So... are Anubis and the Ennead nemeses? The have the same nemesis icon, after all. All of the nemesis rules and definitions mention "heroes" and "villains" but outside of the EE rulebook allowing for the possibility of non-character cards having the icon there really isn't a solid answer.
Yes. Anubis and the Ennead deal each other extra damage, just as Ra and the Ennead do.
I don't think that's true. Annubis has Ra's hero icon, making those two nemeses. And the Ennead members have Ra's hero icon, making them nemeses. There's no indication that Annubis and the Ennead are nemeses.
There's also no indication that they aren't ;). The thought had never actually occurred to me until reading this post - I'd've played it that they dealt each other normal damage otherwise, but on thinking about it…if the Ennead are enemies with one Egyptian god, why not another? Anubis will deal them damage, after all, if any of them fulfil whatever his requirements are for him dealing damage (and which I can't remember because he's only come up about twice during our games and I don't think he ever managed to actually deal any damage…).
The rules for Nemesis in the EE rulebook refer to a hero's icon being present on other targets. That means to me that it only applies from heroes to non-heroes and vice versa. If that's not the way it works, you get a weird counterintuitive situation where members of the Ennead would do additional damage to one another if there were some effect that caused them to hit each other.
As unclear as it is in the rules, Christopher's wording is "If two character cards share icons, they are nemeses." (This was during a conversation in person so I have nothing to point to.) He has specifically said the Ennead and Anubis are nemeses.
Yeah, I'm 99% sure Christopher has said the Anubis and The Ennead are nemeses, though it might very well have been in the IR forums during playtesting.
So are the Ennead Nemeses with one another as well then?
That's been a stickier question. It was brought up in another thread, but I can't find it right now. The consensus of the other thread though (I believe) was that nemeses bonuses only work between cards of different types (environment, villain, heroes). This wasn't due to any specificity in the rules mind you, just a general sense of how it probably should work. If this is NOT the case, then Legacy and Young Legacy are nemeses, and The Operative and The Chairman are nemeses.
That's how we've been playing it in our group. Heroes are nemeses of villains and environments, but not other heroes. Villains are nemeses of environments and heroes, but not other villains, etc.
Edit: Found it. It was on BGG http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/860023/if-one-member-of-the-ennead-damages-another-is-the
and it looks like the official ruling is nemesis icons just always "work". I don't think it'll change how we play though :)
Whoa, okay. Thank you very much for digging that up! Slick and simple from a mechanics point of view, if a little weird thematically.
Also, it seems that I've neglected to subscribe to all the SotM expansion forums on BGG and was only subscribed to the base game's forum. Time to remedy that. ;D
I don't really like it, but official rulings is official rulings. I'll add it to my Clarifications PDF the next time I make updates.
I guess I'll just have to accept that, for some reason, all of the members of the Ennead hate each other so much they'd do additional damage to each other if it ever came to blows.
I would think of it as catching them off guard because they're not expecting their friend to hit them or something. As cool as tachyon lining up the hit and then dodging out of the way so the Ennead hits each other instead of her is thematically, I'm alright rewarding that with some bonus damage. ^_^
Quite honestly, I don't think it was intended this way, as, originally, villains had nemisis icons, and heroes had hero icons, and if a hero and a villain were to deal damage to each other, and the nemesis icon matched the hero icon, damage was increased. But now that an environment card was added which had a nemesis icon, the nemesis relationship had to be redefined (Christopher did confirm during playtesting that Anubis was nemesis to Ra as well as nemesis to all of the Ennead). Since later editions allowed multiple villain card being in play having the same nemesis icon, and the tricky ways for allowing one of the villain cards to deal damage to the other villain cards, Christopher decided to keep everything consistant with the "new" ruling stating two cards having the same icon get nemesis bonus.
Of course, this could easily be avoided while remaining consistant by stating that nemesis bonus only applies to cards from another faction (such that heroes only get bonus against non-heroes, villains only get bonus against non-villains, and environments only get bonus against non-environments). I actually thought that was the conclusion we came to on another thread in this forum. Of course, I don't read BGG at all, so I never noticed Christopher's post about this until now.
Finest Legacy and Newest Legacy are nemeses! :O
That's teenagers for you…
Yeah, consistency is nice and all, but Sentinels is a game with a great theme as well, and here I very much disagree with the ruling in favor of consistency over theme. Luckily, >G don't have a mind police, so I'm just going to keep playing with the `factions' variant rule.
Works for me! I have various story reasons about why targets with a nemesis icon damage other targets with the same icon (The Ennead do NOT get along, the Legacies are not defending against eachother, so if an attack goes awry..., etc.), but feel free to do it how you like best! As long as you're consistent about it, it should be fine.
Are we at least in agreement that the Nemesis rule doesn't cause hero or villain cards to deal more damage to themselves?
Ha! I could see a case being made for that. Very, very tempting. Would make playing against Plague Rat much more challenging.
It'd also make characters such as Nightmist and Fanatic even more painful to play ;).
Well, alright, Nightmist is good enough at healing that she' not particularly painful, but you know what I mean 
Absolute Zero will have super healing. Yay!
So, what's the official ruling?
The official ruling is that whenever a target deals damage to a different target that shares the same nemesis icon, the damage is increased by 1. So, if you're playing with Legacy and Young Legacy, and Felicia punches her dad, the damage is increased by 1. But when Legacy playes Heroic Interception and damages himself, that damage is not increased.
Hope this helps!
I had never even considered this. But I like it. We've tried Ennead on advanced twice and lost pretty hard. But maybe if we bring in someone like Nightmist to redirect damage from Ennead members to other Ennead members... This could work out well.