Maybe in games that aren't Nocturne-heavy, Skulk will suck.
That's interesting since my first hypothesis would be that it's more relevant in games where there are few other Nocturne cards. But who knows.
--
Someone asked me in a game today "What's your opinion on boons and hexes?" and I said, "Just that keeping track of the decks is annoying work"
They responded "Exactly. I think it's the worst thing to happen to Dominion ever. Roll a die, see what you get!"
That has a fair amount of truth to it. Eventually we'll be better at keeping track of them and knowing what's left, but do we want to be? Is it fun?
It's fun in a novel, "Yay, new expansion!" way. It's even fun in a "Okay we've played a lot of regular Dominion today, let's spice things up with some random boons and hexes!" sort of way.
But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?
Of course that's faint criticism, we're talking about the
11th expansion to an already amazingly replayable game. But for a bottom line: Would I buy Nocturne? From what I see here so far..no. I'd rather use that same money to buy the base game and gift it to a random acquaintance, than have Nocturne be a thing.