Let's talk about those Dark Watch promos...

I just got my package from >G today (by the way, thanks guys!).  While Jules will be happy with the Mr. Chomps, I'm more interested in the Dark Watch promo cards.  So, I'm going to do a little thinking-out-loud...

Mister Fixer

Okay, I love Bitter Strike.  It gives Fixer a great boost in offensive capability, at the cost of keeping his stuff around.  I can see all sorts of combos with Scholar and Argent Adept, letting him get fully set up before unleashing massive damage all over the place.  

The front art reminds me of some of the 90s Daredevil or Iron Fist comics, which fits well.  I'm wondering where that golden skull-temple is in the SotM universe.  On the back, who is that?!?!  I don't recognize this fellow at all.  I thought he was Spite, at first, but the red mask isn't the same.  Maybe we're seeing how Fixer got that scar in the first place?

Nightmist

I like the look of the art on this one particularly:  Nightmist looks exotic and powerful on the front, while looking utterly hopeless on the back, alone against Gloomweaver.  I'm on the fence about her power:  it'll mean a genuine shift in the way I usually play her, which is pretty awesome.  I'll hopefully give her a shot within a week or so.

Expatriette and Setback

Oh, man!  These two have to be talked about together, given their incapacitated side.  Are we seeing the first ever in-team hookup?!  I think we are!  Also, is that Argent Adept on the back of Expatriette's incap side, fighting some flying villain (with red energy around his hands)?  It looks like AA just jumped off of a Mobile Defense Platform...  More details are necessary!

I like Expatriette's new power.  While it slows down her set-up time, it definitely increases her overall damage output and makes SMG so much more useful in the long-run.  Hollow Points + Aim + SMG?  Whooo....that's some pain.  I can't speak much to Setback's power, as I'm not a playtester, but it definitely seems more defensive than offensive, so that might be a thing...

Spite

This is definitely a neat take on Spite, with lots of opportunities for players to get the jump on him on the back, if you manage the risk-reward ratio well.  He hits like a Mack truck on his flipped side, made especially rougher for the fact that he goes after the lowest HP hero.  That definitely makes Wraith's Smoke Bombs useful in a fight with him!

Gloomweaver

Holy crap on a crutch!  People who are asking for a harder Gloomweaver, your prayers have been answered.  While his front side isn't hateful, you almost want to keep him there while you build up to deal with the utter devastation of his flip side!  H+2 damage per round!  H AND H-2 damage per round for everyone?!  Ow ow ow!  Very cool!

I've gotta say, though.  Both the art on Gloomweaver and Spite look decidedly creepy.  Spite looks like a combo of Ghost Rider and Solomon Grundy on his flip side, while "The Rotting God" looks suitably gruesome.  Awesome job on these!

Note that GloomWeaver end of turn H-2 on his flip side only his non-heroes.

Is it just me, or is it LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to have MORE saved victims than drugs, barring cirumstances like Atlantis and Time Flies, unless some major changes to his deck have been made? He only plays 1 card a turn, and he flips a drug at the START of his turn, and checks for victims at the END of his turn, so it just can't be done.

Safe house makes him start with a victim in play, he could play a 2nd one for his 1st play.

yeah, but even if you save them both, he flips a drug face-up at the START of his turn, so on his second turn, even if you saved both victim, he'll have 2 drugs and 2 victims. That's not enough to flip a drug face-down.

To save the Good Samaritan, you PLAY the TOP card of the VILLAIN deck. Which COULD play a victim. If THAT victim is another Good Samaritan, you CAN then play the TOP card again and thus get MORE victims than drugs.

Yeah, and that is the ONLY way to do it. It's SUCH a rare thing, like, why even mention it?

You could Timeshift him.

Sub-Zero Atmosphere

Move the victim check forward and before the possible drug flip.

Ah, that's interesting to note.  I think someone once observed that original Spite was weird in listing his EOT trigger before his SOT one…SZA is a reason why this would be done.

Also, there are environment cards that cause villain cards to be played. And who knows what shenanigans the newer heroes will add to the mix...

The playtesters?

But without outside deck manipulation, the double-Good Samaritan-flip is the ONLY way you can get it to work.

Bear in mind (with Spite) that you ditch all 5 drugs, so there are only 19 cards left (since the safe house makes 20). 

you are guaranteed 1 victim (because of the safe house), so that's 18 cards left.

 3 of the victims are Samaritans. It's not a given that you'll get one early on, but it's certainly possible to get ahead of the drugs.

Someone who has seen his backside...does he ever flip to the front again?

no.

So. Expat. She looks like she got blown up pretty hard. 

This is where the white doves come in right? Her power being finaly realized as being immortal? 

Or maybe she just draws from the power of love similar to how her mother does light.

/shrug

Dang, I haven't gotten my package yet (probably end of the list since it is just the errata and the promos) but it sounds epic...

Setback's incap art has been in my brain since I looked at it.

Is this the first Incap art with the hero incapped without a scratch on them?  Even Legacy, whose life falls apart after his daughter is killed shows him defeated on the back.

I have no clue the art on setback's primary card, but this could mean a couple of things:

1.  Setback doesn't lose.  This cat just never gets really taken down.

2.  Losing Amanda ruins him.  How many Incaps show the hero facing a temporary setback?  Almost all are either dead, captured or seriously injured or trapped in a way that doesn't give much hope for recovery.  For the incap of setback to be someone else taken out makes me think that he isn't able to handle it at all.  He's obviously out of the fight once she takes that damage, but I'd bet he's out longer than that.  He's gone from a positive outlook that really glosses over personal suffering, to caring for someone and having a reason to fight, to seeing first hand what can happen when your luck turns bad.

I could see him isolating himself from the world, vowing not to let his curse harm anyone else, and if he does act, refusing to work with others.  Eventually he'll come back, but not for a long while, and he definitely wouldn't be the same again.

It doesn't make his narative any clearer. Tryin to figure it out my self. If the theory is that he finaly vows to not let his powers harm anyone else again after some catastrophy, I have a feeling that he goes through that phases quite a lot.

If you look closely, you can see the same injuries/scars on his incap side as he has on Expatriette's incap side.

Heres the way I interpret his (Setback's) incap side, and some guesses about what the future holds.

Setback is crippled emotionally, rather than physically.  What we are seeing is a combination of guilt and self-blame that is leading to an inability to do anything.  He's more seasoned as a hero (thus the costume and attitude change evidenced from his previous character card), but with that he's seen how badly things can go wrong around him.  He's trying to control his powers, and prevent them from hurting others (probably by putting himself at risk).    I'm thinking that he blames his lack of control for Expatriette getting shot (and killed- more on that later).  In his mind, that blast was meant for HIM, and his powers made it hurt the one he cared about most.  If he'd been faster, or had more control over them, or hadn't hesitated- she'd still be alive.  But she's dead now, and it was all because of his powers.  

On the back of his card, he's in that space where he thinks that if he moves, if he does ANYTHING, someone else is going to get hurt. He can't trust himself, and he can't trust his powers, and the love of his life is dead, and its all his fault.  He's his own worst enemy, and always has been.

NOW- here's what I think about Expatriette's incap:

I've thought for a long time that Expatriette has some sort of resurrection-based component to her powers (I had a whole theory based around the flak vest soaking up infinite damagbe meaning that she died and got back up while thinking that it was super effective).  

I think that she took that hit deliberately.  She knew it was going to kill either her or setback, and she made her choice.  I think that at this point in th estory, she suspects that theres a chance (maybe she believes it fully, or maybe she hopes, or maybe she knws exactly how it works) that she'll recover.  But I don't think that she's told that to Setback- maybe because she's scared, or because she doesn't fully believe, or maybe because she doesn't want to be judged by her powers. Or maybe she DID tell him, and he's out of the fight, desperately hoping that it comes true.

She'll get back up.  Maybe the trigger is moonlight (since a lot of her stuff that shows her getting shot takes place at night), or maybe its dusk. I think that she'll get up stronger and faster than ever before, and her powers will finally awaken.  Maybe this is the first time anyones actually manage to KILL her instead of grieveously injure her, and that was the trigger all along.    Once she's back up, Setback will be right alongside.  His life is a series of ups and downs- and while this is certainly a low ebb, he just needs to see that it wasn't his fault.

I think her hoping/knowing she will get back up again diminishes her sacrifice/heroics. I hope she was unaware of her powers at the time (if indeed they were these particular speculated on powers) and still made the choice to do so, that's heroism.

The themes surrounding Setback, as Braithwhite is laying out, are very similar to the narrative themes for Peter Parker and Spiderman. Anyone else feel the same?  

Matchstick, if she indeed as any powers, I am quite confident that she has no idea about them at all. Her mother sure doesnt.

In fact...if she DOES turn out to have some powers, I'd fully expect that once Dawn finds out, she would probably try and bring her daughter back into the fold at her side. This could get interesting!

I think that Expat's story is a trilogy, and that her incaps are her defining moments- the  places where the story breaks and the next part begins.

So her first incap likely marks the beginning of her transition into DW Expatriette- the place where she starts to step back and think instead of rushing in guns blazing. Maybe its where she lost her eye, maybe its just a defeat by a gang of citizens.  Either way, I think it marks a place where she stopped being a loner, and started being a part of something larger.  

Her second incap marks her transition into someone new, and I think that it heralds her rebirth as someone of equal power as Citizen Dawn.  

I think that the third part of her story is about confronting her mother on equal terms.  I don't think that Expatriette is going to be inclined to accept any offers from Dawn. Dawn was shaped by prejudice, and surrounded herself with an army.  Dawn's entire life has been shaped by prejudice, and she has embraced it's reflection by hating the normals.  Exaptriette could have gone the same route (hating superpowered folks), but I think that her story is all about acceptance.   She starts out getting a rush from taking down supers, but over time she starts to abandon that attitude and take a much different path from her mother.  She has friends instead of followers.   She falls in love and doesn't kill the guy when things don't go according to plan.

As for Setback (and yes, I totally see a Spidey vibe), I think that his story is one of acceptance as well.  Its about accepting that he HAS powers, and ultimately that he can exert some control- but not total control.  Once he accepts that there is always going to be an element of chaos in there, he's going to be at his strongest.  He and Expat are linked in a lot of ways, and they are traveling down the same road.  fortunately, I think that they bring out the best in each other.

Expat's incap side is the very first battle between Dawn and Expat, it's where she loses her eye and it's in the same issue as her first appearance in the Sentinels world.

Is this confirmed? Just seems odd to me that her uncap side would an event that happened before her character card image. 

Good point. 

So its kind of the start of her journey.  Her incap marks the first time that she is brought down by Citizen Dawn, becoming the one who fights supers and gets a rush off it. 

Maybe her transition to DW expat is as the result of one of her cards, or that moment happened so gradually that it doesn't have a clear inception.

I'm 90% that it was confirmed that that Expat's incap is the result of Expat's first battle with Dawn. I am 100% sure that her first battle with Dawn is the battle she loses her eye in. Her first appearance happens to be Emigrant's Song #1. Scholar's card "Don't Dismiss Anything" is a panel that takes place after Expat's incap side, which the flavor text is from Emigrant's Song #2, which would place Expat's incap at the end of #1 or beginning of #2. Meaning she only went part of one issue with two eyes. Would be a bit awkward to have her character card not feature an eye patch, but every card in the deck having one.

So on a different subject, I don't have the cards in front of me so I'm not positive.  But the tattoos on Gloomweaver's Skinwalker side, do they match up with the ones that appear on Spite's Broken Vessel side?  That combined with the name kind of lend itself to the idea that Gloomweaver's new host body is actually Spite's body.  And given how Spite's new villain card works, I'm starting to think that Agent of Gloom Spite is actually trying to get sacrifices for Gloomweaver's imminent return, little knowing that he himself is the last sacrifice.  Hence the Broken Vessel side where he acts more like a rampaging zombie beast hell bent on the Victim cards than a homicidal murderer he usually is.

If this is true then I think they're like two villan cards making one story....which is awesome!

Hmm... Just checked the cards, the markings are infact identical between GSpite's flipside to Bare GloomWeaver. Hmm... It is quite an interesting theory as well, curses! Why can't we just know the full story now?

got my promos yesterday, but haven't had an opportunity to play a game yet.    Fixer's power looks promising.   Very, very promising..

  Expatriette's could be good, I'm not sure if it will help her as much as it initiatlly appears, unless she can pull a nice multi-power turn (AA, Embolden, or  Unload, omg..). Probably a lot better than Load though, in most circumstances.

Nightmist's power looks good, it just seems weak when stacked up against Investigation.  Maybe I'll change my tune when I play her.   In the hands of a smart player who was very aware of the magica cost of all 3 cards on top of their deck, I can see this being good.   Normally I try not to think that much.

They didn't seem identical to me (just got my cards) but defintely extremely similiar.

Spite has some on his face gloomy does not, gloomy has some on his fingers (look like red rings) that spite does not

Gloomy's are thickker and more intricate

The ones on gloomy's forearms look like plates (a single line with three to four lines coming off and possibly connecting to another single line we cannot see) spite's are simply a ring of text

Gloomy has a concentric seris of rings on one arm which spite does not have

Also, on spite's card, what are we thinking about those chains (or chain)they don't look like they are coming from spite, it looks like something someone else is using. Mainstay perhaps? or someone new? It's possible that it is somehow connected with the shoulder plate he is wearing on his other side, maybe "broken vessel" means "broken free"?

Questions I have

What is up with spite and changing his hair color, yet again?

Why is gloomy's magic red based instead of green? (Blood instead of despair?) Is it related to Nightmist moving from green to red (Master of Magic)?

What is that pink gem he is always holding? (original character card and DW nightmist's incap)

Is the obelisk on skinwalker side apostate's?

DW expat's incap, do you think they are on top of the FV freedom tower? The letters could spell that

Man, I love getting new cards

The Freedom Tower doesn't have a sign, it's just a big F. See Titans Tower.

I really like Aim, and I can see myself switching between normal and DW Fixer, as it is an interesting side-grade. I really like it in that regard. Not AS much of a fan of Attunement, but it is great for setting up later turns, so it's not BAD.

I can't really go into it in detail, but the only one I really dislike is Setback's promo. Not only does he lose 1 HP, but he gets the only actual crap power. I get that the whole flavor is them being less reckless, and more methodical, but recklessness is his SCHTICK. I MUCH prefer his base power; why would you MITIGATE when you can go full game show and RISK IT ALL?

(full caps for dismissive tone of voice, when mentioning mitigate)

Because maybe that's how Expatriette got messed up?

Well, its basically granting anyone Wraith's Stealth power.  And it stacks in the exact same way.   

Except you don't get to PICK. It's the NEXT HERO TO TAKE DAMAGE. A LOT harder to stack.

And yeah, with the ExPat thing, but that's a STORY thing. This is a gameplay thing.

Risk It All, eh?  Is this a base power I see before me, the handle towards my hand?  Come, let me clutch thee!

I see thee, yet I have thee not! 

Great call with Nightmist and Gloomy color switches! I  absolutely think that is intentional. I reread her bio, and basically it says that when she tried to cast a spell to be transported into another dimension, instead a part of the dimension went into her. Her mist-like form is the manifestation of that event. Her character is built in a lovecraftian image, she must balance her instinctual gift for magic while wielding the curse of the mists. Its why she is such a great blend of theme and function, because her massive self damage (the curse) and her massive self healing (her magic) is wonderfuly intertwined.

Anyway. The dimension that she more or less "fused" with would seem to be the Realm of Discord. At least this is what that similar color change might suggest.

From the Attunement wiki page: "Attunement servers believe they transmit universal life energy through their hands to the servee"

Also consider the part in her bio that mentions her mists powers flare up around darkness and generally bad things. When Gloom managed to come into this realm of existence, it is very likely that Nightmists powers changed as well. She is now more focused on her spells (the curse) than with her ancient trinkets (her magic), where her Investigate power heavily favored amulet fodder play styles.  

I wonder if the marks aren't runes invovled in reanimation, which would account for the similarity yet some difference.

Setback may be a completely foreign playstyle from his original, I can understand not liking that.  I still can't stand Redeemer Fanatic.

I was just talking about his general playstyle. I find him fun because you can just go wild and play risky and have it pay off big time. It's a lot harder to do when you're trying to simultaneously lesson the negative effects of your own risktaking.

played a game tonight;    Darkwatch Fixer, Darkwatch Expatriette, Argent Adept, Fanatic vs Darkwatch Gloomweaver (Advanced, Industrial Complex)

We got murderized.  We'd barely flipped him with all heroes KO'd.  Sometimes that's how it goes.   We took a global 20 points of damage from Environment card ( Trisolvet vat at +1 damage, Trisolvent Vat at +1 damage,  2 chem explosions with a vat in play).  Add to that that AA, Expatriette, and Fanatic all suffered from very bad draws.    AA had a little healing but not much else,   Expatriette spent a long time with no gun, and when she finally got one it was only a sinlge Pride.   Fanatic found herself bereft of the one-shots that help add to her damage and aid her card draw, and no Absolution either.

Fixer,  on the other hand,  was a total beast.  Bitter Strike [more like BETTER Strike, am I rite?!] was amazing.   It encourages tool/style switching, which makes Fixer a lot more dynamic and fun to play.  When he was happy with his setup I had him eat up a lot of Fanatics sad cards that she had in her hand (Undaunted, Sacrosanct Martyr,  Aegis  (aegis is good, but it wasnt what I needed at the time).    The Toolbox is a great one-turn play with Darkwatch fixer.   He can draw cards he needs to fuel Bitter Strike, and sacrifice the Toolbox for easy damage.  Bloody Knuckles with the right stuff in play is borderline OP.    Bloody Knuckles suddenly becomes Fixer's "Nova" card like Unload or Hypersonic Assault.  Of course Overdrive is still great if you can pay for it.    If I weren't a completionist I'd throw Fixer's original card out the window.   Darkwatch Fixer solves so many of the problems that I've noticed Fixer often suffers from.

Bah…spoiling my Shakespearean-soliloquy conjecture… 

So, that confirms that all four DW promos are down 1 HP from their original.  Interesting.

I'm guessing "Play the top X cards of your deck", where some of the cards in your deck are just plain bad?

Oh, so it was that all the others are UP one...I misremembered what they had in common.  So Setback is different from the others in that regard.  Also interesting.  I'm thinking maybe Setback looks up to Legacy and tries to emulate his leadership style (assuming he is in fact the leader, but really, why wouldn't he be?).

I'm curious whether anyone plays Sentinels in Japan.  The fact that the Dark Watch is a FOUR-person team is doubtlessly significant there.

I...

*mind asplode*

I forgot about that! And half of them are dead! or... have died. That's... huh...

Explain for us gaijin?  Does four mean death or such?

It technically doesn't MEAN anything. Just... The Japanese really like their homophones.

The word for four and the word for death both happen to be Shini.

Don't you mean "shi"?

This aversion to 4 (which is an unlucky number in a lot of contexts) comes from China. Mr. Fixer has Japanese training, of course. But I'm still not inclined to read too much into that, since it's also a handy number for a superhero team.

Eh whatever. I don't speak Japanese. The point is, there are 4 of them, and some of them may or may not have died.

What we don't know is Expatriette is a really good cook, and what Setback is really mourning is the loss of Tacos and homemade cookies at the Dark Watch movie night.

The sheer thought of watching all those old Kung-Fu movies Fixer brings in and terrible monster flicks from Nightmist without Tacos and cookies is unbearable.

Plus Expat was a huge Marx Brothers fan, and you have to respect that.

The number thing is why the Wardens have a secret 5th member.  Villains think "4 wardens, those guys are going to die so hard," then they get there and the fifth one walks out and the Wardens stomp the villains.

The fifth warden is a custom-made raptor bot with grimdark coloration scheme Unity gave them as a christmas gift.

The fifth warden is so delayed in his reveal because Warden Hoeffle took exception to the team using his name and took them to court over it. The fifth member is their lawyer, Litigationman, able to tie up villains in red tape.

Does dying on the inside count?

I played two (solo) games with DW Expat, one of which also had DW Fixer. My first match I went against the new gloomy... I was slapped down sooo hard. Part of it was Atlantis hitting me with mystic defense twice in a row, followed by a collapsing hallway. I got him flipped, but didn't last more than a turn after that. He is brutal, especially since he benefits from all his zombie buffs.

I love Dw expat , the change of pacing for her is really good, and getting an aimed shotgun with incendiary rounds (didn't happen against gloomy but in my game against mad bomber blade) but the choice between powering yourself up or damage now is a nice choice.

I didn't do so well with Dw Fixer, I just didn't get enough things to destroy unless I wanted to take out expat's best guns. But I also drew 2 overdrives, meditation, I had some big hits but nothing consistent. Still if I had had a different had I might have done better.

I just recieved my promos today.

Christopher must have been sick as hell about us talking about how underpowered Gloomy was. Skinwalker is total spite on his part it looks like (no pun intended). 

Yeah, and it is GLORIOUS!

The trials of heroes are supposed to get harder.

gloom is hard but he is *fun*  I'm very happy with how they did him.    

Played a few games with the new darkwatch team last night.  Aim is pretty good with Hairtrigger Reflexes out,  also great with Unload (obviously).  

I must say, I liked Darkwatch Nightmist a lot more than I thought I was going to.  You get rid of mass card advantage in your hand for a better chance at getting the right tools you need early, and you don't damage yourself.   Not a bad trade.   Both cards are good.  

I got my hands on them today, and played a game where I had Nightmist and the other player took Expat (though he never once Aimed, he just kept shooting...I do think the extra HP was useful though, she was tied with Ra a lot and I think that kept the damage distribution a bit more fair).  I had to say, while Attunement was extremely useful, the lack of Investigation really hurts.  I had a Starshield Necklace and later an Amulet, but with no cards to spare, they and the occasional Call Forth type of discard were really hard to make use of.

I'm very interested in who the guy is that's stabbing Fixer.  He's got some kind of symbol on his chest that I can't make out, vaguely hawk-shaped maybe?  And his hood and mask make me think of Oliver Queen...I'm hoping that he's a Robin Hood-themed villain, which is something you don't see too often (nobody ever said that vicious psychopaths can't admire and emulate folk heroes in ways that are completely inappropriate).  Somehow, despite him not looking even remotely corporate, I have a weird feeling he might be connected to one or both of RevoCorp and/or The Naturalist's former company.

Nightmist appears to be wearing what amounts to a nightgown on her incap side.  Being a complete perv, I thought this was a worthwhile observation.

I like the new Spite, though I definitely agree that his EOT Drug ability seems fairly pointless.  Maybe the designers were still thinking of him playing an extra villain card as his original always does.  One thing that I wonder about...on his front side, his hair is white, but on the back it seems gray.  Is he just standing in shadow, or is the color actually different?  Either way, I really dig the Jason-esque unmasking of an undead killer.  And boy is he ever mean - in a 5h game, he won't flip until most of his drugs are face-up, and then he'll have +5 to damage on his first post-flip turn.  With all the blanks in his deck, he might not actually be that hard, but he has definite potential.

I thought the symbol (on the guy attacking fixer) looked like a broken heart.    Especially if you picture a mirrored symbol on the other side of his chest.

I saw that as well.

Played a 3 player game against the new Gloomy last night. DWNightmist, DWFIxer, and Tempest in the Time Cataclysm. 

We were not quite sure where we went wrong, but it wasn't pretty. He was still at 23 health on his front side by the time the last of us fell. We tried to focus him down on the front side quickly to minimize extra card plays, but not killing the pouch as quickly as possible proved a poor decision since the healing from zombies played really hurt. The humor of knowing he still had 100hp left on his flip side that dealt way more damage was lost on no one. We are gonna have to have a much better gameplan next time.

I'm gonna have to bring Legacy next time. I noticed he does mostly infernal damage, so leading from the front/Next evo should trivialize his flip side somewhat. Getting to that flip side is still really tricky.

Yeah, Gloom is a tough nut to crack although ironically, I find it seems like he's actually doing less damage on his flipside.  By looking at the card it doesnt seem like this would be the case, but the fact that he is blowing his own Cultists, Zombies, Relics, and Voodoo Pins away at an alarming rate really decreases the damage that you take.  He's also no longer considered a Zombie (take note if Pouch of Bones is still in play), and for  Advanced Mode players, villain targets no longer deal +1 damage.

We had success last night with Young Legacy on the team (she drew Inspiring Presence, that helped).   I beat him another time with DwFixer, DwExpatriette, Fanatic, and Ra (did not get Imbued Fire that game, in case you were wondering).

I'm not yet sure if the best strategy is to aggressively attack the Pouch of Bones, or leave the Pouch of Bones alone entirely.    One thing that did work very well last night was we had Tempest launch the Pouch of Bones Into the Stratosphere,  followed by Young Legacy's Take-Down.   That gave us essentially 2 turns of wailing on Gloomweaver while he was undefended, and helped us flip him nice and fast.

I also played Skinwalker Gloomweaver at time cataclym, and the extra cards he kept getting from anomalies being destroyed may have had an impact on your lack of success. 

Not so much actually.we made sure things died all at once to minimize the extra cards. 

Are we certain that Mister Fixer is trained in Japanese arts?  I always get a Chinese feel from him.  It doesn't help that Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi are the same exact characters with the same exact meaning (with different pronunciations).  Also, most (if not all) of the style cards are based on Chinese fighting styles. (I remember looking them up with attempting to create a Chinese translation of Mister Fixer, which I decided to give up because I couldn't make it sound natural, the biggest issue was translating the title "Jack Handle").  As far as I can remember, the only definate Japanese relation is that someone said one of the signatures on one of the cards (I believe the incapacitated side) has Adam's name in katakana.  There is also an unlreleased card somewhat related to Mister Fixer which is definately Chinese (no possible mistake), but maybe it is simply a more broad east Asian relation rather than restricted to a single nation.

Also, while on the topic of 'shi':

《施氏食獅史》石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。氏時時適市視獅。十時，適十獅適市。是時，適施氏適市。氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。試釋是事。

I wish someone with more background would speak up. It sounds like maybe you have more background in Mandarin than me.

Mr. Fixer's incapacitated sides has two Japanese cues: "Owari", meaning "The End", is written in a mix of Kanji and Hiragana, and (as mentioned above) Adam's name is written in Katakana. I hadn't investigated, but the style cards do appear to be Mandarin rather than Japanese: the character on "Grease Monkey Fist" and the character on "Driving Mantis" appear to be the Mandarin characters for "monkey" and "mantis", respectively, with different characters being more common in Japanese. The "crane" on "Riveting Crane" and "tiger" on "Alternating Tiger Claw" appear to be written the same way in Mandarin and in Japanese.

There's also his nemesis symbol. Is that character more common in Japanese than in Chinese?

*Paging Dr. Adam to this thread. Paging Dr. Adam*

But why did Mr. Shi want so much to eat ten lions, anyway?

Is it just me, or do the two people in the background on setbacks promo card look like argent adept and the new hero, benchmark... Specifically "supply in demand". Aka body shape and red energy on hands? Also, unrelated, but is benchmark possibly revenant? Sticking with the theme of the new oblivaeon heroes all being past villains

We've been told by Christopher that Benchmark is not the same person as Revenant in the art streams. 

Is there alternate art for DW Setback that I haven't seen?  Because there are no people other than Setback in the art that I can see.

Sorry, meant expat

I see what you mean, he's talking about Dark Watch Expat's incap art

So about that Dark Watch The Harpy, eh?

Control tokens. Well, that gives us some insight on how she works I suppose.

I was thinking a mechanic loosely similar to setback.... In that she leverages something other than hp or cards. Any theories/ideas on how it could work?

Your bet is as good as mine.

Also please ignore the banner in my name. That means nothing.

My guess it has to do with her not having full control over her magic powers yet. So, more control tokens face up might mean she does more damage to enemies and less to herself, and vice versa, and her spells have you flipping the tokens as you play them.

Maybe there will be a slight gamble mechanic like Nightmist, only instead the card she draws has to do with the tokens in play. That way the base power has control over what style you use her in.

I could also see it working similarly to Nightmist's spell numbers -- something like, "Destroy up to X environment or ongoing cards, where X equals the number of control tokens face up. Flip one control token for each card destroyed. The Harpy does herself X damage, where X equals the number of control tokens face down."

Given the lore, I'd say it represent the control she has over her powers. Like she can spend tokens to summon 1 HP birds like crazy, but then she needs those tokens to have control of them. If it's akin Setback, her base power would increase the number of tokens you have available for play (while Promo makes her more reliable and less burst-y)

Also noting that she seems to use the same magic as Nightmist, since in the story, it would appear Nightmist is helping take control of her powers. I'm thinking pre-Nightmist, when she first was learning to use her powers, only times 100, since the source of Lillian's magic is an ultra powerful mask. I could see how they could be similar. That would be my theory.

however, I'd like to see a little bit of setback mechanic in her. It would be a little risky to use her powers uncrontolled, but with more output, whereas you could opt for more control, but less output.