New game: Freedom Five

You all saw this, right? :-o 
https://www.freedomfivegame.com/

(Christopher shared a "trailer" on Discord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BixbAt7-iE)

:-O

There's a blurb on BGG too https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/105320/freedom-five-returns-sentinel-comics-game-table-20

*Setting count-down timer for September 8th*

Ok. Done and done.

Interesting! Anyone played this Defenders game before? I've never heard of it, but that's not too surprising.

I have not played it, but I have seen it being compared to Pandemic.

The original edition of Defenders of the Realm does have that feel to a significant degree, but it seems like time and reiteration have begun to make the game more thematic over time. Defenders of the Last Stand (the post-apocalyptic follow-up to DotR) definitely felt more on-theme, and bore much less resemblance to Pandemic than its predecessor. I’d be willing to bet that this moves the general template even further apace.

Does anyone know what relation this game might have to the enigmatic Arkham-Horror-looking prototype that was floating around a few years back? Given Richard Launius’ past involvement with GtG, it wouldn’t surprise me if that prototype evolved into this game.

Richard Launius is involved in creation of this new iteration of it https://twitter.com/adambsadler/status/1270767230830206977?s=21

Lanius created the original Defenders, if I understand correctly, so his involvement is appropriate.

If I remember correctly, that was called “Mayhem in Megalopolis”. Other than involving the Freedom Five, they aren’t related to each other at all. (At least they don’t appear to be related. I don’t have any more information than having played the original prototype.)

Defenders of the Realm is also getting a second edition later this year.  Not sure if it'll be before September, but if so it'll probably be a good showcase of what its developers have learned in the last few years.

Have they said if it’s going to be Kickstarted or how it’s otherwise going to come around / be communicated? I’m looking forward to seeing how that looks.

Actually, I take it back:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2183274

Apparently they announced the cancellation of the second edition just yesterday.  Probably not a coincidence?

Agreed -- probably not a coincidence! :-) 

In other "probably not a coincidence" thoughts, I wonder if there was too much Freedom Five/Prime War overlap.

While I can understand that assumption I know per discussion I have seen elsewhere that was not one of the reasons for cancelling Prime War. 

I suppose its gonna be a pre-OblivAeon setting

Based off the outfits of the Freedom Five members and a pre burnt face Baron Blade with only a scar it seems like it.   However, seeing Proletariat does make it weird.  

I so want to know more about this game! I can't wait for more details. I've never played Defenders of the Realm, but I'm a fan of Richard Launius' edition of Arkham Horror, and I can only imagine he's grown as a designer since then. And also my wife and I love co-op games in general and, of course, Sentinels! ... Is it Sept. 8 yet?

I look forward to an official explanation on how this isn't a big 'ha ha!' to Prime War backers.

I fail to see how it would even remotely be considered even a small 'ha ha' to PW backers.

GTG had a game (Prime War) in development.  It got cancelled because there wasn't a [big enough] market for it.

Unrelatedly, developers not on the GTG staff worked on a game, using their own game system, to be published by a company that is decidedly not GTG.  They appear to be licensing the Sentinels IP.  This new game doesn't seem to involve Prime Aspects fighting it out across multiple realities, so I'm not seeing a connection to PW story-wise.

I'm confused, is GTG simply not allowed to publish anything else Sentinels-related ever again?  Or did they fail to observe some sort of wierd mourning period during which nothing Sentinels can be announced?

Should they have told Arcane Wonders, "we're sorry, we want you to use our IP, but out of respect for our PW backers, we can't let you do anything with it until [insert some future date here]"?

I mean, Sentinels of Freedom got released recently... am I supposed to be insulted or something about that too?

'Sorry, that Sentinels miniatures game you folks backed five years ago isn't working out. So sorry.'

A week and a half later...

'Hey, check our our new Sentinels miniatures game!'

ORLY? 

feniab, that logic would possibly track if the new game was published by GtG. It's not being published by GtG, and the logic doesn't track.

I can understand how it could feel like a intentional slap in the face, but coincedences happen. Would it really have felt any better if they had pushed back the announcement? From what I can tell, it wouldn't reduce the resentment whatsoever.

Since I don’t think I have ever seen fenianb make a post about anything Sentinels other than Prime War, I think this actually literally is their view on the subject.

…Defenders of the Realm and Defenders of the Last Stand aren’t miniatures games. They have a handful of minis used as player pawns. That’s it.
They’re decidedly board games, not tactical minis games.

Either way, I'm optimistic about this game.  I'm not at all familiar Defenders of the Realm, but another coop game set in the Sentinels world certainly sounds fun.  And it'll be interesting to see someone else's take on the characters.

FWIW, the Editor's Note coming up Tuesday the 23rd will have both more thoughts on Prime War and on this game. They very definitely have no connection to each other is the main takeaway.

Oooh!  I've been hoping C&A would talk about PW on The Letters Page post-announcement, largely because I did find the overall story interesting and am wondering if they plan on using it elsewhere.  (Granted, I should have submitted a question to that effect, but I'm hoping others did).

I may have to check out the video on the patreon instead of waiting this week...

Edit:  When in the editors' note did they talk about it?  (Trying to save myself from having to scan through the full 2-hour episode for just one thing).

I believe it should be around the 50 minute to hour mark.  

Thanks Powerhound!  Was able to give it a listen yesterday evening.

In the audio version of Editor's Note 43 it's around the 58 minute mark.  

Sounds very exciting! And what a funny story, that it started as a Sentinels game and came full circle.

An introduction to the project went out to their mailing list today, just introducing the developers.  Oddly, not mentioning Christopher or Adam by name, just Richard Launius and Adam & Brady Sadler.  And got one piece of preview art, which is the cutest version of Tachyon I've seen yet.

Christopher and Adam aren't working the game mechanics or art on this just final say so that makes sense to me.   There is one image that shows a prototype of the game and what looks like a Sentinel Tactics box rebranded for this game.  

This is a link to the contents of the email 

https://mailchi.mp/d324170078f6/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-1

That Tachyon image is pretty funny. There's also a snippet of Wraith elbowing a Blade Battalion in the email header. She's in pre-OblivAeon costume.

Played Defenders of the Realm for the first time yesterday.  It's pretty good but it is a little rough around the edges.  The heroes seem pretty poorly balanced, and it's very hard.  We were close to losing 3 different ways at once, and I honestly don't know if it was even possible for us to have won.  We took out the Orc general in round 3 or so, but by then the Demon and Dragon generals were already right outside the city.  We took out the Dragon general almost right away and headed straight over to the Demon general, but even using several special cards to halt his advance, we couldn't stop him--and even if we had reached him, we probably didn't have enough red cards to win,

Also I'm not sure how much replay value there is.  There are different heroes, but not many of them, and there are only the same 4 armies/generals every game.  It's more replayable than Pandemic for sure, which I suppose makes it good enough.

One small change--different scenarios that change the difficulty level and also add variety--would make this a pretty darn good game.  I'll have to check out the other Defenders games to see what Richard Launius has learned about it in the meantime.

(Also the FAQ is not good--I had to Google a bunch of rules questions during the game, and found Richard's answers on BGG, but he never updated the FAQ with them.)

Edit: I looked into reviews of Defenders of the Last Stand.  Apparently the general engine is very good, and it does have the scenarios I suggested above, but there are some concerning issues.  Proofreading and playtesting were obviously lacking and, once again, the FAQ is terrible.  Richard apparently made several comments on BGG saying "this will be added to the FAQ" and then they never were.  I'm hoping Richard has taken these criticisms to heart.

It's not solely on Launius for the FAQ.  Arcane Wonders, the Sandler Brothers, and GtG all have a role to play in putting out understandable rules and FAQ as needed.   At least what I've read is that it has gotten better play wise with the second iteration and I suspect this should be even more polished.  

Very excited for this. I am a huge fan of the games worked on by the Sadler brothers, from Descent to Street Masters. Their modular deck mentality also creates a game engine very reminiscent to Sentinels but with a board and added challenge of positioning. Very excited to see where this goes as my friends and I love SotM but have really played it to exhaustion. We are excited to jump back into the world with a fresh game.

The way they’ve described the situation to date, doesn’t seem like GtG’s role is much more than, “Hey, Arcane Wonders, do the thing?” :-\ (But I suppose that is a role…

They've mentioned veto powers and it will have the Sentinel Comics/GtG brand on it so I can't imagine they are that hands off.   They aren't doing development but I would be surprised to find out they don't have much say on the Rulebook/FAQ. 

Most recent newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/2cb30b1d3abd/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-3884921

The good: Lots of great new arts of the Freedom Five.

The bad: Launch date for the KS has been pushed back to October 21st.

I very much like the art of Absolute Zero assuming the half-lotus position.  That screams 90s-era comic cover to me. :D

This art's brilliant. :D It's like getting a preview of the RPG book, seeing familiar characters in a whole new style.

Me too. Kinda wish it was him in his cryo chamber instead of his suit, but I love the Zen pose thing going on. Shows a side to AZ I hadn’t expected but makes sense now that I see it.

I also like the pic of Tyler for, ah shall we say, much less lofty reasons. There was a fair bit of drooling over that one on the Letters Page server. XD

That AZ suit must be a lot thinner and more flexible than I had imagined.

It's mostly just an insulation suit when you think about it. He doesn't need an oxygen supply and it doesn't need to be a full on powered suit. I suspect the bulk of what lets him vent ice is in the torso and the the arms and legs are more wetsuit-like.

(I mean I agree there's probably still a level of artistic license involved but I'm not especially surprised the suit is mostly flexible considering what it's designed for.)

Between this picture and the Day In The Life cover art, I’m developing a new appreciation for Bunker’s extreme hotness!

Bunker’s hotness has turned into a running gag on the Letters Page Discord server because when we originally were judging all the guys for hotness (…it’s a really long story but I swear it makes sense in context…) everyone rated him as merely kind of OK and I was like “…really? You people are missing out” so now every time a new pic of him comes out people are like “You know Tyler is actually pretty hot” and I’m like “I told you!”

At least it's not just Adam who draws all the characters hot. XD

Isn't Adam mostly responsible for that effect on Baron Blade and Chrono-Ranger?

Even suits made out of flexible materials can be really stiff and hard to bend. Space suits are notoriously stiff, for example, mostly because they are pressurized and the interior pressure forces all their limbs to splay out. (Search YouTube for "astronauts falling down on the Moon" for dramatic demonstrations!) I don't know if AZ's suit ends up pressurized, but I'd still expect something pretty stiff because it's hard to design thin materials that can insulate across a huge temperature difference.

But Dr. Stinson designed it, so... ;)

Yeah that's the thing, I think. Most of what we think of as isolating suits IRL need to supply oxygen/remove CO2 from any circulating air and often are designed for situations where they need to be pressurized, none of which AZ needs. And wetsuits which mostly just insulate are reasonably flexible, as someone who had a bestie who owned a few of them because he liked SCUBA diving.

And so yeah I don't put it past Tachyon to successfully design a materal that is basically mega-insulating but still has the general properties of wetsuit material. Especially since considering how often the guy has to be in it and has to be able to fight in it, it needs to be at least halfway flexible and comfortable.

Granted, if I had my druthers, I still would have preferred a similar pose but just with AZ as himself in his cryo chamber.

The latest newsletter is here: https://mailchi.mp/9f724e95f3e8/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-3893585

We have box art previews, ability card previews, and mini previews!

Damn, that looks cool! The Bunker figure especially. :D And I love Legacy's expression on Fortitude.

I still need to go try out the game this is based on! Do I want it or not? XD

If I spy it correctly, is that Chrono-Ranger and Guise on the panel with Friction on the left?

Hadn't looked at the side but it looks like them to me too.  

That's definitely a different take on Legacy!  Very cool, especially the sculpts.

Man, I wish I enjoyed Defenders of the Realm better.

Sounds like they're making improvements and general changes to the original to create this, so maybe you'll enjoy it? :-)  

Yeah, likely.  And I understand Defenders of the Last Stand is better, too.  But that personally drops me from "Kickstart" immediately to "wait and see."

Kinda curious the price. A lot of good kickstarters in October.

Ooo… Do I want to know what’s coming?

…Winter.

I’ll show myself out.

X-D

The next newsletter is up! https://mailchi.mp/ed816d5ff9b6/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-3901925

More looks at gameplay, minis, and ability cards.

Interesting that each of the heroes have an alter ego ability.  Absolute Zero isn't ever out of suit except when he's back in his cryo-chamber.

Oh, this is very exciting. :D

Yeah, I wonder if his might be him in the chamber - either recovering from damage, or maybe providing assistance and advice to other heroes? I’ll be very interested to see.

Also a “personal task”.

Also, he's Frozone-style ice surfing now! And his mini looks *awesome.*

Yeah, the alter ego thing is really interesting. Since the gameplay has, until now, seemed focused on superheroics, I wonder what happens in the gameplay to encourage (or force) players to flip back to their alter ego. There must either be problems that can only be solved in mild-mannered mode, things the villain can do to force you to adopt your alter identity, or a cooldown on how long you can stay in costume.

Anybody else open up the image with the overview of components and zoom in? Besides hints about hero stats and abilities, there's a reference to "the scenario comic."

have we been told prices yet on the regular box and the heroic box? Also how long the kickstarter will run for?

We only know what has been provided in the email updates and that information has not been shared.   Only piece I'd guess on is the KS length as those usually default to around a month.  

New newsletter already! https://mailchi.mp/dd9438c278bc/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-3904457

We have a video of AZ's mini being colored, pricing tier breakdown, a look at the places in Megalopolis, a peek at the Bystander, Special (with special guest hero appearance!), and Anarchy cards, and finally a totally boss pic of Baron Blade.

Yeah, that was a _great_ update! :-D 

Pricing was better than I expected, also. Should be an interesting Kickstarter! ;-) 

Hey, it's Parse! :D

I like the way these anarchy cards work, too. You can just clear them, or clear them with a benefit, or fail and get wrecked. :)

Yeah, they look really cool! I’m excited to see what other challenges and support characters show up in game. 

(Although my repressed anarchist side feels like the Anarchy cards could do with a rename :P )

Second to last newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/cac80cbe9da3/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game-pre-kickstarter-newsletter-issue-3905301

This one has lots of villain-related-things previews, more hero ability card previews, and a truly awesome Baron Blade mini!

Ambuscade is not allowed to look that cool. >:B

I really love how they've forgone flavor text on the cards in favor of the art being basically an entire page of a comic book. :D

You're right, that Blade mini is incredible.

Yeah, I normally love me all the flavor text, but... that art. So tempting.

It's like the Distracted Boyfriend meme with me as the dude, the Freedom Five Artist(s) as the lady in red, and Adam as the horrified girlfriend. >_>

Except Adam is also looking at the art with admiration. ;-) But yeah, agreed! :-D 

My guess is that not having flavor text was another concession on the “less additional work for Christopher” front.

I doubt that makes it easier: you still have to flesh out the story beats, whether there are words or not?

The Dice Tower video channel has a playthrough later this week, for those interested.  I'll certainly be curious to see the differences from the Defenders of the X games, as well as what we can expect.

And the final pre-newsletter has gone out. It has the prices. ...ouch. $50 for the base game seems fair. $99 to include 6(+?) unpainted miniatures seems... excessive. $199 for all the bells and whistles is staggering. Thoughts?

Yeah. $49 extra for 6 unpainted minis does seem a lot, but I suspect/hope there’s more than that what with stretch goals and all.
But I think I was already leaning toward the retail version anyway, as I have enough games with unpainted minis and don’t have the skills, or time, to paint them. And I’m starting to think standees are just better for me personally because … color! But we shall see. Can’t wait to know more about this game/Kickstarter campaign.
I’m looking forward to the Dice Tower playthrough of it tommorow, though I likely won’t be watching it live.

Three words: Low production runs.

Looking it up, mass-market produced unpainted minis seem to run about $1-2 per mini, so ~$8/mini for a low production run is about what I’d expect. Ditto for some of the other extras which run into the same “low print run” deal.

I worked at a graphic design & sign shop for a time as their secretary, and raw amount of units made (cards, sheets, whatever) has a significant impact on the per unit pricing.

Not that this is intended to argue that it’s cheap from an overall standpoint, but they’re honestly not gouging people.

Also, I get the impression the box is larger and ready for expansions, which the $49 level does not have. It’s not just the minis. 

[quote=The newsletter] - Core Game Components*

• Heroes & Masterminds upgraded to miniatures
  
• Kickstarter Exclusive Deluxe Box & Smart Storage System.[/quote]

I am disappointed there are Kickstarter-exclusive aspects, but I’m still going in on it. 

Same. I’m willing to drop the extra for possible stretch goals, it’ll probably be worth it.

And then I won’t be buying anything else for the rest of the year… :B

And it's started!!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanewonders/freedom-five-a-sentinels-comics-board-game

Hopefully stretch goals unlock more. I'm used to a lot more variability from Sentinels and Spirit Island, so $50-200 for five heroes and one mastermind seems kinda steep.

I misread the pledge levels, so it turns out the base version gets all the stretch goals too. :) That's fine by me, especially since shipping is up in the air.

Anyone else think that Guise pic they used for the stretch goals header is terrifying? XD

I'm in for the $50 version, will update my pledge as more info comes out. 

Wow, they ran out of the $499 “get your face in the game” tier already.

I’m not hugely stoked about this so far.  It’s gorgeous, but $200 is a lot to drop on a game that isn’t even out yet.  And I’m not a fan of Kickstarter exclusives even if I’m getting them.  Oh, and shipping not included, which makes sense, but remember to add about $15 (if in the US) to what you expect to pay.

I'll be sitting at the $5 Pledge-Mananger-Access level for most of the campaign. It ends on a payday, but I still don't see upgrading much past the $49 retail level. I understanding (and accept) their pricing strategy, but, you know, pandemic, blah, blah, blah.

YES!!! :-o

Have now watched (nearly all of) the Dice Tower playthrough just now, and man, that looks frakin' hard. Like, I'm not sure I'm going to back it levels of hard. This might be the first Kickstarter I back out of. I'll continue to watch videos, and see if things get clearer, but for now, I'm officially on the fence. 

Do you mean “hard” as in hard to win, or “hard” as in hard to play?

Hard to win, medium on play. From my inexperienced eye, they all looked like they made decent to good choices each turn, and they still got stomped on. For scenario 1 of a campaign mode, there was nothing there to feel good about.

Can someone help me out with the kickstarter here. My reading skills is either not working or I am not clear. I am looking at the kickstarter and the heroic box. What exactly comes in this thing that is different than the retail box? It is throwing me off because then I go down to add-ons and reading it I feel like a lot of these add-ons are already in the box. It is leaving me a bit confused on what exaxtly I want to order from this.

No worries!

• Hero only includes the (unpainted) "Core Game Miniatures" and the "Delux Box and Smart Storage System" (in addition to the core game). 
• Citizen only has the core game. 
• Sentinel has almost all of the things.  

Let's see if dropping the KS graphic in here will work...

I'll try.

$49 = Basic game

$99 = Basic game + bigger box/storage trays + 6(+?) unpainted miniatures 

$199 = everything 

Ok so reading through this the only add on you get at the hero level is the unpainted minatures they mention? everything else you would have to add on seperately?

That’s correct, everything else listed under ‘Add-Ons’ is part of the $200 ‘Sentinel’ level but not the $100 ‘Hero’ level.

I actually only watched the playthrough to the end of the first turn, but I really liked what I saw. The big changes I see from my admitted one play of Defenders is giving characters stats rather than making each type of minion take a certain roll to defeat, and making the 'generals' (villains and mastermind) a bit less of a threat overall. I like both of these!

I'm pretty excited for this. :)

They were having lots of fun, but it didn’t look like they were making super-great decisions. For instance, they went up and took a swing at Ambuscade at a point that was not set up for success.

That’s part of it. It’s session 1. Your’e learning the game. There’s no cushion for “I’m not making the best decision every turn”.
I hope that as more information and videos come out, I’ll have my mind changed about this game. But for now, I don;t see this hitting the table that often with my gaming group, and this not worth the Mega Ultra Upgrades to me.

Me being the big lore person I am, I dug into the Tabletopia promo to get a feel for the flavor and art bits, and. You guys. AZ's personal tasks are the best. And by "best" I mean "hilarious".

You are correct. :D

Personally I like losing on my first attempt at a solo game; I also find the intro game for Sentinels of the Multiverse too easy for me. But of course tastes differ. (And a superhero game should thematically have a higher win rate than many solo games.)

I was worried about this. When the game was announced, I played Defenders of the Realm on TTS with my friends. We lost. More importantly, afterwards we couldn’t think of what we could have done differently that would have resulted in a win.

We took on the bosses as soon as we felt like we had a decent chance to win, and we only barely did, so we felt like we called that well. We took out the dragon pretty early, but by the time we took on the orc, all three remaining villains were just a couple of spaces away from the city, and the demon got there quickly thereafter.

This wasn’t like Spirit Island, where was also lost our first game, but afterwards we realized some of the planning mistakes we made, and there were options for making things easier than default, so we were hype for a rematch. This was just straight-up discouraging.

Having just played the game for two hours, I can mirror this exact sentiment. We knocked out one villain, but by the time we felt comfortable going after a second, the game was basically over. The group wasn’t sure what we would have done differently to change the outcome, given the first question was ‘okay, what should we have done in the first place?’ One player also said they would much prefer a digital version (a-la Handelabra) that would help with bookkeeping while letting the players focus on playing the game, but would probably not play this game physically.

I still hold my opinion on variability and replay. With the current stretch goals, we would need to at least double the current funding to consider the prospect of a new mastermind, if that’s even on the table. While there are 8 villains, the color variety means you’ll keep seeing the same one or two tech, brawn, mind, or spirit villains. I feel after two or three games, it’s going to feel repetitive with few knobs to turn to adjust that. (To me, my comparison would be if you bought the Vengeance expansion of Sentinels and tried to keep playing games with just that content.)

Comparing the $50 version to Spirit Island, which right out of the gate provided a ton of replay value, I don’t see the value prospect on this one. Doubling (or Quadrupling) that price for some bells and whistles also misses the mark.

Thanks for your thoughts, they are helpful to me.

They have revealed this: new mastermind at $300K. Current funding is $183K, it seems likely they’ll hit it since they just yesterday announced more minis for those into that kind of thing.

Also, I thought they said there will be multiple scenarios to play against Blade, and each will play differently, so the scenarios will provide that high-level replayability. 

Based on my first game, those scenarios would have to shake up a lot between sessions to get the replayability you're talking about. Not saying it won't, just watching with a cautious eye.

(I missed the new mastermind at 300k when I posted earlier, since it wasn't in the KS update, but was added to the overview. That should help some.)

And based on blurry art, the new Mastermind should be Miss Information. 

DIsappointed in the sexualization of the female characters, to be honest. :-( But the quality of the art is amazing, other than that. 

Good news, everyone! One of the playthroughs managed to beat the first scenario. 
Tantrum House Playthrough with Richard Launius
Bad news is, even with the designer there, rules got overlooked and forgotten a few times, including by Launius himself. Means it's a tad complicated to keep track of. 

So it's like playing Sentinels. XD

Ha!

I see they are very nearly at the second mastermind.

Is it just me, or are the figures almost *too* big? They're probably three times as tall as the Tactics minis. Regardless, the value proposition does look better with all the villains as figures, too, and with the second mastermind and additional scenarios coming up.

Are any of the videos actually reviews of the game, or are they just previews of the content and mechanics? I've seen a few presenters give impressions of the game - generally sounds like it does a good job marrying gameplay and theme, everybody loves playing Tachyon, and there was at least one comparison to Pandemic (a good thing) - but there's not too much about how it plays, how people like it, how much replay is there, do they think it will hit their table often, and stuff like that.

I have not yet made it through all the videos linked in the Kickstarter. I'm sure some are reviews, and not just playthroughs. 

To be fair, considering this is an unusual case where you can get to see for yourself how the game plays before backing, the need for pre reviews is lessened because you can just decide for yourself from watching how it plays, if you/your group will like it, etc.

Does anyone else here think that Tachyon's Mind ability being a 4 is a tad unthematic? A Mind roll will only succeed 50% of the time for our master scientist/quick thinker? I mean it doesn't.bother me enough to not get the game, but it bothers me a bit. I feel like she should have the best Mind score of the Freedom Five. Probably too good/unbalanced to suggest it to be a 2 (lower is better, if you didn't know), but a 3 seems like it'd be more thematic.

Anyway, just wondered if it bothered any other Sentinels/Tachyon fans?

I feel inclined to agree with a thought one of the commenters had that it's probably because Tachyon as a hero relies on her speed, and the stats are likely tied more to their hero bit than to their personal life. Hence why Tachyon's best skill is instead Body, because that's what she's relying on most in her hero stance.

Since I think it tracks with how Wraith has a 3 in Mind; she's not smarter than Tachyon on the whole but she relies on her analytical skills as a deliberate part of her hero shtick more than Tachyon does.

Aha, one of the videos is the review I was looking for. I'm having trouble getting a direct link to paste here, but it's helpfully titled "Freedom Five Review." (Sorry, the time and attention investment needed to watch and digest a full playthrough video is...difficult in my household right now.)

Ultimately I'm sure I will back this...I haven't played Defenders of the Realm, but this sure sounds a heck of a lot like Pandemic Legacy with stats that you have to roll against. And the Sentinel Comics characters that we all know and love.

Is anyone else super unclear from their description about whether or not the community voted heroes will be in the Kickstarter box, or whether even Hero+ level backers will need to purchase that as an additional add-on to get it?

My read is that the community voted heroes are a separate add-on for $25, probably as an incentive to add more funds to the campaign to push for more stretch goals.

What I'm not sure of is if the figures will be painted or not if you go for the $60 add-on for painted minis, or if you go for the $200+ tier. (EDIT: Yeah, I probably should read the kickstarter rather than reference from memory. Thanks for the clarification below!)

The community-chosen heroes add-on says it has pre-printed minis, so they should be painted no matter what level you're at. There has been a call for a version of that to be available with unpainted minis, and they said they're looking into that, so there might be a slightly cheaper option -- $20 -- in the pledge manager to get those unpainted instead.

I suppose that’s fair. It was just a little off-putting watching one of the playthroughs and seeing the woman playing Tachyon saying Tachyon wasn’t great at Mind challenges.
Wraith’s Mind is 3? So I guess you could also think of it like tactical/strategy, so that could fit. I hadn’t seen Wraith’s hero card/ability cards yet. I was a little disappointed that Wraith wasn’t used in either of the playthroughs I’ve seen.
Thanks for the insight!

NP! I suppose there is an interesting tug of war here that while Tachyon is smart in the ways we think of when we think of "smart people", Wraith, Bunker, and AZ are also fairly smart in their own respective ways.

(Legacy I think is the odd one out. He's not stupid by any means, but his interpersonal talent is far more in his charisma and earnest nature.)

Having seen the stretch goals being hit, I think having new heroes and new Masterminds is likely to expand on that replayability. Also I totally guessed that Dawn would be a Mastermind - Miss Info, not so much!

I think this game probably offers a format for Miss Information to shine, whereas in the card game she's often frustrating. She can focus the players on non-combat challenges, while deploying other villains to be distractions.

They are really moving along adding masterminds to the game! My guess is the next chunk will be Omnitron. The replay value seems to be going up, and they're rapidly adding heroes, too.

I'm also encouraged to see a lengthy BGG discussion about the grid-but-not-a-grid appearance of the map, including participation from the designers. Looks like they're being responsive in the game design to community feedback, and hopefully the product will be even better!

There is a play-through up on To Die For games's Youtube channel, and they also do a 10-15 minute video that runs through the basics. If you want to stop there and watch it, it's about 2hrs 45 as they spend a lot of time explaining what they are doing to show the game off, plus checking a few rules queries. My thoughts upon seeing it are below

I don't touch kickstarter outside of app versions and special boxes, so I was always going to be someone who was waiting for retail, but I'm not convinced this is a game for me despite being a big fan of Pandemic (and that is clearly a big part of the game's DNA). A few things in the playthrough bothered me:
- You can't play a suboptimal team. Their two heroes were both weak vs Blue villains/henchmen, needing 5+ on the dice to score a hit/wound. Add that to the defensive traits and counterstrike abilities and it was no surprise that they were getting butchered by the game's blue villain. You have to question something when the game publisher in chat tells them to pretend they have beaten the blue villain...
-Getting wounded is huge, but happenes frequently. Every wound comes with a penalty like "can't use cards of X colour",  and you can only heal in certain locations. It seems like it is far too punishing. I could understand if the wound tokens were 50/50 or even 70/30 split with tokens that had no impact beyond counting against the wound score, but for all of them to have these heavy negatives? It just adds to the chore of spending actions to get to somewhere to heal, then heal, then maybe do something on the rest of the turn.
-The villains all seem to have a big heal effect if they aren't defeated iin an attack. Not only do they seem to have a big wound effect to serioulsy damage all opponents, they also get to heal back two wounds and move to somewhere else on the board. Now given that some attacks may only generated two wounds to begin with, it just seems to needlessly ramp the difficulty by given them an auto-heal on that scale. Heal one and move away? That might still be annoying, but given the chance that a hero is trying to roll 5+ per dice when attacking, healing 2 just seems to force players to wait, hope they get enough cards of the right colour in to their hand and then try to get together on the villain. I feel like it should be more forgiving on someone trying a heroic gamble.
-It's too busy. I know SotM has a reputation for being fiddly because of the different damage types and modifiers, but this looked far worse to me with the constant spamming of henchmen, the different types of tokens being added, the personal tasks being added... It ultimately feels a bit bland and I'm not sure it helps the feel of the game. I love games against Voss in the card game, where the growing army really feels like a threat, but this didn't give me that impression, it seemed to come across as just a game mechanic to stop players getting to do the cool stuff of fighting villains. With Voss, stopping the emerging army really feels valid, and to an extent it's true with Citizen Dawn too, but I don't want to face that every game.

Some of that might change by the time the game is published, but for me, I'm really going to have to wait to see what the final version plays like as currently I'd much rather play Pandemic or SotM

That was my impression as well. It's difficult just because we can make it difficult. 

Having tried it myself, I agree that Glamour is really difficult to deal with, which kind of sucks. I was only able to take out Ambuscade, which took a few tries and got me a ton of wounds as well. (Also, I think I should have lost a lot earlier than I did.)

The henchmen also aren't particularly thematic. The mechanic makes a little more sense in DotR, where you can imagine generals using magic to spawn in their monsters or whatever. But either way, keeping up with them is pretty difficult and can really take your attention away from the main things you should be doing. I was only playing two heroes (though Legacy is almost a hero and a half on his own, he's amazing!), and overruns happened rather frequently. I even ran out of colors on more than one occasion!

I do still like the changes they've made to the system. Having a set of stats to roll against rather than it being per-color for everyone is great, it adds a ton of playability and even more reasons to play different heroes. The hero decks, it sometimes feels like you're drawing the same card turn after turn. I definitely miss the deckbuilding aspect. (DotR's a deckbuilder, right?) That said, the Special and Justice cards are really cool. I went through the entire Justice deck, in fact, and the bonuses for rescuing Bystanders are generally great. :) Even if you get the one guy who penalizes you for saving him, you still get a Special card, and those are always worth it.

I'm gonna have to try it with three heroes next time and see how it goes. The difficulty is definitely high, but Sentinels is apparently a rather easy game compared to a lot of other higher complexity board games, so it may just be a question of adjusting to it.

I have a feeling that if you take 4 heroes, making sure that each one needs to roll 3s vs a different colour, then it makes a big difference to taking out the villains, especially if they can set their hand up to have a lot of dice in their strong colour. What really hurt Mandi and Ashley is that between the heroes, any blue die needed to be 5 or higher, so even if they rolled 6 or 7 die, I think they were barely able to roll 2 successes at any point.

It’s not that the difficulty seems high, it just seems to ramp it up in ways that just feel needlessly punishing. It’s not just about being hard, it’s about what makes it hard as I know people enjoy playing Iron Legacy but absolutely hate fighting Spite - it’s different types of difficult

Morbid curiousity and an Excel spreadsheet later...
If you need to roll 5+ on a certain colour, then on
5 dice you have a 79% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
6 dice you have a 68% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
7 dice you have a 57% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
8 dice you have a 47% chance of rolling less than 3 successes (but only a 26% chance of rolling 4 or more)

Basically, if you attack a villain and you need to roll 5+, you need an absolute bucketload of dice, and even then you're quite likely to not do much damage compared to what they do to you, and if they get to heal 2, the attack may be entirely pointless...

Not sure if they are taking suggestions, but I'd be tempted to test the game where the villains only heal 1 when they move away, but maybe have an additional hit point or 2 in total. I'd also maybe make beating a lone henchman an automatic success, but you still need to spend an action on it. Then add wound tokens that have no additional effect (and maybe a few that count for 2), to disperse the ones with negative effects. I still reckon it'd be challenging, but far less punishing to people who make heroic gambles which feels like the sort of thing you want to encourage in a superhero game

These are very interesting numbers and a tad scary. They do seem to be taking suggestions, though, so maybe post this in BGG? They seem to be fairly active there and responding to suggestions.

Are they taking suggestions on there? I assumed it would just be on the kickstarter page

If you’re interested, I don’t know if I can send you the Excel file through here, but I could maybe copy the functions so you could create a sheet yourself

I’ve seen them comment on BGG on threads related to Anarchy cards, etc. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to comment on the Kickstarter either. They definitely respond to a lot of questions and are quite active there. But the comment section is quite active too, so it might get lost there.

No, but thanks much. I trust your numbers and I’m not great at Excel, so not sure I’d even know what to put in or whatever. But I do worry about the overall difficulty of this game, especially with regards to two players/heroes as that’s what I’ll primarily be playing. I was going to bring it up in either the KS or BGG myself. I’m actually curious what the win-rate is for 2 hero games. I might respond/contribute to your BGG thread later.
Thanks again! (I do feel heroes should have a bit better chance at winning than I suspect they do, what being superheroes and all)

Well, I'll drop it at the end of the thread if others are interested - it might appeal to some of my fellow oddities who use this site that sometimes enjoy spreadsheets! Though I suspect I might be the only one... (also, it might mean someone lets me know if I've messed up with the maths!)

I think the win rate is going to vary based on the stat distribution between the chosen heroes - if the stats for both heroes is higher than 4 for a specific colour, that colour may be unduly difficult which then leads in to just how brutal failing is. Ambuscade for example, counterstrikes with 1 wound + 1 wound per hero present, so a minimum of two wounds which may also stop you playing cards of a certain colour or take away an action. Then he moves and heals 2 wounds so if you only inflicted one or two in the first place? Now consider that if he is green and if your score in green is 4, you need 11 dice to have a 50% chance of doing more than 6 damage on him. If the other hero is 5? They're just not going to be much help directly. Now if the team have 3s in some areas and 4 in the other? It then means you can use that hero for that villain, but that again feels far too much of an optimisation puzzle, like you're an idiot for making any other choice, and the game will beat you savagely for making it. It's not unique here, I think the same can be said for facing Citizen Dawn with heroes that require a lot of cards set up on the table, and no-one to deal with her aurora, but as there are a lot more superhero games around now, I worry one with a limited interest IP needs to maximise the accessibility if it wants to have success outside of the core hobby audience.

It's possibly a sensibility thing, I'll wait to see how the retail version turns out, it just felt like something worth raising, and yes it is worth noting that cards can mess with the results a bit, so the numbers are pretty much a baseline, but how many kids (or even adults) will have a solid enough grasp of probability to have a realistic estimate of their chances and why they may need to do a lot of manipulation etc?


So for people who are gluttons for punishment, this is the formula at the heart of my spreadsheet:
=COMBIN(MAX($A:$A),$A2)*((B$1-1)/6)^(MAX($A:$A)-$A2)*((7-B$1)/6)^$A2
In A2, I put 0
In A3 I put 1
In B1 I put 2
In B2 I put that formula:
COMBIN(y,x) - it works out how many different ways you can combine x selections out of y objects. MAX() returns the maximum numerical value in the selection, so MAX(A,A) gives me the highest number in the A column. Hence, =COMBIN(MAX($A:$A),$A2) gives me how many ways I can pair up 0 successes out of however many the A column is set to go up to. At the moment, it's the number of ways of selecting 0 out 1, so just 1 way.
((B1-1)/6)^(MAX(A:A)-A2) - This is the probability of the number of dice that need to fail a threshold of B1 to have A2 successes, this is a 1/6 chance of rolling less than 2 on one die.
((7-B$1)/6)^$A2 - This is the probability of the number of dice that need to pass a threshold of B1 to have A2 successes, this is a 5/6 chance of rolling 2 or more, BUT in this case, there is no die that succeeds so this part of the formula will return 1.
The whole formula returns the probability of getting that specific number of successes out of however many column A goes up to.
In C2 I put =100*SUM(B$2:B2) and this gives me the cumulative probability of rolling that number of success or less, as a percentage
In D2 I put =100-C2 which gives the percentage chance of rolling more than that number of successes.

Once all the formulas are in place, those cells can be highlighted, and dragged down using the plus in the bottom right corner to auto-fill down for however many rows you want to work out the probability for (as long as you have a number in column A). This gives you the cumulative probalities in a table. If you edit the number in B1, you can then get different tables for diffferent stat numbers, or you can copy the columns to have tables for stat side by side. I made mine so I have a different sheet for a different total number of dice, and each sheet has the tables for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 as thresholds, which was mostly a case of dragging to auto fill (hence all the stray $ symbols in the formulae...). If it achieves nothing else, it did at least reinforce why I thought the Storyteller rpg system was much richer and better balanced than anything D20 based...

I was looking through some of the comments on Kickstarter today, and there is a discussion there about Glamour, with a consensus that she's really annoying to deal with and exchanging strategy ideas for each hero to increase the chance of success against her. Seems like there's general agreement that she is one of, if not the, hardest villain, and there's some indication from the developers that the demo scenario on Tabletop Simulator is *not* the starting scenario for the campaign, partly due to difficulty. Sounds like there are some effective ways to take Glamour out. I haven't tried, myself...

When I first learned both SotM and Spirit Island, I felt that there were elements of those games that were kinds of adding difficulty just for the sake of difficulty. I got really annoyed that "end of turn" effects revealed during the end of turn also triggered, and I thought Radiant, Infernal, and Lightning damage were extraneous, for example. I wondered why Spirit Island powers had to be Fast and Slow, or why there had to be so many Elements. In the end, though, those all became elements of the puzzle to solve.

Time will tell whether Freedom Five ends up like that, of course, but in the mean time it does seem like these issues are getting some attention.

(I do share some of these concerns about making sure this game hits my table often enough to justify the investment, to be sure. In the end I did decide to back partly because of the sheer amount of content they are offering - if Glamour turns out to be super annoying, I hope I can sub in another villain or play with 2 players/4 heroes to counter her. I think the concerns are valid, though, and do represent some element of risk.)

At least there are more villains now. I'm sure you need to have a blue one in every game, but there should be someone to sub her out with.

The main problem, of course, is that everyone's got a 5 Spirit except AZ, and his is only a 4. :| If we had a hero who could actually roll well on blue, she might be a little easier. (But she'd still be a pain.)

Legacy also has Spirit 4. I have a suspicion that Unity and Guise are going to have stronger Spirit ratings, but it's definitely an issue. I think they probably should have gone with Legacy as a Body and Spirit 3, Mind and Tech 5 character to balance out the other core folk, but such is life.

In brighter news, the most recent update has three difficulty notes. The first is that some things are still being fine-tuned, especially villain abilities, so Glamour might be less devastating there. The second is that the scenario that everyone is playing is the first one in the campaign, but not the actual introductory scenario for new players, so there's a less complicated story to get people used to how the game plays which you don't play on subsequent campaign runs. And the last is that the game is going to have a few difficulty sliders for people to manipulate so that they can have an easier or harder time. All three of these sound pretty good to me, honestly. 

I would expect Scholar to have a 3 Spirit also.

Definitely, but since he's not going to be in the core box fewer people would have him, I expect. I'm not entirely clear if people who buy the game later will have Unity, Chrono-Ranger, or Guise, or whether they're going to be in seperate expansions. 

*EDIT* Actually, looking over the stats of the Freedom Five kind of hurts my sense of symmetry. No one has Mind 5. No one has Spirit 3. Three out of five core heroes have Tech 3. Body is the only one that's decent spread out. I think that if I had been in charge, my change to better reflect the characters while also balancing the game for people who don't have the full range of heroes would have been:

Legacy: Mind 5, Body 3, Spirit 3, Tech 5
Wraith: Mind 3, Body 5, Spirit 5, Tech 3
Tachyon: Mind 4, Body 3, Spirit 5, Tech 4
Bunker: Mind 4, Body 4, Spirit 4, Tech 4
Zero: Mind 4, Body 5, Spirit 4, Tech 3

It's still not perfectly ideal; Spirit is still a little bit behind on average, and Mind tilts more towards the average than Body and Tech. But with five heroes you're not going to get perfect lining up. It also gives you two heroes that are very tilted, two that are slightly tilted, and one that is average. 

Mixed feelings about the intro mission and first mission of the campaign being different, I could still see a few people want to dive straight in to the campaign so I'd sound that note of caution. Most of the changes I like though I have some issues about stat augments - they can maybe shift the difficulty too far, and they can make the heroes feel less distinct. Will wait and see if they do playthrough videos with the new set up. Just wish I liked using TTS or TableTopia enough to try it but I find them both horribly clunky

@FrivYeti

Worth noting that going by the various flavor on Spirit-related things, in this game "Spirit" isn't "willpower" so much as it is magic, psychic abilities, supernatural phenomena, etc. So it makes sense for none of the core Freedom Five to have strong Spirit.

My feeling is that a hero with two 3s will tilt the difficulty too far, and using two with two 3s will really do so. Can’t say for sure, and if the mastermind needs a lot of successes, it still largely pushes people towards choosing a hero with a 3 in the relevant stat, so I could see wanting to have 1 hero with a 3 of each colour in the box for people who want to try that optimisation.

Edit i let someone on Realm of Discord take my Defender Pledge level
lets unlock the nest stretch goal