The Long Shift (v0.32)

Every family gets an engine.

Twelve new cards, one signature engine for each family, so a run finally has something to build toward instead of just a pile of good cards.

NEW

• WISDOM HOLDS ITS HAND — Study, The Long Shift, Memorized Procedure and Total Recall all pay you for cards kept ON HOLD between turns. Held cards grow stronger the longer you keep them, and they remember what they grew.
• CHAOS PLAYS THE JACKPOT — Loaded Dice, House Money, Streak and The House Always Wins turn every roll you make into a payout. Loaded Dice rolls twice and keeps the better; The House makes every rolled outcome happen twice.
• VENGEANCE KEEPS A GRUDGE — Grudge Ledger and Unpaid Debt bill the creature for exactly what it took from you. Every hit you take is itemised and returned with interest.
• THE VEIL CASCADES — Veil Cascade and The Tear Widens reward stacking Veil casts inside a single turn. Rush the Veil and it starts opening doors for free.
• EVERY ENGINE SHOWS ITS WORK — each one wears its own status chip so you can see at a glance what's armed, and a card ON HOLD shows what it has grown.
• ROLL AND HOLD ARE TAUGHT WORDS — every gamble card in the game now grows a ROLL plate in the hover zoom explaining what a roll actually is, and the Wisdom cards do the same for ON HOLD. If a card needs a rule, the card teaches it.

AND THEY PUT ON A SHOW

• HOUSE MONEY rains real poker chips that bounce and lie where they land.
• LOADED DICE rolls two big dice across the boards to double sixes.
• THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS rises a roulette wheel out of the floor — the ball rattles the rim, then SPLITS IN TWO and both drop into the same pocket. At its final rank it splits three ways.
• THE LONG SHIFT swings a pocket watch while every card in your hand tosses Aldric a shield.
• MEMORIZED PROCEDURE floats a brain above him that drinks case files, more of them each rank.
• STREAK chalks a tally on the back wall for every roll you make, then rakes a gold slash through each group of four when it pays out.
• STUDY sends a librarian monkey with an open tome to shoot your ON-HOLD card its discount.
• UNPAID DEBT drops a note in from off-screen and pins it to the wall with a thrown dagger, for the rest of the fight. Each rank adds another paper and another knife.
• GRUDGE LEDGER swings open a black ledger, enters last turn's wounds in red ink line by line, snaps shut on the debt, and tears the ink out as a bolt that breaks over the creature.
• TOTAL RECALL opens a portal for every card ON HOLD — buffs drop onto Aldric from above, attacks fly out of a gate and land their own damage. If the creature dies partway through, the book closes.
• THE TEAR WIDENS opens one rift that grows with every rank, and there are THINGS behind it: pale-eyed shapes pressing forward out of the dark, blinking, clawing at the edges. One watches at the first rank; every rank adds another.
• NINETEEN NEW SOUNDS carry all of it, including a proper tear-in-the-void — a sub-bass that drops away and fibres popping open one by one as the fabric parts.

FIXED

• Aldric stopped juddering when he guards. The brace was alternating two poses every fraction of a second, so blocking cards made him vibrate. He holds the guard now and settles out of it once.