I wanted to present the first iteration of The Also Rans as a board game, because this entire week was a breakthrough in learning how to cobble it together and it all clicking!

So lets start with the player card. Each player gets a character to play as, or, if you’re doing a solo game, you get all of them (up to three). Turn taking is brief enough that it should be manageable for any number of characters, but each one has their own rule set, briefly described on the parchment.

Alastrina is the character I’m introducing today. She has a lot going on with her battle card; two attack spots, two prayer spots, a string of prayer beads (a mala) and a desperate plea. Each turn, a player gets a random pair of 2 attacks and 2 prayers; you get to pick one of each. That’s because only getting to do one thing per turn is hella boring and makes healers into HP fountains instead of viable characters. I want to focus on the prayers, though, because that is her main characteristic.

Each prayer token has a front and a back side. The yellow side is her unpowered version, the golden-y side is the connected version, for when her mala is filled up. Prayers build japa, the beads on a mala; all of them do, so the more she uses her unpowered prayers, the sooner she can use the connected ones. Which are all improvements over the original.

As you might imagine, prayers of protection and healing are kinda typical for a cleric PC. She also has some potent abilities to extend buffs, both ones she gave the party as well as those other party members provide. Here’s her either extending them by one turn, or doubling their power:

Remember, you get a choice of two prayers a turn, so this is a tactical move if there are a bunch of buffs you want to extend, but not very useful if there aren’t. She also has the same effect on enemy debuffs, so she can ask the heavens to exact penance for their wicked nature, again, depending on the debuffs they have stacked.

So why wouldn’t you just power up and use the better version of your prayers each turn? Alastrina has healing powers, usually in the form of regeneration buffs, but to truly restore life, she needs to burn off her japa. Each of the Desperate Pleas use the beads for greater effect, so a 1 bead Plea is a lot less impressive than a full 7. I don’t have any fancy card art for them, but here’s a sample idea of the text:

Blinding Light

Burn up to 4 Japa to place Dazed debuffs on target foes.
Then burn up to 3 Japa to place Blind debuffs on target foes. These debuffs can stack on the same foe.

What’s the upshot of this? If you have 4 or less Japa, you can hand out Dazed debuffs, which lower the odds of a foe casting a spell or something. If you have 5 or more, you can also add Blind, which causes any attack based move to automatically miss. Versus a boss, this can cripple them for several turns, but of course cost Alastrina her entire power bar to do it.

So that’s progress so far. Next step, printing and playtesting versus some monsters, just to get a feel for how combat works, and if its fun.