Beacon

So the first stretch hero is Beacon. She is Young Legacy who hasn’t become Legacy yet.

I think her design is based on the current Captain Marvel from Marvel. Obviously her story is different but their powers are similar with both having a form of energy projection.

So here we go let’s discuss Beacon

Heh. I actually get a bit more Billy Batson/Captain Marvel from her. She has a lot of power, but not a whole lot of control, it seems.

Well, adding to the confusion, I got more Power Girl, although I can see the Caron Danvers influence on her costume now, especialyl the sash.

Maybe power wise she is but her look is straight Ms Marvel. Her captain marvel look is different

DC's Captain Marvel has a sash, too.

But no leotard… XP

Huh, I thought she looked like a young female Legacy...


I love the look, though. The art is just awesome!

Very glad Adam was able to find a way to recreate the art after losing that harddrive...

I think the coolest part is getting different decks for her and Legacy, so now we get to see more of her as her own hero, and less her Daddy's girl.

Maybe someone beat La Capitan and made her give it back.

So will Pauline now get her own SOTM deck?  If so, how?  Mini-expansion, or part of one of the main sets?  And will she play similarly (ie having the same Power and some similar cards)?  I really like the way YL changes how Legacy's deck plays; it's not perfect and I'll be glad to see some tweaks, but I'd be sad if the overall effect was too dissimilar.

Same here.  With the obvious difference and Power Girl's usual cape, the cuts of the Power Girl and Ms Marvel costumes are pretty similar.  The white color and the fact that they used images related to famous covers involving Superman for both Legacy incapacitated sides has me leaning more toward Power Girl though.

I hope there will be a Beacon deck mini-expansion someday. Please.

I doubt it, all her powers are represented pretty well in the young legacy deck, she's Legacy with laser eyes, and she will get the ring someday.  A Beacon deck would need to keep most of the cards from the current Legacy deck.

The best way to cover it would be a 6-8 card pack that you'd switch Legacy ring and a few other cards out for.  I don't think that's something we'll see though.

Not officially at least, I am sure there will be a creative fan somewhere who will translate some of her power cards from Tactics into SotM for the change. 

Inconsistent card sizes would make an add-on to an existing deck somewhat impractical.

My errata cards are completely unusable, for example. It's not a big deal since the changes are minor and the game still works without them, but if I bought a conversion pack that didn't fit I'd be pretty annoyed. 

That's a good point about the card sizes.

For it to work it would have to be a stand alone deck. And if you are making a new deck you might as well change it so it the text and the art reference Beacon and not Legacy and update the back of the cards to reflect the same... so in the end you have a deck of mostly re-skinned Legacy cards and a few new ones. 

Again, I see a fan taking the time and effort to do this... but not any kind of official product. 

Actually, i did it about a year ago for Greatest Legacy and Young Legacy.  Sadly, I am not an artist.

I just read through the young legacy deck.

The damage reduction card actually gives her 3 dr instead of the intended 2.

And can I say how powerful her deck is. An ongoing that gives a free draw at the start of turn is tremendously powerful. She also is going deal Ra levels of damage while potentially tanking for the team. Im not sure she’s over powered but I would guess she’s better than her father by a bit

I haven't touched or playtested them in quite a while.  Now that Beacon has been revealed, i'll go back and make some changes.

In playtesting, she was very offensively focused, but had much less in terms of team damage immunity and large-chunk damage prevention (like Superhuman durability and next evolution).  The card draw is quite nice, but so is a team +1 to damage.  I tried to make everything as directly comparable to Legacy as possible, but with a unique flavor and playstyle of her own.

She suffers from the same "problem" as Legacy, in that there are a lot of great options, and you have to balance personal power (IE ongoings, one-shots) with things that will benefit the team, and only one play to do it in.  Legacy has the potential to deal nearly as much damage as Ra as well, the trick is that you almost always have something to play that benefits the team more, and those back-fist strikes just taunt you....

I would argue a free start of turn draw is 2 times as powerful than a +1 damage boost. The scholar, bunker, parse, tachyon, nightmist and even regular legacy would prefer a card draw to +1 damage.

The biggest problem I have with that card is that your entire team gets an enormous boost with no cost. Team leader tachyon has a power to do that but it is a power and if she uses team leader she loses a burst in her trash, which is a cost.

Also being able to pick who gets which damage is incredibly valuable. Giving all cold or fire damage to AZ is crazy good

I can certainly see your point about the card draw.  I would slightly disagree because the entire point of Legacy tends to be to make the team better, and most of his ongoings have no cost for the enormous benefit that they bring the team (except for occasionally needing to hurt himself).

However, it is also fan deck that currently exists only as a set of index cards on my shelf, and has been played a total of three times!

Yeah you’re right. I would like see a Beacon deck that is based on her but not be a molding of legacies deck. I also think what you put together for the most part does that. I really like the way damage works in the deck

While I doubt we'll see a Beacon deck (although that would be cool) we may see a Beacon card.  Once SotM is complete we know that GTG is thinking of releasing a pack with all of the promo cards but with new art so that the originals still retain some value.  It could happen that the Young Legacy card is recreated as a Beacon promo card for the Legacy deck.  Although I have no idea how they would identify it as a Legacy character card...

Also, did it just click to anyone else that Legacy's icon is the lantern used by Paul Revere after being alerted by the original Parsons?  The "Beacon" if you will... 

I may be drawing some silly conclusions but I think that's kind of nifty.

Nope you got it that’s exactly why the lantern is their emblem and why she is called Beacon

Rationally, I assume Beacon will not get a deck in SotM. I feel as if she doesn't become Beacon until after the core storyline of SotM is concluded.

Of course, it's been stated that Young Legacy will never receive her own deck, but now this Beacon thing might just be the way to get around that! After all, they never said Pauline wouldn't get a deck!

The only sad thing about it is that, along with the fact that Mobile Defense Platform has turned from a card in Baron Blade's deck to an entire Environment, while the Baron himself now has a whole new deck, the early SOTM cards are getting more and more outmoded, and several are beginning to seem out of place in the modern SOTM set.  If there's a Beacon deck, will anyone still play Young Legacy?  I get that she was the very first promo card, but it'd still be a bit sad if she was made entirely obsolete.

I have no idea what you are talking about, which characters/environments are out of place now?

The ones that he doesn't like playing with.

I could see his point though... by having a fully blown Beacon character with its own full deck but the same power set, it may push Young Legacy closer to obsolescence. 

I don't think that's quite the case with any others though

There is no more reasons for a Beacon deck in SotM to have the same cards as a Legacy deck than there is for Sentinel Tactics' Beacon to have the same cards than her father. She may have the same powers as Dad, but use them in a very different way - and so have different cards and a different gameplay. She is more of a front line fighter than a leader, it seems. Young Legacy followed the tactics and training of her father, Beacon found her own uses for her special abilities. She broke the combat tradition of her ancestors (promo or not). You can do a lot with superstrength, invulnerability, flight and a killing stare.

I can see her have a card that damage a number of targets and redirects the damage they'll do next to her, for instance : she jumps in the melee, interposing herself. More fighting, less support. Young Legacy's motto of "less Galvanize, more Atom-eyes " taken to a new step :)

It's not that at all.  It's just the weirdness that MDP is somehow both a target that you can blow up and an entire Environment that you can be fighting in, and that you can even have the former inside the latter.  It would be similar weirdness if there was both a Young Legacy promo card and an entire deck representing the same person.  Only even weirder, because they could both be fighting on the same hero team, despite being not only the same person but even (probably) almost the exact same version of that person, with (probably) almost the exact same powers.

On a tangent, does anyone think that the name Beacon reflects interestingly on Freedom Six Tempest, who has a red-and-white-striped lighthouse right next to his name on the card?

I seriously doubt we will see a Beacon deck.

This is not a new hero, this is Young Legacy with a diferent costume and no ring.

At one point in DC continuity (Yes so many retcon it becomes weird to follow) Power Girl was the counterpart of Supergirl from earth-two but both eventually coexisted on the same earth so even playing with Beacon and young Legacy would just mirror that. After all this is a multiverse and sentinels tactics confirmed that Iron Legacy did coexist in the same universe as the Actual Legacy even if for a brief time.

But by the time Beacon becomes a hero in her own right, the timelines have sealed (see Visionary's new bio), so timeline shenanigans become harder.

Best explanation I can think of for this is that the heroes might be fighting on the deck of the Mobile Defense Platform and the one that is a target is another one flying over to drop off more soldiers or something.

Yeah, that works adequately well; my complaint is that it's only adequate.

Look. We're playing a card game about people wearing tights and wielding patently impossible powers. Let this slide.

I want to play a game with Unity against Blade in the MDP, for maximum number of platforms in one game.

The powers are only patently impossible in the universe we live in; SOTM's setting has time travel, mystic dimensions whose different physical laws "leak" into our world, alien genetic meddling and more.  In that context, simply contradicting what we know of real-world physics isn't an issue in the slightest; the only things that are weird in such a context are things that don't make sense no matter how much phlebotinum is involved.  This isn't quite such an issue yet, but it's something that has to be explained.  Otherwise, It Just Bugs Me.

Frankly, I can accept "comic book science" MUCH more easily than I can accept some examples of Comic Book Fashion Sense.  The authors can be forgiven for not having a doctorate-level understanding of the jargon terms they pepper their technobabble with, but it's much harder to comprehend how anyone ever thought that looked cool, for various possible values of that.

Take the Freedom tower.

If you are fighting in Megalopolis and someone hides behind the Freedom tower so you can't shoot them, it's a minor inconvenience.  They are using the Freedom Tower to protect themselves from you.

It's a very diferent story if they run into the freedom tower.  Now the Freedom tower becomes a much bigger obstacle, and in fact a series of big obstacles that you have to deal with.

The same for MDP.  Baron is using his MDP's to distract the heroes and buy himself time.  Until those giant floating platforms are dealt with you can't get to Blade.

It doesn't take as much to get past an MDP as it does to get onboard and hunt someone down.

That's how you get a 10hp device vs. an entire environment deck.

The current deckbuilding game involves a mash-up deck of Vengeance Baron with all his platforms, and his -2 damage dealt to devices on the MDP.

The costume only has to be functional. Whether or not it is "cool" is in the eyes of the designer and possibly the person wearing it, if they aren't one and the same.

Pretty much couldn't disagree more with that, but I'll refrain from arguing the point.

Really, I've been presuming "Mobile Defense Platform" meant something more like "Giant Force Field Projector" or "Hologram Decoy" or what have you for a very long time.  It makes more sense in enclosed spaces like Wager, and it avoids the awkwardness of the heroes crashing an apparently weaponsless craft full of people who didn't so much choose to be criminals as they were born in an Eastern European dictatorship.

I keep reading this thread title as "Bacon" and getting really excited... only to be disappointed when I click on it. 

Well, she probably does wear her own "Kiss The Hero" apron, if that helps.

She actually has a "Feed the Hero" apron. 

Outstanding.

The MDP has "pew pew lasers" and Powered Remote Turrets…

You misunderstand me.

I know what it is designed to be.  When I play games, I imagine it as the things I described earlier, as that works with a wider variety of scenarios anyway, so the Environment deck representing the full MDP treatment suits me just fine.

Now, it is a little odd when Voss' spaceships show up there, but as with Wagner Base and The Block, I just assume they're flying past and strafing it.

Send Pauline to my house, I'll feed her.  It's Taco Tuesday.

Man, now I want bacon tacos.  What a revoltin' development.

Piggy tacos with Bacon Salsa, they are phenomenal.

Christopher, quick question: Is Beacon as strong as Legacy?

In terms of physical strength? Ability to lift things? Yes.

Which hero would win an arm wrestling tournament

In any case, I'm pretty sure the table will lose…

Play on top champion bot!

I think Haka's got this, at least until Sky-Scraper shows up.

He'd probably still have it afterwards. Even the giant Haka is so short compared to Sky-Scraper that to arm wrestle him, she'd have to virtually have her arm horizontal which would drastically reduce leverage. it'd be arm-wrestling to him but thumbwrestling for her.

Yes. I was looking at the Superman/Super(Power)girl relationship between the two . That said, he's got more muscle mass. 

Yeah, but she's a later generation Legacy, so one would assume she'd have more superstrength than her Dad.

Not necessarily. She's got laser beam eyes.

Except every new generation brought a new superpower without removing the old ones so eye beams is not a reason to remove any superstrenght

Right, but it’s also a reason she hasn’t gained more than her father

Sorry I thought you implied she could have less, I get your point and agree with you that they stand on equal footing

Is it not possible that working out might increase super strength by adding your natural strength to it?

If not I want to see a fat, lazy future Legacy (think humans from Wall-E) who can arm wrestle all comers to a standstill, perhaps in Galactic Strike Force!

So, is it safe to assume that, far in the future setting of GSF, after many generations of Legacies, that the current Legacy is a deity?

Having the same super power is not the same as having less ability in it. Women in general are not as physically strong as men. They tend to have less muscle mass. Which is why I asked Christopher if her strength level was the same as her father's.

So, is it safe to assume that, far in the future setting of GSF, after many generations of Legacies, that the current Legacy is a deity?

Unless something were to happen...

You jerk.

Well if I take your statement litteraly let see legacy is a pretty tall very cut guy so let's say his natural strenght allows a bench press of a 100 Kg and well his daughter could press between 25 and 50 Kg would it really matter much if you add it on say spider man level superstrenght of lifting 20 tons? Not to say there can't be a difference but if the difference is around 1% of the total it usually doesn't really matter. (I did not take superman strenght as a reference because planet moving strenght is simply ridiculous)

Sure, sure.

But the question here (which Christopher has already answered by saying both current Parsons...es have the same raw physical strength) is whether Parsons Superstrength is added or multiplied.  If the nature of superstrength were something like "normal strength times 1000," then a difference in raw musclepower so small as to be almost undetectable among normal humans would be almost impossible to overcome between Legacies.

... of course, all of that further spins out of an issue for how muscle is depected in visual media in general - which is to say, inconsistently at best, especially between men and women.  At the end of the day, it's probably sanest for everyone involved to just say "they're both Legacies and strength hasn't increased between them, so they're equally strong."

You know what I do want to know, though?  What would people in the universe of Sentinels comics call "heroes who inherited their names from other heroes" (the Bunkers are the main non-Parsons example I know of, but there could be others).  Surely, calling such a person a "legacy" would just get confusing, yes?

Technically the Adept has an inherited title...or subtitle...or something - he's the Argent Adept, but he's also the current Virtuoso of the Void (of which there is always one, I seem to recall reading - Mr Drake is just the current one).

My friend can deadlift 90kg. She weighs 60kg, and looks like she might break if you look at her too hard. I try not to annoy her...

Scions

Yeah! After the ill-fated White Wolf RPG!

Superman hasn't been that strong since Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot.

Speak American please

They're working on the second edition!  That game had such a fun world…

As for future deities in GSF…Ra?  Seriously…if the Metahumans worshipped Sun Ra then we would have some hardcore parallels to afrofuturism which would be absolutely fantastic.  Almaric jamming to "Things You Can Do" by Deltron 3030 is firmly locked in my headcanon.

But something may have happened to the Legacy line by the time GSF happens?  Rough…

Hurm - a group of metahumans worshipping a sun-themed being in the Sentinels universe.  Sounds legit.

"My friend can lift one and a half times her body weight despite looking frail, and is even capable of using simple internet searches to find unit conversions."

And, sure, not everyone who is incredible shape looks bulky and muscular - I am always struck when I look at UFC champions that even the high-weight male champs aren't built like weightlifters - they wind up chiseled, but since fighting is generally pretty anaerobic and a lot of musclemass can slow you down (fighting is fairly rarely about strength past a certain point, really), they look more like a tough person you'd see on the street than a spandex-clad colossus.  And, of course, some of the lighter female champs look like actors I'd call out as miscast if they were portrayed as professional martial artists in a movie, since little musclemass at all can be seen.

So, sure, your point is well taken.  And larger discussion of superhero body image portrayals is really a tediusly dull debate I'm sure we've all had at least as many times as we're interested in.  The most important thing is the information we already have: that Pauline is just as super-strong as Paul - no more, no less.

Not necessarily. If America ceased to exist for whatever reason any Legacies running around might end up being depowered.

That may be true.  I just know that the Legacy family is known to have a decent bit of tragedy surrounding them.  Dead parents, dead children, oppressive dictators, etc.  This was averted according to what we've learned in the Tactics Kickstarter and I'm wondering if Legacy isn't overdue for a little more trauma in his family's lives.

Hold on, hold on. New completely false theory incoming.

Unknown Cosmic Entity Or Equivalent needs a body. Sends a seed of power to earth. It implants in a man, giving him small powers - but his first child shows the same abilities, and adds a new one. It takes generations, but at last, the "body" is ready, at full power - or powerful enough to be of use to UnkCosEntOrEquiv. This is the famous "Child" we are wondering about elsewhere. The Legacy line is slowly nurtured to become the body of a powerful entity.

So Pauline is the child. Or maybe the potential mother of the Child.

Completely false, I don't doubt it.

I can't wait to see what Christopher has in store for the End of the Legacy Line.

Maybe something leaves her unable to have children? That would effectivly end the line