Allies pushes decision-making, like Intrigue. Includes split piles, but this time there are four cards per pile, with one card letting you rotate what's on top. Ally cards provide 23 different ways to use Favor tokens, which Liaisons produce.
Allies are a new landscape card. Allies provide optional ways to spend Favor tokens. Spending Favors can only be done once per time an Ally triggers, unless it says, "Repeat as desired."
This expansion includes six split piles, each with four sets of four cards. To start the game, these sets are ordered by cost, with the cheapest on top. This ordering may become more shuffled throughout the game. Only the top card of a split pile may be gained. The top card of each split pile has an ability that can "rotate" the pile. Rotating a pile means taking the top card, and all copies directly under it, and putting them on the bottom.
Some cards have a new type, Liaison. Liaison cards grant a new resource, Favor tokens. Favor tokens persist across turns. If a Kingdom includes any Liaisons, one Ally is added to the game.
Flavor
It’s a celebration! People are dancing in the streets, and riding horses through the dancehalls. You’ve finally formed an alliance with the barbarians to the north. Instead of the streets running red with blood, they’ll run, well, the usual color, let’s not focus on what color the streets run. The point is, there’s peace. Sure negotiations were tricky. The barbarians are uncouth; they have no five-second rule and stick out the wrong finger when drinking tea. There are perks too, though. They’ve given you skulls to drink mead out of, and spices to get rid of the skull aftertaste. And you’ve given them stuff in return: forks, mirrors, pants. It’s great for everyone. And with this treaty out of the way, you can get to work on your other neighbors. Soon, all the allies will be yours.
-- Donald X. Vaccarino
Features
- 78 Unique cards - large sized expansion
- 31 Kingdom card piles
- 9 Liaisons
- 6 Rotatable Split piles
- 23 Allies
- Medium complexity
