Stars Below card deep-dive: The Ash

This is part five of a five-part series of articles on the design of the cards for The Shipwreck Arcana: Stars Below expansion.

The Imago is the only standalone promo card we’ve made for The Shipwreck Arcana. If you haven’t seen it before, it looks like this:

It serves a unique niche: trying to get 7s on the board. Plenty of other cards that care about fates in play never actually get the chance to look at 7s, because they usually cause cards to fade the moment they arrive. The Imago is a “trash can” (see part 3 of this article series) that doubles as a mantelpiece for displaying 7s, making them less dangerous and also making other cards behave in new ways.

And if you’re wondering why we’ve spent this post talking about an old card instead of a new one, allow me to explain the purpose of The Ash:

Spoiler alert: it’s very similar to The Imago.

Much like its predecessor, this design is intended to make the usually-dangerous 7s into “safe” fates. Unlike The Imago, it makes them 100% safe, reusing the “comet” indicator as a way to avoid ever fading due to the fates piling up in front of it. Mix in a mandatory effect, and this single card flips the game upside down by turning 1s (and 2s) into the most dangerous fates to play!

This card basically summarizes Stars Below. It uses mandatory effects and unique fading. It has gold text and the comet indicator. It creates new play patterns out of regular old fates. It’s surprisingly simple, almost turning it into another building block.

And its artwork caps the narrative begun in the fictional deck of The Shipwreck Arcana, a year and a half ago. It will be covered in detail soon, in our final Lore post for the game: The Tale of The Stars Below.

Art from the archive: Part 4

These blog posts will feature art from various projects Matthew has done over the years.

The story: Shortly after I got my drawing tablet, I was pretty interested in webcomics and needed projects to work on. This was from a short comic I made with Kevin (he did the writing, as usual).

Drawn: 2010

Stars Below card deep-dive: The Musicians

This is part four of a five-part series of articles on the design of the cards for The Shipwreck Arcana: Stars Below expansion.

So far we’ve highlighted cards with new mechanics, but as we’ve already talked about, the game also requires a certain percentage of “building block” cards: simple, easy to evaluate, always useful. The higher the average complexity of other cards get, the more these building blocks matter as touchstones during the players’ evaluations. They’re also the hardest cards to make, because all the simple and obvious ideas are in the base game.

To find more of them, we’ve looked for variations on existing cards that eliminate unique ranges when played upon. We often combine this with increased context, making the elimination range depend in some way on what fates are already in play. This does require care, since a building block must remain viable even if no other fates are in play.

For a past example of a late addition to the repertoire of building blocks, check out The Lantern from the original Kickstarter’s stretch goal/expansion cards. Or, if you’re paying attention to Stars Below, check out The Musicians.

If this reminds you of base game cards like The Deep, The Key, or Leviathan, congratulations! It’s intended to fit the same mold. Add up your fates, check a number, see if you can play on it. These cards provide a lot of value because not playing on them often results in a very simple “Your fates didn’t add up to the target number(s)” deduction.

The Musicians finds a new way to twist this effect by letting you add three numbers… but now two of them are unknown. A single equation with two unknown variables isn’t the easiest to solve, but it does a nice job of creating N+1 possible outcomes, where N = the number of visible fates. We’ve seen this on previous cards like Asunder or The Prophet, which become less useful as fates pile up.

Is that a problem? Nope! Good news about building blocks: they’re most important early or when the board is empty. There are plenty of other cards that become more informative as they gain fates, so this aspect of The Musicians is right at home with its stated design goal.

Art from the archive: Part 3

These blog posts will feature art from various projects Matthew has done over the years.

The story: A fake comic book cover I drew for fun (which doesn't happen too often; usually I need a project to get me drawing). The character is from another project, though.

Drawn: 2019