Completing the triptych of spoiler articles (the Moonveil Sirens and Veil Chaser Voyagers were the first two), today I’ve got a review of the 6 spoilers from the Freefolk of Luxmorn. These folk who live next to Curdle Cove have unclear loyalties, with Lord Eldrich Willard being the cousin of the Occultist Issadora Curdle, and the Willard Family Crypt having a decidedly Achromatic ambiance.

They also introduce the final new keyword: SECRET. If a card has the SECRET Keyword, you hide the top card from any palette under the card with the SECRET Keyword as a Secret. That card is now the Secret’s Keeper. At the beginning of your turn, before you do anything else, you may Erase the Keeper to play the Secret for free.

This ability is, on the face of it, a bit random. The card under the Keeper could be wildly innappropriate for the circumstances, such as a Jarvis Tremma when there’s no objects in play, athough this risk can be mitigated through careful deck building. However, included among these spoilers is one character that lets you look at SECRETS and swap them. This means you can know what you’re letting yourself in for and improve the value of erasing the Keeper. No doubt there will be more support for this Keyword in the faction to push the odds further in your favour.

A nice card you could combo with SECRET is of course Green Raven, especially in multi-player. Just look at the top card of all players’ palettes after their final draw/trade step, then pick the palette with the best top card for your SECRET.

Let’s have a look at Lord Willard, the first card to carry this Keyword:

Willard mirrors his cousin in shard colours (magenta and achrom) as well as having an X steal on resolve. His ability is “Pay 1 Shard: SECRET”. This means that every round you can Pay 1Δ to place a SECRET underneath him, each round increasing his steal by 1. It feels a bit awkward the fact that you would have to erase such a good card to play his SECRETS; it kind of feels like he’s merely going to be a vessel for SECRETS but never tell, though maybe that’s thematically correct. However, if he did reach 4-5 SECRETS I would certainly be tempted to trigger them at the beginning of my next turn for a big payoff.

On balance, I can’t see myself playing Willard right away, though a deck built around lots of SECRETS could certainly get a lot of value out of him and could be a lot of fun for casual gaming.

Asa on the other hand is a very strong Legendary. 4Δ for 2 steal is already pretty good, but her passive ability is her strength: Each time you Deploy an ACTION card, steal 1. This could get carried away pretty quickly. At the very least, you can play her when you have 2 ACTION cards still to play for a bonus double steal. Additionally, you could combine her with effects like:
Delilah’s Cauldron to play extra ACTIONS in a turn;
SECRETS: trigger SECRETS on the next round and any SECRET ACTIONS will trigger a steal;
Runes: these cards REVEAL and play another card, so if they hit an ACTION you get double steal,
ACTIONS that already steal or drain, such as Salum Spring, HAIM Shard Cache, Achrom Blast and Arabella’s Recipe, for maximum burst drain potential.

Her lore also uses the word “femine”. I thought this was a typo for “feminine” initially, but a bit of searching elucidated that this is a Middle English alternative to feminine.

Luxmorn Fisherman is a wonderfully stereotypical fisherman, down to his hat, overalls, and beard, and I do like the idea of a Wizard fisherman. 3Δ for +2 is already acceptable, but ACTION: SECRET is a nice little bonus. A great combo character for Willard decks.

Willard Family Crypt is a 4 cost location with steal 1, which is 2Δ too expensive, so you would expect an ability worth at least 2Δ on the card. The ability is an interesting one: when you reveal a SECRET and Erase its Keeper, and you may Pay 2Δ to place the Keeper in the Crypt as a SECRET.

It’s a nicely thematic ability, however it does feel expensive and slow. You have to play the Crypt and SECRET Keeper one turn, next turn you Erase the Keeper and move it to the Crypt (paying 2Δ for the privlege), then you can if you want next turn erase the Crypt to reveal its secrets, essentially returning the old Keepers to the game. Paying 2Δ for every SECRET just seems expensive, especially given you have to Erase a 4 cost location to reveal them. Unless there’s more cards like Willard which trigger off the number of SECRETS you have, making this a storehouse of SECRETS rather than a Keeper you actually erase, I can’t see this being worth it. A fun card mechanically though.

And finally.

Soloman Rift is a rare 5Δ +3 character with Pay 1 Shard: SECRET, much like Willard, and the delightful Wazard Vagabond card types. Willard and Soloman together and your SECRETS could quickly get out of hand, even if you do have to pay for them.

His ability to look at a SECRET and, if you like, swap it with the top card of any palette is very strong. Of course if you swap the card you won’t know what the new card is, and will have to wait until next turn.

A slightly odd upshot of his ability is that if the SECRET comes from an opponent’s palette, and you swap it with the top card of your palette, you’ll end up with an opponent’s card in your palette (albeit at the top, unless you shuffle it due to an effect like REVEAL). This eccentricity aside, this could be an essential card for SECRET heavy decks.

Soloman’s Influence has nothing to do with SECRETS, but is just a nice card. REVEAL a Character and Deploy them for free is excellent for 3Δ, but it carries a risk: you choose an opponent to REVEAL a Character and they get to deploy it, though not for free. I could see this massively backfiring, so it’ll be a situational play. For instance, does the opponent only have a couple of shards left in their bank? If so, they’re not going to want to pay to deploy a character now, so this card is a safe play. Do you have a 6 strength character ready to attack? If so, why would they pay to play something that’s just going to get erased immediately?

Overall, I think this is a very nice card that could be used to great effect in the right deck. However, I think for most decks it’s going to be too risky or situational to be worth playing.

Right, that’s all the spoilers for now. More soon.

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