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.
Command · maximum 2
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 →Influence · 0–10
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 →Capital · dynamic limit
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 →Intel and Operation Progress
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 →Three Rites · no tracked resource
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 →Conviction · maximum 4
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.