YMMV / Hand of Fate

• Anti-Climax Boss: The Wrath of the Old Gods blessing can turn any encounter with an otherwise powerful creature into this, as the gods will randomly smite one enemy, killing it instantly, and since there's only one enemy for them to smite...
• Best Level Ever: The King of Plague's dungeon imposes the curse, "Time Distortion", which increases movement speed and damage inflicted for everyone.
  • Judgement in the sequel. From a gameplay perspective, you start decked out with free random items, thrust into several difficult floors, all of which are populated by large amounts of each of the main factions, as well as having to deal with Empire patrols. You're given choices throughout each floor to either take on an absurdly difficult fight with that floor's faction, or to give up a large amount of your items for safe passage past them. And then there's the way that the story and gameplay intertwine, and the outcome completely depends on your choices and if you've done your Companions's quest-lines and made them Platinum. If you haven't, or if you choose poorly during the floor transitions, your companions will die, one by one, leading to a final, tragic, grueling crawl to the end. However, if you've taken the time to help your companions, not only do they survive, but you overcome all of your obstacles and get further closure to their stories, with several different types of Crowning Moments to boot.
• Damsel Scrappy: Oswin from The Lovers challenge in the sequel is a Rare Male Example. You have to escort him through a decent sized challenge when he's lousy in combat, drains your food and doubling the strain on a mechanic people already didn't like, and he's guaranteed to be kidnapped five or six times by skeletons sent by his obsessive ex-lover, with you having to run him down and rescue him every time.
• Demonic Spiders: The Ratmen, they do unblockable attacks at random and emit poison when they die. And the "Ratmen Hunting" cards are forever locked to your deck unless you get the "Culling the Ratmen" card.
• Even Better Sequel: Many reviewers agree that the sequel improves upon the already praised original in every way. With it having more varied challenges, several different minigames, permanent companions, and a deeper world-building and story.
• Game-Breaker: Nymphs of Sweetwood can be this, all depending on when it turns up. It resets the player to the most basic equipment and supplies (with the exception of a free shield), while granting a blessing that gives them a free Gain card every five steps — powerful enough, but consider that "all the player's equipment" includes the nearly-impossible-to-remove boss-specific curses...
  • In the second game, many, many artefacts have been removed due to strength (Mercenary Contract in the first game was absolutely ridiculous, giving you +3 gold a HIT for its duration — with the twin blades in this game, it'd be 200% broken) and Rings were hit especially hard. Blessings have not, and the favorite of all in the original, Guardian Angel, remains just as strong as ever during Card Gambits. There is also a Blessing that grants +2 to EVERY DIE ROLL, meaning each Dice Gambit has a +6 modifier in your favor.
  • In terms of 2's artefacts, there is Victory Cry — using it grants you and every ally -100%- bonus damage for 8s while debuffing enemies by 25%. Combine this with The Wanderer, whose special ability is a charge that can hit multiple enemies and STUN all of them... simply toot your horn when he dashes and lay into enemies. You're easily looking at 50+ damage a swing, a speed that will obliterate ANY boss in short order, as none of them are immune to stun... did we mention Stun gives you a double damage bonus as well? And it STACKS?
  • In regards to encounter cards, Street Fighter in 2 has absolutely no downsides as long as you know the combat system - it's You and your Partner vs. two Monster cards on a 2:00 timer. Killing all enemies before 1:00 nets you THREE gain cards (no Food either, only Gold, Max Health+, and Armory) so it fits into any challenge deck period.
• Memetic Mutation: "BACK TO THE BONES" and "THIS GAME" ^Explanation Parts from quotes from the dealer heard frequently when starting a dice gambit and wheel gambit respectively. Considering you'll see those gambits a lot (and fail them a lot), you'll be hearing them quite often.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Food. Every move from one card to a new one takes one unit of food, and food gain cards are rare in the first game. Most of your gold will go to trying to avoid starving to death, if you're lucky enough to find a trader that has food at all. In the second game, you can camp at any time and buy food from a trader, but it doesn't restock unless you run into some rare encounters that have a trader join you. And several things make it even worse; the Lovers quest saddles you with a potato farmer that will eat huge amounts of your food, and more if he gets wounded... and there's an encounter that makes you eat double the amount of food if you fail a difficult check.
• That One Level:
  • The Queen of Skulls, whose dungeon comes with a massive Difficulty Spike. Buying any equipment means taking on a curse, up to and including Blighted, which means the player can't heal at all, and there's no priests or healers who can remove them for you. The deck also includes five Dark Dwellers — passing by them means a chance event with a 75% chance of failure. Failure means drawing two pain cards, many of which will reduce the player's maximum health by a substantial amount. Getting to the boss is an enormous challenge, though strangely, the boss herself is extremely simple.
  • The Jack of Plague also qualifies. It's the first time you get introduced to Ratmen, and there's the addition of three 'Angry Mob' cards by the dealer. These are not only extremely hard to win (75 and 50% chances to fail), but almost always draw you pain cards or steal food on a failure, unless you don't have any food... At which point you're in a bad spot anyway. The boss is also one of the harder ones you could face up to that point if the throwing variant of the Ratmen decide to show up.
  • All of the above pale in comparison to the King of Scales' dungeon. Every fourth step you make, the Dealer will draw a card from the Pain deck. Some of those cards reduce your maximum Health. If you don't find the boss soon enough, you may end up having to fight it with your max Health halved (or worse). Enjoy.
  • Strength in the sequel. You are reduced to ten hit points from a massive injury you took (meaning you're only a couple of points away from being a One-Hit-Point Wonder), food doesn't heal you anymore, and health regeneration is extremely rare in this level, meaning you have to go through the level on the brink of death, with every hit being a massive loss unless you stack your deck with life regeneration cards, and even then, it's hardly a pushover. This challenge also features numerous ambushes by all faction types, meaning you won't get the chance to switch to the best weapon type before the battles begin.
  • Star in the sequel is also very difficult. It requires you to go through four different levels, sealing a portal on each one with an artifact that are the dealer's rewards from the first game, and each artifact leaves a nasty curse on you. The first one causes you to need twice as much food, the second causes you to lose ten health with each new encounter, the third one causes you to gain a new curse with each new encounter (which can dogpile at an alarming rate and quickly turn into a non-health-related Cycle of Hurting), and the fourth causes you to lose fame with each new encounter. The first two are hard but manageable, but the third is where the difficulty really skyrockets. Loading your deck with curse remove cards is practically a requirement for this level.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Any token that requires success at consecutive chance draws. The worst might be the Devil's Carnival, which requires two Huge Successes in a row. The Guardian Angel is a godsend here.
  • Also the Blacksmith card. You cannot get it until you've gotten to the King of Scales. First, you have to draw a 1 in 4 chance of leaving the card (with nothing gained), drawing a pain card, or fighting 2 monster cards. And then you have to do it again. To gain the card's token, you have to draw a huge success, which doesn't allow you to leave, and you may have to fight the Queen of Scales and the King of Plague at the same time, the last two bosses.
  • Moonlit Horror is this. You get have to fight a lich without any of your equipment. You don't have a shield, so the lich's ranged attack (which does 20 damage, meaning 5 of them usually kill you) does not get indicated and if the camera decides to not show him, good look dodging it. Did we mention he teleports away whenever you get a few hits in? Also, you get dealt a random Skulls card to fight along the lich. Which might be a 2 of Skulls (just 2 melee skeletons), but also includes the 6 of Skulls (which includes a few skeletons with rifles) and even the Jack, Queen, or King of Skulls. Suggestions usually involve doing the card in an earlier stage (limiting the power of the additional Skulls card) or in Endless mode (allowing the player to at least stack up on blessings).
  • Getting rid of The Ghost of the Sea card, which is locked into your deck as soon as you start the Kraken DLC. It requires completing the ENTIRE DLC just to unlock it, and while you're attempting to do this so you can remove the card, if Ghost of the Sea should pop up at any point, you're automatically cursed without being able to do anything about it. Removing it also requires doing several Multiple Success Cards, and a few cards that require you to FAIL without even hinting that that's what you need to do. Even once the sidequest is finished, the Ghost of the Sea card basically just acts as an upgraded version of The Maiden, which is unlocked at the beginning of the game, without the ability to bless the player like the Maiden has.
  • Getting the Hierophant gold token in the sequel is an exercise in frustration. You need to save the guild leader and gather all the clues, which is only possible by succeeding in a series of dice rolls and spending a ton of gold. You can fill your Encounter deck with gold-giving cards, but the dice can and will screw you over. Prepare to redo the entire quest many, many times.
  • The Hanged Man card's gold token in the sequel — you have to save ten villages without losing five at most. The problem is that the villagers never come along willingly, requiring you to convince each village separately — some of which are HIGH dice rolls or multiple card gambits that are nearly impossible to do without the correct blessings or equipment. You can retry those challenges, but the mission also has Northerner warbands spawning and trekking through the map to burn any village they see. You can fight them or avoid them, but the former only slows them down (as a new warband will spawn on the edge of the map) while the latter puts you BEHIND them (thus most likely dooming a village or requiring you to fight the warband anyway to get to the villages you haven't saved anyways).
    • The Hanged Man is actually not as difficult as it first seems once you discover that destroying warbands does not cause the turn to pass (meaning no warbands move forward) and if you destroy one while it is on a village card, the villagers will immediately evacuate, and will reward you greatly. Since all of the desolation cards also don't cause the turn to pass, and neither does camping, so long as you can keep your health up and can handle fighting warbands, you can simply wait until they've reached the villages, then destroy all in your way. Surprisingly easy if you have a handle on the combat, but this method is nevertheless EXTREMELY time consuming (I ended up spending hours to complete the challenge).
  • The Devil's gold token in the sequel too. As mentioned on the main page, you need to Take a Third Option to the Sadistic Choice the game presents you with by using the Desert Trek card. Sounds easy enough, right? The problem arises when you realize getting the Desert Trek card is an exercise in Guide Dang It! and a That One Sidequest in itself — first you need to get the Market Thief token (Huge Success in a card gambit then a dice gambit), Pickpocket (FOUR Successes in a card gambit and a correct option), then Caravan Robbery (a rather precise wheel gambit), and even then using the card is convoluted at best. And that's assuming it spawns on the right level, which it might not.
    • This can be made a bit easier with the Forgotten Dreams encounter, as it allows you to select an encounter of your choice (including Desert Trek). The downside is that you then have to play a game of chance cards, where you have a 2 in 3 chance to get cursed instead.
  • The Justice gold token in 2, which requires ending the level with more than 500 imperial soldiers still alive. Not only does it requires knowing exactly what fortifications to build in what order, but the ressource-collecting aspect of it is also unforgiving (requiring nothing but successes and even a few Great Success to get enough ressources quickly enough), and any wrong move will make getting it all but impossible.