There are still many who yearn to see this sequence officially addressed in a satisfying way, and many who have put in work to assist PG in finding a solution. The design of PA is way too good otherwise.
We submit this potential erratum for your playtesting, and as the official rule change, if it passes your tests. The goal is to retain the Shadow’s merging concept while alleviating unwanted side effects, yet be very clean and easy to implement in conjunction with the printed rules.
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“After a Lord moves, replace the spawning of an Invasion token with the spawning of a Shadow token”
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A nice summary of why an official change is requested: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/…..9#34566979
The proposed change above pushes the merge to after minion movement, and removes one Invasion counter.
I have gone through more tests personally, and have the key stumbling block potentially solved —
Remove the concept of the Lord ”moving” altogether, because, under the current rules, it is now just a byproduct of the core shadow mechanism. And, it really has nothing to do with the Lord – whether it moves or not is not a variable of the Lord itself, but a feature of the Map. So:
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Lords never move.
Minion Spawn step: Spawn an Invasion Counter. If Lord Track reached 1 this turn on a Shadow map, add a new Shadow Counter instead.
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This handles the double spawns, and also the timing issues for when heroes are close to the shadow when the clock strikes. The Lord still “moves,” just via the Shadow’s spreading, and the Shadow’s spreading is what is most important (both mechanically and thematically).
If you feel this is too much of a departure, you can just simply use:
“A Lord that moves does so during the Minions Spawn step, in lieu of placing an invasion counter.”
BUT, phrasing everything in the form of the Shadow spreading and removing Lord movement altogether also has a nice side effect of reducing the number of concepts for a new player. There is no need to worry about Lord movement at all — this was really just an artifact of previous rulesets. To simplify the core rules even further, you could push the above “Minion Spawn Step” modification to the pages of the individual Shadow maps – those frequently list spawning exceptions anyway (and could use some rewriting in general).
I am very excited by this solution.
(And then, for “The Final Battle”, you could have the Lord actually move as the map’s special rule, sans shadow, and it would make sense both mechanically (as there, it is separate from the spawning point) and thematically – making for for an even more epic Final Battle. No more shadow, this dude is ACTUALLY on the march!)
Since there is talk happening of the new PA2 rules, I want to have my updated submission here available for review:
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Lords move only as the Shadow expands, not as an extra step in the Lord Cycle.
During setup, place the Gate in the next space in front of the Shadow.
When the Lord track hits 1:
– A 4th Circle Demon spawns on the Gate
– Minion Invasion: Instead of a spawning a new Invasion Token, a new Shadow token spawns on the Gate, and the Gate advances.
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Hell is in the entirety of the Shadow at all times; the Gate has no other inherent effects (but has a more interesting use than it does currently, for such a nice piece).
For “The Final Battle”, the Shadow does not expand, but the Lord now marches as the map’s unique mechanism.
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