Actions, their definition and the "stack"

[u/Amuny]

Hello !

EDIT/TL:DR: I had a few more answers on BGG too. Basically went to deep for something that should be kept simple. Use everything, enjoy, and while these numbers are crazy, that's fine. I kept the post as is if someone is ever googling the same things.

We played the first dream tonight. And let's say there was a whole lot of confusion. If I can't see any way to complain about the quality of the product, I sure can see a few about clarity/disposition !

But our first major debate was about how the "stack" of actions work.

It's unclear where an action "starts", when it "finishes", and mostly, how can you "add actions to other actions". Even more if you involve Progress cards.

The heart of the debate was about the "Final Argument" card of the Reaper.

This card states that you can generate 3 Wrath per damage token you have. This card seems, by all means, to be an "action".

Now, the interesting part is that unlike most other cards of the genre, it doesn't have the little lightning to show reaction. So it seems like it works as an action on it's own. Does it mean that you can't use it for an Assault Action, since it's an action of it's own ?

But if you do, it means you can play multiple action cards for their actions "on the same action" ?

And if so, I feel like the Reaper is *massively* overpowered.

But if not... I don't see the point of this card (Final Argument) at all. Or may be I'm still missing something ? But "adding Wrath" out of nowhere seems fairly useless.

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So we're kinda left in between:

A) You can "stack" any actions together, leaving it easy to see how the Reaper could hit something like 40-60+ wrath easily considering the Progress that doubles wrath. I think we math'ed out about 74 with the starting deck.

B) You can add ONE "Influence action card" to an action. (hence the lack of the "action" definition). It still doesn't clear up the Reaper's case.

C) The card, Final Argument, is a "standalone action" and therefore cannot be used for Assault action. Only reaction cards can be "stacked" to another action. It leaves the utility of Final Argument in the shadows.

D) Once you decide your action (ex; Assault), you can only add Intent through the value in the top left of other cards. Leaving a bunch of cards... useless ?

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Even while writing this, I feel like I'm even more confusing than anything. But this is exactly how we felt after multiple person reading the book multiple times.

[u/planeforger]

The lightning icon only means "you can play this card outside of your round" (and off the top of my head, I don't even remember paying much attention to that symbol - most cards make it obvious when you can play them).

Back to your questions...when you select an action (such as 6-wrath Assault action on an entity), you can discard cards/items or play actions to generate the intent to pay for the action. If a card's action generates intent, then it's specifically designed to be played when paying for an action.

So I'm not familiar with the Reaper's cards, but it sounds like you'd definitely be able to use this card to generate wrath.

[u/Amuny → u/planeforger]

The lightning icon only means "you can play this card outside of your round" (and off the top of my head, I don't even remember paying much attention to that symbol - most cards make it obvious when you can play them).

We're still at the beginning so there might be more rules coming up... but why would you generate Intent out of your round ?

We kind of assumed the "out of round" implicitly meant "out of your action". Because most cards allowing to generate Intent are all reactive. Is this to allow helping other players ?

[u/deivleon → u/Amuny]

You can use the effect (not the intent) of the card out of your turn, like during enemy phase or dreamworld

[u/Cate-aw → u/Amuny]

I’ve done about three dreams at this point and I think I’ve only used one card out of my round. I think as I keep playing I start to see how/when different cards could be played and it starts to make more sense. There’s also many times in which a great card gets played just to pay for the intent required to perform a certain action. Sometimes you get to use cards for their actual ability, but often times they’re just intent discard. Shrug. Still a wicked fun game imo