#horned fool

[heroes-den]

Rank Timido Cute

James: She does indeed look very cute. A

Rhys: Along with innocent and inexperienced, my favorite. They always make the best noises. S

[triskelionsociety]

Modifying the “Horned Fool”

Those of you who have been following our development of this game for a while may notice that the Power of the Horned Fool has been altered from its original state. Originally the sole effect of the card was to add a court card to your hand and treat it as an extra "6," essentially giving you a free card better than a fair number of the cards in your deck. It was eventually brought to our attention that this effect is actually weaker than many of the other Masks powers, and the reason why isn't immediately obvious. The effect is not bad in and of itself; not counting the Aces, 6 is the average value of a card in a player's deck, so gaining a new one in your hand isn't a weak effect. But the fact that the card remains among its owner's played cards presents a problem. Once a card is played it goes into the discard pile, likely to later be shuffled back into your deck on your next Recover action. And herein lies a problem, because having an extra 6 in your DECK is actually a considerable detriment. Even though it's close to the average of the overall cards, it's not something you ever want to draw instead of your Ace, and is so much worse than one that it actually weakens the value of your average card. As one of our researchers (and more aggressive players) put it, it is just one more card that is not an Ace. So, in order to maintain game balance, we added an additional effect to the Power, reading: "You may then remove the lowest card in your discard pile from the game." Longtime players of trading card games will recognize this "banishing" mechanic; it essentially a step above discarding. What it does for the Fool's player is allow them to not only gain an extra decent card into their hand, but it also gives them the option to generally replace a weak card in their discard pile (and ultimately their deck) with a better one. Of course it the pile had no cards equal to or lower than a 6 in it, the additional effect would still be detrimental, but this is something the player may even be able to control themselves through clever play and may give them increased reason to play weaker cards earlier than normal. We feel this effect adds enough additional strategy and balance to the game that it was worth altering the original as conceived by the French nobles.