Myth Orphans of Ovenstein – News Update February 23rd, 2024
Today, we want to tell you a little bit about the rules changes and refinements for Myth Orphans of Ovenstein. Where to begin? That’s indeed a good question. We already had one or two lifestreams where we talked about the rules, but those happened a while ago, and a couple of things have changed in the meantime. So in order to get everyone on the same page, we will start at the beginning and work our way up.
For starters, lets take a look at one of the simplest cards, the good old Hustle. The first thing you will notice is that the information is presented in a more digestable manner. As before, the card is an Action Card and its Darkness Cost is 1, but you no longer have to understand the symbols to understand the card. We also reduced the number of Stances to two: Cautious and Agressive, and you can easily distinguish which is which.
Instead of MP, we now use EP (Exertion Points). Those points are mostly used for movement, but also for special actions, called “Tasks.” Tasks will be the bread and butter of the Orphans of Ovenstein campaign. They represent non-combat challenges the heroes need to overcome in order to succeed. Each combat scene will come with its own unique challenges and special rules. Not just in order to make the game more exciting, but also as a means to tell the story. There will be a decent amount of narrative text, too, but we want your heroes to experience the main story beats through the gameplay itself.
The card text provides the hero with 2 EP, plus another 2 EP, if the hero is in Aggressive stance (more on Stances in upcoming news articles). Additionally the hero may draw 2 cards and add one of them to their hand. So Hustle is the kind of card you play to move your hero into a better position, get stuff done, and to improve your card situation. It doesn’t come for free, as the Darkness Value goes up by 1, and every time the Darkness reaches 6 or more, a Darkness Cycle is triggered, i.e. the monsters act and new monsters are spawned.
Each hero begins the campaign with a Hero Deck of 20 Novice level Action Cards and plays with a card hand of 5 per round. Cycling through those cards and making the best of what you currently have on your hand is all part of the gameplay strategy. When leveling up a hero, one Novice level card is replaced with one Journeyman card, so the deck will always stay at 20 cards, but it will get a lot stronger over time.
Next time, we will probably go into more detail regarding attacks and how they are resolved. That said, if you have specific questions, then please let us know, and we will center our next news update around answering those questions.
