Initiate
$5 - Action - Duration - Attack
+1 Card
At the start of Clean-up, you may reveal a Curse from your hand. If you do not, each other player gains a Curse. Otherwise, at the start of your next turn, +1 Action and put this into your hand.
Initiate tells the story of a new magic user. She starts out as rather ineffective
Witch, but after feeling the sting of another Witch’s Curse, she can change her ways (much like Phil Conners) and turn to the side of good, in this case becoming a
Lab of sorts.
It’s all thanks to the conditional Duration effect modeled after
Conjurer, but this time coming with a free Action. The overall effect of continuously playing Initiate is comparable to that of
Hireling, but much like
Alchemist and Potion, you need to draw a Curse each turn to keep things going. Otherwise, you could end up with a bunch of
Ruined Libraries in your deck. In that sense, it is mechanically similar to
Taskmaster, with some differences. For example, Initiate is a better target for
Adventures' vanilla bonus tokens.
I took inspiration from
Donald X.’s Cultist retrospective and made it so that each play of Initiate can either junk or set up the Duration effect, but not both. Players can choose to not reveal a Curse when they have it. The Duration effect has the added advantage of allowing you to play more powerful terminal draw first in hopes of getting villages before playing the Initiate again. You can even use the extra terminal space on terminal payload instead of playing Initiate, but doing so sacrifices the Duration effect for the next turn, assuming the game doesn’t end before then.
Edit:
Encampment uses "do not" instead of "did not." While that's super minor, I switched things to make it more in line with that official card wording.
