After yesterday’s blog looking through the Villain Card, today we thought we should probably look at the ‘courageous’ Keep Master and their pesky elves *spits in disgust*

A little like Star Saga and Dungeon Saga, League of Infamy pits one player against everyone else. Although unlike those games, this time the antagonist is actually the hero! It’s all about perspective. The Keep Master is in charge of the elf defenders that will try and stop the ‘evil’ villains carrying out their nefarious schemes.

“But wait a minute! I hate being the player that has to beat everyone else and ruin their evening – mainly because I also laugh and point at them. I wish this was entirely co-operative.”

Ah, it’s our old friend imaginary blog reader. Don’t worry! There will also be an AI deck that pits you against an imaginary Keep Master, so you can have four players all on the same side. Hooray!

Although their bastion is being assaulted by a team of highly skilled Villains, the Keep Master has a few tricks up their sleeve – after all, they have the home field advantage. This is represented by the Keep deck, from which they will draw a hand of cards at the start of the game and replenish each round.

The Keep Master’s hand size depends on the number of Villains in the Raid, so the more Villains involved, the more Keep Cards the master will be able to draw from the deck.

There are a number of different sets of Keep cards, each with its own theme designated by an icon. At the start of each raid the Keep Master is instructed to construct the deck for this Raid, usually from the “common” set plus one or more themed sets.

Keep cards each tell you which phase of the game they can be played in.

THE KEEP PHASE

In the Keep phase, the Keep Master rallies the defenders to repel the Villains. The Keep Phase has three steps, which must be completed in order.

STEP 1: STRATEGY

In the Strategy step, the Keep Master is able to play a number of their Keep cards, giving them bonus activations, allowing them to heal their Defenders and so on. These cards clearly state how to resolve their respective rules.

STEP 2: DEFEND

In the Defend step, the Keep Master activates their Defenders. They can always activate a number of Defenders equal to the number of Villain Players and can spend Alarm tokens to activate more.

The first additional activation of a phase costs one Alarm token. The second one costs two Alarm tokens, the third costs three, and so on.

Activating Defenders

When a Defender is activated they can make up to two Actions, and cannot make the same Action twice. Each Defender can only be activated once per Keep phase. If a Defender was activated earlier in the round (because of a special rule, Keep Card etc) they can still be activated in the Keep phase.

STEP 3: REINFORCE

In the Reinforce step, the Keep Master can spend Alarm tokens to summon additional Defenders as reinforcements. They can only summon Defender types that are in one of their Defender Slots, and for each Defender summoned they must spend a number of Alarm tokens as shown by the Alarm Cost / Infamy Reward icon on the Defender’s card.

When a Defender is summoned, the Keep Master places it off the board, next to a Reinforcement point, ready to move onto in the next Keep round.

So, there you have a quick preview of how the Keep Master works. Next week we’ll be having more sneak peeks, including a look at the infamous Disorder cards.

The post League of Infamy: What is the Keep Master? appeared first on Mantic Games.