Playtesting Nostalgia

This was inspired by some discussion in the Quiz topic. Could any of the other playtesters help talk about how currently-published heroes, villains, etc. varied from their current state during playtesting? I thought it'd be interesting to talk about. My particular input was how generally BAD the Scholar was in his first few incarnations. copy-pasta'd from the other thread:

Ok, so, at first, his elemental cards were all limited, and not NEARLY as utilitarian as they are now. Mortal Form was "whenever the scholar would regain HP, he deals that much damage instead. Power: destroy this card" Solid to liquid was "double all heroes' HP regeneration. you cannot deal damage. Power: destroy this card." Flesh to Iron was pretty much the same as it is now, but with a 2 card cost per turn.

He did have SOME things he could do. Expect the worst caused him to turn all damage he would take into HP, and would only go away once he actually regained HP with it, so having it with Mortal Form would turn him into an infinite redirecting machine. But that's pretty much it, and as any game developer will tell you, when a game with a cast of characters like this develops a single, dominant strategy, that's pretty bad.

If you have any playtesting stories or questions for us regarding game elements (that are already out; please don't tempt me with spoiler questions) as they were in playtesting, here's the place for it, I guess.

Did the elemental forms all still have their card-cost as they do now, or was it just Flesh to Iron?

If you're talking about Scholar and how he was bad, please don't forget the period of time in which he was a game ender, too. It didn't last long, though.

It was just flesh. The others only had their power to destroy them.

And I must have missed the OP phase. As I recall, they weren't very good at telling us when new versions were out.

Good ol' playtesting, been a playtester since Rook City. Back then, I would of willingly admitted that Mr. Fixer was a weaker hero, because the first build we had recieved wasn't really the best.

• The Meditation we know today used to retrieve styles from the trash or it could retrieve a Overdrive from the trash aswell. While another card allowed searched his deck for a style.
• Riveting Crane increased damage dealt to the targets hit by Fixer. Which practically made it the go to Style, probably the reason for the change.
• Harmony and Charge were not a thing
• There was a card that allowed Fixer to draw a card at the start of his turn if there were no environment cards in play.
• Salvage Yard only retireved equipment cards from the trash equal to the amount of cards in the environment trash. Lacked the put Overdrive into play. (As you probably guessed after Meditation and the other were joined is when Salvage Yard got that)
• Dual Crowbars allowed for hitting a third target. For a bit it lost the +1, which made it a worse Jack Handle, so instead it lost a target and regained the +1.
• Harmony (went by Synergy) almost increased Fixer's damage for the turn when he played a Style and/or a Tool. Which would be able to give him a +2 for the round if he could play 2 cards.

I tried a lot to try and get Bloody Knuckles to remain in play, but sadly Christopher would never budge.

Expat didn't change much, only Speed Loading (at the start of her turn, it allowed her to search the deck or trash for an ammo card to put into hand. It lacked the "put an ammo into play" part) and Shock Rounds (was a whenever the gun is used to deal damage, it increases damage dealt to that target by 1).

Presumably that bit was moved to Salvage Yard, making it the uber-card it is.  Debatable which version was better.

Riveting Crane increased damage dealt to the targets hit by Fixer.

Instead of making it irreducible, or in addition?  If the former, I might have preferred it…it wouldn't be as redundant with Grease Monkey Fist as the existing RC is with Alternating Tiger Claw.

There was a card that allowed Fixer to draw a card at the start of his turn if there were no environment cards in play.

Now that is something I wish he had kept.  I assume it's name was something along the lines of "Peace and Quiet".

Dual Crowbars allowed for hitting a third target.

That made less sense.  Glad of the change.

My only regrets with him is that Riveting Crane isn't SLIGHTLY more effective vs. high DR (it's still decent with low-mid DR), like maybe throw a +1 damage on it or something. That, and your inability to search for and recover tools.

Yes, because every hero needs to search for every card in the deck. Tools are equipment cards, thus they can be recovered with Savage Yard.

But only if they get into the trash in the first place.  Though there are ten Tools and only eight Styles, Meditation gives you effectively three more Styles and the ability to pick and choose the ideal one…the five different kinds of Tools are applicable to very different situations, and Tool Box is not very adequate as a method for collecting them.  Granted, the ability to keep the extra ones in your hand rather than trashing them makes a big difference, but in view of Salvage Yard I almost think it should have gone the other way.  It wouldn't quite make sense for you to constantly have your existing tools break whenever you play new ones (the causality is presumably the other way around in-setting; you keep using one tool until it breaks), but it makes even less sense that when you shift into a new martial arts style, the knowledge of how to assume the previous one again instantly vanishes from your mind.  And destroying the Tools instead of the Styles would mean Salvage Yard could get them back, whereas currently it usually doesn't interact with his own equipment except for Grease Gun…it's awesome for his team, but only if they aren't all Incapacitated (or Visionary).

Yes, that is what recover would mean.

I'd sure like it if he had a way to actually put them in the trash.  It'd be nice if his typically larger-than-average hand could aid the players in other ways than just playing cards.

But that is neither here nor there.  I remember when Chrono's Bounty cards almost had no other classification than just "Bounty".  They couldn't be destroyed by any card short of Another Reality's Debt, their own destruction trigger, or Jim's Hat (Which originally prevented further hero card destruction when it was destroyed, but that was revised before I even got a chance to playtest it!).  It was ultimately decided to keep them in line with other hero cards by classifying them as Ongoings, as all Hero cards are Ongoings, Equipment, One-Shots, or Targets.

Hey, no need to get hostile. I'm just saying, those are the only things I don't like about him. Whether you agree with me or not is irrelevant.

I wasn't getting hostile. I was just saying that he does have a card for Tool recovery and that I disagree that he (plus a lot of other heroes) need search cards to function.

And I didn't say he NEEDED them to function. Just, considering he can search for styles at will, and he relies heavily on having exactly the correct style and tool at the right time, I wish he had a tool seach. and you saying "yeah, because EVERY hero needs a search for every card in their deck" sure sounded hostile, or at least rude and sarcastic, to me.

Okay, guys. I don't think anyone is really trying to be hostile, but there are already plenty of threads about Mr. Fixer and/or Ex-Patriette. It might be good to keep this one focused more on playtesting differences.

Most of Rook City villains remained the same as their current forms. Chairman had an ongoing at one point, which would bring an Underboss from the trash at the end of the villain turn, it was replaced with Prison Break. Plague Rat had an ongoing that would play the next villain card when he was dealt 5 or more damage in a single source, replaced by Shadowy Ambush.

Now Spite, had the biggest change. When you saved so many Victims you would automatically win, instead of it dealing damage to him when he flipped. Also he would win if he had a certain amount of victims in his trash. Another thing is he had a max HP of 250, but started at 60. So not hitting him wasn't an option, unless you wanted him to heal a lot.

Plague rat was originally a kitten named Mr. Nummy, and he shed a lot so he'd cough up hairballs and leave them all over the city, and the heroes had to go clean it up, which is pretty gross.  If you've dealt with kitten hairballs you know what I mean.

The trouble was he was so cute nobody would hit him, so they turned him into a gerbil that just ate a lot of food and it cost your entire allowance and you didn't have money for comics, but that made everyone so mad they would rip up the cards, so then they made him a Rat.

At first he just played basketball, and if he pushed the button the heroes got a shock, but the other button everyone got food pellets.  The food pellet mechanic was broken and lightning damage was wicked with leaky room so they created Pike Industrial and made the rat toxic based and a ninja.  But that was too much like Mr. Fixer and his gang of turtle friends so they just made him do toxic damage.  The funny thing was they eventually dropped the whole turtle angle to Mr. Fixer, So Plague rat could have been a ninja anyway.

This actaully didn't happen.  I'm not a playtester, I was just feeling left out.

Ooh, that's interesting. Do you know why it was changed?

Yeah. Try playing him that way. Not fun.

Not to mention that things starting below their max HP would be otherwise unprecedented.  Even so, the outcome that they were trying to avoid, where you just ignore him pre-flip rather than trying to beat his healing, is indeed exactly what tends to happen, particularly on Advanced.

FTFY

I do wonder, however, how a more Victim-centered Spite would work... As it is, I tend to ignore saving the Victims, instead opting to keep them out as meat shields for the Sidekick. Oh well. I think maybe I'll try house-ruling the whole 'have a number of victims in Spite's trash and he auto-wins' thing. How many did it take? :O

All Mechanical Golems are Targets, thus his original unfixed comment is still correct.

One other thing about initial release Spite, when he killed a victim, instead of regaining (H) HP as he currently has, he would regain 10 HP.

Well, crap. Read, Meerkat, read.

It took 10-(H) and he checked at the end of his turn. If you want to save Victims, then it was (H)+2 you would need in the safe house, which was checked at the start of the environment turn.

Though I will note, the reason I think the saving victims stopped, was because it was too easy of a win condition.

I assume he knows that.  Although the "fix" would remain valid if Reckless had also changed "targets" to "Distortions". 

The saving victims would have made a great flip condition, then have the second side somehow only allow drugs into play instead of never playing cards or something.  Would be tricky to make it work though, and I really like the uniqueness of his second side.

hmmm. . . I may have to try and make an alternate version of Spite now that is more victim based.

Ooh, that would be a valid Promo Spite. Maybe just remove all the drugs, and deal exclusively with the victims. Maybe even implement the massive HP thing, so instead of killing him you HAVE to save victims.

Hmmm. Interesting, I might add a victim-kill loss for Spite, I always felt less than hero-like letting the victims just die...

But I don't think an auto-win on a number of victim saves is necessary... a Hero's job is never done, you know. 

I only started playtesting for vengeance I assume it isn’t kosher to mention hero and villain mechanics and how they’ve changed beyond saying they sure are different now.

I don't know all the involved legal stuff, or if they would be interested, but a Create a Promo Spite contest would be super cool, or even just a promo villain contest.  I love teh promo versions of villains (even more than the hero promos which I also love) because they give such a different feel to villains we already know.

I've already got an engine idea for running a drug dealer version of spite, just have to make it good with restraint on text requirements.

Correct - no Vengeance discussions on this thread until the set has been made public.

Thanks!

Not for vengeance, at least. I assume you're talking about Setback; man, has HE changed. But no specifics until the game is out.

How about a post like; I find the Vengeance heroes really fun to play, just like every hero that has been released for Sentinels of the Multiverse!

The first iteration of Setback that we saw was…well…what it wasn't was pretty. 

Can't wait for the massive influx of Setback threads though that I am anticipating happening. He panned out really well in some very interesting ways!

Figured. Though when I first became a playtester, I went to the old locked threads for RC and IR because that seemed fun

Interesting, I had always wondered if newer playtesters had access to older threads. I figured they did, since the badge is identical, but it is neat to know for sure.

Fun fact: at least one card in Vengeance was taken almost verbatim from my suggestion on the forum! So every time one of them gets played I make sure and go I BUILT THAT.

*sigh*


Folks, let's not talk Vengeance - it's just rubbing it in the face of non-playtesters. We'll all have plenty of fun once it's out.

On the subject of a promo, victim-based Spite, maybe you could have one of his pre-drug-crazed-nutter days, when he was "just" a serial killer, so he only goes around trying to murder people because he hasn't been put on that drug trial thing because he's not in prison yet. Then again, I suppose promos only replace the character card so the drugs would still be in his deck and that wouldn't work so well.

Nah, you could state on the "Set-up" portion to remove those cards from the deck if nessesary.

I've got a question. How much did Nightmist change? I feel like her balance had to be really carefully parsed out since every card has a different magic number on it. How did that whole process go?

I'd be interested in knowing what card it is, once the time comes!

'Mistfueled Recovery' was at one point called 'I am the night' but from what ive read, and there is a lot that I could read not much had changed. I could answer better if I took part then or if I could read the old documents on my machine.

Remember Baron Blade's promo uses every target without them ever entering play.  You just have to be creative with their use.

As for Playtesting, IR playtesting is interesting to me, since all the mechanics are very different and there was another designer in the mix.  Any good stories about those heroes villains and Environments.

Just for anyone who may not know how exactly playtesting for >G works. Heck, I am not even 100% sure what happens before the first batch are posted for us to use. However, from what I have gathered, the >G crew actually playtest quite a bit before it arrives for us. So most mechanics and even cards a pretty set in stone by the time they arrive to the Forum Playtesters. Currently the only deck that has gone through a complete redesign is Setback (sorry, I hope this isn't rubbing it in anyone's face, I try my best not to come off that way), most other decks only have some cards altered (such as increasing/decreasing damage/health), some sub text are moved from more powerful cards to the weaker ones, and the occasional card replacement. Don't mistake this as me saying that Playtesters have no say, a lot of the changes that a made are direct request of playtesters.

Argent Adept was really insane when he was first introduced, Syncopated Onslaught and Counterpoint Bulwark worked on all hero targets rather than just 2. Plus the Accompany on Alacritous Subdominant didn't destroy itself. Early on Rythyms were only Performs while Melodies had both Perform and Accompany. He also had a target in his deck, that had HP equal to the Instruments plus 2 or 3. What that target did was allow Argent to activate a accompany immediately after that accompany was activated. He pratically made all the heroes invincible, while making them a wrecking crew.

NightMist really didn't change much, most of her changes were card name changes. The biggest change I can think of is the Amulet however (so fortunate for that one) which would let her draw a card at the start of her turn, but at the end of her turn she would have to discard one. Really not that great, especially compared to the current. Also I Heedless Lash (at the time called Energy Blast) discarded the revealed card instead of putting it into play or hand.

Unity's biggest change was making it easier to put bots into play. Before she would have to destroy 2 equipments for her base power, discard 2 for Modular Workbench, and Construction Pylon only put 1 into play. I also don't think she had a way to heal bots in the beginning. Most other changes were HP totals of the bots.

Akash'Bhuta and Ennead I believe went mostly unchanged. At least I can't think of anything...

GloomWeaver was severely weakened. However I think there has been a thread about this at one point.

Apostate's changes consisted mostly of HP totals. However Corrupted Effegy had another name, and worked like Undaunted. Runes of Malediction only gave a DR1, but also gave it to Demons. While the Orb only redirect damage from Apostate.

I can't recall any drastic changes from the environments however.

Edit: I shall toss this in, I was a bad playtester for Shattered Timelines. So I can't say anything I remember from those.

On BGG there are some Nightmist cards listed under Launius...I don't know if they're the original versions or an alternate take that he ran with after >G changed theirs to what they would publish.  Either way, this version of Nightmist is male and black, clad in a brown trenchcoat and hat.  I wonder what the story is there.

I believe that was his original concept before collaboration began with GTG

As jagarciao had said, it was Richard Launius' custom hero that he had created for Sentinels of the Multiverse. Somewhere down the line the two met up and Launius was invited to work with them on the next expansion, since his custom hero fit the theme. GloomWeaver was also a villain Launius created, I believe his initial concept was KeyMaster, or something like that. From my understanding, the current NightMist is a mashup between Richard Lanius' idea and a character >G had originally planned.

Back in the day, in the Original Edition Playtesting Forum Living Room, Absolute Zero was completely different (and less awesome), and the turn order was Draw, Play, Power.

And I would now be interested in this original Absolute Zero.  At least just to see how he evolved into what he is today

MADNESS!

Was there any reason for the shift away from Draw, Play, Power?

I can see that slowing down a game, as people would want to take a moment to read the card they've just drawn, which is currently something you can do when it's not your turn, as play moves around the table.

I have heard Christopher say that is the reason for the change. By drawing at the end of your turn, you can read the card, and plan your turn on someone else's.

Seconded! Also wondering if there have been drastic changes before the playtesters got to it.

I may have posted this before, but seems relevant: Early version of Plague Rat: 

http://www.spatzel.net/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=30416

HA!

I believe the first edition of the croe set was playtested only by Christopher, Adam, Paul, and their friends.

That version of Plague Rat seems very similar to the formatting I use for my own prototypes...as in, "write things on paper and hope they work"!

Wow, his character card hardly changed, looks like even irreducible damage was on it, but later removed. Looks like the original HP was only 70, or at least prior to the edit. The way Plague Locus was written, it appears that it wasn't originally part of his deck. Plus the advanced is different, playing the top card of the villain deck rather than increasing his and Infected heroes damage.

I very much remember that Plague Rat.  We lost to him at the Arsenal.  Also, back then, Infections were called Rat Plague.  Many people didn't like the fact that Rat Plague and Plague Rat were so similar in text (I actually liked that, but meh).

Oh yeah, I remember hearing about PLAGUE RAT'S RAT PLAGUE and suffering from PLAGUE RAT'S RAT PLAGUE'S PLAGUING RATNESS.

Draw before Play seems to be a common assumption, probably because while it's not necessarily more common in games in general, it definitely tends to be more common in more complex, representational types of games.  Magic the Gathering is an obvious example; most people would say SOTM has more in common with that than it does with, say, Lost Cities, which is a game (actually two games) where you draw one card after playing one card.

I get the impression that draw-before-play used to be the standard, before designers realised that it slows down the play.

It also causes you to think more, since you know your cards for your next turn, it makes the coop easier, planning a turn and everyone drawing different cards they want to play just takes up way too much time, and leads more to the "Heart of the Cards" mentality instead of planning with what you have.

Yeah. I notice this when you get to draw a card out of turn, e.g. when Team Leader Tachyon is just in front of you. I have my turn all planned out* and then someone smacks me with another option! It definitely can slow me down sometimes while I reassess.

*Who am I kidding? Google+ players will tell you that half the time I forget what I was planning to do by the time it gets to my turn and have to rethink it anyway...

I can confirm this …

Just getting back to the playtesting nostalgia, I'd be interested to know what were your first impressions the first time you played a character?  Were you taken aback by the difficulty of The Matriarch and Iron Legacy?  Did you find the Argent Adept useful?  How was the fight with Miss Information and was her first name really The Assistant?  Looking forward to Vengeance and more spoilers from the designers, especially the awesome art, hopefully since it's non-convention season...  Also, if you are allowed to say, have playtesters been testing any SOTM post-Vengeance?  (If not allowed to say, I fully understand, please don't leak anything).

Matriarch: Deadly.... Very deadly... Though she is basically the same!

Iron legacy's first build wasn't a significant threat. I think if I would rank his first build that was given to the forum playtesters, I would have put him in rank 2.

Argent Adept's first build was insane, picture current Argent Adept and multiply that by infinity. He was literally a one man wrecking crew.

Miss Information's name was totally The Assistant when she was first introduced and on all the playtesting material that we were provided. When her name change happened is quite the mystery.

Currently we are only playtesting GSF.

On a couple of occassions I've had the opportunity to playtest in person with Christopher. It's fairly thrilling to see him just pick up a card and change it in front of you. Kind of history in the making.

Most of us playtesters, on the other hand, were not involved in playtesting Sentinels until Rook City was being worked on. That means that we didn't see what was involved in getting the original game ready to go. Galactic Strike Force has been quite different. Though I want to be extremely careful not to reveal anything about GSF, I think it's fair to say that the playtesters have seen it from a much earlier starting point and have seen it go through much more significant changes than we have for the various Sentinels expansions.

To agree with Ronway, earlier versions of Argent Adept were extremely powerful. I don't recall the details for certain, but I think he may have had an infinite loop at one point, though I'm not quite sure how that would have been possible.

Are playtesters involved with Promo Characters? :) I would be very interested to hear about the evolution of Mad Bomber :)

Nope. We learned about that at about the same rate you guys did.

We were involved with promo hero and villain decks, but not promo character cards.  Those we played alongside the non-playtesters when they were revealed in the Kickstarters!

Those are actually mini-expansions.

Not infinite, but huge: Remove "If you do, destroy this card." from the Accompany of Alacritous Subdominant and you'll get an idea of what he was capable of…

Wow, coooool - I'd've loved to have given that a go :D. Well, technically I could if I deliberately houserule that that part of the card doesn't exist, lol.

While I'm raving about the Argent Adept on another thread, it occurs to me to wonder, was there ever a time when Syncopated Onslaught dealt sonic damage to ALL non-hero targets instead of just one?  It seems like it should, flavor-wise, apart from any and all balance concerns.

Not duirng the time it was given to the forum playtesters. However there was a time it where it was energy instead of sonic.

Such an improvement there.  Energy damage is so much flavor fail on nearly all of the cards that have it (offhand about the only place I consider it vaguely reasonable is Omnitron's Bio-Engineering Beam).  I'm guessing that the energy damage from Kismet's "make a hero blast another hero" card, which shows Argent Adept beam-blasting Fanatic when he isn't actually capable of doing so, is a holdover from this?

He is very much capable of doing so, Polyorphic Flare also has him so energy damage. I wouldn't be suprised if Argent is actually capable of dealing any type of damage, since Argent isn't focused on dealing damage in the card game, there wasn't a point in fitting it all in the deck.

Although Sarabande of Destruction doesn't do any damage, the art on it clearly depicts the Argent shooting out a beam of green energy at his nemesis.

Right, but since the beam doesn't deal actual damage on Sarabande, why does it on Kismet's jinx?  I had forgotten about Polyphoric Flare, but Sarabande doesn't prove much; perhaps, to borrow Champions technology, the Sarabande is simply a Dispel/Suppress power, whose beam deactivates other powers but doesn't inflict damage.  That would fit quite well with Sarabande's effect, since it can never affect Targets other than those in the Environment.  (And well, there's always a bit of a flavor fail to cards that blow up Environment cards without caring whether they're targets; apparently you can't fire an RPG Launcher directly at someone's face to blow them to kingdom come, but have to fire at a conveniently proximate dinosaur and then hit them with a tiny bit of splash damage.)

It's possible that in the comic universe, Sarabande can damage the target as well as disable them. In terms of mechanics though, being able to destroy an environment or an ongoing card is pretty powerful on its own and may represent the primary function of the Sarabande, but that does not necessarily mean it has no capacity for damage in the actual stories the Argent is a part of.

Sarabande of Destruction sounds pretty damaging to me.

Just because the game effect of the card doesn't match the game effect of losing HP doesn't mean it doesn't (or can't). Superhero comics do have a history of changing powers to fit the need of that particular issue (or writer).

To me, it suggests more of a mystical-pattern "unweaving" effect, which completely unmakes some things but cannot affect others (such as living beings, who are generally "killed" rather than "destroyed").

Well, technically, you can unweave a living being. It just tends to be messy.

No, I mean that in works featuring that kind of power, it often specifically doesn't work on living beings, because their mystical pattern is too dynamic or whatever.  I figure, it's magic, it can have whatever arbitrary restrictions it likes, particularly gravitating toward ones which "feel" reasonable, even if they wouldn't make any sense from a scientific perspective.

But why give a character a restriction on what they can do with one ability when they can do that thing (hit things, in this case) with other abilities anyway?

Because that's what mystic heroes (and gadgeteers and a few other types) tend to be all about - ultra-specialization, being a Swiss Army knife with a tool for every occasion…it's part and parcel of the archetype that none of the tools can be used for anything other than their extremely narrow purpose, and that sometimes you have to fumble through your toolbox for a few seconds looking for just the right thing.  (I can't remember what this phenomenon was called on TvTropes, but that's probably just as well.)

I'm guessing the Argent has a generic power that does whatever the script calls for that's manifested as a green energy beam.

In one of my favourite superhero RPGs, ICONS, the Wizardry power works almost exactly like this. At the cost of metagame currency and a little creativity, it can replicate any other power. That seems to be pretty accurate with how comics tend to portray most generic magic.

ICONS is a great example (and a great game, to boot), but that’s a pretty common power in most superhero rpgs, including my own. It makes for an easy mechanical way to represent the flexibility of a Doctor Strange or a Green Lantern.

Yeah, Mutants & Masterminds has a Magic power that works similarly (not surprising, as both were designed by the same person).

Interestingly, and probably more truly accurate to comics, there is a class of superhero RPGs that represents every power this way. Capes, Cowls, & Villains Foul springs to mind, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying could probably fit that bill, too.

I was a fan of Mutants and Masterminds 1e/2e, but I don't care for the newest edition.  Too much number crunching during character generation and heroes tend to feel very generic.  It was the same issue I had with Wild Talents/Godlike, though I don't care for WT's dice-engine, either.

I like Marvel Heroic, but I can't imagine running a full campaign of it.  The character creation rules basically amount to "Give your hero what you think he should have" and there's no real sense of advancement.  It's good for portraying exactly what it's built to do:  playing out Marvel storylines using pre-existing characters.  It's a shame that it didn't get a longer run--when I spoke to Cam Banks two years ago, I pitched him a Rise of the Midnight Sons-style campaign arc, to bring in the more mystic and horror-themed heroes, but obviously that didn't take.

I'm not very familiar with Capes, Cowls & Villains Foul, unfortunately.  I'm aware of it, but I've never played it or read the book.

During the pt of Shattered Timelines at one point Omnitron's Bio-enginerring beam was a "Bio Engineered Response" that whenever an environment card was played he would just automatically destroy it. Brought about some hilarious ends in silver gulch flipping an explosives wagon and just auto losing the game. That's the big thing i remember that hasn't been stated before.

In regards to playtester feedback, kismet's inconceivable obstruction (the one with the shark-hilarious) was acutally a playtester suggestion. I can't for the life of me remember who but it was a damn good idea and i'm glad they went ahead with it.

A believe that was Alex? I think he mentioned somewhere that he was very proud of that card being from his head...

Bio Engineering Response: Whenever Omnitron-X is dealt damage by an environment card, destroy ALL ENVIRONMENT CARDS.

Curiosity is getting the better of me...  If we become a playtester in the future, would we have access to all of the past playtesting forums such as IR or Shattered Timelines to read what people were experiencing at that time?

Yes, yes you can.

sorta - its a lot harder to follow cause you wont have the active cards in front of you, that we were working on at the time, but yeah, you can at least browse through the forums. I do so on occassion for nostalgia.