Rules debate

I haven't seen one in quite a long time here. What gives? I miss them 

No new rules in a while.  Hopefully Vengeance will change that.  I'm guessing the vortex of rulings surrounding The Sentinels alone should keep us going for quite a while.

We're just all too good at getting rules right, apparently.

I predict massive discussions once enough people get Vengeance, so don't worry. 

Nah, Vengeance is totally easy to get.  I don't imagine any rules discussions to come from that 

Anything Sentinels (the deck) related has been discussed in the PT forum ad nauseum. There will be questions (when you first play them against the Rat I'm guessing is when those posts will start coming), but I think we got all those bases covered during testing. *Fingers crossed*

Just because you guys got it all straight in your heads doesn't mean Johnny Noobman playing Vengeance for the first time will.  Non-playtesters will be starting from scratch.

I didn't mean to say that there shouldnt be questions. Just that debate around the answers should be small. Hopefully.

Nah, I'm going to release a complicated a ruling that'll mess everything up.

At least it'll spice things up!

I'm also wondering how long it will take the new "Fix this hero" threads to go up, those are...fun?

I'll get it started:

The Naturalist totally needs to be fixed!  I mean, he's essentially unplayable right now (because we don't even have his deck yet because Vengeance hasn't shipped).

Am I doing it right?

K.N.Y.F.E. is even harder because you have to type her name in all capitals with all those periods in it.  Why couldn't she be fixed in playtesting to be more like Ra?

I feel like Setback is completely underpowered. Basically all he can do is Stealth the team, and even that's through a dubious interpretation of what his card means by 'unlucky pool'... I just use the big pool of tokens in the middle of the table, but then I don't know what to do with the token I remove! It's infuriating!

I highly doubt we will see those threads. The hero decks are all incredibly competitive. 

Setback, like most lvl3 hero decks, will take time to find optimal strategies for since his playstyle is everything but straightforward. I don't expect a "fix this hero" type thread though.

All heroes should have some kind of search so they can get to their super awesome win cards right from the beginning!

The Sentinels will totally need to be fixed.  I can already hear the complaining from my gaming group when it comes around to me and I take four turns when they only get one each.  Totally OP!

The Idealist is way underpowered. I mean, she only has ELEVEN HP! How is that fair?!

*smoke bombs*

Well we need one, the reworking of card play order pretty much crushed all of our fun with arguing rules and interpretting syntax to have all kinds of meaning.

I propose the following changes:  

All damage must be dealt in alphabetical order.

Every turn is now considered the Environment turn.

Text spelled "would be dealt" is now changed to "Would like to be Dealt"

If health order changes that would change the target of an attack happens in the middle of applying the whole attack, reapply the entire attack immediately.

On Raptor Bot the word Melee is replaced by Fluffy.

Fluffy? Noooo, have you even noticed his name? It has to be Chomp! :D

This game sucks. There aren't even any dice! How am I supposed to move my pawn along the track on the board with no dice?

This made me giggle

Wiki'd

Thank you, "Shut Up and Sit Down!" review of Sentinels of the Multiverse.

glances at playtester threads of questions upon questions…

glances at broccoli's Playtester badge…

With this much having been (inadvertenly?) spoiled, is it fair to ask for the difficulties of the remaining heroes from the set? I won't ask about villain difficulties since I believe that will likely depend upon their interactions with each other.

Both of these got a smile out of me.

It never even occured to me that the complexity ratings might not be fair game. My appologies. They run the gambit though. Fun note. We have not seen a lvl 1 hero since base set.

I'm not upset; it just caught my attention as something that might fall under NDA. I supposed that "leaked" might have been a better choice on my part than "spoiled."  I'm aware that we haven't seen a level 1 hero (or villain, for that matter) since the Core Set, and I'm curious to see whether that changes on either side of the equation.

I like to keep my expectations low, so whenever a expansions is released, I expect to see threads of every character to need fixing.

Ex-Pat and Fixer are the only heroes who've had intense "fix this hero" threads. As far as I remember, threads like these for Argent and Nightmist were non-existant to few and far between. CR had Spiff's troll thread, but that ended up being mostly about Fixer and Ex-Pat again anyway. There was talk about Omni being too powerful, but that hasn't really permeated through the forums.

I think Bunker had a couple of threads about "fixing" his modes...

Generally, I think the more heroes you have available, the less you will see those types of threads since the sheer number of choices available means you won't get to play some heroes all that often so you begin to be more selective about which ones you play... so you just skip the ones you find less than optimal. 

I completely agree jagarciao. Bunker had a couple of "fix" threads, and one forumite made a custom deck for him, but Bunker while having his critics, has never caused as much controversy as Ex-Pat and Fixer. Absolute Zero also has critics, but I don't think I've ever seen a thread on how to "fix" him. At any rate there really weren't any "fixing" threads for either Infernal Relics or Shattered Timelines, unless you count people who wanted to nerf Omni-X, and so it's still not really a normal thing that happens whenever new heroes get introduced.

The romance with OmniX people had (myself included in that company) fizzled as you played more games. I think the first time we all got hit with 5+ damage in a turn and lost 6+ components quashed those feelings swiftly.

Bunkers modes are really interesting and are quite good, but they require a "long view" vision. In todays microwave instant-gratification based world, Bunkers ideal playstyle butts heads with how we generally feel it should work. Take Chrono-Ranger as a perfect counter example. Everything is instant, in the moment, pew pew pew, profit. Bunker players, if you truely are interested in edging out as much out of him as possible, must be planning their play phases two turns in advanced. Upgrade Mode is a casualty of the instant-gratification mindset as its immediate benefits are few but the long term gains will pay for themselves in a few rounds. No wonder it is brought up so often when others talk about Bunker as a "low tier" hero. (It is the same mindset that prevents players from enjoying the Zen of Mr. Fixer in my opinion). 

Having said that, I think the new hero decks will appeal to many. Sentinels might (read: will) overtake Chrono as the insta-grata champs.

Something like this?


Whoops! Spoilers!

See, that's why I find Bunker boring - your ideal setup is to automatically do the same thing over and over again with no real decisions. 

Oh, time. Why can't you move faster?

Interesting nemisis icon for The Naturalist

I think Bunker gets the most "change me" topics because it feels as though he goes through a long set-up that only yields a fairly average reward.  And while I love Bunker and wouldn't change him, I can definitely see the argument.

Rabit's last post just made my day 

If that's how the player plays him, yeah, I can see that.

That's why I don't play him that way.

Glad I can occasionally do something useful.

Christopher's post has just been Wiki'd. Complexities have been added.

Now all I need is a friendly forumite who is handy with Nemisis Icons to get those last two... xD

And edit

Curse you Christopher. You should have put those in the Playtester forum so I could have told you they are not in alphabetical order!! 'The' does not count! xD :p

Err, since the complexity levels for the Heroes have been released, any hope that the Villain difficulty rankings can be released too?

I JUST realised what KNYFE's neme symbol is (after looking at it for months).

It is the FILTER emblem being cut in half. 

Fail

Did you at least notice that The Naturalist's nemesis icon was the symbol on his shoulder?

Yeah. It's embeded in his animal forms as well!

Shush, you!!!

Ohgoodlord - we are not having this argument again. (You know I completely agree with you lynkfox, but we're never going to convince Christopher otherwise. )

Done!! Though like I mentioned in the email. I will probably rework The Naturalist a little bit when I have the actual cards to go on. 

To be fair, this is hardly a spoiler considering the Naturalist's bio.  I'd have been genuinely surprised if he WASN'T a shapeshifter.

If Rabit really thought it wasn't ok, he would have just deleted the comment instead of replying to it.

Yay! once again, you're awesome!

If they were in Alphabetical order the difficulties would align and it wouldn't look as nice.

As to Bunker, being slow isn't his problem, his problem is he presents cut off points where you must decide whether to stop where you are or go for more.  He actually moves fast, he just also has more cards that could be played, and the ability to cash in and sit in turret mode.  Managing his modes is a unique task in this game, and his complexity rating doesn't do that justice.

I play him better now that I've become a better Fixer player.  Fixer isn't about doing what you want to do, it is about doing what needs done.  Playing Bunker that way really changes how you approach him, solve the problem in front of you, looking to the future helps, but mostly if you adapt to what is needed at the time you'll end up being more valuable than if you pull off that perfect build just in time to mop up.

You have officially mastered the Zen of Fixer

It's a "easy to learn, difficult to master" type thing. It is very possible to play him simply, even though it is possible to get some complex combos within his deck.

Fixer isn't about doing what you want to do, it is about doing what needs done.

What I want to do with Mr. Fixer is also what needs to be done.

Mr. Fixer follows the Ronway, so it would naturally follow.

... Where can we see the FILTER logo?

It's on patches on the arms and chest of the FILTER Agents in The Block

I knew that KNYFE was a 1 before you said this, so I'm pretty sure the information has been publicized somewhere.

All of this advice sounds very vague and esoteric to me.  Can you explain in more detail what you mean by "cut off points", "stop or go for more", "do what needs done", "solve the problem", etc.?  Can you give examples?

Recharge, Upgrade, Turret, all of his modes present opportunities with cost, when you play Recharge, you don't play cards till you destroy it.  When you switch out of recharge you are deciding to stop drawing huge amounts of cards so you can play/use powers.

You may hope to draw the cards you need for the desired set-up, but if you get some options but not all you want you have to make a choice of when to stop recharging and join the fight again.

Upgrade is often a tougher choice, esp. when you have a ton of good cards in hand.  Turret mode is awesome, but it essentially locks you down as long as it is on the field, you can't draw except with Ammo Drop and you can't play cards to improve your build.

Most people play Bunker looking to achieve a certain build, and while acheiving that build might hold a lot of value to the team, often players overlook higher leverage situations in trying to accomplish that build.

"Fixing what is in front of you" simply means you do whatever you can that turn to deal with the problems of that turn, if you can take an enemy out that would otherwise live and yet wait, you allow the situation to worsen.  Often the first few rounds of the game are where the game is actually settled, esp. villains that start with cards in play.  Taking a flyer on those rounds to do better later, when others tend to also be really powerful isn't worth it.

Take the shots you get, don't dump the early game on your team and work for end game, Bunker isn't built that way.

One of the reasons I like the house rule where you can return a mode to your hand to play another at the start of your turn is that rule allows players who really want Bunker to be more of a good early, strong end game hero to do just that.

For me, Bunker is a lot less about the end game, but how you get there. Sure, I think I know what you should play, but you don't always have the cards. The other day, I had a great game against Apostate in the Realm of Discord. Postivie Energy Field came out, so I went into Upgrade Mode with Bunker. With Bunker and Tachy playing two cards a round (plus the others), and no villain targets in play (destroyed the turn they came out), the heroes were gaining hp like crazy.

Once another distortion finally came out, Bunker had: Omni-Cannon, 2x Maintanence Unit, Heavy Plating, and Ammo Drop. Not a combo I would usually go to, but I dropped Turret Mode anyways. Bunker became the tank, gaining 4 hp a round, with 1 damage reduction. He would play Omni-Cannon every few rounds when he had the cards, and easily take out a relic and get by the damage reduction. 

I would probably never intentionally try that, but it just happened. There is so much about Bunker just playing what he has, and how he gets to his combo. Sometimes he gets it, sometimes he doesn't, but it's usually fun trying to get there.

I don't think it has… It may just be that K.N.Y.F.E., being a stabby stabby stabby sort of hero, kind of screams COMPLEXITY ONE at you

It definitely has not been PUBLICIZED anywhere. Not saying it hasn't been mentioned anywhere, though. I also didn't know they weren't fair game until I spefically asked about talking about Setback's difficulty a while back. For the Hero Tier List.

This has been a worthwhile thread to peruse. I've missed these forums!