Two spoilers for Election Day Slaughter have arrived directly from AEG and the official release date has been announced as February 16th. Faith and Fear will be arriving on April 6th.
Ridden Down
Another card to add to the horse theme, Ridden Down seems to be the glue that will make taking more than a few horses worth it. Ridden Down allows you to boot a horse to send a dude without a horse home booted. This is a good way to send dudes with big guns at your deeds home without having to fight them. You can also use it to hold a location after you’ve taken it. Since it boots your horse, Jon Longstride and Fresh Horses can help you make extra use of this card or move and use Ridden Down in the same turn.
If you take A Secret Tunnel, you could easily move to one of your deeds and kick them off in the same move, without fear of retaliation. I expect to see several Morgan Cattle Company decks sporting 7’s and 8’s with horses. Add 9’s for Mechanical Horses or 5’s for Mustangs. It all depends on the horse you prefer.
Summoning
Summoning is a spell that behaves similar to Recruitment Drive but for Abominations. It’s also a 6 value so don’t expect it to run often in Fourth Ring decks that can’t handle mid-range values for their spells. Without a huckster 3 somewhere on the table, those players wouldn’t be able to guarantee their Blood Curse.
Spell casters don’t usually go running to Town Square looking for trouble unless they know their spells are going to give them the advantage. This is a job worth doing, but since it’s in Town Square it is a job nearly anyone in town will be able to contest. It could pay off by bringing any of the more expensive Abominations into play such as Ivor Hawley or The Ghostly Gun. If your abomination is also a huckster, he can add on Corporeal Twist to add even more Control Points.
The Fourth Ring tends to enjoy sending their Abominations to Boot Hill or back to their hand, so Summoning placing a Control Point on the dude might make you want to keep him on the table a little longer or help convince your opponent that he needs to be put in a grave even more.
The Evidence
The Evidence is a new goods card that lets you manipulate bounties a little more. A nice touch is that it’s a goods card that you can put on any of your dudes and wait for the right time to use it. It may not seem cost effective, but there is already a large number of cards that benefit from bounties and wanted status that can take advantage of Evidence.
The first action on this card is a noon option that lets you reduce the bounty on a wanted dude to 0. You can effectively clear someone’s name with this card. When you are playing against Law Dogs, keeping bounties off of dudes important to your strategy can keep them alive. You can also use it just to reduce the amount of ‘profit’ a Law Dog might make by taking out your dudes.
The second function of this card allows you to effectively spend 2 Ghost Rock to increase a dude’s bounty by 2. You have to ace the card after adding the bounty. The ace effect can allow you to play the card in a deck that doesn’t really use eights. As soon as you use the card, it’s gone and won’t be seen in your shootout hands after that. Adding a bounty can be important to a large number of cards. It allows you to increase the influence or bullets of the Aims brothers. You can set up a Judge Harry job or allow Clyde to call out a dug in dude. If your opponent is using a B&B Attorneys to avoid bounties, they won’t be able to remove both bounties fast enough to avoid the wrath of the Law Dogs.
Considering all the uses in the game already for wanted dudes, The Evidence is another dual purpose card that can either defend against an ever increasing bounty or can be aggresive in adding bounty for Law Dogs to earn or The Sloane gang to amplify their strengths.
Quaterman
Quaterman will be the first non-unique dude to enter Gomorra. He must also be invented by a mad scientist. As a non-unique dude, you’ll be able to bring several copies into play and if one goes to Boot Hill, you can still play the rest.
He doesn’t look like much at first with only one bullet and no influence, but his traits really make him shine.
First, he has to be invented by a Mad Scientist. The upside is that he will show up at the scientist’s location instead of at your home. This could add some needed shooting power to defend your scientists that are out and about town. He only costs one Ghost Rock, making him incredibly cheap to build and a scientist like Harold Aimslee can fish him out of your discard if you don’t like his low value of 3.
Second, the Quaterman can’t have his bullets modified except by attached goods. This means several of the most useful shootout cards won’t hurt him at all. Invent a Holy Wheel Gun for him as well so he can be a 3-bullet shooter nearly all the time.
Lastly, he can’t be moved by card effects. This means he can’t use a horse, but it also means he can’t be Pistol Whipped out of a fight and Wendy will have to shoot it out with him.
He is still a soft target for Soul Blast and Shotgun, but it’s better to have a non-unique dude take the hit than one of your important scientists.
More spoilers to come!
As usual, I’ll add more spoilers to this article as they arrive. Check back here often to keep up to date on what will be coming from Election Day Slaughter. Also, check out some of my older Doomtown strategy articles here.
