Thanks Tiago,
From Zaratan's ability to put any card into the manual I assumed that meant non-Monster cards could be played from it. But now I see Zaratan's FAQ in the rulebook confirms that you can't. (And presumably Zaratan has been balanced around it not having a Cargo Ship ability.) I'll have a think about what to do there.
As for Honey's slowness at getting started (needing another Honey or some other Savior), that was intentional. I'll explain my thought process:
- From the "official" Hero cards it looks like it is meant to be hard to get the strong Monsters, because most Saviors don't give more than 1-strength; to get a 4-strength Monster you'd normally need to play at least 4 Saviors/Fairies.
- One exception is Carnivorous Plant, but that's already a Monster, so fair enough. The other exception is Bestiary, which can upgrade a Monster on each play; I struggle to see how that can be balanced.
- So, ignoring Bestiary whose power level I don't understand, I felt that Honey's ability to gain strong Monsters (once you have Monsters in your manual) makes it crazy strong, so it needed some significant weakening.
- The first nerf came about naturally from the need to get 1 card into the manual somehow. Gaining Honey directly to the manual seemed like a happy solution. It gets a card into the manual and it also means Honey is a very slow way to get started on Monsters.
- But then I realised that if there was any other Savior on the board then Honey's slow start is kind of meaningless - you just start with the other Savior and then get Honey later to get the strong Monsters too easily.
- So I came up with the additional nerf of making it a Treasure, as it forces you to leave Action Monsters unplayed that turn if you want them to contribute to Honey's gain.
Anyhoo, it seems I need to address this somehow. Perhaps now that Honey has the nerf of being a Treasure I don't need the original nerf of making it a slow starter.