Two Echoes, shared
Nought multiplayer descents had ever been played. Three were, and they all ended in the same place.
| banished | fell at | |
|---|---|---|
| the first | 7 of 12 | Herald 4 |
| the second | 4 of 12 | Herald 1 |
| the third | 6 of 12 | Herald 3 |
Every one of them: one player alone under a Herald’s fifteen Ruin, with nothing left to pay it. No table has reached an Ancient. No solo descent on record has failed to.
Why the Heralds
A Spawn strikes for ten. A Herald strikes for fifteen, and the average card is worth five and a half, so covering one costs about three cards. Every turn it lands.
And here is the thing I had not accounted for when the Muster was made solo only: a second seat helps you deal Ruin and cannot help you pay a Strike. Payment is individual. Your partner watches.
So going from one seat to two, what one person can survive goes down:
| alone | two | |
|---|---|---|
| cards in hand | 8 | 7 |
| the Muster | yes | no |
| Echoes | 2 | 0 |
| Heretics in the deck | 0 | 0 |
More output, less resilience, against a Strike that has not changed.
What a table gets, and what it does not
Two Echoes, and the pool is shared. Whoever is playing may spend one. It commits your hand to the Grave and the Gathering answers again, and crucially you may spend it before step 4, when the Strike lands and you cannot pay it -- which is the exact moment all three descents ended.
Not the Muster. That was considered and rejected, and the reason is worth writing down: the Muster fires because you are losing. Alone that reads as the last of you stepping forward. With company it reads as the game apologising. An Echo is spent, so it is a decision, and a shared one is the first thing this format has ever asked two people to agree about.
Not the Breach either. The ladder stays solo, for the reasons it always has.
That position -- a Herald on thirty, a two in hand, fifteen owed -- was the end of a descent last week. It is now a decision about whether this is the moment to spend one of two.
One change, not two
There is a second lever sitting right beside this one: a table plays on seven cards, and one extra card in hand is the largest measured difficulty dial in this game. It is tempting to pull both.
I have pulled one. If two changes land together and the next three tables go well, nobody learns which one did it, and this project has paid for that mistake before.