New Priest: Simon Orne

Simon Orne is from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and is one of Joseph Curwen’s sorcerous associates. He has been around a long time, and is known to be a man of wealth. If you are playing as him for your priest, you have the ability to “call in your markers” and suddenly gain wealth.

Basically, when you activate Simon Orne, you fill all empty slots in your sanctum with treasure. This of course doesn’t count your Exposed Resources (which is limitless – get real). Of course as with many priests, you’ll want to pave the way for this boon. Getting the Pit Trap makes sense for example (it can hold 4 cash!), and maybe a closet or two at the end of your map. Anyway, usually you can’t have a completely empty sanctum when you activate Simon (if you are, you are doing something wrong), but this can certainly pay off big time. 

How to use all that cash?

The easy answer is, “Spend it at Aylesbury” which gives you 2 Spellbooks for 10 treasure.

The more complex answer is “go nuts with a bunch of Rituals”. It almost doesn’t matter which rituals you do – they’re all good. Just plop down your guys willy-nilly. Of course, this means you won’t have much to do next turn, but at least you’ll have a LOT of loot. You may want to use your priest to chant on the next turn, so you can rearrange your treasure in your sanctum and try to keep it safe from investigators.

New Investigator: The Vampire!

Yeah I know, “Isn’t a vampire a monster? Why isn’t it on our side?” Well, after all, those other players are honest-to-goodness cultists, yet THEY’RE not on your side! Incidentally, Lovecraft absolutely wrote about vampires. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward the evil wizards all drink blood. His tale The Shunned House is about a vampire, though a really creepy and unconventional one that feeds off general health, both mental & physical, rather than blood. Also in his poem Psychopompos, werewolves make an appearance, and the Dame Du Blois is apparently a were-serpent, and possibly vampiric.

Regardless, here is OUR vampire, and he is a threat to you the players, though also an opportunity.

The Vampire’s Opportunity

The Vampire basically presents you with a chance to completely avoid the entire attack – if you discard 4 blood, you are ignored.

Of course, 4 blood is also 4 VPs, but many attacks (especially late-game) can destroy more VPs than this. For example, in the very last attack of the Watcher gameplay video, Andrew Lucio loses 2 VPs by losing a Magic, and also loses enough cash that he has to share the 5 VP “most treasure” bonus with Lincoln. Giving up 4 blood would have been well worth it for him.

You can think of the vampire as basically extorting you for food. Pay up, and get ignored. Of course you have to HAVE the blood available in the first place, but if you see the Vampire show up on the Investigator track, it’s not hard to make preparations.