Each of the four factions (Kingdom, Monster, Wild, and Undead) have access to a power that no other faction has. In each instance, two cards in the faction have the power: a unique (the defacto 'leader' of the faction) and a rare. No other power appears twice in the same faction.
We'll run through each faction and their power in turn. What you'll see is that the faction powers are among the most powerful powers in the game but also oppose and offset each other in really interesting ways.
Kingdom. The Kingdom power is Loyal to the End. Loyal to the End reads 'Decrease all stats by 1 while [creature] is not controlled by original player.' So if Player A plays King and Player B captures King, all stats are reduced by 1 until Player A gets it back. Obviously, this is really powerful but only defensively. It only comes into play if Player B wants it to come into play by capturing King.
Monster. The Monster power is First Strike. First Strike reads 'Increase all stats by 1 the first turn [creature] is played.' So if Player B plays Dragon, all of Dragon's stats are increased for that first turn, making it really effective at defeating cards in play. The symmetry to Loyal to the End is hopefully apparent; First Strike is powerful on turn one and puts all the control in the hands of the player who plays it while Loyal to the End is powerful in every turn except turn one and puts all the control in the hands of the player reacting to it.
Wild. The Wild power is Winsumloosum. Winsumloosum reads 'If defeated, controller may remove [creature] from game prior to losing control.' The idea here is that if Player A plays Phoenix and Player B subsequently defeats it, Player A can decide to physically remove Phoenix from the board instead of allowing Player B to flip the token and gain control. This leaves an empty space on the board, but Player B's turn likely still ends. Player A can then play somewhere else or play in the empty space to refill it. At first blush this seems extremely powerful, but it is actually a lot more balanced than you might first believe because it is sort of like Player A skips a turn in order to not lose a card. Skipping a turn in Scratch is a big cost.
Undead. The Undead power is Festering Defeat. Festering Defeat reads 'If defeated, controller may swap [creature] with attacker before control is lost.' The narrative idea here is that the undead infected or began to turn the attacker even though they were defeated. Similar to Kingdom and Monster, Festering Defeat is the symmetrical opposition to Winsumloosum. They aren't quite as opposite, but they take very different approaches to the same idea of making attacking the cards inherently risky.
The Wild and Undead faction powers also introduce two interesting complexities to the game. First, Winsumloosum removes a card from the board, which means it reverse the relationship that whoever plays first will be playing last. Having to play that ninth and final card is challenging because if you don't defeat a card in play, your opponent wins. Fear of that ninth card is one of the best reasons to decline to go first. With Winsumloosum, you can play first and not play last, but only if you opponent decides to attack and defeat a Winsumloosum card. It isn't a unilateral decision, so it adds layers of interesting tactical complexity.
Festering Defeat is interesting because it makes Stand Your Ground (the power that denies efforts to swap places with it) more powerful. If you use, say, Knight to attack a card with Festering Defeat, the Knight can decline the attempt to swap.
