Over the coming weeks we'll be taking a deep dive into each god and their abilities, first up is Cernunnos, the Celtic god of nature! All of the gods have 3 different starting abilities, each incentivising slightly different styles of play and enabling synergies with the god power cards as well. Cernunnos' starting abilities are:

• At the start of the year if you do not have a palisade card in your deck, add a palisade card to your deck
• In addition to faith, you also gain 1% happiness per turn for each follower within range of your shrine
• Enemies sustain 1 stack of bleed when they attack a tile on your island

You can see already how each of these allow you to play the game differently. The 1st enables you to turtle a bit more and has great synergy with one of the god power cards we will look at in a moment, the 2nd allows you to not worry about happiness as much but really incentivises you to build near the shrine and the 3rd encourages fast expansion with land so enemies bleed out before they attack your core!
Couple these starting abilities with the god power cards available to you and you can create some powerful strategies!

• Bloody Roots - +1 bleed to all enemies when you place a tree this turn
• Spiky Walls 8 damage to enemies adjacent or diagonal to palisades or defensive walls
• Healing Roots - +2 maximum health to buildings, units, palisades and walls

You can see how Spiky Walls has great synergy with the starting ability that gives you palisades and how Healing Roots also works well with that ability or the enemy bleed stacking due to enemies most likely needing several attacks to destroy buildings. Not to mention the other synergies and strategies you can find with all of the other cards unique to Cernunnos! Wishlist the game to help us out and stay notified when it releases in September! Also join our Discord to get involved in the discussion and playtesting!