Six institutions · twelve Leaders
Choose how you wield power.
Every Gauntlet faction contests the same Territory column and can run the Gauntlet. Five add a second route to victory, and all six reshape the decisions that happen before, during, and after battle.
Already chosen? The Faction Guides teach how to operate your faction at the table.
Direct action · battlefield control
Military
Military turns battlefield victories into Command, then spends that Command on Orders that extend movement, strengthen attacks or defenses, drive enemies back, and secure captured ground.
General · Commandant Explore Military →Negotiation · leverage
Diplomats
Diplomats use Influence and Terms to turn an impending battle into a negotiation. The opponent may accept a settlement—or refuse and fight after the Diplomat has shaped the consequences.
Ambassador · Senator Explore Diplomats →Engine-building · compounding advantage
Financiers
Financiers convert cards and Territory control into Capital, Capital into Deeds, and Deeds into recurring income—or ownership of the entire Gauntlet.
Banker · Executive Explore Financiers →Hidden objectives · information
Intelligence
Intelligence pursues hidden Missions, accumulates Intel, studies opposing battle choices, and turns operational progress into a secret route to victory.
Ranger · Spymaster Explore Intelligence →Combos · sacrifice and recovery
Mystics
Mystics bind, sacrifice, exchange, and recover cards while completing three public Rites that unlock increasingly powerful ways to use the Graveyard and the cards in hand.
Alchemist · Spirit Walker Explore Mystics →Disruption · suppression
Inquisition
The Inquisition sends opposing battle cards permanently to the Graveyard, gains Conviction from those losses, and spends it to suppress Assets, hands, and Discard Piles.
Grand Inquisitor · Witch Hunter Explore Inquisition →Shared world
Institutions, not nations.
The factions represent methods of power within a broadly shared early-modern civilization: force, diplomacy, finance, intelligence, ritual practice, and institutional judgment. Their rivalries can represent armies, courts, orders, guilds, expeditions, offices, or coalitions competing over contested ground.