OblivAeon Update Month!

We get 5 updates this month.  This one's about the Collector's case again (meh) but there are some content reveals:

• The Collector's Case shows the updated difficulties (e.g. Ambuscade and Chokepoint as difficulty 1).  Still not perfect (Kaargra is still a 3), but better than the original estimates.
• The 10th Scion's name comes between Progeny and Sanction in alphabetical order.
• Environments have official difficulties (1-3).  Most of them are 2's, though.  Out of the new ones, Maerynian Refuge is a 1 and Mordengrad is a 3.

I'd like to point out the difference between the Completionist Guise in the Collector's box and what we've received from the Foil Pack is just the comic issue he is sleeving.   Now that's a true collector.  

Is that Justice Comics #1?  Nice.  And Prime Wardens #1 is on the foil, right?

In case anyone need the URL:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-oblivaeon/posts/2005181

I'm loving the card divider art, though it makes me sad that I'll be mostlly seeing just the name bit of each of them.

I do believe so.  

Interesting that the"helpful" scion is a difficulty three.

I liked the art for Bunker, it feels better for some reason

Depending on how their flip sides work, this actually makes sense. Since the helpful one probably has a beneficial back side, his front side needs to be more difficult to compensate.

I'm at the point that I want to know when everything ships.

The updates should be good though.

i know what you mean. However, looking at comments on the updates, some people are getting plain rude. I understand that the wait is longer than expected. But the rudeness is unexceptable… 

i am am excited about update month. It sounds like there will be potential solid information about how things are progressing. Also this month we should be getting that play through by a podcast! It’s the little things that help hold me over.

I honestly don't get what the people complaining even want at this point. Rushing the process not only likely isn't possible but would result in a worse game. They can't give a shipping date they don't have. You look entirely unreasonable still complaining about a lack of transparency when GTG is actually telling you everything they know about the situation. There reaches a point when you really need to either be silent or take a refund and go because you're no longer accomplishing anything other than being inappropriate.

Have fun enjoying the sneak peeks at the game, people, for pity's sake.

Still not perfect (Kaargra is still a 3), but better than the original estimates.

I'm curious as to what you think she should be? Three feels right to me- she's one of the harder decks to play against, but not one the level of something like The Matriarch, Iron Legacy, or The Chairman (I'd argue that Progeny should actually 3 rather than 4 for the same reasons).

I would rate Megalopolis maybe even a 3. 

Heroes can't use powers...

Heroes can't play cards...

Heroes can't draw cards...

If we go by the stats project Megaopolis is middle of the pack difficulty wise.  

http://mindwanderer.net/sotm/

According to the statistics, both the self-reports and the video game data, based on how often she wins, she's easily a 4.  Her Challenge mode isn't as bad as those of some other villains, but in the self-reports her normal and Advanced are the hardest–and it's a substantial margin between her (and, for non-Advanced, Iron Legacy) and the next runners-up.  In the video game data, The Dreamer beats her out, but otherwise the patterns are pretty much the same.

Honestly, I'm tired of waiting after putting so much money into this. I'm not going to be rude or attack anyone at GTG but what I really want to see is Oblivaeon in my home. I know I'll have to wait like everyone else, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable in being frustrated with the wait.

Kaargra's the worst, you can lose at random.

@Belle Sorciere

That's totally reasonable.

I can't say that I'm not disappointed that I didn't have this in January, but what's making me okay with it is that I also know that GTG is actually working on it, and that the game and case I'll be getting will be better because of the extra time.  I seem to remember someone commenting (on the KS I think) who had playtested the scenario 2 (though maybe just 1?) years ago at GenCon.  At the time, the OblivAeon fight was confusing, had a ton of moving bits, and took 4+ hours to play.  From the observations out of this years' GenCon it's a <=2 hour hour game that's much more streamlined.  I want the 2nd of those 2 games, even if it means I have to wait longer.  And as someone who ordered the case, I appreciate them going through half a million iterations to get something that will last.

That's not to say I'm willing to give GTG a total free pass, but maybe I just have more patience?  When I look through the list of projects I've either Kickstarted (8) or pre-ordered (another 3-4), almost every single one of those was at least 1 month late (the average is probably 4-5 months), then there's Tactics/Prime War, a different project that is over 2 years past the estimated delivery and no where close to delivering, and finally one project that shut down and will not be delivering period.  I think only 1 project (a game matt which literally only needed to be printed) actually delivered on time.

The amazing preview pictures aren't helping me be patient (because holy crap that looks awesome and I want it yesterday!), but holy crap that looks awesome and I'm going to get it at some point!

As someone who is used to kickstarting, preordering, or anticipating video games, the current 1.5-ish years of development actually seems short to me, with 2 years being more like the norm I'm used to for Kickstarters (and often even longer for preorders/anticipations). And those video games are projects which don't have to worry about printing and shipping as much physical product.

No, you aren't being unreasonable in frustrated. I think the thing that gets lost in the conversation is that all of us are frustrated to one level or another.

The thing that "gets my hackles up" if you will, is when people start attacking GtG because they are frustrated with the delay. That's just not right to my mind. GtG has never acted in bad faith towards this community, and so I'm just going to continue sitting here grinding my teeth until the game shows up, possibly distracting myself with the letters page on occassion.

Helpful Scion? If anything, I would expect Faultless to be the helpful one, and he's a 1. Don't exactly know what you mean by helpful. Mind clearing that up for me?

EDIT: Where would Voidsoul have showed up before? They act like we've seen it but I can't remember a time…

EDIT2: Unless Tim Cosing is the Scion from Scion's Aid… Is that the 'helpful' Scion?

EDIT3: Ninja'ed by padcurtain! Well, at least that makes sense. Thanks!

They are referring to the scion labelled redacted aka Tim Cosing whose believed to be the scion in https://greaterthangames.com/scionsaid offering the hero's a Faustian bargain

Voidsoul is on the back of writhe incapable and on cause and effect one of setbacks cards

Oh yeeeaaah (Was totally listening fully when C&A talked about Writhe and Voidsoul, not playing a game and listening in background.)

I'll agree with Jeysie on video game KS delay.

I've backed three video game Kickstarters, estimated delivery Feb 2013, Oct 2013, Feb 2014. None have delivered. Add an overdue Spirit Island (since delvered) and an overdue Obliveon. And the Order of the Stick KS that funded Feb 2012 and he's still working on stretch goal fulfillment. I've gotten to the point where kickstarters deliver when they deliver and there is nothing I can do to make them come faster. I get that people are frustrated, justifiably so. I've been waiting for so long on these I'll be shocked when some of them finally deliver.

Kickstarter for me is a chance to throw some money at people who created something awesome in the past in hopes they can create something awesome again with said thrown money.

I've backed a bunch of stuff on Kickstarter, and yeah, delays are pretty common. From video games, I got Mighty No 9 (big disappointment), Yooka Layley (still waiting for the Switch version, but not too keen on it at this point either), and Bloodstained (Still have strong hopes for, but might be the same category). I have probably 10-15 Kickstarters I'm waiting for fulfillment on, and I've been all over the gammut on delays and quality issues.

My biggest complaint with OblivAeon was more a complaint with GTG Kickstarter practice in 2016; I backed every game GTG put a Kickstarter up for that year (with the exception of Exoplanets, which I picked up on release since I actually had funds then). From an outside perspective looking in, it felt like they spread themselves too thin by trying to publish too many things at once, and as a result each project added more delay to the others already in flight. I won't say it's unreasonable to have multiple things in flight, but when you have 6+ projects in the air at the same time and they all end up late, that raises a red flag.

(Mind you, I was disatisfied with the delays, but I've been happy with backing every one of those games once I had them in hand and they hit the table. I also admittedly like to gripe, so there's that.)

My second issue with the OblivAeon delays is more personal in that, while the OblivAeon fight is cool, he won't be hitting my table as often as the original villains/the occasional game of Vengeance. He feels more like a once every 6 months - a year kind of experience, that you have to be in the mood for, rather than a completely new game mode that will always serve in rotation. He definitely won't be in my go-to list when I want to play a random game of Sentinels. The stuff I really want (the new heroes-- especially Void Guard, Stuntman, and Benchmark), however, have been completed for a while and are just waiting for OblivAeon to be finalized to ship out.

Add to that the months of mangled communication, especially around the delays, and a couple of people who will defend any criticism against GTG as invalid, regardless if the raised criticisms are warranted or not, left a very sour taste in my mouth for the experience.

I don't feel criticism of GTG is invalid, so much as it feels like GTG already addressed those complaints that were both valid and addressable (like problems with lack of communication), so now it's just devolved into people continuing to complain about things that either GTG can't address without harming the quality of the product or where it's out of their hands to address at all.

As someone who is a bit of a complainer (I say probably understatement-ly), I feel it's important to recognize there are times when complaining actually just isn't productive even if it might otherwise be valid.

Next update is tomorrow. I'm excited to see what's coming up next! :D

Which one is that?

Perhaps they are referring to Dubai?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/dubai-rebuild-the-ruins

Not, not Dubai.  I did back that, but it didn't fund so I didn't lose out on that.   The project that shut down and never delivered was Clang .

The goal of Clang was to bring realistic sword-fighting to computer/video games, by developing a system that would allow you complex control (vs. "left click to swing").  It was going to (initially at least) be based around Fiore dei Liberi's work, and at the time I was studying European medieval martial arts so that was very exciting to me.  It was a pretty experimental project, and the "game" it would've delivered would have been geared to demonstrate the system, which then hopefully other games would use.  Unfortunately they used up all the money working on it before finishing, and never found a company willing to try the system out, so they had to close up shop.

I was disappointed that it didn't deliver, but it was also clearly more experimental in nature and I knew that going in, so I my disappointment was mostly that I didn't get complex sword-fighting games.  I certainly didn't feel like I had wasted my money or anything.

I remember seeing that KS.  It certainly was a great premise and I’m sad to hear they didn’t actual finish the product.  

For the record, you wouldn't have lost money on it, because Kickstarter doesn't pull funds until the campaign is finished. This policy was created for exactly that reason.

That can't be right.  The whole point of Kickstarter is to use the funds they get from it to make the thing they are trying to make.  If you don't pay until the project is delivered, how would that work?

I think he means that you don't pay until the KS campaign is fully funded. So there's less risk of backing a project that is likely to fail.

If you’re referring to Clang that project was fully funded and thus people would have lost money as funds are taken shortly after the successful campaign.  If you are referring to projects that don’t meet funding goals then you are correct that you don’t lose any money. 

Clank is an awesome deck builder that was not kickstarted.

Clang was an ambitious failure that was kickstarted.

And Godus was just a total mess that became the only Kickstarter I regret backing :P.

I'm actually not that bothered that Oblivaeon is so late in coming - I know it's going to be worth it and I know it's definitely on the way (being able to regularly meet up with a playtester and experience the new decks ahead of time has probably helped somewhat), so I don't mind sitting back and waiting a while longer. Any ETA on a Kickstarter is always going to be a very rough estimate, in my experience. I have at least one other Kickstarter I've backed that I keep forgetting about and which I think is a couple of years overdue now, but every now and then there's an update. It's on the way. So that's good :).

New Kickstarter Update:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-oblivaeon/posts/2011223?ref=backer_project_update

Christopher shows off some Aeon Men cards, the Void Guard rules insert, the updated hero and villain complexity charts, and some more deck backs! Also, hits at seeing hero deck backs in the near future.

Yay! I paraphrased Christopher correctly in the KS comments section the day before (sorry for stealing your thunder… )

Wonder when the video game is going to correct the difficulties of heroes and align all the variants to the same numbers + add difficulties for environments, since they’re new.

On the Livestream last week I believe MigrantP said after OblivAeon is released.  

Sounds like Oblivaeon is going to be dealing a lot of indiscriminate damage. Somehow, I don't think that will be as much of a help to the heroes as it tends to be...

Hot damn, do I love the design of the Maerynian Refuge, though. It's a different kind of futurism from the Enclave. :D

When the information is finalized and released.

I mean, last week's update is pretty finalized and released, given that I showed pictures of every page and that book is already being printed with that text. But if you want to wait until you have the physical copy in hand, that's fine, too!

There's definitely something to that.

I'm starting to suspect that OblivAeon will not be affected by normal damage–or maybe, will not be affeceted by normal damage below a certain threshold, because we know that Ra & the Ennead (hey, I think I saw them open for Scooter Picnic last month) damaged him, and that's represented in game by dealing each villain target 9 damage. (Likewise, the Infinity Cannon deals 5 Energy damage, and I gather that's also intended to be something capable of damaging OblivAeon.)

But there has to be something more to the scenario than "deal OblivAeon enough damage and you win." The "Inevitable Destruction" on a few cards also suggests that; one aspect of fighting these Ultimate Enemies–and this is definitely a sense I've gotten from the Letters Page–is that you have to move fast. You can't wait, can't try to fight to a standstill and then build up your power, because if you do that, so are they, and they're building up more. No turtling.

Well, we know that the OblivAeon fight takes place in phases.  Early playtests mentioned that he was invincible in the first phase and all you could do is destroy his shields, but then was vulnerable to damage in phases 2 and 3.  So I think the Ennead just destroyed a shield--and we know there's a whole deck of those.

I'm not sure whether OblivAeon will deal indiscriminate damage or just eat Aeon Men (like Infinitor does with his manifestations when flipped).  He could even do both in different modes/phases.

I still think some hero variants are considerably more complex than their normal forms, in many cases enough to merit a higher complexity number.  But they are the exception and not the rule.

Out of curiosity, which ones do you think are the exceptions? Genuinely curious.

I've been hearing a lot of people pointing to, say, DW Mr. Fixer and Hunted Naturalist as examples of increased difficulty, but I tend to disagree. It almost seems like confuting "differing strategy/priority of card you want to play" as complexity.

I'm most excited about previews of the comic book.  We haven't seen or heard anything about that in quite a while.  I wonder how long it will be?

Scholar of the Infinite is definitely more complex than base Scholar, as you need to keep track of every card you discard whereas before you didn't need to remember anything.

I remember a few cards from my demo in 2016 that said something like "Oblivaeon deals X damage to all targets, Oblivaeon and all Scions are immune to this damage" which pretty well covers that avenue.

Scholar is already complexity 3 so I don’t know how listing a different value for Scholar of the Infinite adds much value.  I agree it adds more tracking but it doesn’t add much complexity to an already fairly complex character. 

I would definitely include those two, although with caveats.

I'm not sure I'd put Mr. Fixer at a 2 anyway, he's a very straightforward character who just has to carefully evaluate which style and tool he wants (when he even has a choice).  If some of the variant 1's deserve to stay 1's, normal Mr. Fixer should be a 1, too.  DW Fixer is a high 2 or a low 3, since he has to make continuous sacrifices to do anything at all, especially in rounds 2-3 or so (or after a wipe).  He's very hard to build up, and has to play a continuous balancing game between damage now and options later.  And he has to have solid awareness of what every other hero is doing to know whether they can spare something to fuel his attack.

Hunted Naturalist should be a 3 for the same reason The Sentinels and Setback are: more stuff to keep track of.  I break out some small tokens or toys to mark what form he's currently emulating, and any time you have to do that I think a 3 is merited.  His strategy isn't any more complex, but his mechanic is.  It's very similar to Sky-Scraper in many ways, who is also a well-deserved 3.

Completionist Guise is also easily a 3.  You have to know what variants are in the box and the best circumstances to switch your whole team between all of them.  Although with all of Guise's bizarre interactions, he may deserve to be a 3 anyway.  Completionist might just be the most complicated hero in the game.

Xtreme Captain Cosmic is pushing it.  He can suicide very, very easily.  Fortunately he does have a couple of alternate powers he can give himself.  But he might again deserve to be a low 2 in his normal form and a high 2 in Xtreme form.

I haven't played with Setting Sun Ra yet, but he reads like a lighter version of DW Mr. Fixer.  He has a much more complex resource management game to play.  He's defninitely not a 3, and he can always put out cards that give him alternate powers, but I don't think he's a 1 either.

Most of the others whose variants are much more complex than their base card–Termi-Nation Unity, BoT Chrono-Ranger, Rogue KNYFE, Xtreme Haka, PW Fanatic, Termi-Nation Bunker, F5 Bunker, F6 Tempest, PW Tempest–do tend to transition to using powers from cards as soon as they can get them, and their powers don't make it any harder to reach that point, so Christopher's logic is good here.  But for heroes that depend heavily on their base power throughout the game, and for whom that power is a core mechanic, I think he's wrong.

You do make an interesting point in that "complexity" is not clearly defined.  For instance, in some cases of 3's (The Sentinels, Nightmist, Setback, Sky-Scraper), it's just a slightly odd mechanic that doesn't appear anywhere else in the game but isn't hard to understand or manage.  In some (AZ, Scholar) it's because they have resource management that don't work the same way as most other heroes (and when did Scholar get bumped up to a 3?) and which sometimes results in multi-step math.  In one (Argent Adept) it's mostly because he easily gets flooded with options and has a lot to consider every round, and plan for future rounds.  It's not consistent and it's often hard to compare.

The impression I got from the early Kickstarter update that went through the gameplay was that you don't play through, like, the whole shield deck, but that you draw a shield, and that's the shield you have to overcome that game. Like, that card decides what the task of the first phase is.

I imagine it being something like the finale to JLU, where the fight is taking place all over the world, and your playing group is one team tackling OblivAeon in this spot, with these shields. Then the next time you play it, you roll a different set of shields, and a different set of Scions, so each game is unique.

Completionist Guise is definitely more complex than standard, judging by the game I played today. :B Setting Sun Ra definitely makes you think, but I'm a fan of just pointing him at threats and letting him go. You don't need hit points​, you're the God of the Sun! :V

So far the explanations given reinforce bobbertoriley’s point to me that it’s a change in how you play or strategy being used not complexity as much.  Some of the explanations also fall into a variant meaning some extra tracking is needed which I don’t consider complexity either.  As to Completionist Guise specifically I think his biggest complexity is getting your group to allow you to use him and mess with variants they are using if you aren’t playing solo.  

Coincidentally I have a new bumper sticker.

Update month Part 3: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-oblivaeon/posts/2017841?ref=backer_project_update

10k HP? Seems a bit of a struggle. Shield cards look interesting. I wonder which 5 Scions are pulled forth.

Also, I'm totally ready  to shoot the moon.

Honestly, a lot of the big nuke cards seem kind of ... wasted on regular villains?

Like, Haka can pour like 80 HP of damage into an attack on his own, but usually by the time he's ready for that, the villain is already whittled down to less than half that. Same with Hyperspeed Barrage or Omnicannon. I've had plenty of games in the app where several characters are finally ready for their "monster turns," but the villain won't survive more than the first two or three hits, tops.

This sounds like it's going to be an opportunity to let everyone let loose, and furthermore, for them to need to let loose. This is where the insanity in the Nuking thread will really come into play, where all the broken combinations that have been discovered will pay off.

Hell, I'm looking forward to it.

But, uh... someone tell me that the game's going to come with some higher denomination HP tokens? I don't think that handful of 25s is going to cut it.

I'm getting the impression that the 10k hp mark for OblivAeon is simply a way to say:  "Yes, you can hit OblivAeon.  No, it won't do anything negligible to him.  Yes, he is still a target, for effects that hinge upon number of targets hit or the like." 

Again--I'm not a playtester or the like--but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the Phase 3 cards start with something along the lines of "Set OblivAeon's hp to 200" or something similar.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's card text along the lines of "When a Shield is removed from the game, reduce Oblivaeon's HP by half".

Am I the only kinda lamenting that the comic is a Kickstarter-backer only thing? >_>;

Its part of the main OblivAeon box itself not KS exclusive.  

A point was made in regards to the comic I missed.  It’s now the OblivAeon one-shot instead of Freedom Five Annual #30.   I wonder what lead to that change.  

1st off, I agree that those monster turns are going to really feel great now that there is a bigger target to hit.

 I remember seeing some massive 1,000 hp tokens at the Oblivaeon demo tables, so that's good, but you'd still need to account for the 990 left over after you give him a solid whack or two. Hopefully they come with a few 100 hp tokens, but I can't guarentee that.

Those shields are super nasty.

The Primary Objective is probably the "nicer" of the two, only requiring you to flip 2 to 4 objective cards over. But remember what some of those requirements were from the Mission Deck update?

"Destroy H cards on your turn"

"Pick back up any number of your cards from your play area, flip the card if at least two of them had powers"

"Reveal the top three cards of your deck, if you revealed at least 3 different keywords, discard those cards anf flip this card"

"Shuffle 20 cards from hero trashes into hero decks"

Anyone thinking those are going to be things we'll be able to do quickly? That Primary Objective shield is going to hang around for a while, and remember Voidsoul is the Scion for this card. Flip an objective card and Voidsoul takes 2 damage and then flips, which can't be a good thing.

Then look at "Source of Foes", to get rid of it you need to destroy a bunch of Aeon Men and to get rid of the Counteraction Aura (whch forces movement between zones for using your powers, which is terrible) you need to clear all Aeon Men from both fields. While Aeon Master is the Scion you started with and Oblivaeon was playing additional Aeon Men cards from the start…

Really highlights how bad this fight is going to get when this is how it starts

My commentary on voidsoul in early playtesting was it  wasn't a very tough Scion, as long as you don't let it flip.  Voidsoul has changed a bit since then, but yeah, flipping Voidsoul. . .

It might be because this comic needs to cover many of the characters, where FFA30 would be centered around the Freedom Five, since this would probably be an event where every comic is showing a different angle from the perspective of its characters.

Still seems like it deserves an explanation even if that’s all there is.  

The switch from FFA#30 to an OblivAeon One-Shot was a little jarring the first time I saw it. Now that I've thought on it a little more, I really like it thematically, and find it more interesting than had they given us the original idea they proposed.

Christopher once said that he considers every game of Sentinels* canon. So, instead of Christopher and Adam providing the book that gives the definitive end of the Multiverse, they provide the set up for how it ends.

How does it end? Well, that depends on YOU. It also gives a little more credence to the first page of the book that OblivAeon is showing up everywhere, and every game is different parts of the Multiverse working together as part of a greater whole to take him down.

Either way, that moon pun alone was worth the switch in my book.

* - Dunno if that sentiment included that weird stint in the 90s/2000s when Sentinel Comics did a bunch of crossovers with Castle Comics and Abstract Tales; I think that's left up to the reader.

Honestly, of all the updates this month this is the one that's done the best job of getting me excited for the game. I can't wait to face off against these shields (and the others) in game, and I've already started thinking about the characters I'll want in-game to deal with all the possible situations. Personally, for that Source of Foes one, Exxpatriette is high on my list - I want to take down a lot of Aeon Men quickly and keep them out of play, and a boosted Expat with Hairtrigger Reflexes will do a lot to keep them away. She and Ra will probably be mainstays (ha) of my strategy.

Of course, no doubt a lot of this will change once I actually get a look at the scenario. Very excited to see what next week's update is like!

Also the switch means they don't have to include all the flavor text, and potentially images, from cards that quote FFA#30.

That was part of what I was looking forward to as to how they tied it altogether in that issue. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-oblivaeon/posts/2024594

Update Month Part 4 with OblivAeon instructions!

So the Imminent Destruction counter starts at 6 but we start with 5 environments?

AND we get glimpses at non-foil OblivAeon hero cards!

Two different ways for him to win, Imminent Destruction and Devastation tokens are counted separately I'd say

I realized this after I posted the comment. We've seen cards reference the Inevitable Destruction track.

Welp, this update certainly gave me new insight into the Oblivaeon scenario.

We're all going to die.

Christopher asks "are you scared?"

The answer is yes.

Both of how hard this fight is going to be and how much real estate it's going to take up on tabletop. D: I'm glad my friend got a new, larger gaming table!

I'm so excited now, I posted a bunch of stuff on the comments of the update, but everything about this scenario just has me grinning from ear to ear.

Yes, we are all going to die, but we get to bring in more heroes until they all die. I can't wait for the threads where we talk about how many heroes were incapped  before victory/defeat, and I'm curious if anyone is going to go through all 37 hero decks before Oblivaeon destroys all the environments.

I'm sooo giddy right now. This was the best update of Update month, hands down, until next weeks probably

I'm more curious who will be the first person to defeat OblivAeon without losing any heroes.

I'm a bit concerned that OblivAeon is described as a booklet. How sturdy will the booklet be?

ABout 10,000 hp sturdy, right?

I don't figure I'll be shuffling it much. 

Heck, I'm not even expecting to turn to the last page any time soon… 

It can't be that awful.  You could always be playing on Advanced, after all.

I'm sure beating OblivAeon without losing anyone is possible with luck and cheese.  And the Rewards will help a lot, too.

there will be several teams. But I tend to think that his win condition would come up before you cycle through all 37 heroes… the concept of choosing a new hero to jump in sounds amazing though. That’s one aspect I’m really anticipating. The rest of the fight? Oh my goodness. I’m still thinking the main reason I’ll like it is for the heroes. But maybe it’ll be so epic that it’ll be liked. Time will tell. 

I don't envy Handelabra for having to implement all this in the video game.

Funnily enough, just before reading this update, I was thinking about…I guess an earlier version I heard about, where you could swap zones instead of a play, power or draw phase. I think that'd probably be a huge pain for the interface, so this might make that a tiny bit easier. The rest of it though…yeah, ouch.

It's interesting, too, that they get that time at the start of the turn to use an incap ability. Given the various abilities, that could be crazy-powerful, and I can definitely see planning your initial hero loadout to manipulate what incaps you get (ah vanilla Tempest, you're going to be making a lot of heroes immune to Infernal damage). I look forward to cheesing the hell out of this scenario - and probably still losing, because this whole thing looks ridiculously intense!

When I've played Oblivaeon games, we've counted promo versions of heroes as "extra decks", so for example, I got one-shot as Omni-10 on the first turn of a game, and just shuffled my deck and switched to Omni-U. Same happened in a different game where I was plying as Writhe and also got one-shot on the first turn. Sigh. So there's a bit more than 37 possible heroes to play with ;).

I was of the opinion that variants don't count for this, but if they do... ouch, just ouch.

And, thanks @MindWanderer for reminding me that this is just the Standard rules I'm reflecting on. There is still advanced and a challenge mode that has yet to be announced, leading to Ultimate.

Someone deserves a prize if they can defeat Ultimate Oblivaeon without losing any heroes.

My “rule” re variants will probably be that if the variant is a different person (Freedom Six, Grandpa/Young Legacy) they can be played as a separate hero. If not, then I’ll probably limit to just one.

My first post!

I'd be okay with using variants because its a multiverse, and multiple versions of a hero might get pulled through the weakened timelines to fight.

Yeah, even variants that aren't a different person might be from a just-slightly-left-of-center alternate universe. Y'know, where there's still a Rook City Wraith and all.

That's a totally reasonable approach, but I also thematically want the loss of hero to feel meaningful, and running through 5 versions of Bunker in row would kind of defeat that.  (Though it could certainly be fun in it's own right!)

Just realized that Bunker's probably not my best choice of example... while he may have 5 hero variants, 3 of them are actually different people.  So technically I could run through 3 of them in a row following my "rule".

Welcome! Post more!

I'll probably follow the official ruling that comes from GTG for the first games, but depending how incredibly difficult OblivAeon is, I'll probably go with the 'Variants that are different people count as different people' rule.

The interesting thing will be if the rules say “Remove from the game” or “Return to the Box” for the hero deck. The latter would imply that the hero is re-selectable.

I remember at one point Christopher liked re-use of heroes (with different variants) because it was friendlier to newer players (for example, it allows someone to spend the whole game as Legacy if they wanted).

Not sure which way it landed, though. I think to each their own, though.

The only reason I don't like that variant rule is that there would be more options for certain decks, like FV and PW heroes, and much less selection for DW or other characters with 1 variant each. Of course, the "swapping heroes" rule took me comepletely by surprise in the first place, so I'm really excited to see how any of this will play out regardless.  

Welcome, hope you enjoy it here, but I think someone already ate all the cookies

Sorry.

I'd love to see a game log of this, even with stacked decks.

Okay!  Send me a copy of the game, and I'll get right on it!  

Oh sweet zombie servant, we’re all in so much trouble!

I just had the thought that, until now, we’ve all thought that the Freedom Five promos were pretty overpowered. But…I think we’re going to need them.

Good try.

After reading through this weeks update I was particularly concerned with the comment about "Characters are going to be incapped a lot in this game"(or something like that). When the character is incapped, you just choose another one and start again.

This concerns me for 2 reasons:

1. Even if you get to choose a new hero and just join the fight again, this feels like the equivalent of Citizen Dawn dropping THAT CARD over and over again. Meaning, for me, not fun at all. Constantly loosing all of your setup does not equal fun for me.

2. I don't mind having a hero incapped. It happens. What concerns me is the slow build heroes like Absolute Zero, Argent Adept, Bunker, Unity, etc. Is there ever going to be any point in playing these heroes in the Oblivaeon event if Heroes are just being incapped left and right, and losing all their setup in the process? Its looking like the slow build heroes are going to be relegated to the back of the box for this event.

I'm looking forward to the new heroes and environments. However, the more I read about the Oblivaeon event and play style itself, the less interested I'm getting in actually playing it. I'm hoping I'm wrong, and the new play style actually breathes new life into a game which for me has begun to grow a bit stale. I didn't particularly care for the vengeance play style so maybe that is coloring my feelings on this, as yet, unplayed play style.

I'm not sure it's going to be "left and right." From the sound of it, there'll be some unlucky draws where maybe one hero goes down round one (A string of "Hits the hero with the lowest HP" cards, for instance). But that's possible in the game already -- you could easily lose all the Sentinels in Iron Legacy's first turn, for instance.

It's going to be rough, but I would be extremely disappointed if it was the normal case for heroes to not be able to make some contribution before they go down.

It depends on what kind of mission rewards we get though. There could very well be a mission reward that helps you set up faster or removes the need for one of your usual set up pieces. If your buddy has a strong support hero in play and you've collected some mission rewards, it might be viable to bring a slow build hero in later.

I highly doubt that this is going to be a problem.  While some villians are less fun for setup heavy heroes, OblivAeon is the big finale villain - they're going to be designing it with the intent of being fun to play using all heroes.

OblivAeon has gone through a metric ton of playtesting, and each hero is the personal favorite of some player.  If there's any hero for whom OblivAeon was specifically unfun to fight with, that would have been fixed long since.

Also, it looks to me like a great many of the Mission rewards grant extra plays and draws to the heroes, which should make setup even easier than before.  It's a lot less frustrating to lose a fully setup AZ if you can plop down AA with 3 instruments and 3 songs the next turn.  (I'm probably exaggerating, but you get my meaning)

Plus, this actually brings a whole new area of strategy into the games that I can’t wait to try: when to bring a specific hero into the fight.
I mean, bringing Haka in early to eat Aeon Men all day for a super powerful Savage Mana would be great, but it’s not going to help much while OblivAeon has his 10k HP shield, and the longer Haka’s around the more likely he is to die. But bring him in too late and you won’t get the satisfaction of crushing Obliv with it.
So learning when the best time to bring specific Heroes into the fight (including those like Bunker and AZ) is going to be hugely fun for me.

Remember you can move between Battle Zones as well, so you can just make sure you keep moving to wherever Oblivaeon isn't, get set up, and then go kick some of his massive scary arse once you're ready. In between fending off Scions and Aeon Men and whatever the Environment throws at you, of course ;). And doing stuff to delay the Environment destruction countdown thingy as long as possible.

 I love the idea that if The temple of Zhu Long gets destroyed, a Ninja in a different Battle Zone will get removed from the game. 

clap

Thank you. I was nervous writing this. 

And I was nervous for the heroes reading it.  Well done.

Thank you! I think I'm going to try and write some more to this. Just to come up with the Battlezones and who is where. Back to the update. I really can't wait to see more images, and hopefully a video of the box in real life!

Yeah. If I recall correctly from the version I played at Gencon, there's penalties for NO ONE being with Oblivaeon. But there's considerable risk to the people who are hanging out in the zone with Oblivaeon, with the potential for huge damage spikes. So low set-up or high durability heroes can be trying to hold off Oblivaeon while the people with setup…set up.

very nice, can't wait to read more

Well done.

Thank you! Means a lot. I got another little story in the works. All this encouragement means a lot

One really cool thing strategically about this update with the news of all the incaps and how we'll get to use the incapacitated abilities is it brings a lot of thinking to which Heroes to bring out when in terms of which Heroes you want to have incapacitated early.

For an extreme example, that 20 irreducible damage from OblivAeon seems a lot less daunting if you have incapped Tempest (original flavor) ignoring one type of damage for you every round.

I'll bet that incapped heroes stay in the play area of their player, since that would line up with what we see on the hero turn reminder card. Meaning that they'll probably stay in the battle zone of that player's current active hero. And since no card can effect the other battle zone unless the card says so, you could only extend that protection to one zone at a time.

Still a very good point about stregtegic incapping. Oblivaeon is going to be rediculous.   

Still, leaving incapped Tempest in OblivAeon’s area and making everyone there immune to that 20 irreducible infernal damage is a powerful option. Too bad you can’t move zones and trigger that ability in the same turn.

I’m having Weekend at Bernie’s visions, though, with heroes hauling around armfuls of incapacitated predecessors wherever they go.

I mean, when you consider Tempest granting immunity, or stuff like PW Argent letting you redirect an instance of hero damage or XPW Haka and Sky-Scraper turning into indestructible targets, basically, are we sure the heroes don't already do this?

"Oh no what do we do now?" "Hide behind [character x]'s unconscious body, I'm sure it'll be fine…"

Oh no, I'm going to be picturing Weekend at Oblivaeon's now whenever I play. XD

Was it Dorkness Rising that gave us the quote: "Hide behind the pile of dead bards!"

Yes it was.   So many dead bards

That guy either just had bad luck, or didn't know how to play a bard. ;P

<ArgentAdept> I do not like this plan

Yeah, let's give it credit, Sentinels is the one place where you can unironically like playing the bard because Argent is pretty badass.

Make it a Weekend at Bernie's 2 vision in that the heroes have to play some music to make the posse of dead heroes dance.

And HEY bards are awesome. It's much less an uphill battle to defend bards using today's rulesets (Schmifth Schmeditiion).

Even if it's not showing anything for OblivAeon content-wise, this was a pretty informative update this month.

And I'm SUPER glad I backed the first day... Still, I'm gonna have to wait til over 3,000 packages ship out before I get my copy of the game...

I'd be happy to move to the back of the queue.  Not that I'm any less excited about the game, but I don't see a game that takes that much table space happening any time soon.

So, I just had a thought that makes me super happy.

Let's say that they finish pre-production in the next few days, and finish printing in the next few weeks (I have no idea if this is reasonable or not)

Then the ship leaves towards the end of November, arriving towards the end of December.

Being that my copy is going to come from the second container, and hoping best case of getting a container a week at GtG, and the fact that Ohio is not terribly far from GtG headquarters, it ispossible I could get my copy around mid to late January.

Which is right around the time of my Birthday.

Please please please let Oblivaeon show up on my Birthday, I will lose it like a little kid

My expectation is February or March for delivery based on what information we have.  

Unofficial opinion, nothing to back this: I'd be willing to put money down by end of June at the absolute latest.

(That's all containers shipped out and the game in all backers hands, not just start of shipping)

What's your pledge number, man?  I'm at 426, so I'll likely be in the very first wave…

...

Balls.

I'm in the 8K range.

I really thought I'd pledged earlier... guess not.

*shrug* oh well.  At least two of my friends backed as well.

I'm only #194....

huzzah, number 21, my order can drink

#565

But, I got the Collector's Box, so (if I read the update correctly) I'm in the second wave shipping from GtG.

...

I hate all of you so much right now...

:P

what are you?

He's in the 8k range.

If it makes you feel any better Blackfang, I'm in the 4k range and I'm relatively certain that I backed within 24 hours of the KS going live!  (Maybe it was between 24-48 hours, but I seem to remember that it was on day 1).

I'm also gtting the BOX. So… I'm not getting it first. 

It's the Kickstarter backer number right, not Backerkit? I have the good fortune of being KS#5, but am in the 6K on Backerkit. 

Where do you find out these numbers?

If you go to Kickstarter and click "View your peldge," it says your backnumber. 

It is Kickstarter number unless you were a Backerkit-only backer, in which case it is Backerkit number.

572.  Okay then.

I think I remember why I'm so high.

I spent several hours trying to decide which pledge I wanted to back, instead of just pledging first and then changing it if I needed to.

Oh well.

I've been in the first delivery set of several onther ones (including Planet Mercenary), so I'll be near the back of the line here.

Maybe I'll set up a brewery while I wait.

Sometimes we can forget how we got that high especially if we took too much.

I playtested OblivAeon on a three foot card table, a 4x6 table is plenty of space for it.

How many players (and heroes?)?

Yeah, I remeber how I backed.

I logged on within 2 minutes of the KS going live, clicked on the signed box level, and within the span of me placing my pledge we went from nearly 100 signed copies to 8, it was mass hysteria within those first few hours.

Hey, at least you guys have pledge numbers - I backed as part of one of the group backings so I'm not even on there at all (so I just rely on people posting links to the updates on here so I know when there's actually been an update :D) ;).