The Night Cage Advanced Game: Keepers and Pit Fiends

Once your group can escape the standard game, a harder version waits in the box. The Advanced Game swaps the Key tiles and most of the Wax Eaters for two new monsters: Keepers, which hold the Keys inside their bodies, and Pit Fiends, which collapse whole diagonals of the labyrinth. This lesson covers the setup, the rules for each, and plans that follow from them.

Setup changes

Start from the normal setup, then make these changes:

• Remove all the Key tiles and put them back in the box.
• Remove 8 Wax Eater tiles. The rules say this leaves 4.
• Add 6 Keeper tiles in a 1 to 4 player game, or 7 Keeper tiles with 5 players.
• Add 2 Pit Fiends.

Then continue setup as usual. Keepers replace every Key tile; you never use both.

Keepers

There are no Key tiles in the Advanced Game. Each Keeper carries a Key inside its body, and getting one means reaching a Keeper.

Keepers stay put. A Keeper is the only Monster that stays on the board even when no one is Illuminating it, until its Key is removed. That makes Keepers landmarks you can plan a route toward over several turns.

The mouth faces whoever placed it. When you place a Keeper, its mouth always points toward your Prisoner. So the rear, the safe side, faces away from you.

How a Keeper attacks. Keepers attack much like Wax Eaters, with three differences:

• They strike in only three directions, never behind themselves.
• They are not triggered by movement behind them.
• A ranged hit from a Keeper costs only 1 tile from the Draw Stack, but it cannot be Blocked with Nerve.

The rules list Lights Out among the Wax Eater penalties; for the Keeper’s ranged hit they name only the 1-tile discard.

If another Monster’s attack hits a Keeper from behind, the Keeper does not join a chain reaction.

Taking the Key. Moving onto a Keeper earns you its Key, just like a Key tile. Approaching from the rear is the only safe way in, with no penalties. From any other side you cannot move onto it at all unless you spend 1 Nerve to Charge. A Charge from the front or side, or a Fall onto a Keeper from those sides, puts you Lights Out and costs 3 tiles from the Draw Stack. That 3-tile hit can be Blocked with Nerve. The FAQ confirms you still get the Key when you Charge from the side.

A Falling Prisoner without a Key can take the Key as they land. Once the Key is collected, the Keeper becomes a Pit at once, and the Falling Prisoner scrambles onto an existing adjacent tile or a newly drawn one next to the Pit.

Pit Fiends

A Pit Fiend is placed like any other tile. As soon as it is placed, every tile in a diagonal line from it becomes a Pit, including Key, Gate, and Monster tiles, even across empty spaces. Then the Pit Fiend itself becomes a Pit. Its diagonals do not wrap around the board; they stop at the edges.

Any Prisoner with a Pit formed beneath them by a Pit Fiend Falls at once, out of turn, and then normal turn order resumes. The FAQ adds that these Prisoners discard no tiles.

The rules warn that Pit Fiends are most dangerous late, when a diagonal could take your last Gate.

Planning around Keepers

• Read the rear before you place. You choose where a drawn tile goes among the open spaces, and the mouth will face you. So the rear points away from you, often toward the far side of the board. Ask which Prisoner can reach that side.
• Use the wrap. Edges wrap, so a Keeper whose rear faces a board edge may be reachable from the opposite edge.
• Charge only when it buys real time. A Charge costs 1 Nerve, puts you Lights Out, and costs 3 tiles (2 if you also Block). It is a fair trade when the rear is far away and the Draw Stack is still deep, and a poor one late in the game. The Charge rule itself names the Advanced Game as the place it matters most.

Placing a Pit Fiend well

When you draw a Pit Fiend, its placement is your choice, and that choice decides the damage. The official example shows the same Pit Fiend doing far less harm in a different open space.

• Count the diagonals. Before placing, trace all four diagonals from each open space. Count Gates, Keepers you still need, and Prisoners who would Fall.
• Edges shorten the reach. Because the diagonals stop at the board edges, a space on an edge or in a corner has fewer tiles in range than a space near the middle.
• Sometimes the Pits help. A Pit interrupts a Wax Eater’s line of sight, and a Pit Fiend turns Monster tiles in its diagonals into Pits too. A placement that removes a threatening Wax Eater can be worth a small loss elsewhere.

For a harder challenge, the rules suggest adding the third Pit Fiend.