Rainforest

My take on this set: Aside from providing a critical mass of locations for the exploration deck in the two scenarios it’s used in, the Rainforest set adds two treacheries to the encounter deck. Fittingly, both deal with exploring: One stops players from exploring a certain location, the other one punishes players for not exploring. Both are reasonably powerful cards that have some impact on the game.

What it does: Overgrowth is attached to the current location until a player manages to spend an action and pass a test against strength or intellect at a difficulty of four. While Overgrowth is in play, players can not explore at that location.

My take: It’s Locked Door, except for exploration. Unlike Locked Door, which always seeks out a location where players may want to investigate, Overgrowth has no such clause and will just attach wherever the investigator currently stands. As a result, Overgrowth will often be drawn in places where exploring isn’t necessary because either the connections have already been found or they can be found from a different location. When it is relevant, it is quite annoying though. The tests are high enough to require some extra work and there are no easy ways to bypass the card like there are for Locked Door.

Threat level: Medium. Overgrowth has a tendency to attach to locations where it is no longer a huge deal, similar to Obscuring Fog from the core set. Whenever it is in the way, it’s a bit of a problem though.

Dealing with it: If nobody with naturally high strength or intellect is around to dispatch this card, it can be worth moving to a connecting location and exploring from there. If that’s not an option either, getting rid of Overgrowth can take several actions or a serious expense of cards committed to the test.

What it does: After drawing Voice of the Jungle, the player will have to keep it in their threat area until they spend an action and pass a willpower test. While affected by the treachery, they take one horror each turn unless they successfully explored.

My take: I like this card’s design a lot. Anyone who doesn’t have the willpower to get rid of this card will have to consider if they are better off taking the horror instead of risking extra encounter card draws from failed explorations. It’s very tempting to go for the exploration to keep the Voice from hurting you until you find a solution for it, and after all you’ll want to explore eventually anyways … but that can just see the player run straight into the arms of the next problem while others are still on the board. Great theme.

Threat level: Low to Medium. If it’s allowed to stick around, the card will reward bad decision making… until there’s actually nothing to explore left at which point the card just turns into a clock that will slowly eat away the investigator’s sanity. Luckily the difficulty of the willpower test is fairly tame and should be doable for anyone who is properly prepared.

Dealing with it: Passing willpower tests or having a way around them is a basic requirement for any investigator, Voice of the Jungle is merely the next card enforcing this expectation. Remember that anyone at the same location as the affected investigator can attempt the test, so someone with better willpower can bail out their friends.