Set Size | 4 |
Number of unique Cards | 2 |
Role | Enemies, Agility, Stalling |
Threat Level | Low to Mid |
# of scenarios | 7 |
Variants | – |
My take on this set: The Nightgaunt set requires a specific scenario structure with lots of locations and designated Central locations to work properly. Despite that, it’s been used five times, appearing in all but one campaign so far. Hunting Nightgaunts are solid Hunter enemies that haven’t lost much of their impact since appearing in the Core set.

What it does: At four health and three fight, Hunting Nightgaunts are difficult enough to take down in combat that it will require a weapon and at least moderate fighting skills to do so. The difficulty to evade them scales with the difficulty of the campaign, or to be more precise with the negative modifiers in the chaos bag.
As implied by their name, the Hunting Nightgaunt has Hunter.
My take: Depending on the difficulty level, players usually want to have an advantage of two points to five points over the difficulty of the skill test to have a reasonable chance of passing. For evading the Nightgaunt, players should double this expectation and apply it to the base difficulty of 1. (Example: In Standard, you’d usually want to be testing with a skill value two above the difficulty. For evading the Nightgaunt, you’d want to be four above.) Using this rule of thumb, we can estimate the Nightgaunts effective agility value to be around 3-6, depending on the difficulty.
Since they are Hunters, you will usually want to get rid of them in a more permanent way anyways. So killing them is often the way to go.
Threat level: Mid. No large problem for a fighter, but will at least take two actions to defeat. Can be an issue for non-fighters because they are just large enough to put them out of the damage range of most one-shot effects and can’t reasonably be defeated unarmed.
Dealing with it: Due to the map layout in scenarios with Nightgaunts and the Hunter keyword, evading them is often not the best solution. If possible, have the fighter of the group use a turn to take them down.

What it does: The player has to pass an agility test at difficulty four. If he fails, he is dealt one horror and damage and also transported to a location with the Central trait. Note that the use of “Then” in the card text means that this movement will only happen if the test failed.
My take: There are some situations in which the movement from On Wings of Darkness can be used in some beneficial way. But more often than not, this treachery usually is pretty rough as it not only deals some horror and damage, but also eats up actions that were spent on movement and now possibly need to be spent again. It also separates players that were trying to stick together from each other, possibly leaving one vulnerable now that they lost their bodyguard.
Threat level: Low to Mid. The potential impact is high, but the card is very situational in how it plays out.
Dealing with it: Clearly, the forced movement is what matters most on this card. If being shuttled off to the Central location is really inconvenient, it can easily be worth it to pitch one or more cards into the agility test. As a final note, if there are multiple Central locations in play, the player gets to choose where they want to go. This allows to take a significant shortcut in the Point of No Return scenario, jumping ahead to the Peaks of Thok.