Bug with "Call on Midnight's Dream"

[TheoreticalString]

This power is supposed to make it so if you forget the Major Power you learned you gain power equal to the Dahan on the land and can play it immediately.

It does neither of those things. Absolutely bugged, and makes the spirit unplayable.

[Oui-Vile]

This is a very common misunderstanding. The exact wording of the power is "If you forget this Power..." where this Power refers to Call on Midnight's Dream. So you can use this power over and over again to gain major powers (you still need to discard another power though) or you can choose to discard Call on Midnight's Dream in which case you get a little bit of energy and get to play the major power immediately.

As to it being a bug, the last time I played that spirit, it worked properly. It may have changed since then though.

Hope this helps.

[TheoreticalString]

...

If that's true, that is the worst wording I've ever seen. I have to believe it's not, because if this can't even Major Power Roulette to do something interesting this spirit is trashcan tier.

[Aelis]

Originally posted by TheoreticalString:

...

If that's true, that is the worst wording I've ever seen. I have to believe it's not, because if this can't even Major Power Roulette to do something interesting this spirit is trashcan tier.

You're right on the first part, the wording is very confusing. I chalk it up to being one of the first cards (I hope) made for the game, most cards since are much better defined. The card definitely works, but maybe not the way you expected.

The second part, "if this can't even Major Power Roulette..." is how I thought about the card at first, it starts to make a bit more sense when you look at the spirit in its entirety. Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares is actually a flexible Spirit - they have 2 card plays for the vast majority of the game, and trickle into a third late enough that you've probably already burned CoMD to get an early Major that made a break in the game because you're playing from VERY (more than usual) far behind.

In general this spirit focuses on one, MAYBE two Majors, and CoMD is the kick-start to that - allowing you to use a major card FAR earlier than most spirits can manage, but still dramatically limiting your power. As you play through, you'll get opportunities to replace that major because maybe the first one you picked isn't amazing or its usefulness has passed. Not a big deal, you still only have two (or maybe three) card plays per turn, so they need to be extremely impactful. It's not crazy to pull a new major and replace your already spent major to avoid a reclaim turn, though it'll be tough to make that work as an actual play style.

[Oui-Vile]

To add to what Aelis said above, please remember that this is a digital implementation of a physical board game. In the physical board game, space is limited on the card for the description and Call on Midnight's Dream has a lot of text compared to other powers.

If you look at the physical card, GTG used a slightly smaller font than other power cards just to get what they have to fit in a readable manner and preserve the graphic layout needs of printing. I imagine that saying "this power" (10 characters) instead of "Call on Midnight's Dream" (24 characters) was the best they could do.

As in everything, tradeoffs must be made.

Now as to it being a bad power, this I have to disagree with. If it worked the way you seem to be interpreting it, then it would be a starting power with zero cost that gave you energy and allowed you to play a major power very early in the game. That would be broken beyond belief. Essentially, a player would simply do a reclaim loop and play that power almost every turn. If one of the other spirits could give them energy (some spirits have this as a starting ability) then a player would do it every turn.

It isn't the best power, but then it is a low cost starting power and not meant to be the best.

Hope you enjoy your time on the island.

[ulzgoroth]

Also, Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares tends to be a rather difficult spirit to play. I'm not sure if it's strictly weak, but it definitely doesn't perform very well in my hands!

Bringer can absolutely contribute to the game, but can have a lot of difficulty acting strongly against the invaders in any way except fear cultivation. You can race to terror victory, but keeping the island around while you get there is the problem.

(Maybe using Call on Midnight's Dream early to get a Major that can shake things up despite Bringer's restrictive special feature would help. I've not yet learned to play Major-oriented strategies.)

[Songbird]

Bringer is this really bizarre power level where it's one of the weakest spirits in the game in a vacuum, due to absolutely awful action economy and no innate way to survive problems or interact with the board well (since its Defend card sucks). Except it's also a cornerstone that enables really silly cheese comps that generate a thousand fear in a turn, or at least a few hundred.

Violence aspect is even cheesier; starting with 1 energy and having access to NI majors lets it beat every level 6 adversary at the same time on turn 1 fast, thanks to how crazy Call on Midnight's Dream is. (This requires perfect luck when pulling major powers, but it does exist.)

With the spirits we currently have available, Bringer is generally going to be really bad and largely unable to use its special rule because it will be too busy playing defensive majors like Paralyzing Fright in order to not die. Heat and Green are probably its strongest partners out of what's currently available on digital.

[ulzgoroth]

I didn't think its defend card was that bad. Obviously defend 1 is barely useful on its own, but if you can target the location with Night Terrors that alone kicks it up to 3-4 defense usually, and if you need really high defense you can stack on other fear sources (including other spirits' fear sources). Though only fast fear will matter.

It does cost a lot at 2 power though.

Non-unique minor defend powers are better in most cases, I guess, which does put it at a pretty low bar.

[Feral Yoda]

BoDaN is a complex spirit, its hard to learn. But once BoDaN clicks in your head, its super powerful. This little vid by the creators helped a few people figure BoDaN out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E69NvCH5vw

[Songbird]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I didn't think its defend card was that bad. Obviously defend 1 is barely useful on its own, but if you can target the location with Night Terrors that alone kicks it up to 3-4 defense usually, and if you need really high defense you can stack on other fear sources (including other spirits' fear sources). Though only fast fear will matter.

It does cost a lot at 2 power though.

Non-unique minor defend powers are better in most cases, I guess, which does put it at a pretty low bar.

...Do you not see a problem with paying a whopping 2 energy for a Defend 1 and then still requiring additional actions to muster up a passable amount of defense? It's absolutely awful. You want to add in Night Terrors? Okay, so you reduce the range to 0 and now it's a Defend 2, unless you play an animal card (since Dread Apparitions lacks animal). Once you've forgotten Call on Midnight's Dream, that means you either have to have drafted a moon/animal minor, or you also spend ANOTHER two energy for the also underpowered Predatory Nightmares. So you're paying 4 energy for a Defend 4, 4 fear, and 2 damage (+ 2 fear/town push), and that's your entire turn. That barely keeps pace with base difficulty. It absolutely dies against every level 6 adversary. It also basically eliminates your ability to go into majors with the sheer energy cost.

Also, Bringer gets free moon and air elements... and then the only moon/air major in the base game that does damage is Mists of Oblivion, which has text on it that Bringer literally can't trigger and is one of the least synergistic cards for the spirit imaginable. Moon/air doesn't really get much better for damage with expansions, either. So Bringer is also pretty underpowered as a major user, since majors of other elements are really hard to threshold on two plays. Which is why it often just ends up spamming PFright hoping to stall for a fear victory, rather than actually being to get the high amounts of fear from its special rule.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Songbird:

...Do you not see a problem with paying a whopping 2 energy for a Defend 1 and then still requiring additional actions to muster up a passable amount of defense? It's absolutely awful. You want to add in Night Terrors? Okay, so you reduce the range to 0 and now it's a Defend 2, unless you play an animal card (since Dread Apparitions lacks animal). Once you've forgotten Call on Midnight's Dream, that means you either have to have drafted a moon/animal minor, or you also spend ANOTHER two energy for the also underpowered Predatory Nightmares. So you're paying 4 energy for a Defend 4, 4 fear, and 2 damage (+ 2 fear/town push), and that's your entire turn. That barely keeps pace with base difficulty. It absolutely dies against every level 6 adversary. It also basically eliminates your ability to go into majors with the sheer energy cost.

I mean, I said the 2 energy is high and noted the range limitation on terrors, though you can pretty easily get your presence wherever you need. The rest is kinda going off the wall though. You don't really want to not have beast influence for Night Terrors, that's two fear per turn being left on the table. More generally, if you don't have ways of generating terror, why are you even pretending to play this spirit?

And then you're going even further off the wall and arguing that one unique card somehow ruins things by not being able to unilaterally cover defense for the entire game, when...no unique or minor card does that? Maybe Elemental Aegis on an extremely good day.

I agree the average minor defend power is better for most purposes than Dread Apparitions is.

[Songbird]

My points are: that Bringer has woefully underpowered cards other than Call on Midnight's Dream (and Dreams of the Dahan, which would be good except it's stuck on 2 plays and the card doesn't quite do enough to be half of its plays), and nothing it does (innates or starting hand) meaningfully impacts the board; that Bringer is limited to a disastrous element set that makes it extremely hard to actually get enough value off majors, while having an awful bottom track that makes minors unattractive as well; and that Bringer is generally a weak spirit in terms of power level as a result of these factors, quickly losing to blight and adversary loss conditions unless it either abandons the only advantage it has (its special rule's fear generation) or has the entire team built around it.

Violence aspect letting it start with 4 plays and increasing the fear from its special rule improves it significantly, letting it actually draft and use minors (which tend to be much better than majors as a game plan). Pairing with Mists, Finder, Heat, Locus Serpent, and certain other spirits (such as those that can threshold Powerstorm or provide more energy/draft support) enables Bringer to actually function as a fear nuke, albeit one that still rapidly dies to blight if it doesn't get execute that strategy quickly enough. But on its own, Bringer regularly fails to deliver on its own fantasy, in part because its tracks and cards stink, and in part because the major power deck is very underpowered for damage without being able to hit thresholds.