Secret HQ
art (c) Mike Trap
I got a chance to get a hold of some Dark Future cards down in LA at Games University -- here is a preview of the new faction The Purists:
The Purists get 3 foundations in Dark Future. The most important, Purist Initiate, lets you play Purists from previous sets (like Dr. Celeste Carter, Paradox Beast, etc.) without having to worry about their resources as well a providing magic. Arcane Scientist is a two cost magic provider that you can turn to draw a card. Rounding out the foundations is the Purist Aspirant, who can be sacrificed to prevent damage to all your characters from non-combat sources like Final Brawl.
The leader of the Purists is Rhys Engel, with Primus as his number 1 thug. Esteban Vicente rearranges one player's sites when he enters play, Inoue Oram can gain you an extra point of power each turn if you can draw an even number of cards, and Misery Totelben the insane musician is just odd and highly specialized.
There are 5 non-unique Purist characters. Hexagram Spirit and Mutator are 6 fighting beasts that can mess with your opponents -- the first lets your predict a card your opponent has in hand, then lets you look at their hand and gain power for every copy. The second is a portable Probability Manipulator, that doesn't require turning and can be used every turn! Memory Spirit gets bigger if your opponents don't discard, while Zen Logician generates power at the expense of lowering your hand size. Finally, Void Sorcerer blanks the text of a site (chosen when he enters play).
Rounding out the Purists are various other cards -- the Entropy Tap Event converts damage inflicted on your sites into power. Quantum Sorcery is an Edge that lets you draw cards or gain power by turning a magic character. For deck manipulation, Paradox Divination lets you rearrange the top of your deck, while another (it's rare and I don't remember the name) lets you shuffle cards from your smoked pile back into your deck. Memory Palace (also rare) lets you set aside your hand as extra cards to play later in the game. Deja Vu lets you reply an event from your smoked pile. The Purists also like to mess with Sites -- Portal Nexus lets you rearrange your sites every turn, Chi Reconfiguration lets you smoke a site and replace it with one that's already in your smoked pile, and Entropy Sphere is an event that can smoke a character, but requires you to put damage equal to that character's play cost on a front-row feng shui site you control (Dark Travelers, anyone?). Rounding out the Purists is the powerful Nexus Tower. Not only does it get you closer to victory, but on each of your main shots you can replay a magic card at +1 cost from your smoked pile (but only once for each card as the card you replayed gains the restriction Toast-It). Hermes and Malachi are sure to be hanging out at the Nexus Tower!
All art (c) the individual artists. Dark Future (c)
Z-Man Games.
