New heroes and villains and stuff

Ok, so, I’ll start this out with a disclaimer. I KNOW you playtesters aren’t allowed to give out details regarding Infernal Relics, at the risk of losing your playtestership. I don’t want that to happen, so I am NOT asking for details. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble – me for asking or you for answering – so I’m not going to ask for any sort of in-depth description or anything. That would also spoil them for me, when I get them.

My question of this. How would you, the play testers, rank the new heroes, villains, and environments, on a few different scales?

Villain: Difficulty (1 being Baron Blade, 10 being the Matriarch)
How fun they are to play

Heroes: Difficulty to use
Relative payoff

Things are about to change, but as it currently stands:

Ambuscade will be the new 1. Depending on if he gets “combos” off (or not), he can be a chump or moderately dangerous (nothing to worry about).

Baron Blade is getting changes and is more dangerous now. (!!!)

If Apostate is kept as he is, he will be the new 10. He is horribly, horribly strong. A guy I play test with was joking that he’d win vs the Organisation and the Matriarch united against him!

Akash’Bhuta is like an epic boss battle you’d find in a RPG. You have to keep going and going and going, whittling her slowly. And just when you think you have her under control, BOOM! boss changes form and becomes more dangerous, spouting 8 tentacles like some Final Fantasy game! I played 2 games against her today, and it nearly took me 4 hours! (of course, I was taking copious notes, so that’d account for some time) If you have AoE, she’s slightly easier (normal: 6~7ish). If you have no AoE, she’s tough (advanced: 10). (edit: forgot to mention: she depends on the environment slightly more than other villains, so that can change difficulty as well)

Ennead are solid. They’re very flavourful villains and lots of fun to fight. I’d reckon they’re 6~7 normal / 8 advanced.

I’ve not played against Gloomweaver yet.

The Tomb of Anubis environment is very flavourful and ADDS GAMEPLAY TO THE GAME. NEW MECHANICS! Yeah, it will totally change the way you look at environments.

I haven’t ventured into the Planes of Discord yet.

Nightmist is fun to play, never really runs out of options. Nightmist does a little bit of everything. Utility with decks, environments, ongoings; damage, healing; drawing cards, etc. She is a jack of all trades.

Argent Adept is a more nuanced hero and resembles a bard. I think he suffers a bit when he faces villains who destroy equipment and/or ongoings. He has some really great cards (and absolutely rules the environment), but his damage is lacking. Imagine someone like Visionary, except with sustained heals (!) and more complicated cards.

Unity is a botmistress. Spawn bots, more bots and even more bots. She suffers when the villains throw out AoEs or do lots of damage to Lowest HP Hero targets (naturally). But even in the worst of cases, you can see her dealing consistent damage. From the few times I play tested her, I tended to run out of cards to play in my hand (esp. when my bots were being destroyed willy-nilly).

Have you looked at Advanced Ennead, Densetsu, let alone played them? I daresay they set a new difficulty in this game. I’ve only had the courage to try it once (lost horribly), but I’m pretty sure that’s going to be the hardest fight in the game.

I don’t think Akash’Bhuta is as difficult as you say, but she has the chance to really overwhelm the heroes, especially with good villain or environment draws.

I’m still evaluating Gloomweaver. Flavorful fight, but his newest incarnation doesn’t seem that tough.

I’m sure the pleas about Apostate won’t go entirely unnoticed, but I don’t think he’s Matriarch bad. Just don’t draw that one card, right?

…
THIS WAS A HORRIBLE IDEA

Now I am even MORE excited! BLUH BLUH

Still, Unity’s a summoner? Damn, so much for my custom summoner hero then.

Argent Adept seems like my kind of guy. I love difficult characters to use.

I think Akash’bhuta’s main thing is just chipping away at the heroes bit by bit, since she doesn’t have any majorly devastating single attacks. If you’ve got Tempest in with Cleansing Downpour, she’s a lot more easy. Still very fun. I love her. And I don’t know if this has been changed, but if you want a game against GloomWeaver to be a near-flawless victory, all you need is Fanatic and End of Days.

Old School End of Days…

As Gnipp indicates, that is being corrected in the reprint.

yeah, it was both a horrible and great idea

Yeah, I figured. It’d just be way too easy if they didn’t fix it.

wait… What about End of Days are they changing? The “Destroy End of Days before any of the other hero cards” exploit?

That, as well as not destroying certain types of cards.

Then it isn’t as ‘End’ as before. Lost a bit of its thematic flavour.

… So Gloomweaver has a character card other than the villain? Interesting…

One of the new villains has several character cards, bu not that isn’t GloomWeaver.

Well we already knew about the Ennead, so that’s not a spoiler.

It’s just that he said End of Days doesn’t destroy some cards that it used to, and it used to destroy some character cards (The Operative). Oh, well. Now it’s getting into the spoilery region I wanted to avoid, so let’s switch topics.

The new heroes; how hard are they to use effectively?

All three new characters are more into the tricky range of things.

Nightmist, as we have her now, seems a little too easy to use effectively. I’ve found her cards extremely powerful, but there are some risks you have to take into account - think Lovecraftian spellcasting. As is, one of the problems seems to be that it’s too easy to mitigate those risks.

The Argent Adept is good fun. It will not be tricky to use him reasonably effectively most of the time. But to get mileage out of the character and blow away the competition, you’re going to have to think really hard.

Unity. I’m not as good a judge of her. She looks pretty easy to understand, but there’s definitely nuance to her deck, too.

ALL OF THIS MAKES ME SO EXCITED

Unity art work was just previewed today.

She just got 500% COOLER.

HOLY HELL THOSE BOTS ARE …

Unity has so completely become my favorite hero to play it is not even a contest.

guyyyyyyyys. Stop making me so excited for the release, and tell me more.

Sorry - not allowed to do either.

This is why I opted not to be a playtester. Call me crazy, but the excitement that comes from mystery makes the actual unboxing and play so much more fun. This coming from the guy who actually doesn’t care about spoilers in fiction.

I will say that this expansion is way better than Rook City. (Don’t get me wrong, Rook City is also very enjoyable, it’s just the villians other than Spite tend to annoy me when playing with some people that don’t grasp the way to beat them no matter how many times they have faced them and playing solo there is just too much stuff going on at the same time.) That statement was excluding Unity and Ambuscade (since it isn’t really part of the expansion), but when you toss them into the mix Infernal Relics is almost even better than the core game. I’ll also say that the artwork is just fantastic. Really can’t wait to see what Adam pulls out for the next expansion.

Yeah, I definitely understand and greatly respect that. I think there’s also a concern with seeing how things were versus how they end up, and having disappointments and frustrations arise from that.

It’s just different priorities. For example, I can’t speak for why anyone else became a playtester, but for me I really hoped I could help support the game. That interest was greater than my interest in being excited by getting the new cards. Again, that’s just me though - totally understand and respect that others are going to have different views on this! 8)

Rabit

The reason why I became a playtester is also I wanted to help out and because I just plain out don’t have the patience to wait to see what i’ll be dealing with.

I became a playtester simply to be the one to have all the cool new stuff. That, and to see the squirming of all those not in the know.

For me it was the process. I love seeing how the cards start (at least start for us, I’d love to see the even earlier versions the >G start with) and the development process. Some day I’d love to create a game (and even have some thoughts & notes), so i love seeing how things make it from thought through to actual completion.

Being a playtester is a really good investment. Given I wasn’t around too much these last weeks to actually be playtesting, but I know the benefits are certainly present and will be present when the next expansion rolls around.

Also, I want a shirt with Unity on it. Just her. She’s just so amazing. Favorite hero. That is all.

I love all the Unity love!! She’s been the BG on my home computer since the art was available.

I always love characters that are a fun mix of “traditionally” girly/feminine and also badass or “traditionally” studly and masculine, but then end up being the ones who really need the rescuing I’m also a total sucker for the summoner/animal companion type of character. Combine those two things and I’m thrilled!

I think all I can say about Unity is that Mr. Chomps needs friends. Also, add another vote for favorite character. I liked playing as her, but now I love her character after I saw all the flavor text.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg!

Stop taunting those of us who couldn’t/didn’t get in on the kickstarter! I hope there are still going to be some Unity decks left over and in the >G web store.

There will be, although I’d keep your eye on things and buy it as soon as it becomes available, as there probably won’t be a lot of them available… :-\

sigh good thing I bought 2 Unities and an extra Ambuscade. (one is for my friend’s birthday. SHHHHHHHHHHH)

I don’t know if this is necessarily against the rules or not, but any chance you could…

tell us the new heroes’ base powers?

Yes.

The Mysterious Tantaliser

Power: Inflict 1HP of irreducible head-explosion-due-to-excitement damage on a non-playtester.

A non-playtester can make a good guess.

Nightmist - Turns into a mist. Immune to damage!

Argent Adept - Play an instrument now.

Unity - Play a robot now.

My guesses.

mm. You’ll just have to wait and see if you’re right then, won’t you? =p

/taunt.

Aww mannn~

I totally read this as humour. AA allows you to bring your banjo to the table, even if previously forbidden from doing so. Unity allows you to do the same with your singing and dancing robot.

I will say that at least one of them is correct if not talking about about the innate power.

And, another one is close, also if not talking about an innate power. That same one is also close if talking about an innate power.

All of this taunt-alizing is getting me really excited.

Based on a pic Christopher posted, we know that Unity’s innate power is (or was, at one point), “Destroy 1 Equipment card [three words, illegible] a Mechanical [Object? Creation?] [face-down?] into play.” Basically, destroy an equipment card and put a bot into play.

NightMist’s power does include the word “damage,” for what that’s worth.

[glow=red,2,300]SPOILER ALERT[/glow]

[quote=““Select the text below to read spoiler””]
Unity, Power: Destroy 1 equipment card. If you do, put a mechanical golem from hand into play.
[/quote]

Where can I see this pic?

I, uh, don’t think you were supposed to do that, The_Densetsu… :-\ I could be wrong (for example, you might have checked with Christopher, first), but I believe we aren’t supposed to share card specifics.

Rabit

I’m still going through all the decks, I am a pokey tester. My two observations:

If you want interesting decisions and to make painful trade offs, play Apostate.

Either I’m the luckiest man on earth or 3 player games are getting significantly easier.

The H mechanic should account for that, I would think.

The H mechanic should account for that, I would think.
[/quote]

Truth. When playing with three, I usually opt to face a RC villain so the H mechanic scales it down for us.

Would it be against the playtester code for someone to say whether or not Unity will have any abilities that interact with any of those “device” Villain cards you get sometimes? I’ve been wondering if more of the keywords on Villain cards will ever get utilized, since a lot of them just seem to be there for flavor…

I can tell you that Christopher said in a podcast a while back that all players used to have cards that targeted “minions” in particular. However all villains had minions at the time. When not all villains had “minions” anymore, they redesigned it so that they removed that, because the cards would only work against specific villains. Based on this alone, it seems the design of heroes looks like it’s focusing on more things that will be applicable against most villains and not just a few.

Regardless of what I may or may not have seen with regards to Unity, the design doesn’t look to be focusing on specifics like that.

I had a question on the new baron blade.

Without going into specifics…or even its difficulty, I just want to know: is he significantly different? does the new set-up card change him so much? If so…the >G guys are great (not that they are not otherwise :))

Beats us. We’re as in the dark as you are on that front.

'Tis true, they want to keep somethings a mystery to us so that way when we get the game in the mail there will be some kind of suprise instore.

Sorry for double post, but it’s probably better to post here instead.

Bring this up again, unless there’s a IR thread, please point me to it.

Here’s the news, any one noticed that Unity’s Innate Power is named Bot-Hack: “Destroy 1 Equipment card. If you do, put a Mechanical Golem from hand into play.”

And that she has 26 HP.

And Ambuscade is called the Superhuman Hunter (at least on the front side), and he has just 50 HP.

Ooooooooooooooooooo!

And by “Ooooooooooooooooooo!” I mean they’re up in the store!

I note that Unity doesn’t say “your equipment”, you can take apart your friend’s equipment to power your bots, I’m sure they will love that!

Sounds like she’ll go great with Wraith, then.

Also, are her bots considered Ongoings or equipments? If not, then that means they are immune to Devastating Aurora. That’s nice.

As far as I know they are not, but as targets they are also vulnerable to anything that does global hp damage, so it kind of evens out.

From the nemeses symbol on Unity, I’m guessing that her nemeses will be one of her Mechanical Golems gaining sentience (possibly Cosmic Omnitron might be involved in the process).

Well, the nemesis symbol always refers to the hero.

Legacy has the Lantern, Tempest has the Lightning, ExPat has the crosshairs, Fixer has the Japanese symbol, etc. It NEVER has anything to do with the villain. We can not hypothesize from that.

We CAN hypothesize from Plague Rat’s, though. It’s a sheriff star… hmm…

When there’s a picture of a cowboy with a futuristic gun on one of his cards and a quote from “Chrono-Ranger” on another of his cards, there’s only so much 'hypothesising" one can do.

… my point was that the nemesis symbol never has anything to do with the villain. Always just the hero.

You are right! It never has anything to do with the villain.

Which also means that that robotic eye symbol belongs to one of her golems! A replica of Unity herself maybe?

I’m actually wondering if it is Unity herself. Possibly in some kind of armor?

Oh geez, a crazy half-bionic Unity from the future COME TO DESTROY THE FREEDOM FIVE! gasp

I thought Omnitron was going to be Unity’s nemesis. I mean, sentient AI vs a technopath?

Maybe next time…

If any exist, you could probably destroy villain equipment too???

It has been confirmed that Unity and Omnitron with not be a nemesis with one another. Though Omnitron’s nemesis symbol appears to be some sort of upside crazy power symbol makes me wonder if Omnitron’s nemesis will be some kind of machine itself.

I think they’re being very careful to not word any villain cards as equipment, anything that could be equipment is instead, a device. They must have use their time scope and seen your future evil plans!

Also on Citizen Dawn’s Devastation Aurora it states:

Destroy All Hero Ongoing Cards.
Destroy All Equipment Cards.
Destroy All Environment Cards.

So there probably have no intention having ever having Villians of Equipment cards, not to mention Devices for the most part seem to be the Villian equiviliant of Equipment.

… in Dawn’s deck, at least.

The reason I point out Dawn’s deck is because of the fact that maybe a rule will come out that will allow Villians to cooperate more easily and thus Dawn’s Devastation Aurora will not target her new found villian allies. It is also why I bring up the fact that Villians use devices rather than equipment. So I highly doubt the villians will ever have any equipment cards for Unity to destroy.

Did you mean to say “ever”?

What are you talking about silly flame guy. It totally says “ever” I think you quoted me and messed up my post. Thanks for pointing that out.

…or a Relic.

Yeah, but Relics are a little different, as both Heroes and Villains have them.

(Might even have some in an Environment some day… )

I can’t think of any Relics in base set/RC hero decks. Devastating Aurora is… well, devastating to everyone last time I checked. And at least for another month.

I know of two relics in the base set (though, technically, they won’t be known until the enhanced set/enhanced overlays for the base set).

Staff of Ra and Absolution come to mind. And not just because those two heroes have ties to IR.

There are three relics among the already-released heroes. And one relic in an already-released villain, though nothing had to change there. I think that’s it, though.

Hey look, there’s Unity and Ambuscade’s character cards (front only) in the SotM store. Show’s hp and Unity’s power. Maybe that’s not news to everyone else, but it’s the first I’d seen of them.

You must have missed when this was mentioned, in this very thread, a couple weeks ago.

3 relics in the base set?
hmm…

Staff of Ra and Absolution, probably…

Legacy Ring, maybe? That’s the only one I can think of…

Yeah, I forgot about that third one. However, I’ve been scanning the cards for quite a bit and can’t seem to find the so called villian relic…

It’s not Matriarch’s mask?

Hmm… I remember somewhere hearing mention of people believing Martiarch’s Mask to be a relic. I don’t know how it was settled though. Also, I only have Enhanced Edition cards to scan through; Matriarch, being Rook City, is not included in the Enhanced Edition.

As I have Rook City sitting next to me I can confirm that the Mask of the Matriarch is indeed a Relic

I also thought the Legacy Ring would be a Relic, but alas no. In talking to Christopher, the Legacy Ring really doesn’t have any powers in and of itself - it’s effectively a motivator for the family, making them strive to do more and be better.

I don’t recall a third Relic in the Enhanced Edition, to be honest, but I could be forgetting something… :-\

Two characters, three relics (yes, one character as two relics).

Well that answers that question!

I guess that it makes sense that her second card is a relic also… though that seems to imply that she is ‘real’ and not misinformed/delusional as to where her power comes from.

It sure does!

. . . or wait, does it just mean she happened across artifacts of power (like The Matriarch did) and she doesn’t actually have any powers of her own?! OH NO! WHAT A QUANDARY!

;D

Oh, geez - yeah, of course. I completely forgot about that! :-[

Thanks for the reminder, TheJayMann!

And I think Christopher’s having far too much fun at our expense… (And I think it’s only just beginning! : )

… the Aegis?

As a pragmatic man who generally does not see wings on your average human being, I think we already have our answer here. She clearly has received some power. She reminds me of that quote from Prophecy, “would you ever really want to see an angel?”

But where did those wings come from? There lies ONE answer in the Infernal Relics cast, but is that the true answer? Who do you believe? Who CAN you believe?

Certainly not me!

Hmmmm, well only two of those words are ALL CAPITALS so they must be important… with a little rearranging you get No Acne, so her powers must derive from overuse of spot removal cream, solved!

Now Matchstick you have got me thinking so I started doing some rearrange of my own.

So when I rearranged the letters I get “n canoe”, though the “n” is missing a apostrophe before it. Now that got me thinking… Both apostrophe and Apostate start with “apost” which if you take that out and rearrange the remains letters you get the words “a” “the” and “rope”. Now if you combine everything you get the sentence “Rope the Apostate 'n a canoe” still trying to figure out what that could possibly mean though…

Yeah that was the only other candidate I could think of. Nobody else has anything I would even pretend to classify as a “relic” by most common definitions. The equipment of AbsZ, Bunker, Tachyon, Tempest and Wraith are all too techy and modern, Haka’s are primitive but basic (a blackjack/club and a spear), and as mentioned the Legacy Ring doesn’t really have any powers (also: not sure if something that is only slightly older than the USA could qualify as a “relic”).

As I went down the list in my head, it occurred to me that Visionary is the only base set hero with no equipment at all.

Darn! I so love my evil plans!

We now know the Vengeful Baron Balde has 30 HP, same as that on the Vengeful Mad Scientist side of the original Blade.

And Cosmic Omnitron has the same 100 HP.

How do we now know that?

From the Kickstarter update! :D

Looks like the "are villains going to have equipment" debate is over

From the Infernal Relics glossary

Equipment: A keyword appearing on hero cards. Equipment remains in play after being played and can only be destroyed by cards which specifically target equipment cards.

Emphasis mine

Nightmist: very fun to play. Unlike any other hero in the game. She draws a LOT on the luck of the draw though. She is sim to Mr. Fixer though. Great team mate, but she will be over shadowed by others, even when she is getting a few shots and tricks in. She discards a lot of cards and takes damage, but has healing options. She can actually play a never ending HP tank if she wants. Her mist form also let's her tank it up. It is like Visionary's cocoon but she can still do stuff. She has a touch of Zero to her as well. The brand new "spell power value" mechanic is nifty. Ton of bang, maybe not a big pay off.

Adept: super support. Half his powers were other here's utility powers, he just happens to have them all. (Draw a card, play a power, discharge a card from the top if you don't like it, heal, etc). He is original in his power plays though and can boost any team he is on. He is just there to help others (think heal bot). He might not seem too thrilling but should actually have a big pay off. Ongoing and equipment attacking villains or environments will crush him though.

Tomb: freaking brutal. Makes Rook City look like a cake walk. 

Realm: first impression was of it being more balanced than Tomb, but still a bit nasty. Along the lines of Atlantis or Mars Base.

Aska...something: a pure grind it out game that can. Snowball. Damage dealers are a must against her. She is Omitron plus.

Apost: insanely fun. You have to split fire on relics and him, with more focus on relics. If you can keep the relic sin check he can be stomped. Keeping the relics in check can be a tall order. 

Haven't tried the other two yet

Tim

Well, now that I've played it all, here is my review.

NightMist: Perhaps my favorite character. Lots of damage redirecting, card management, and jack-of-all-trades-ing. She can destroy environment and ongoings, deal LOTS of damage, heal a lot, can control the villain AND environment (or even hero decks) with the one card that's basically infrared eyepiece, she can draw cards (and have others draw cards as well).
 

Argent Adept: I've had a bit of trouble getting his combos out, but he almost always has something at least marginally helpful to do, and usually better.

Unity: OP. She's easy to use, fun to play, and has hilarious cards, but she almost makes the game too easy to be any fun. ALMOST.

Ambuscade: Surprisingly tough. The whole bit with him shuffling his deck every turn is kind of annoying. He's fun to play, though. The traps are creative, and his flip mechanic is great. (I was going to do basically the same thing for the villain contest, but obviously had to abort that.)

Akash'Bhuta: Probably the easiest of the new ones. I like how it's tied in with the environment deck, and the large amount of hit points make it seem like a long, RPG-like battle, which is great.

Apostate: I've only played him once, but he's neat. He mirrors Fanatic perfectly. His flip mechanic is a little confusing at first, but easy enough once you figure it out.

Gloomweaver: My favorite, thematically. The pins are a huge nuisance, as well they should be. The cultists turning into zombies is a great touch, and the Power of the Grave card makes them a fearsome sight to behold. Also, I like how he's the only villain with an alternate heroes WIN condition, rather than an automatic heroes lose like Voss or Baron Blade. Granted, taking out the relics is barely easier than taking him out (unless you use Cedistic Dissonant) but the option is nice.

Ennead: The hardest of the new set, easily. Especially on advanced. The way they play like an opposing group of heroes is great, and the way the deck dictates what extra actions they take is extremely creative. It must have been hell making them balanced.

Tomb: Awesome environment. I found it significantly easier than Rook City. The fact that the cards target ALL non-villains rather than just heroes like RC helps. The treasures are pretty neat and helpful -- temporary powers FTW -- but there are only 2, so I felt they were underused.

Plane of Discord: Awesome. I like the creative things they can do (and did do) with an alternate universe with wonky physics. Imbued Vitality is pretty hilarious. WE GOING TO GO FIGHT CRIME?

Overall, I give it 7/7 asses.