Tips paganfateofroanoke

OG Board Game Geek Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3463944/core-set-strategy-guide-from-runner-and-wiccan

Pagan Play Network Card and Deckbuilder: https://pagan.play.carde.io/cards

Introduction

As an ex-Netrunner married to a proud Wiccan, my husband and I fell in love with Pagan the moment we laid eyes on it at the game store. One month and 25 games later, we can't stop playing nor stop forcing our friends to learn it.

This basic strategy guide reflects our experiences with the starter deck in the core box, and we hope we to jump-start strategy discussions and debates in the community with our guides.

The Most Important Strategy Tip

The heart of the game in the core set is the control of the three villagers which place two assets: Doctor Annie, Preacher Wulfric, and Widow Atkins. All things being equal, if you are generating more secrets/clues than your opponent you are going to win, and if you control all three of these villagers, you will place twice as many assets as your opponent every turn!

Controlling all three of these villagers is difficult, as you only get three action pawns and it takes two of them to wrest control of a villager form your opponent - one to ready and one to visit. Prioritize based on your opponent's actions, and remember that the most important villager in the game is the villager that can place two assets on the True Witch!

The Witch

The Witch player is at an advantage in the core set, especially for newer players. Your deck has a greater density of powerful cards, you have multiple strategies to pick from, and you can afford to make mistakes and have bluffs fail.

When placing secrets, focus on one or two villagers at a time, converting secrets to favors as quickly as possible. Getting the 2nd favor on a villager to double their ability is a major boost to your economy while putting pressure on the hunter. It's possible to create a favor from nothing in a single turn with the help of a two-secret villager, and if the hunter is careless with their pawns and clues they may be stuck with no options when that 3rd Favor hits the table.

We bucket the witch's general approaches to a few key strategy types:

- Rush: Just shove as many secrets and favors on the True Witch as possible. If the hunter doesn't respect this and fight for control over the matching two-secret villager, they will never have enough clues in place to eliminate the True Witch before you're ready to perform the Ritual. Even if they do respect it, it can require precise and careful play from the hunter to stop it. This strategy is most effective if the True Witch is one of the self-asset villagers: Nestling Mia, Stranger Sue, and Native Penny. If the hunter gets an iron grip on the two-secret villager linked to the True Witch, abandon your rush! The hunter may believe you were rushing two favors just to double the villager's ability, and you can come back for a Checkmate play later.

- Shell Game: This strategy focuses on getting multiple villagers to three favors on the same turn, forcing the hunter to guess at which one is the True Witch. The Brews Jar of Glibness (031), Surplus Elixir (030) and Blend of Nature (026) are key cards for this line of attack. First, get as many villagers to two favors as possible while preparing a full three-brew cocktail. In one turn, pop all of the brews and use your visits to get as many as three villagers, including the True Witch, to their third favor in a single turn. The hunter will not have enough resources to stop all of them, and if they guess wrong the game is over; 2/3 odds of victory are good odds!

- Checkmate: This strategy tries to create a board state where the hunter cannot stop the True Witch on the turn the ritual is prepared. The cards Flagon of Oblivion (026), Misdirection (035), and Hypnotism (040) are key to this line of attack. On the turn you place the 3rd favor on the True Witch, use the Flagon and/or Misdirection to strip the True Witch and their faction allies of as many clues as possible. Playing Hypnotism on this turn is often fatal, as wasting the hunter's action can render it impossible for the hunter to re-take control of the True Witch on the next turn. If you can, use brews to get to four favors on the True Witch on this turn - Bribe (007) is the hunter's only solution to a good Checkmate turn, and an extra favor protects you from it.

- Murder, He Wrote: Rush, Shell Game, and Checkmate can all be faked to trick the Hunter into killing the wrong villager! Rush a villager completely unrelated to the True Witch. Shell Game two unrelated villagers. Pull a Checkmate when you know they have an answer in hand. A single incorrect kill wipes all of the clues from the board, leaving you wide open to safely perform the ritual. Don't forget your second win condition: get the hunter to make three incorrect eliminations. (This strategy is even more viable with certain expansion cards, where it's possible to take a villager directly from 0 to 3 favors in a single turn.)

Whatever strategy you choose, keep careful track of the pace at which the Hunter is Exonerating suspects. You need to start executing on a Ritual-based victory plan by when the 4th suspect card is drawn, especially if you have no way of removing evidence. If you wait longer, you risk running out of time; even if you set up a perfect Checkmate that the hunter has no answer for, you still lose if the hunter draws the last suspect card before your winning turn.

A note on bluffing: While a successful bluff can win the game, a series of failed bluffs is the most common way we've seen new players to lose as the witch. You are on a clock, and each time the hunter exonerates a villager that clock is one tick closer to defeat. In particular, be very careful when bluffing a Shell Game play unless you think you can trick the hunter into a 3rd kill - getting multiple villagers simultaneously prepared for the ritual is expensive, and if the hunter doesn't take the bait you've told them exactly who you aren't.

Some advice on specific cards: Save Pryokenisis (036) and Discredit (034) for destroying Village Center and Operative, respectively. Without these cards providing the hunter with extra clues, they have far less room for error. Save Hypnotism (040) for a Checkmate play; while the combo with Isolation (044) looks tempting, Isolation is too expensive for what it does and too cheap for the hunter to remove. Isolation only restricts visiting, not raiding nor eliminating.

The Hunter

The hunter is at a disadvantage in the core set. There are quite a few weak or even dead cards in your deck, your economy can hardly keep up with the witch, and a single mistake can lose you the game by leaving the witch open for a Rush or Checkmate!

Where the witch has multiple strategic options, you have a single core strategy: Stall the Witch. Buy as much time as possible to gather evidence and make deductions. The witch gets to pick their strategy, but you are the one with an inevitable victory: drawing the entire suspect deck. Every turn the witch isn't threatening the ritual is a turn you are printing evidence and exonerating villagers. Evidence comes naturally as the board fills up with clues, so prioritize slowing down the witch with your turn over printing an extra evidence. (Note that expansion cards make evidence rush and other strategies more viable, but stalling the witch is your best chance with the starter deck!)

The time to rush for evidence is after you've drawn your fifth suspect card. Once you have five suspect cards in hand, it's game over for the witch if they haven't prepared the ritual before you've acquired 9 more evidence. Try and save Ransack (013) and Combine Information (008) for this point in the game, where you can surprise the witch by stealing away time they thought they had!

Keep a close watch on the two-asset villagers. Leaving the wrong two-asset villager ready on the wrong turn can leave you open to Checkmate. You can't control all three of them at the start of the game, but you have some tools to address that:

- Deduction: If you can deduce the Faction the True Witch belongs to, you only need to control a single two-asset villager.

- Investigations: specifically, the card Quarantine (015) turns a two-asset villager into a zero-asset villager for the witch, freeing you up to focus on the others.

- Elimination: Death is the ultimate control. Killing a two-asset villager early can cripple the witch, slowing the growth of their brews and halving the number of secrets a faction can receive in a turn from four down to two - a major blow if that faction houses the True Witch. Be careful with this technique, it can only be safely used early in the game without leaving yourself open to Checkmate, though Operative (004) and Village Center (023) can push that window further into the mid-to-late game.

The most important cards in the your deck are Operative (004), Village Center (023), and Bribe (007). The first two are the only two cards in the deck that generate clues, making them your only safety net against surprise Rush or Checkmate plays. The latter should not be played unless the ritual is ready - Bribe is often the only escape you have against a powerful Checkmate setup.

Outside of those three cards, the most important card type in your deck is the Investigation. The witch has only one answer for Investigation cards in Qualm (049), and that answer still requires they visit a villager under Investigation, and it doesn't even discard the Investigation.

Be aware that most of the locations in the starter deck are traps. Visiting a location does not place clues on the board and does not control a villager, creating a tempo advantage for the witch. The ideal three location spread is Village Center (023) for clue printing, Message Board (024) to make Exonerate actions more efficient, and Headquarters (021) for its sheer efficiency and as an "emergency switch" when you get caught without an answer in hand. The other locations are all too slow to use, and are best fed to Clerk (002) to generate influence.

Lastly, a note on Raids.

Raiding is very expensive, as it places no clues and spends three of them. Unless you have **Operative (004)** or **Village Center (023)** on the table, repeated raids give the witch too much of a secret advantage for you to recover from. Early in the game, Elimination of a villager is usually more effective, destroying multiple favors in a single action. Here are some general raid do's and don'ts:

- Do: Raid a ready, two-favor villager. If the witch leaves one of their two-favor villagers open, raiding can be an efficient way of slowing them down.

- Don't: Ready-then-raid: Ready-then-raid uses 2/3 of your actions and burns four clues, leaving the witch wide open to create more secrets next turn than the ones you removed.

- Don't: Leave a villager with 0 clues: Leaving a villager with 0 clues after a raid leaves you open to Checkmate! Recovering a clue on one villager is easy, but a surprise pair of Misdirections from the witch can turn one clueless villager into three, which is much harder to recover from.

- Do: Raid with an exoneration victory in hand: If you can see a clear path to an exoneration victory, raiding, even if you have to ready beforehand, is safer than elimination. Count your evidence and tally your tricks in hand and see if an extra turn or two can guarantee your win rather than risk falling for the witch's bluff.