Ailurophobia (1921)

The masterpiece silent picture that began a film revolution in the 20’s, Ailurophobia follows the exploits of a single black cat through a night in Paris, and the grim consequences that follow in the wake of its ill-omened passing. Is the cat truly an evil force, or merely the instigator of a series of unfortunate coincidences?

Design

Ailurophobia, also known as The Black Cat, is a monster that has been a long time coming. As one of the first monsters to be conceived for Spooktacular, it’s quite odd to have this kitty show up here in Bride instead of the base game.

The original concept for Ailurophobia was sort of a monster that played the game in reverse. It would start with a LOT of points and play the game exceptionally well. However, any time it would gain points, it would lose them instead, so the game became about reverse optimization, where you’d want to make all your effects miss. While cute in concept, this ultimately did not end up being fun.

Instead, we’ve decided to make you feel more like the cat itself: uncaring about the misfortune and heart attacks you’re giving everyone else. Ailurophobia now randomly drops bad luck wherever it goes, leaving a trail of hidden misfortunes that other monsters have to deal with. These are almost always great for you and bad for the other monsters, so you usually don’t care which specific ones get activated. And should everyone evade your misfortunes, the Black Cat has a few ways to cash out on the shadows that they’ve left in the theater!

Ideation

We knew that we wanted to go for a sort of minimalist typography-focused illustration. The Black Cat’s threat, after all, is simple - a noise you hear go bump in the night. The cat itself is an ill portent of what’s to come; not the actual threat in and of itself. As such, most of the early poster ideas focused on portraying the cat in a simple manner. It’s literally just a cat. It’s our paranoia, fear of shadows, and anxiety that makes it scary…right?

The final poster for the Black Cat ended up turning out quite nice, wouldn’t you say? Just the right amount of spooky but still plenty cute. I’d pet her. Carefully, of course.

Strategy

Ailurophobia is an easy monster because we all know that everyone will want to play this cute kitty! Kitting aside (hah), Ailurophobia’s mechanics seem a bit complex but are ultimately easy to do: you just play Spooktacular normally but leave behind dangerous shadows that scare your opponents. These will let you do a variety of things, from drawing extra cards to straight-up stealing points from others!

This turns the theater into a mire of bad luck that becomes impossible to avoid by the end game. Even if opponents avoid your shadows, this affords the Black Cat a level of area control that makes its future plays easier. Of course, the kitty has ways to explicitly punish people avoiding its shadows, thanks to Scary Shadow letting it gain 1 point per shadow in the theater. That’s a possible 9 points in the bag plus a spook!

Play If You Like:

• Cats
• A power that benefits you without much effort
• Seeing the misfortunes of others

Avoid If You Dislike:

• Cats
• Accidentally provoking other players at the table
• Unpredictable effects

See it LIVE!

Watch the Black Cat in action on last week's event!

COMING SOON!

Next week's event will feature Dragonbeard!

Alternate Poster

The Brazilian poster for Ailurophobia comes from the amazing Thiago Lehman. I love the striking colors and art-deco vibe!

Would you pet this kitty? Say “YES” in the comments below! And learn more about Bride of Spooktacular on Gamefound!