December OblivAeon update!

The latest update to the OblivAeon Kickstarter(written by Christopher this time around) covered several important key things: http://tinyurl.com/z4gzalg

1) Christopher loves us.

2) OblivAeon will take a little longer than expected, but Christopher is confident enough to say we WILL get our rewards from the campaign in the first half of 2017.

3) Those who had pledge levels that included Vengeance, Shattered Timelines and Wrath of the Cosmos will be getting their copies by the end of the month(barring Fright Train derailing or something like that), and GTG will float the bill for the shipping.

4) And the most awesome bit of news(I personally think) is that we wilol be recieving 3 NEW ENVIRONMENTS INCLUDED INTO OBLIVAEON!

These new environments include:

~The militerized industrial city of Mordengrad(Home to a certain villain)

~The Maerynian Refuge(the new home of Tempests people here on Earth)

~Champion Studios( A big movie company located in San Alonso)

Edit: Added in the url to the update.

Edit: Changed thread title from 'Latest' to 'December'.

I'm curious as to why a movie studio is a place of high importance.  The others make sense to me.  

Maybe it's a city like Rook City, or Megalopolis. Except they ahve wayward animatronics, skeevy agents, exploding props, and a dahs of corruption. Also, in a sunny city? SHARK ATTACKS! We have yet to see one, and the only one I noticed was in Kismet's deck. if there is no Shark i will be sad. 

There is a shark on Gimmicky Character.   It is likely the same shark too as the same comic issue is referenced on that card and Inconcievable Obstruction.  

RIGHT! I forgot about Gimmicky Character. So… maybe it was a shark for a movie! I now ahve huge hopes that there be a shark. 

Could the movie studio could possibly be for Stuntman?

And Ambuscade, as he used to be a Action star too. 

Ambuscade is Stuntman

right, I forgot that Action Stuntman is from a different timeline, not both. 

Also I'm guessing that there may be a few pokes and jabs at 'Super hero' movies and the 'artistic-liberties' some studios take vs the original content.

Character Embargo! Licensing issues! Toy markets! Recasting!

Also, Christopher will appear as a cameo on every card.

Yeah, I'm also baffled as to why the studio is so important to the main storyline.  I can certainly see it being important to a few secondary characters, like Ambuscade/Stuntman and maybe Guise, but that's about it.

Mordengrad makes sense story-wise--I'd forgotten Baron Blade was actually still based there, I kept thinking he was sort of nomadic on his flying defense platforms and whatnot--but do we really need another military/industrial area?  Seems like Fort Adamant and Dok'Thorath, and some cards in Mobile Defense Platform and The Block, cover that pretty well already.

Perhaps the whole "superhero/villain" thing is a giant con and nothing we have done has been anything other than a scene in a movie.

Another theory could be that that there are criminal empires, sketchy science departments, and a place that uses monsters instead of prosthetics backing the theatre and company.

Or, maybe it's just Occam's razor, and it's just a cool idea! Why not have something that's unrelated, but fun? 

The entire multiverse is just a movie!

Are you saying that the heroes' personalities and lives are just figments of our imaginations, and we're playing them like some little game? I think that's a silly idea! HA!

Maybe it’s setting up for GTG’s next game:
Sentinels of the Movieverse. 3-5 players play as actors playing superheroes as must act out battles against dozens of cgi villains in front of various greenscreens.

Or it's a setup to a series! A LIVE ACTION/ANIMATED SERIES. 

IT'S HAPPENING! :O :D

I'm actually really excited for the Maerynian Refuge. I'm thinking a more hero-focused Dok'Thorath. I mean, what could be going on there that would hinder the heroes' efforts at beating the villain?

Well FILTER agents come to mind for me

Champion Studios: At first I thought it would just be Hollywood props, sort of like Silver Gulch, but I like the idea of confusing things by having fake heroes, villains, and props lying around.  I want a "prop swap" card that goes on an equipment--or a device--in play, and just takes away all its text (and the "limited" keyword).  But it would be even sillier if the environment somehow turns the entire game into a movie or TV episode, and all the cards are just tropes, like "The second movie always ends badly" (maybe adds to villain damage when they're flipped, but only if no hero is incapacitated?) or "Mook marksmanship academy" (villain damage is reduced the more villain targets are in play, or maybe all projectile and energy damage dealt by targets other than character cards is reduced to zero).

Maerynian Refuge: It's actually kind of depressing that this will be an environment, since it means the Maerynians are coming under attack.  And since environments are largely more harmful to the heroes, this suggests they're not doing well.  We have other FILTER agent stuff (The Block and presumably Fort Adamant), so I kind of hope they're not the aggressors yet again.  Maybe it will be a deliberately helpful environment?  Or maybe the Maeryrians are upset at the heroes for some reason and are just as eager to fight them off?  Sounds like it might be hard to make this different from Dok'Thorath's and The Block's warring factions mechanics.

What if the Champion Studio has fake villains/heroes? Targets that if destroyed, you lose the game, but are (somehow) confused with a villain or hero character card? Like a person cosplaying baron blade, or a Brad-Pitt look a like for Legacy. We can't have the main star die on set! 

Thinking about why the environment is important.

Tachyon's Wife is a model, maybe this is the place she records commercials. Add in Ambuscade being an actor and any sort of shady "corporate sponsorships" for marketing heroes as toys and saturday morning cartoons. Or villains, after all, they need commercials too.

Also Guise. Just Guise.

Don't know if I want to deal with that as I'm fighting a Galactus-sized threat to the Multiverse, but who knows?

Maerynian Refuge should be exciting.  Can't wait to see the mechanics behind it.

Aren't the Maerynians supposed to be pacifists? Maybe the problem is less that they're fighting the heroes and more that they're trying to keep the heroes from fighting.

Alternatively FILTER could have ironically, shall we say, forcibly conscripted them somehow.

Given the hints we heard from the description of Fort Adamant, I think it'd be more likely that we'd see F.I.L.T.E.R. there than in any other environment so far.

http://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=Fort_Adamant

The only place we haven't visited yet that I'd really love more of an insight into is RevoCorp.

Oh, now that is an excellent point.  We don't actually know a whole lot about RevoCorp–it's all mentioned incidentally.  Poring through the wiki, here's what we know:

• They held Plague Rat prisoner for a time.  He works as their "bloodhound" during Villains of the Multiverse but is free again in Tactics.
• They also held Setback prisoner at one point, but he escaped.  (They didn't create him, Baron Blade did that.)
• Parse works for them.  Only one thing suggests she ever quit: On Benchmark's incap side, he receives directives to kill both Setback and her.
• They were in possession of Omnitron I's core (being studied by Parse) when it was upgraded into Cosmic Omnitron.
• They're somehow in charge of Revenant (Setback mini-nemesis in Friction's deck).
• Naturally, Benchmark is their crowning achievement.
• Benchmark's enemies, at least in the Supply and Demand universe, include Fright Train, Highbrow (nemesis: Parse, also in Friction's deck), and two more I can't place (a woman in a gold-and-white dragon leotard and a scarred man in purple).
• It seems likely that Re-Volt is also with RevoCorp (I don't know why else Setback would be his nemesis)

...Okay, if Champion Studios is a front for RevoCorp, that would be the most amazing thing ever.

I'll bet you a Big Mac that's the Operative from that Benchmark's world.

The addition of 3 new environments was a great update. As mentioned in the update, 5 environment deck are needed for the OblivAeon scenario. Having 5 environment decks (vs 2 originally) would make OblivAeon somewhat self-contained as a stand-alone expansion. Though I can’t imagine why someone would get into OblivAeon before the original base game…

On a separate note, I hope that GtG has taken into account the size of the Collector’s box. These new decks would have to fit into the Collector’s box, sleeved! Completionist GuiseGuise demands it!

Revenant from my understanding is the owner of RevoCorp based on questions asked during all those streams they did.  

So there are now THREE Baron Blade-themed environments, yes? Mars Base, Defense Platform, and Mordengrad?

I kind of hope that playing against Blade in his hometown is really hard.

Christopher says in the comment section of the update that yes, everything will still fit into the box. Even with sleves, if I remember correctly.

The Wagner Mars Base is a research facility. It isn't ment to be a specific environment for Blade, he just uses it once in story for his TerraLunar Impulsion beam. Saying Wagner Mars Base is specifically his environment is like saying the Brooklyn Bridge belongs to the Green Goblin because he threw Gwen Stacy off of it once.

Edit: Fixing some spelling

Huh. I honestly thought Blade was hiding out in Atlantis for the Terra Lunar Impulsion Beam, and it was Omnitron who was on Mars… But it's been a while, so I could be remembering it incorrectly.

Wagner Mars Base is where Baron Blade would have killed Paul or Felicia Parsons. I’m not sure where Baron Blade was with the Terra Lunar Impulsion Beam, but it certainly wasn’t at Wagner Mars Base because it wouldn’t be called a Terra Lunar Impulsion Beam I it wasn’t in Earth somewhere.

There's another; the flavour text on "Segmentation Fault" in Parse's deck hints that she no longer works for them. Revenant says "I think it goes without saying that you're fired." after getting hit with one of her arrows. I know flavour text doesn't always match the picture, but in this case it seems likely.

Oh weird, I never considered Revenant might actually own RevoCorp before. I guess he named it after himself?

I would assume so.  

I really don't think it would be an effective strategy to pull the moon into the earth while you're still on it, no matter how powerful your Mobile Defense Platform is.

But still, my point still stands that Wagner isn't specifically Blade's environment.

At Gen Con we learned that the Terra-Lunar Impulsion Beam incident was in Atlantis.  I remember some one saying it while we were talking to Christopher and Adam and they confirmed it.

The Maerynians aren't pacifists, they gave up violence because they were going to destroy themselves entirely.  Which is very different.

They lost to Voss because they were not prepared to mount a resistance, and it took too long to prepare to fight Voss and there were too few left.  They did fight though, and I assume the others would have no less trouble using their powers than Tempest did excaping from FILTER or fighting villains.

It should be very interesting, because a refugee camp where everyone has superpowers can't be a place the rest of the world isn't going to be interested in.

Right, and each of the four original villains link up with one of the four original environments.

I really don't think it would be an effective strategy to pull the moon into the earth while you're still on it, no matter how powerful your Mobile Defense Platform is.

Baron Blade is not necessarily known for thinking things through.

Omniblade:  "Sir, I estimate our odds of survival to be 3,720 to 1."

Baron Blade:  "Never tell me the odds."

"Fright Train, take the 'Professor' into the back and plug him into the Terralunar Impulsion Beam."

still sad we are not getting a greater than games hq environment.

My bet is we're gonna see some inside jokes in the Champion Studio environnement. At least I hope so…!

maybe its the multiverse vesion of GTG...

Lol that would be cool...there might be a couple of actors there who look a lot like Citizens Hammer and Anvil...

I think it is a lot that produces really bad PSAs and low budget films, and the heroes are forced to watch the films.

I'm incredibly excited about getting 3 new environments. Its like Christmas came early.

I am a bit concerned however, that 1 month before the product was supposed to ship the product is still in playtesting. I'm concerned for several reasons.

Number 1 - Broken City (Prime War). This game was supposed to be out 2 years ago? Its been dropped and replaced with Prime War and the system is still going through an overhaul. Sure we got pretty pictures but no real word about how the game is going to change or when we can expect to receive a copy we payed for several years ago.

Number 2 - Playstyle Change. The game as described in the Kickstarter doesn't match what Christopher put in the update. You play with 5 environments now? It was originally supposed to be 2 environments. I have a hard enough time convincing my group to play a Vengeance style game because it is just to dang crunchy and fiddly and hard to keep track of. I was already concerned about having to manage 2 environments and battle locations. Now there's 5 to keep track of? The new environments and "heroes" will be used for standard games but this news doesn't give me hope of actually playing the Oblivaeon event itself on the table top.

I'm still looking forward to this product. Even if I only get to play the Oblivaeon event when it makes its way to the video game. I'm still getting a single box to keep all the cards in, 11 new heroes and 5 new environments. I'm just hoping this doesn't go the way of Broken City and that the Oblivaeon game play is easier to manage than a Vengeance style game.

This is only hearsay on my part, but the impression I got was that there are five environments total in a game, but only two at a time. They get destroyed (a la Deadline) and replaced as the game progresses.

That is how the demo games at GenCon went.

No passive aggresive sarcasm(irony?) here, it would literally be great if they actually had a video of the demo like they did with tactics. GenCon for me might as well be Mars, there's no way I'm ever getting there.

I can second this is how the demos were played.

He had a few cards that removed environment cards from the game… the biggest mechanic that I'm trying to remember involved destroying things, because it was important that the deck was empty and there was nothing on the field???

The reason I remember this is because we accidentally nerfed him by playing in the Freedom Tower, since the environment cards stayed out and weren't being destroyed we locked that environment up and he couldn't finish it off and advance that count down.

Changed the title of the thread from 'Latest OblivAeon Thread' to 'December OblivAeon thread'.

Champion Studios is where the historical documents come from.

I just re-saw that movie. Still good.

LIKE

We know that not all Maerynian Refuges are fans of Tempest, or at the very least one of them that is pictured doing nasty things to Tempest on two of the incap sides, so it might not be all friendly, hero-helping things.

I am wondering if the coral on the arm of the other Maerynian is some sort of disease or controling lifeform.

I always thought that guy might be some kind of Elite Gene Bound trooper. Of course, he's tended to show up on the F6 and Xtreme variants, hasn't he? Or has he shown up on the Prime Wardens one, too?

Whomever is attaching Tempest they show up on the PW and X-treme PW incap sides.  You can see them on this page http://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=Tempest

It could be more Atlantis Tech gone awry? I'm on board with your thoughts that this guy is a Refuge however. Thats a solid theory and I'm buying it.

I've always assumed that was a Gene-Bound Maerynian and not a refugee, as well.

Though if there's any place I'd expect him to show up as a card, it'd be the upcoming Refuge!

Just noticed the sign on the gate in Freedom 6 Tempest’s new incap… looks like not all is well at the Maerynian Refuge. Also, noticed the FILTER logo on the sign.

I think the explanation there is that Iron Legacy wiped the place out.

I have mixed feelings about this update. Three more environments? That's awesome! But adding more doesn't speed up the process any. In fact, doesn't it mean needing to make the decks, and play test them? Possibly extending the process more? 

im a bit bummed that the January goal won't be met. Hopefully they'll give us some cooler updates in the meantime to keep us excited... I understand that quality is most important to them. hopefully it'll be timely though. 

If I remember correctly, playtesting environments is usally a lot faster than playtesting characters.  

Was that the case for the Time Cataclysm with the now infamous Fixer(sic) Point? Or that insane circus?

Love them both, just curious how much of a pain was it to test those.

MMFFCC?  It changed very, very little from Christopher posting V1 to what is in the final deck.  Almost no change.

The ones that have the most playtester impact from my time (started after shattered Timelines) would be Dok'Thorath and The Court of Blood.  The really crazy environments tend to be really well fleshed out when we get them, and we mostly help clean up wording problems and find loops that they missed.

The less nasty or crazy ones we tend to get a more vanilla version of and we get to spice them up.

Interesting stuff.

I hope that sometime after Oblivaeon has been released, some of these playtesting insight and historical stuff can be shared!

Some specifics can't be shared, but there really aren't a lot of stories to tell.  Mostly it is arguing wordings and whether a hero innate power is too weak or too strong, or if some edge case is enough to warrant changing an otherwise really cool effect.  We argue a lot about variant powers.  A lot.

There are a lot of playtester rebuilds, from single cards to entire rebuilds of decks.  Because everyone sees characters differently and have their own ways they would love to see a character go.  We argue and playtest them and eventually Christopher shows up, grabs what he likes, ignores the rest and we get a new version and start the process over again.

I like to think of the playtesters as a population of thought bunnies, nurturing our little bunny idea children and sending them out in the field in the hopes that Christopher the majestic and beautiful Bird of Prey will swoop down and carry our little idea off into the sky where he will eviscerate and repurpose our perfect little wordings.  Having your little thought bunny chosen is a great feeling.

There are really exciting points, like when we get a deck for the first time, and when we get to see the proofs (and art) for the first time.  Even better if you happen to be online and get to read and respond before other playtesters.  Also a lot of boring parts like waiting for a new version when business and outside things slow down the process.

Those are the times when the playtesters get restless and angry.  We don't get much advance notice of delays, setbacks, or changes, but we can tell things aren't going fast enough, and we notice when business interferes and we get silence for longer than expected.  It isn't fun for us fanboys and fangirls seeing things not going the way GtG wanted and not knowing why.

And when we find things out through public releases we get upset about that too.  We get used to finding things out first from the comfort of our little playtester bubble, and we don't like it when that doesn't happen.

There's a lot of feelings involved in playtesting, we are emotional little thought bunnies.  Also spellchecking, a lot of spellchecking.

Christopher kills baby bunnies, got it.

Seriously though, interesting stuff. Honestly makes me glad I'm not a playtester but also glad there are those of you who are, to help improve this game.

I have learned today that I really like phantaskippy's analogies.

They are glorious to behold

So playtesters are the mythical twelfth damage type, Fluffy Bunny Damage?

And seriously: Who doesn't want to be leporids?!

Whoa. Does everyone use the Fluffy Bunny damage? It was quite truly the very first Ether I Twisted.

Fluffy Bunny damage for the win!

Fluffy Bunny damage was a type I've chosen on the table and Microsoft Banana dollars as a damage type. 

I've done Fluffy Bunny Damage, but I learned it here on the forums.

I really half expect it to be an options on the app at some point

Fluffy Bunny damage is the best way to defeat every villain

"Baron Blade, grab a bunch of bunnies. You pull the moon into the earth when you're angry."

Once Christopher mentioned it in a rules example (in the old forums, so regretfully it is lost to us ), it became quasi-official for our group. 

The first weird damage type that came up in my gaming group was Rainbow Moonbeam damage...

I prefer crippling self-doubt damage.

Only for Naturalist in his Care Bear form?

I don't know, maybe Idealist has a brief magical girl phase before she settles on Super Sentai instead of Sailor Sentai (I have no idea how close that was to correct for Sailor Moon)

It's senshi, but you're close. :)

I can't say I wouldn't enjoy Baron Blade crying out "MOOOOON PRISM POWAAAAAH!" while pulling the moon into the earth.

Of course, who am I kidding? I wouldn't mind Baron Blade doing anything at all so long as I'm there.