Void Guard preview

Since it was a Kickstarter reveal, I won't copy the contents here, but we now have one card each from the Void Guard decks!

• Dr. Medico's From the Brink: Meh, last-ditch healing.  I don't get much mileage out of these, personally.  If I'm hurting so much that I'm getting killed, A) preventing just the killing blow isn't going to be enough to pull me back from the abyss, and B) I've probably gotten my ongoings nuked anyway.  If the 2 HP healing triggered when the card left play (by any means), this would be a little better, but as it is, I don't see myself playing it often.
• Mainstay's Void Belter: So Mainstay benefits from having his stuff smashed.  That's pretty cool.  He'll be good friends with Dark Watch Mr. Fixer and Freedom Six Tempest.  He looks like he could be a seriously heavy hitter.
• The Idealist's Bored Now: I love the title and the art, but it's hard to evaluate this card without knowing how her other mechanics (fragments and concepts) work.  It looks like it would work well with the base Idealist but not with Super Sentai.
• Writhe's Dark Dreaming: I thought he was more in control of the cloak now?  It does not look like a tool of the good guys there.  Pretty cool mechanic with base Writhe, sacrificing your power use to make your one-shots seriously nasty (and have some amazing interactions).  With Cosmic Inventor... again, I don't see how this would work at all.

:)

1. AAAAAAAAIIEEE EXPATRIETTE!!!

2. I wonder if “From the Brink” previews Dr. Medico’s mechanism. Maybe many of his cards are powerful, but have to be removed from the game after use.

3. Looks like Writhe has to decide when to expose himself (presuming the Shadow Cloak has some kind of defensive ability) to launch his signature attacks, and then he cloaks again. Cool - can’t wait to see what the Shadow Cloak says!

I figured that "removed from the game" mechanic was an exception for that card.  Otherwise trash recovery cards could potentially abuse this to create an invincibility loop.

The artwork on Dark Dreaming is the freakiest thing I have ever seen.

I'm dying to know how Idealist's mechanics work.

And Freedom Six Tempest can only destroy his own cards! But you're right about DW Fixer, that'll be a fun team-up!

despite the flavor text Biomancer totally deserves that. 

I just got home and pulled out the Void Guard character cards to remind myself of their powers.

If you were playing with Malpractice Medico, HOLY CRUD is “From the Brink” a lot of damage!

Ah, you're right; I only ever use him with Santa Guise.  But Unity might work well with Mainstay as well.

Heck, it'll even give you stuff to burst with Setback's Whoops! Sorry! card!

Darkly Dreaming makes you wonder how much of a hero Writhe really is.

He wouldn't be the only hero whose intentions are questionable especially with the other heroes with OblivAeon.   Considering his powers are pretty much darkness and being in the shadow it's not far fetched in my mind he teeters the line a lot of being heroic and cruel.  

Or that he was in jail and only released because the battle with my captain broke him out.

Again?

I've talked about this in other posts I've made, but because Writhe draws a lot artistically/spiritually from Venom and Cloak that I've always viewed Writhe as solidly anti-hero with a tendency to go over the line.

I think his struggles with Void Soul are part of this, but also his background as a criminal in the first place. If I had to guess, it's that later in the South West Sentinels books he gets more aggressive as time goes on. The Void Guard story and the shards overwhelming power probably only makes these tendencies of his far worse (leading to Void Soul splitting off). I'm unsure of how the Void Guard promo Writhe fits into that, though I think its safe to say its post the Void Soul split. It wouldn't surprise me if the Void Soul personality was the root cause of his more violent outbursts such as Darkly Dreaming.

I really hope Writhe gets his own Letters Page podcast and not samwhiched in with the other Sentinels because he, moreso than any of the other 3, has A LOT of story and exposition to unpack and review.

Cool, nice to be able to see some of the upcoming art for these cards :). I must say, I think the Idealist has some of the best card names in the entire game :D.

Firstly, I love the look of each card. Can't wait to see the rest of their decks when OblivAeon finally drops.

Regarding Writhe, I don't really think he's really a 'hardened criminal' as some make him out to be. When the character was starting out he was just a desperate man who had run out of options and made a bad choice that now has a lasting effect on his life. PLenty of room for angst, yes. But does this really mark him as a full-blown a criminal?

I don't see him as a full blown criminal or villain but certainly questionable choices along the way.   The first time we see him is on Supersonic Response and I'm curious why Tachyon has to come in to take him down.  His original incap with the Sentinels it seems like he is losing control 

Every single incap we have for Writhe is about a loss of control of some sort or another.

We have one where he is pirate in front of treasure for the Foil Sentinels version and the foil incap for Void Guard doesn't look like he has lost control as he is about to branded in that one. 

Those are all forms of a loss of control. It doesn't have to stricktly mean a loss of control of the cloak/shadows specifically, thats too narrow a lense to view the narrative themes at work here.

When he is being branded, is that not a loss of control over his freedom? Think of how that relates to his relationship with his powers and void soul.

When he is a pirate, we obviously don't know the full details of how/why/when he does this, but there are many possible scenarios where this could represent a loss of control over his identity as a hero, as a member of a team, as a hero. A loss of morals? Hope? The details of that scenario and what led to it will form a more accurate picture, but it's not a stretch to think that any/all of those could hold true here. 

I can definately see some powerful nuke potential here. A team of Darkwatch Nightmist, Captain Cosmic, Unity, Fanatic and Medico would be fun to try. Nightmist leads with a 3/4 Oblivion to damage all the constructs and bots so they can actually be healed dropping a Sacrosanct Martyr loving Fanatic in the process. 10 base damage just for the 5 heroes plus 2 per construct/bot healed.

Really looking forward to these 4 decks. Happy the video game is going to be releasing them first when Oblivaeon goes live.

I see what you mean now but upon first impression it seemed like you were talking about him losing control of the Cloak itself.  

Which is why I said "of some sort or another" originally. I ment to convey a wider net for the theme of Writhes incaps

Broadly speaking, all incaps could be considered “losses of control”. If the hero was in control, they wouldn’t have been incapacitated.

(Luminary being the exception, of course )

I see your point and it's totally fair. But I think that theme is more pronounced for Writhe. Legacy has an incap theme of "loss in death". Tachyon's shown in positions she can't run from, or where she is unable to outrun her problems. Wrath's themes are price/cost (similar to her F6 promo).

You can make arguments that all incaps are losses of control, and it's valid, but a lot of characters have stronger and more focused themes they deal with as characters 

I feel like Idealist's concepts will be static buffs to everyone that either

* get stronger the more fragments are under it

* get a different/changed effect depending on what kind of fragment is under them (think Naturalist)

* will eat up the fragments under them to keep in play