Agents of Yig

My take on this set: Agents of Yig is one of the payoffs for the Vengeance mechanic. None of the cards provides Vengeance itself, but all of them get stronger if the players did already earn points for killing snakes or otherwise angering the Father of Serpents. Obviously this makes the set vary in power depending on how much vengeance players earned so far, but even without boosts this set is not exactly a pushover. The presence of this set in the scenario should make players avoid getting vengeance by all means as the enemies here can put a lot of pressure on them otherwise.

What it does: Starts out with below average stats except for the 3 health that stop most attacks from taking down the Brood in one hit. It has Hunter to follow the players around. This combined with appearing in scenarios that have a lot of other enemies as well means they will require being dealt with permanently. This becomes harder with each point of vengeance in the victory pile.

My take: Even one or two vengeance make a big difference in how hard these serpents are to kill. So that is obviously to be avoided. While they are easy to evade, it’s usually better to evade the snakes with vengeance on them and killing the Broods of Yig instead. It’s certainly preferable to doing it the other way round…

Threat level: Low to Mid. They are usually just ghouls with an extra health. While that is certainly relevant, it doesn’t make them particularly dangerous. If the players start to gain Vengeance, the power of these goes up dramatically though, until evading can even become the only realistic option.

Dealing with it: Avoid having to take vengeance. This goes for the complete Agents of Yig set, of course. Aside from that, there’s not much to it. One interesting bit is that Vengeance is usually earned in larger quantities when players are unable to evade the enemies. And the Brood will force players to evade in that case, which can be a bit of a challenge despite the low agility value on the card.

What it does: Even without any vengeance in play, the Serpent from Yoth hits hard and has a lot of health. This makes it a credible threat worth the victory point on the card. With vengeance, the Serpent earns new abilities that make it stronger: Retaliate for the first point, Hunter for the second. From the third point of vengeance on the Serpent will take 1 less damage from every attack which will make it truly resistant and hard to take down.

My take: This big boy is not to be underestimated. At its base values it already takes about a full turn to take down and it only gets worse from there. This is one of the victory points that actually takes a little bit of effort to earn. I really like the set of abilities this enemy gains, they play well off each other and turn the Serpent into a real threat without having to repeat the same stat bonuses that the Brood gets.

Threat level: High. This is what the big guns in your Guardian decks are for. Especially if players manage to pick up the third vengeance, having attacks that deal three or more damage are basically a must have to kill the Serpent without wasting two turns.

Dealing with it: Avoid having to take vengeance! There’s only one of them in the deck, but once it arrives, it has a large presence on the board. The conditional Hunter keyword on this creature works wildly against the players here: If it’s weak and players want to kill it for its VP, then it doesn’t have Hunter and needs to be sought out. If it became a boss monster that the investigators might not even want to fight, it gains Hunter and goes after the players.

What it does: The curse of Yig makes the player gain the Serpent trait. In exchange, they get a penalty of 1 to their health and fight value. To get rid of the card, the player can spend an action and attempt a Willpower test against current Vengeance plus 2.

My take: That’s one bad trade. The Serpent trait doesn’t do anything, as far as i am aware. But the minus one to fight and health is certainly not great. All things considered this is one of the weaker cards in most encounter decks, as its easy to discard unless the players went and slaughtered every snake they could find. And if they did, they can likely take the hit to fight and health. Most investigators can take it anyways.

Threat level: Low. While this does deal the equivalent of one damage in a backwards way, the card usually only has a noticeable impact on investigators that use their fight value. Everyone else can likely just ride this out.

Dealing with it: You probably already guessed it, but … avoid having to take vengeance. If you do, the willpower test is easy to pass. Often enough it’s not even actually worth the action to do so, though. The only way for this card to become annoying is when players accumulated a lot of vengeance and the card is drawn by the primary fighter. In that case, remember that other investigators can make the Will test in their stead, so for example a Mystic could use his higher Will to free the Guardian from the curse.