Adventure Basics
To adventure, a hero must be standing on a space with a gold adventure plaque. Adventuring is voluntary. A hero can stand on an adventure space and not adventure.
Adventures are resolved during the Adventure step only, and ONLY for the active team.
Adjacent enemies do NOT prevent adventuring.
After EVERY adventure, the adventuring hero will be either dismissed (usually) or banished (you messed up).
Challenges
Many adventures (as well as attacks) are resolved by a challenge. In a challenge, two ratings are compared, and then a challenge card is turned over to determine the result.
Place used cards in a discard pile. You cannot look through the discard pile.
Each team has a challenge deck of their own. This deck flattens the luck and makes sure both teams are abused equally.
Reading the Challenge card
Determine the difference between the hero’s rating and the opposing rating. Find this difference on the challenge card. Look at the face next to that amount. The difference cannot be greater than 6 or less than -6.
A positive difference is commonly referred to as being “Better By.” A negative difference is known as “Worse By.”
Example: Your hero’s Aim is 6, versus the 5 Aim challenge shown here. The difference is 1. You draw a challenge card. “1” is in a green band containing a happy face. The hero Passes!
Amaze! The hero rocked it.
Pass. The hero did well enough.
Squeak. The hero failed, but learned something.
Fail. Hang your head in shame.
Fopp (Failure of Painful Proportions). Let’s pretend this never happened.
Common Adventure Results
On EVERY adventure, a Squeak, Fail, and Fopp have the same results.
Squeak: The hero gains a Boost and is dismissed.
Fail: The hero is dismissed.
Fopp: The hero is banished.
Capturing a Faction Adventure
The goal of all adventures on the Faction keys is to capture them. If your adventure result tells you to capture that adventure space, do the following:
If there is no victory marker on that space, place your team’s victory marker there.
If the enemy already has their marker there, remove it. Do NOT place your own.
If your own team’s marker is already there, do nothing. You’ve already captured it. Only one victory marker can be on a space.
Faction Relations
Factions prefer to work with heroes of a like mind, while those of opposite factions are met with suspicion.
Each hero has one faction that they naturally relate to, known as their home faction. This is shown by the symbol in the upper left of the hero card.
Heroes also have two opposing factions that naturally treat them with disfavor.
Heroes gain a +2 adventure bonus on their home faction key, while suffering -2 on the two opposing factions keys.
These modifiers apply only to adventures that are challenges - ones that require a challenge card to be drawn.
Steel Bastion is home to Warriors. Warrior heroes gain +2 to tasks and quests in Steel Bastion, feeling right at home there.
But Adventurers and Icons are met with suspicion, suffering -2 penalty.
Adventures where you spend money or cards give no benefit to home heroes or penalty to opposing heroes. Money greases all wheels.