New Crusaders factions?

I don't think I've posted about the extra player expansions for Crusaders, but art is done for them, and they're ready to be printed (just as soon as everything else gets sorted out)...

There will be 2 boxes you could get to add a 5th player to your Crusaders game, Crimson Knight (red player color), or Amber Knight (yellow player color). You'll even be able to play with 6 players if you get both!

These expansions contain a player board and pieces for one new player, including Divine Influence stuff, and 2 new faction powers to choose from. These new factions were ones that I had been testing originally, but had not made the cut to the final 10 in the game.

As I mentioned, all of the art for these expansions is done, and has been for some time now. As I happened to be looking at those files recently, I noticed that I apparently included the same 2 factions in both expansion boxes. I don't exactly remember why I did that, it seems like the boxes should each have 2 unique factions. In fact, I think I remember choosing 4 different ones, but in any case, the art files have the same pair of new factions, and that's not great. So I decided to come up with 2 new factions so that players who get both boxes to play with 6 players won't have any duplicates.

That said, I needed to think of new dynamics. I got a few ideas from Twitter followers who responded to a request for abilities they'd like to see, and I decided on 4 powers to try. I had hoped that at least 2 of those would be good enough to use. Here are the 4 draft factions (sorry, no fancy names yet):

1. When resolving an upgraded wedge, you may add 2 virtual tokens. If you do, downgrade the wedge afterwards. 

This one seems good so far, it might be a winner.

2. Remove an action token from the game instead of taking a normal turn. If you do, resolve that wedge based on the number of tokens on an opponent's board. Distribute your own wedge as normal afterwards.

I think it might be better to NOT distribute the bin... But this power might not make the cut anyway. With 2 players it as a little annoying to see what was available all the time, but not too bad. However with more players it would probably get too AP prone or annoying.

3. Before resolving a wedge, you may remove a token on it and set it aside to upgrade it.  When you take an upgrade turn to upgrade a wedge, you may add a token set aside that way to the upgraded wedge.

This worked pretty well, and may be a winner also. I might want to change the wording so that the 2nd clause works with Divine Influence's Upgrade actions (in the expansion there are more ways to upgrade your wedges besides just taking an upgrade turn).

4. Instead of a normal turn, choose any wedge, distribute it, and resolve the last wedge you place in.

Could call that one the Feldian Order of Trajan or something :)

This one was neat. Very different, and probably way too powerful. Next time I try it, I'll add "-1 to each action" as a drawback.

If I can balance this one acceptably, I might like to make it a promo item, because it's so unique, rather than a regular faction power in an expansion.

Having played just 1 game with each of the draft factions, it looks like I have 2 that will work, and they both deal with upgrades, which is interesting because Divine Influence adds more ways to upgrade your action wedges. And I also like the idea of using the Trajan-styke one as a promo, if I can make it fair enough :)

Just need to get a little more testing in for those, and to look up some more faction titles I could use!