Vagabond (Tinker)

The Vagabond is unlike any other faction on the board. You have no territory, no buildings, and no warriors — just a single wandering figure picking through the forest for useful items and forging quiet alliances with whoever is winning. Where others fight over clearings, you slip between the battles and collect the spoils.

The Tinker is the most resourceful variant of this wandering life. Where a disruptor raids and vanishes, the Tinker builds — or rather, scavenges and constructs. Your signature skill is Day Labor: once per turn you may pull a card from the shared discard pile matching the suit of your current clearing. In a game where cards are currency, that recurring advantage compounds fast.

You begin with an item kit slanted toward crafting, which makes you the Vagabond most capable of hammering raw cards into items and victory points from the very first turns.

You have three steady engines running in parallel, and the Tinker is unusually good at all three.

• Quests — reveal a quest in a clearing matching its suit, exhaust the two listed items, and score VP (or draw cards if you prefer the hand size). Stack these whenever your item stock allows.
• Aid and relationships — hand a card matching a faction's clearing suit to give them Aid. Each Aid raises your relationship with that faction. Higher tiers score VP as you reach them, and reaching Allied status unlocks powerful joint actions.
• Battle — removing enemy buildings and tokens in combat scores VP directly. You won't win a war, but a well-timed skirmish against a weakened position pays off.

The Tinker's path to 30 typically runs through crafting items for VP and quests, padded by steady relationship gains. Don't fixate on one route — let the board tell you which engine is running hot.

Your whole turn runs on items. Items exhaust when spent on actions — moving costs a boot, battling costs a sword, crafting costs the symbols shown on the card — and take damage when you absorb hits in battle. A damaged item is out of service until you repair it.

Each turn in Daylight you choose from a menu of actions: Move (exhaust a boot), Aid (give a card, advance a relationship), Quest (exhaust two items to complete a posted quest), Battle (exhaust a sword), Explore a ruin (draw the hidden item inside), and Craft (exhaust matching item symbols to play a card for its effect or immediate VP). The Tinker's Day Labor happens in Birdsong — before anything else, you may take one card from the discard pile whose suit matches the clearing you're standing in.

Managing relationships is as important as managing your item rack. Hostile factions can attack you unprovoked and may slow your movement or force extra costs. Keep your standing warm with whoever is militarily dominant so you can wander freely.