Thanks for the heads up! I might've missed the sale otherwise.
Inquisition's Trap I remember when this map was first made I really liked the idea but the map is simply too draw dependent and simple in general. Aesthetics are nice though. Silverwood Camp Again a bit too simple in both senses of the word for my taste, Uncanny Dodge means an auto win. Also realised sunlight would not damage these wolves Aesthetics are nice though... One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Good old stupid mechanic that we all know and love, only drew PoK on round 3 but it was simple enough. I expected this one to be the easiest for everyone but as it turns out not many people know about the Path of Knives + Crude Armor combo so here is the copy pasted solution for anyone looking for it: Try to solve the puzzle by just using the above, if it is not enough then I rephrased the solution for the actual MM module below. Spoiler: Solution So basically you need to place a Path Of Knives card onto one of your Trogs and then move them in a parallel fashion away from the temple which will then cause them to move into the temple and to the door because of their Crude Armor sometimes the armor fails, in which case you need to move away from the door again to get all the way. To help this issue I suggest waiting to draw at least 2 Crude Armor cards before placing PoK onto the trogs. Aesthetics are horrible.
Every day we get a new Mauve Manticore is a great day Inquisition's Trap Maniafig's writing is always on point . The main idea is fantastic, a clever use of unusual cards and NPCs always equals fun. Still, it felt a bit awkward to do nothing but passing just about every turn. I guess Gary went easy on me with a couple of signature random passes of his own, but I still wish there were other things to do apart from waiting to be smacked and watching those VP stars tinkle away. Silverwood Camp Absolutely beautiful map. And a cool little backstory about the wood that sparks our imagination and expands our perception of Cardhuntria with new details - always greatly appreciated. The fight was quite enjoyable too. It feels nice to play with these powerful new NPCs against.. other powerful new NPCs . Still, making a "classic" battle fun and enjoyable is harder than it looks, and tolkien managed to do just that. P.S. Spoiler: This is not how Sven thought his morning would go One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Oh boy, the tears of laughter. What a brilliant use of game mechanics! I didn't know of Trog Toboggan's existence before reading this thread, but huge thanks to Scarponi for creating this single-player version. It needed to be added to the game! The visual design is pretty cool too. It's not easy to make use of boards with uneven edges, but here it makes perfect sense, and so does the use of difficult terrain (stairs are difficult!). Thanks to everyone who made this MM issue possible!
Welp, I tried to record my playthrough, but all I have is the audio of the first map if anyone's remotely interested. Poor little computer can't handle it. $:^ J Audio highlights from Inquisition's Trap: "All right, @Maniafig, let's see what you came up with..." "LOL! All right! Lol, the game started freezing for the sake of ... oh wow ... Umber Bulks, lots and lots of traps." (I started with Heavy Armor in hand, yay!) (After getting my first star very easily...) "Very nice. LOL. ~Looking at Missile Block in hand for discarding.~ Uhhhhh, I don't think they have any... I don't think they have any projectiles." (Discard Missile Block to keep an extra Swarm Of Bats. New round starts. First card they play: Path Of Knives.) "They have projectiles." (Another round goes by. Although I haven't needed to play a Move card yet, I suddenly realize something...) "Ohhhh, ohhhh. They're Umber Bulks, so they will mess up my... my moves. (Looking at criss-crossing traps.) Oh, this is brilliant. Lol, I like this a lot. Lol, oh man, lol. This is great." (Play play play.) "This is ♫hilarious♫." (Eventually get Reliable Mail, too! Play play play.) "Lol. So um... It looks like-- my traps are failing miserably, and I'm going to uh... not do well with the whole Inquisition thing." (Play play win.) "All right!" (Reading through the outro text to see the expected ending, muah ha.) "'You have a feeling you can wave that position good-bye. You quickly make way with your meager commission and start applying at another position for another employer.' Maybe Acquisitions, Inc.! Lol." Yep, definitely enjoyed it. $;^ } Some fun things from Silverwood Camp, from memory: My first reaction upon seeing the map? Silence. It was just .. very atmospheric. Pretty. A calm beauty, despite knowing danger lurked in the shadows. Very nice. $:^ ) From there, the lore and character/monster combinations felt perfect in flavor and mechanics, albeit also being very easy. Uncanny Dodge is painfully hilarious to waste a Werewolf's huge attacks repeatedly -- Move in, Dodge out, Move in, Dodge out. As much as I wanted to play Disenchant, especially since Karen never had Svitlana played it, it still says "New!" for me because Inquisitor's Strike is way too good, lol. Forward Thinking? Okay, keep your Monstrous Hides. $:^ P Mad Dog? Eh, ~Boosted Healing.~ Prowl? ~Uncanny Dodge, Vengeance, etc.~ Amazingly, the one time I landed a Destructive Purge, (climactically on the final wolf,) I got some irrelevant card, Wimpy, and Creature Of The Night! Lol! Ohhh, if only I could draw Fey Silversmith on Svitlana... Nevertheless, I'm all too familiar with 17 HP Inq Strikes. $}^ } $}^ } Good job, @tolkien, makes me glad I didn't studiously playtest it so that I could simply enjoy the final experience like any other pleb. ~siiigh~ @Scarponi, you rascal, you. You want to know what made this sunset race even better than you intended? Round 1, turn 1, Dropped Guard. The right-side Trog caught the Path Of Knives round 2 or so -- and as the rounds passed, no matter whether he would Run or get a Sorcerous Blast to the face, his two Crude Armors failed every time. My left-side Trog got 1/3 or so up the stairs when I finally found some more Knives to lob. My right-side Trog nearly died to his comrades refusing to hit his chest where it was safe. Like I said, always in the face. $}^ } Then! When I relished in using a Predictable Stab to finish the Reinforced Door -- 'cause, y'know, everyone sees it coming by that point -- victory! treasures from the temple! my chest was .. empty. $8^ | Creak open, nothing there, nothing falls on Club Pillow. ~nod~ Okidoky. (But later, I checked, and I do have @Pawndawan's no-joke very nice item. No telling what else landed in my Keep, though, heheh...) So all right! I say "all right" a lot. ~nod~ Maybe in the future, I'll get a more powerful computer, or I'll find some potato settings that'll work, but until then, have fun, do well, and thanks to the content creators (including Blue Manchu! heehee). $:^ J
Thanks pkb =°} I tried to make it a little harder with another werewolf but I could never beat Silverwood camp with four wolves. That's what happens when midrange elo guys create maps. If I can't create an ingenious interplay of card strategies....at least I can make it look good.
Whoo, finally a new MM, and a good one to boot! The Inquisition's Trap I've long wanted to make a map using Traps creatively without making it a gauntlet quite like that one AI module and I went through a lot of iterations with this map before settling with it as it is now. My first idea was to let the player control the Traps and Umber Bulks, but it proved far too finnicky to pull off, so I quickly decided to turn the tables and put the player against Maze of the Mind and Traps. Swarm of Bats proved perfect for this, since it functions quite nicely as bait to get the player to move and an eureka moment when they realize they can't be Maze of the Minded if they trigger the reaction instead and it'd let me use some of the fresh CM mobs. There's also the question of which cards to keep and discard as any card bar Shuffle can be useful in its own way, attacks to alter facing, armor to reduce damage and Bats to avoid attacks. Originally I let the player control Yurik, but he was clearly too powerful and healthy, so I picked the Afflicted Guard instead. I also had to finetune the amount of Umber Bulks and Victory Stars needed, but as it is now I tend to beat the map more often than I lose. The map is still more draw dependant than I like and the AI can make it real easy or real hard, so I'm glad it was put in as a first map. I did like having the pre and post-battle dialogue be from the perspective of the enemy rather than the player character, I was worried people might be confused by it but thankfully it seems the message came across clearly. I had to think outside the box a bit as to why you'd earn loot when you lost, and I like the idea of the intern running off to work on more malformed schemes. It also let me add a nod to Yurik to tie the map in better with the whole CM expansion. Silverwood Camp I really like the visuals on this map! The music is a nice touch too, it's been a long time since I last heard it. It's fun to play with the Inquisition character's powerful decks against a group of intimidating foes. The map has a lot of difficult terrain that can be used to move around in, though I still had a hard time, it took me five tries to beat the map! The Crossbowman usually lived the longest but it's hard to keep dodging two Werewolves at once. Oddly enough I actually had no party members die on my winning attempt, in part thanks to AI stupidity. These werewolves are really bad at choosing where to move characters with Muscle Through. One Step Forward Really funny interplay between cards here, I've played Troll Tobbogan before so I quickly understood what to do, but it was still great seeing the messagebox fill with all those 0 damages. It even forced me to refresh the page! Congrats to Pawndawan for winning AA with a funny and interesting item!
The trap it's tricky to get right draws but the character is just powerful enough to survive the path of knives and the bastardly attacks the camp I had to retry a few times but it is quite nice, good theme of werewolves and whatnot. They felt very tanky and their passives could kill you if you weren't careful, but ganging up upon them wasn't too difficult. one step forward fun battle, funny animation when they just jump jump jump all the way back to the door with just one attack
Ah, fast and easy, just the way I like my MM! The Inquision's Trap A little bit of RNG but nothing aggravating as it's the first map, just be sure to keep armors/Swarm Of Bats in your hand and hit "pass" often, the AI will usually gift you free stars. Silverwood This one scared me on first sight with those massive hp werewolves, but your party decks are pretty solid and have all the tools to handle the beasts without much trouble. Be careful as double All Out Attack are indeed possible. One Step Forward Speed animation at max for teleporting trogs.
These were a lot of fun to play, however while trying to do the third map: One Step Forward, I think I'm coming across a glitch? I can't target any of my friendlies (Trogs) with any attacks or spells. so it just says no valid targets for Path of knives and any other attacks. So I'm stuck unable to beat the third map though I know how to. Anyone have this issue?
the control key is your friend -- hold it down when selecting the spell, and it'll let you choose allies as targets.
Or disable auto target in options. A lot of people are having issues with this, maybe there should be a hint in the pre-battle text saying that its a puzzle or a gary pop up in the beginning of the battle saying you have to solve a puzzle/ giving a hint? @Flaxative
The Inquisition's Trap This map has a super easy AI exploit. The Umber Bulks won't move to base you if your back is to them. So the first time they trigger Bats move to an exterior victory square where your back will be to them. Do not attack the UBs even if they are in range because then you'll face them. Instead just pass. If they cast PoK on you causing you to turn and face them, simply attack one of the Traps to turn away from them again (if it's not obvious... never play a move card). You'll be able to pass all the way to victory.
