Castle Interior

Overview
The castle interior is constructed using a modular tile system made up from beautifully illustrated game tiles that allow for near limitless combinations and layouts. The villagers will attempt to reach the heart of the castle and destroy it, but they must be stopped! Only by slaying enough villagers and breaking their morale will you be able to drive them from your home for good. Room tiles are split into three different types for the purposes of traps, Village Events and other occurrences.

Corridors
A corridor should be something that I don't need to describe but just in case...these are narrow sections of castle mostly used for joining rooms together. They come as straight, corner and cross-shaped junction tiles. Official scenarios generally don't contain two adjoined straight tiles, but many scenarios do have straight sections connecting to corners and junctions. Junction tiles also act as T-junctions, hence the lack of tiles of that shape.

Corridors are narrow enough to be ideal bottlenecks for slowing down the ingress of Villagers, allowing for casual slaughter of the mortals in the zone or the filtering out of particular models or kinds of Villager via monster abilities. Forcing entrance into a full corridor is a valid tactic for a melee DPS, Tank or Support player as the Heave mechanic will heft some Villagers out of the opposite end like screaming toothpaste, but beware becoming Hindered and unable to leave the Zone without help.



Small Rooms
Also needing no introduction, small rooms make up the lesser chambers of the castle: general chambers, kitchens, armouries, stores, crypts, outdoor courtyards and their variants are all comprised of the smaller of the two room types in VA. The same Heaving in tactic applies to these tiles as to corridors, but without an Area Of Effect (AOE) ability to move or fell multiple Villagers, such as the Banshee's A Death Foretold, players may wish to bring backup, lest they get stuck.

Large Rooms
You know what these are. Large rooms make up the majority of the space inside the monsters' castle and can provide an area for Villagers to gain a significant numerical advantage in the latter stages of a game. The Castle Heart, Entrance Hall, Graveyard, Library, Banquet Hall & Summoning Chamber are all large rooms and caution should be used when allowing Villagers to gather in large numbers in these tiles.

They are, however, prime targets for any Monster's AOE abilities, providing that there aren't too many Villagers remaining for attacks that only kill half of the Villagers in a zone (such as the Lich's Soul Harvest and the Glaistig's Lured to their Doom abilities) so prepare backup if that is the case or use something like the Banshee's A Death Foretold to plan ahead, move the Banshee into the hall and then gather the hapless unwashed into the tile last to slaughter everyone.

So aye: large rooms can make for great murder-places if the dice are in your favour, otherwise they can be just as lethal to Monsters if undue care isn't taken.

Significant Rooms
Each tile in Village Attacks has a unique ID code located in each corner. These are used to easily identify the functions of certain tiles which can vary from mission to mission.

Castle Heart (CH-n)
This is the heart of the castle (unsurprising!) and the source of all the Monsters' power. This must be defended at all costs in pretty much every scenario and is usually the primary target of every Villager in the castle.

Monsters will most often start a mission in this room, basking in it's magnificent purple glow of malignant energy. In most cases Villagers will head straight here from their spawn points with the intent of attacking the heart and rendering it's health to zero, prioritising it above all other targets. Hunters and Town Heroes will only be distracted from giving the heart a kicking if a Nemesis Monster (a Monster matching their Type) enters attack range and it's a valid tactic to use this mechanic to pull a Hunter or Town Hero's attention away from the heart even if the player sacrifices their Monster to do so. The very first mission in the core rulebook teaches players that it's often better to lose a Monster and resurrect at the heart (inflicting 2 damage on the heart in the process) if it prevents a worse outcome, like the heart taking more than 2 damage or losing the mission.

Monsters can be revived, the heart cannot. Some later missions have a second green heart in play, this shares health with the purple heart and must also be protected just as fiercely. In these scenarios all Monsters still start the mission in the purple heart.

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Courtyard (CY-n)
Ahh, how delightful: a charming sun-trap for all to enjoy on those lazy summer afternoons...if you're a meddling mortal! No, Monsters DO NOT want to head outside into the sunlight; as Vampires will be quick to tell you, it kinda has the tendency to set them on fire. Unfortunately for all players this is also applicable to most Monsters in the game so there's very few situations where you'll willingly want to end your turn outdoors in an area like the courtyard marked with an effect token. Note that you can move through an outdoor area without picking up a blaze token, but ending your turn outdoors will set the Monster ablaze which is indicated via a blaze token on the Monster's dashboard.

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Graveyard (GY-n)
As our old friend Eric Draven once said "...safest place in the world to be." He's kinda right, unless you're a Monster in Village Attacks. A graveyard may sound like home to evil Monsters, but the issue is that like the courtyard, they're a yard and thus are outside. Alas, trolly Grimlord saw fit to remind players that graveyards are a human construct and not for everyday Monster use 'cos when one goes outside during the day the blazing ball of fire in the sky...you guessed it, sets them on fire. Exactly the same as the courtyard, a Monster ending their turn in a graveyard marked with an effect token will get set ablaze. Beh.

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Armoury (A-n)
Again, Grimlord decided to take something that sounds good and beneficial, like arming oneself is a handy thing, and promptly turn it against you. Fortunately the Monsters don't need to stoop to the level of the cattle and use crude tools and armaments, nay; Monsters manage just fine with what they bring themselves. Unfortunately, it seems that Igor, or whoever the damnable caretaker is, if indeed there is one (and given the state of some of the rooms this seems kinda unlikely), they've left the armouries unlocked and all the horrid pointy, stabby and bludgeoning things are just lying about for any hapless mortal to pick up and put to irritating use.

And use them they do: as a general rule any Villagers attacking within or from an armoury inflict an extra point of damage on their targets.

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Library (L-n)
You'd think that the Lich and maybe the Vampire would be appreciative of a good weighty tome or twenty; books are a great source of knowledge, learning, enjoyment and laughter. Well...yes, despite the Monsters apparently knowing everything, learning on their feet & only finding insalubrious enjoyment and mirth in tormenting human cattle, it turns out that they do rather value a good book. We can only assume that some Monsters knew the benefit of not destroying vast swathes of paper, for there are several libraries scattered about the scenarios of Village Attacks.

Generally a library will involve one of two things: benefiting Villagers who are intelligent enough to read, or containing a mission objective. For the former, it seems that Peasants are too thick to gain any benefit from a library but Hunters and Heroes attacking in or from a library treat all Monsters as their own Type, making them a Nemesis priority target while also doing +1 damage when attacking. For the latter it depends on the mission; some need the Villagers to get there, or the Monsters interact with the area instead.

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Storeroom (ST-n)
There's a theme here: don't leave cool useful stuff lying about in case your castle gets invaded by really uppity Peasants and their more challenging mates. Let this be a lesson for every self-respecting Monster out there, if you don't need armour or shields or anything protective...get rid of it!

If you hadn't guessed by now, a Storeroom is bad for you and good for them. Peasants again are too thick (or wary) to use anything found in a Storeroom, but Hunters may not be damaged by Monster attacks or abilities whilst in this zone. Fortunately Heroes are unaffected, presumably they're too arrogant to need to use anything that they didn't bring with them.

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Chapel (C-n)
Why is this even still here?! What use do Monsters have for a Chapel beyond partying in there and mocking decency with their very existence?

Well, if there was some excessive mockery happening it appears that whatever forces hold sway in holy places have grown tired of the insolent affront caused by such activities and at some point decided that they are having absolutely none of it. Or perhaps the Chapels have always been shunned by the Monsters who have taken up residence? Either way, Monsters suffer Silence if they enter these zones.

Like the Burn effect from an outdoor zone, Silence is persistent until removed by a Monster's ability or spending a Magic result at the Castle Heart. Unlike Burn, Silence occupies a Monster's Reserve slot, preventing a die result from being saved there. As a Monster suffers Silence with each trek through a Chapel, it's pretty easy to get all Reserve slots taken out of action by successive visits. Assess the necessity of entering a Chapel and plan accordingly.

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Kitchen (K-n)
Ah, the kitchen: the beating heart of any home, or so the saying goes. I suspect that the only beating that will be happening in the Castle kitchens is the pummelling that an unfortunate Peasant will be receiving as they're tenderised before going into the cooking pot. Ha. That'll teach 'em.

The Kitchen crops up in a few scenarios but for the most part it's just a standard room. Sometimes it'll contain a spawn point (or two!), other times it's just there to move through. It is significant in a few missions though; in one case the Monsters have left it provisioned enough (although it's best not to think about what with...) for Town Heroes to recover two health whenever they end a turn in there, but in the classic Dinner Time scenario that we often run at events for new players, the Kitchen is the target room for your dastardly crew to drag a number of Peasants to.

For dinner. Noms...................

Summoning Room* (SR-n)


Finally, a room in your own castle which is 100% of benefit to the Monsters and provides zero advantage to the invading rabble! For the Horrors of the Sands expansion, the game throws a new type of Villager at you; the Yunfakh Hunter.

Yunfakh Hunters spawn alongside standard Hunters. They are tricksy gits who can only be damaged in melee and ignore any ranged damage or ability targeting them, so any ranged DPS class is better off focusing on other targets and leaving the Yunfakh to another monster who can get in their face and survive.

To help tip the balance back towards equilibrium a tad, Horrors also introduces a dice-based mechanic allowing players to summon other Monsters from the game and expansions, albeit in a cut-down evil Town Hero kinda way. These Summoned Monsters are represented by a Town Hero style card instead of a full dashboard and are fairly useful but require 2 Monsters to roll one less die whilst in play. Depending on your party composition and Monster summoned you may find that having an extra friend along may be worth losing two of your dice for...but then the players build the summoning deck before shuffling it so they have some idea of what Monsters to add to it to benefit their party.

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* Horrors of the Sands expansion only