I don't know if this has been asked before, but if it has, it doesn't appear in the first 7 forum pages.

Some friends and me are going to play the core game 6th quest (The Eternal Guardian) and we have all the vanilla expansions. I am the OL for this game and, since we have already played the previous 5 quests, I'm adding the treachery and feat cards from now on. Now, in this quest glyphs work a bit strange. Each area has 2 glyphs (there is a total of 3 pair of glyphs). If a glyph from a certain area is activated, its "pair" is also activated, but the heroes only recieve 3 CT (as if they had activated 1 glyph instead of 2). So, in a way, each couple of glyphs behave as one glyph with two locations.

Now, since the best way to avoid the Guardian is to constatly use the glyphs, I thought I should corrupt them with treachery. But it doesn't seem clear to me how many dark glyphs I have to pay for. If the heros activate one dark glyph, is the other one in the same area immediately treated as another dark glyph of the same type? Do I have to pay for both?

Let's say each dark glyph is payed separately. Now a hero activates a red glyph and the glyph pair is shown to be green. How many CT do the heroes receive? Does this red glyph summon monsters? What if the combination is Blue+Red, do I summon monsters AND get the extra card? This can be easier to see with a normal+green glyph pair. Heroes would receive 3 CT according to the normal glyph, but just 1CT according to the green one. Is it suposed to depend on what glyph is activated before? And if they get just 1CT due to the green glyph, what would happen if both were green? (Actually this cannot occur as I only have 3 green treachery points).

Let's say that each pair of glyphs counts as just one glyph (so I can pay 2 treachery of each colour and corrupt the six glyphs). In this case, if a glyph is red, its pari must also be red and monsters would be summoned just once when the pair of glyphs is activated. It still looks a bit unfair to me because even though glyphs activate in pairs, they work as normal glyphs once they have been activated, so the penalty for using a glyph is doubled (without paying for that extra penalty).

I suppose dark glyphs weren't paid enough attention when they were added to the game (spetially when it comes to previous quests). So what would you do here? I have 4 possible ways to solve the problem (I would preffer not to resign to the last one).

A: Pay treachery for each individual glyph. When activating glyphs, the heroes suffer the penalty of all the corrupted glyphs. The penalty for a green glyph is considered to be -2CT. Green+Green pair is impossible, so don't consider it.

B: Pay treachery for each individual glyph. When activaging glyphs, the heroes only suffer the penalty of the glyph they activate normally.

C: Pay treachery for each pair of glyphs. Glyphs on the same area must be the same colour. Activation penalty is payed only for one glyph.

D: Dark glyphs are forbiden in this quest since the glyphs have a special feature.

Galvancito1 said:

I see what you're saying, but the bottom line is there are still two glyphs in each pair. They activate together and they short-change the heroes on CT, but otherwise they are two glyphs in every respect. If you wanted to corrupt both glyphs in a pair, you would need to pay for two dark glyphs and use one on each.

Yes, at first that's what it looks. But when both dark glyphs activate, what penalty do heros pay? If thay have to pay both penalties, then I'll go for the dark glyphs. If they only pay for the one that was activated normally, then I'm spending treachery on something that may even not be used at all. I mean, heros will always try to avoid dark glyphs (particulary if there are normal glyphs aviable) so they'll pay the penalty only when the dark glyphs are activated. If they activate a normal glyph and the pair is a dark glyph, then there goes my treachery.

I understand your point: the answer is not C (and most surely not D). But is it A or B?

I'm considering the alternative of using the Sloth and Envy cards and forget about dark glyphs. But if heros pay the penalty of both glyphs in the pair, I would still be interesting in using the glyphs instead.

You are mixing up activating a glyph (which is flipping them from the inactive, red side to the (usually) white side) and using a glyph (which lets a hero teleport to and from the city).

To replace a normal glyph with a Dark one, you will have to pay 2 treachery for each single glyph you swap out. This is completely independant from any special features or pairing (unless the quest specific rules say otherwise, which they don´t in this case).

The pairing has no influence on the use of the glyphs, only on activating them.

So when the heros use a Dark glyph (red or violet), the OL only gets the bonus for the one they used (even if it is paired with a Dark one of a different colour). When they use a normal glyph which is paired with a Dark one, the OL does not get any bonus, since they did not use the Dark glyph.

The only thing unclear is the CT situation with one green glyph in a pair in this quest.

Activating a green glyph normally lowers the value of the activation by 2 CT, so I would think that the a pair of green and white glyphs (which would be worth 3 CT in case of non-green glyphs present) would be worth 1 CT.

Activating a pair of two green glyphs would reduce the CT value by another 2 CT, but since the pair usually is worth 3 CT, the heros would simply get no CTs at all from activating that pair.

Parathion, if I understand you correctly, you mean that the correct option is A, don't you?

Each individual glyph is paid separately. When a glyph pair is activated, the penalty is payed for any dark glyph in the pair (the penalties stack). When the glyph are used, they are used individualy and the normal rules apply (no penalty for a white glyph paired with dark glyph).

Am I correct? It looks OK to me. And since there is not enough green treachery for 2 green glyphs there is no room for strange things like +3-2-2 CT.

There are no "penalties" when activating a glyph or a pair of glyphs. The heros get either 3 CT or 1 CT under normal circumstances, the OL gets nothing. It may just be a wording thing, but basically yes, Option A would be correct.

Altar of despair rulebook, page 5:

"Summoning (red): When this glyph is activated, as well as each time a hero uses it to move to or from town ... "

"Power (purple): When this glyph is activated, as wel as each time a hero uses it to move to or from town ..."

So something is triggered when dark glyphs are activated. That was what I called the penalty. But anyway, I'll go with A.

You´re right, that´s what you get when not checking the rules. But this is still not a penatly, it´s a bonus for the OL.

What I think might be important to note here is that the treachery for the glyphs is paid before the game starts, just like treachery to replace cards in the OL deck. Then the glyphs are mixed in with the normal ones (even though you should also note that the OL looks at them before choosing which one to place when revealing a new area).