A couple questions about "Shock Rounds"

So I noticed yesterday that Kismet’s nemesis icon is the same empty dice with a 1 on top as the logo on the center the character’s chest on Expatriette’s card “shock rounds”. However, this raises a few interesting questions:

Is this yellow-clad charcter a hero who is kismet’s nemesis? I think that the logo is distinct enough to assume that much. Who else is getting shot in the background? Doesn’t seem as important at the moment.

But… if he is a hero, then why is expatriette shooting him? But then since she is, does that make him a villian? And probably the most exciting question, does that mean from vengence forward that the villians could either fight previous villians or heroes and be player controlled?

This card might have made me more excited than it should have, and if this has been discussed before I apologize, but the possibilities are all pretty cool!

we have come to believe he is just that unlucky. XD  This was discussed some in the Kismet threat on the main forum during hte Kickstarter. - After all, Kismet is a master of Luck... and she can very well make it unlucky for others, and would do so especially for her nemisis!

An interesting thing to note however, is that Kismet was developed /by a fan/ and so had no bearing on expats artwork... so was this guy originally supposed to be a villain of some sort? Only once a luck based villain was released it was just that much funnier to change him to a hero and be just that unlucky to be getting smacked by Shock Rounds?

or are >G omnipotent?

This is the only explanation that makes sense.

Wasn't there a statement from >G that said that they already had Yellow-Man in mind as a hero, and that Kismet just happened to be a perfect match for him? There's also the possibility that he's from the Block, and thus is trying to apprehend Expat, or at least working at cross purposes to her...

It does seem possible that it's Kismet messing with that hero's luck so that a stray shot happens to hit him. Villain turned Hero is another possibility.

F.I.L.T.E.R. Agents are "good guys" but still attack heroes, I can see this being one of the early encounters and he was just in the way of Expatriette from dishing out her brand of Justice to the enemy... or he could be a Hawkeye character, mistaken as a villain when he was doing his first heroing.

alternatively that symbol could be for an organization, ala filter agents and what not - and a new hero deck is not just a hero but a group of humans. So who we see on the shock round card is not necessarily her nemisis, but part of a group that is....

oh and this is why i made the wiki -- the text on shock rounds says Twitchy so we've been calling him that (The wiki reminded me :P)

http://sotm.wikidot.com/villain:kismet

Expat is a "Punisher"-type hero and you guys are surprised a law enforcement agent is fighting her?

Twitchy has been around for a while. I've lost the thread, but somewhere, Adam posted a pre-Sentinels drawing of both Fright Train and Twitchy, so they've had him in mind for a while. They also said that Kismet had an easy slot to fill in the overall story, so Twitchy must have been planned as a hero to have a nemesis like her for a while. Since he's getting shot by Expatriette, my personal theory has been that he's a villain-turned-hero, and spent some time in The Block while he was a villain. And since it's mentioned that Kismet has had many trips to The Block, that could be where they met.

That's just pure speculation, though. Just there to make me not ponder their true relationship a ton. It keeps me pacified until we get the real story.

What about the other character on Shock Rounds?

Seems like it is the same character featured on Hollow Points. Judging from the flavor text, seems like a Silver Surfer/Terminator II sort of Villain. 

Also, from the flavor text on Bunkers Flak Cannon card, would the character you're refering to as "fright train" be called "Seigebreaker" instead? Just a guess. I don't know how to read any of the comics or other story materials, so I'm probably missing something

No. Siege-Breaker is a member of La Capitán's crew. Fright Train's bio is up on the Shattered Timelines Kickstarter page.

@Katsue, thanks for the clarification! My ST stuff wont be here until tomorrow so I have yet to see all of the new goodies first hand

Also, Fright Train is the shirtless guy with the cowcatcher for a mask on a few of Bunker's cards.

(and the bio is on the wiki, hint hint, nudge nudge)

I'm thinking that what ever Kismet's nemesis is ultimately named his powers are going to have something to do with die rolling. Maybe he has a power that will allow him to deal damage based on whatever roll of the dice he makes or allow him to use his power to augment his fortune while hampering his enemy. Could make for some interesting play mechanics. :3

I don't think I'd like to see a die introduced to the game mechanics.

I doubt a die will be added since Nightmist would have been a perfect place to implement something like that. 

However, he could have ongoing cards representing a "value"... maybe his power isn't bad luck but fixed outcomes. So if he set his power to 1, every time a dice was rolled in his prescence it would be a 1... there's a webcomic character with a similiar ability let me find it.

*Rummaging through internet*

Here we go, it's a great webcomic to if anyone is interested

http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=383

Interesting concept... I didn't read the comic link you put up, just going based on my interpretation to your description. Which is I read correctly would mean that his power would be in essence to set a number, and every card on his deck would be associated with a number and can only be played or have an effect if his power is set to that number? Or something like that. 

Ooh or maybe his cards have several effects on them each assigned a number... for instance:

1: reduce fire damage taken by 1

2: increase melee damage dealt by 1

3: Imminity to sonic damage

4: cannot play a card

5: increase damage taken by 1

6: redirect damage dealt to lowest HP hero to yourself 

And every card would have different ones so when he sets his power to 2 all the twos would be active and you'd have to be careful of when you activate what since the more cards you have out the more things you have to watch out for. 

Ha, it would  probably be really fiddly, like a complexity 4... but definitely interesting and very dynamic. 

cool idea for a hero mechanic!

Edit: What if Twitchy is not considered a "hero", but we get to play his deck against the villains along side the proper heros? Something like that could work out thematically at least, since FILTER agents only seem to distinguish between super vs normal instead of the good vs evil mindset of traditional heros. He would not be touched by any attacks that only target hero targets, but would probably have to come with some major draw backs to whatever his powers and abilities would end up being to make that kind of trade off

Possible, but I think that would change too many facets of the game. H wouldn't include him, few ally abilities could help him, ect. You're reasoning is good and I could see it possibly happening, but it'd be a pretty revolutionary mechanic for the game.

Yeah, I don't see them doing anything that convoluted/complex. >G is big on using the structure of the game to build interesting possibilities. They tend not to break the fundamentals of the game when designing new components.

I'm guessing Twitchy will be a "normal" hero, but he'll have ongoings that give him really nice, thematically-appropriate abilities/powers, but which also make him count as a villain target or a non-hero target. Also figure he'll have some cards that make him take damage that would normally target lowest hit point or highest hit point hero targets (i.e., he's unlucky).

Looking forward to seeing what they come up with, though!

So, I was thinking more about Twitchy today

I have it in my mind that he is a F.I.L.T.E.R. agent. I have seen other people express the same sentiment. Where did we get this from?

Is it only because of the emblem on his chest resembles the holding cells in the Block? Like the one Unity finds herself in on her incap side? If this is the case, let me pose an alternate theory (if its not, oh well. it was good while it lasted like my freedom wraith = operative idea)

I do not think the emblem on his chest is a FILTER prison cell. You know the card in Kismets deck where she is punching Twichy and we see a bunch of Casino/gambling related art?  I think his emblem is a die. This die only has one side with a value on it, and thats what he rolled. He rolled a 1. Snake Eyes.  

Him rolling snake eyes fits thematically with the popular rumor that he is probably just naturally unlucky. This fits in with him getting unluckily zapped by Shock Rounds and also fits within the potential Nemesis dynamic where Kismet is super lucky and Twitchy can't roll anything but the figurative "snake eyes". If he can not help but be unlucky, then we see another Nemesis dynamic take shape in the form of Infinite Possibilities vs Fixed Outcomes. Kismet's luck can potentially make anything happen if she just gets "lucky" enough. With Twitchy it is the exact opposite. His outcomes, possibly his entire destiny, are set in stone, fated to happen the same way every time. When he rolls a die, it will always be 1.

Plot wise, this puts him in a very unique situation as it pertains to "the multiverse" and the time cataclysm, as he could act as a common thread between them all, potentially being a key to preventing the possible dark futures of Iron Legacy and The Final Wasteland. I also now picture him as having a very bad gambling addiction before gaining his powers

It takes two dice to be able to roll snake eyes.

Maybe the snake lost his other eye to Ambuscade?

Never heard of a one-eyed snake…?

I never assumed that icon was anything other than a die rolling a one.  Given the vast speculation on how on would implement a "bad luck hro" in SotM, I do not seem to be the only one.

Also, I still suspect that F.I.L.T.E.R. harbors a big-league supervillain.

So I had this idea on how to implement a "bad luck" hero:

Imagine, say, an ongoing that read "Whenever you take damage, every other hero target regains 1 hp" or "whenever you discard one or more cards, every other hero draws a card". A deck that encourages you to take the brunt of the villain and environment's beatdowns, or possibly even get "accidentally" struck by your teammates (Shock Rounds and Kismet's Jinx destruction I am looking at you), maybe combined with a slightly better than average incapacitated side?

I like that idea but I wonder what the incentive would be for someone to play that character in a non-solo game. 

Along the same lines, what if the bad luck hero was an MMO-style aggro magnet i.e. "Whenever an attack would deal damage to a hero other than [the bad luck hero], deal that damage to [the bad luck hero] instead. He would be a true tank and one can assume that the rest of the deck's mechanics would reflect the fact that a hero whose whole shtick is having horrible luck but whose career lasted more than a week must have some novel ways of staying alive.  

Obviously there'd have to be some stipulations to keep one AOE attack from killing him on the first turn 

I think we already have a hero like that - Lantern Man, or something.

Ironic

Maybe he's so unlucky he lost the other one under the couch? Lord knows that's happened to me.

Not that twitchy isn't "endearing" or anything, but I personally like the name Schrödinger for Unlucky-Yellow-and-Black Man. By how much damage he seems to be taking, the dude obviously can take some punishment and still survive. That could be from good old refusal to give up, but theoretically I don't think a hero that's neither dead nor alive could be outside the realm of possibility. And the box on his chest could symbolize the one used on the famous cat…Or I'm just thinking too much into it. Probably the latter.

Anywho, I motion that from here on out, until we hear something official, we call Unlucky-Yellow-and-Black Man simply…

"Lucky".

As it happens, that is what I had been calling him in my head.  Where did the "Twitchy" epithet stem from?

The flavor text of Shock Rounds.

Its also much easier to type and spell correctly than shoedigger. . .

... Lucky.  I have been calling him "Lucky".

Random thought: will Twitchy have Jinx cards? What if his name is Jinx?

I play/played a luck based hero in a Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition game, his name is Felix Prosper. Given that Absolute Zero's real name is Ryan Frost I fully expect some sort of pun* like that.
 

*pun is not the right word, anyone know what is? Is it just "word play"?