Imperial Crows, Dogs, Mechanical Familiars, Flonzi...they all have been sculpted not only because we all need more funny creatures to decorate our bases with, but also to give you an important resource, when the game will be finally ready: Familiars!
There can be no fantasy, without familiars, and indeed these colourful and weird creatures are an important part of the future game (and lore!).
But how do Familiar behave, in-game, and how much Familiars can we deploy on the battlefield?
For each guild of adventurers, players can choose a single Familiar.
Obviously, several characters allow you deploying extra Familiars: for example, if your guild includes a Dwarf Inventor, you can add an extra Mechanical Familiar to your gang, while if you recruit a M.A.S.K character or a Grimorian, you can add extra Flonzi Familiars to the party.
No matter how many little guys you take with you, for each of them you must select a master, because there can be no Familiar, without a Master.
This is important because despite these creatures have their own profile, stats, action points and abilities, making them almost individual characters through and through, the link between them and their master is the real key of their functioning.
Talking about rules, at the beginning of the match, before the players start to deploy their characters on the board, you must select one of your adventurers and declare that it is the Master of a specific Familiar.
From that point, these two characters are linked, in several ways:
•You must deploy both the Master and its Familiar together, during the Deploying Phase.
•You can Activate a Familiar only during the Activation Phase of its Master
•If a Master is removed from the board, then also its Familiar has to be removed (but, obviously, not the other way around).
As you can see, owning a Familiar is a big responsibility!
But the advantages are too many, indeed: even if you can activate a Familiar as a normal character, during the game, making it move and act freely all around the board, a Familiar really comes at its own when it is close to its Master, or just in supporting is Master.
There are many Familiars, in Into the Quest, and each of them has a unique way to support its Master, let's see some of them.
The Hunting Bulldog, for example, is a nice bodyguard for its Master, granting a decent attack and being able to "absorb" a hit per-round, if it is close to its owner. Unfortunately, it is also quite lazy, so you might see it refusing to move, sometimes!
Mechanical Familiars MK III, as you may expect, give extra shooting bonuses to their owners and increase their owners' ability to heal mechanical creatures (including, of course, the Iron Titan!).
Talking about shiny heroes, how can we not mention the glorious Mechanical Familiar MK I?! This guy, as its mark name clearly suggests ("Bodyguard"), gives its best when it's close to its master, protecting him/her from any danger. It's favourite action? Putting itself between its owner and an enemy in charge, like a real hero! Keep this guy really close to its master, you won't be disappointed.
The Imperial Crows are more strategic guys (after all, crows are smart creatures!) and allow their owners, for example, to see what they see (any characters in the line of sight of an Imperial Crow Familiar, is considered to be in the line of sight also of its Master) and can even give the alarm, granting their owners defence bonuses against range attacks activated by enemies in their line of sight!
Flonzi Familiars are worthy of their (bad) reputation, and will easily become the worst nightmare of your playmates! There are different tasks that a Flonzo Familiar can achieve, for example, they can carry in the place of their master heavy weapons and tons of magic books (granting them an extra weapon or extra spells), but they give their best when they are unleashed all around the board, able to max-out their superpower: bad luck. In fact, they give annoying malus to any character close to them (including their master, of course!) so if you want to see your playmate consumed by rage, after being obliged to repeat a successful die roll, Flonzi are your best choice!
Priestess of the Golden Boar's piglets have a legendary nose, concerning truffles and treasures in general and they increase your chance to discover hidden treasures when you search for them (I will talk about treasures in the next post).
These are only a few examples of how Familiars can make your guild more effective, and expect to see a lot of them in our future releases: I love Familiars because they add not only interesting mechanics, but also because they add a unique flavour to the game, allowing any kind of epic or fun situation!
Imagine seeing your opponent failing a death blow, because of the bad luck of a Flonzo Familiar nearby: in the next game, you would surely promote it to Mighty Knight, giving it a proper mount worthy of its legendary act!
Talking about "promotions", even if Familiars don't have access to all the crazily huge list of improvements that you can choose for your characters, they still have some minor upgrades available to increase their effectiveness: a single Familiar of your guild may receive an extra ability, chosen from their specific list.
The Hunting Bulldog, for example, can be upgraded with the ability "Leader of the pack", allowing it to ignore the rule "Laziness at its finest". Any Mechanical Familiar can receive the ability "Hard Shell", that will boost a little its (already decent) defensive stats.
So, this is a first view of the Familiars Family: what kind of new Familiar would you like to see, in our future releases?!
For what that concerns the next releases, I'm designing a proper familiar for the Elf release: the P'tyl, nemesis (and opposites!) of Flonzi!
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