Without further ado...
Picking the Villain
So, I decided a long time ago the villain needed to be relatively simple: no Dreamer, Progeny, anything like that. I think minion-based villain decks are usually the easiest to understand, and so my early thinking pointed me towards Citizen Dawn and Thano...Grand Warlord Voss. Dawn's deck however, despite my love of its theming, is probably just a little too swingy to put people against since it has multiple board wipes that can wreck your day. I like Voss a lot more, and had all but decided on him, but his deck has two shortcoming for this event:
1. Most of his minions have low health pools, really incentivizing players to take AOE damaging abilities (hello Tempest). I want a villain who you can in good conscience take both AOE and single-target damage against and not be screwed by over-investing in one over the other.
2. His deck is a ticking time bomb, and I don't want my players to have to worry about 10 minions getting on the board in addition to trying to win. The time limit and the competition format are enough to rush them.
It was then that I hit upon one of my favorite villains from this game as my competition baddie:
The first time we played against La Capitan, she pulled the perfect opening combo of cards and nearly obliterated us (we only won by combining the Scholar with Wraith's smoke bombs to mitigate damage with Amanda wiping out the minions as Skyscraper). The second time, she couldn't get her key cards out and it was really disappointing. She's the perfect candidate with someone like me stacking her opening deck to get a good level of difficulty.
La Capitan has a minion-based deck, but its different than most as it has fewer higher health minions. This makes diversifying into both AOE and single-target good for dealing with her. She also doesn't have a time limit attached to her deck, other than the fact that eventually she will kill you with the sheer amount of cards she's cycling back in if you are not careful. She also feels appropriately like a video game boss fight, with periods where you can damage her (Time Corsair), before stealing your shit and becoming untargetable (Split Across Time). She also heals in this time making it important to kill her quickly. However, lots of damage in her deck scales based on the amount of crew she has out, so you can't ignore them either.
She steals your equipment and ongoing cards, but not to an extent that decks heavily based on this will be unusable. If anything she incentivizes you getting more and more out so you have shitty stuff she can plunder. Finally, she has a couple nasty ongoing cards.
I've seeded the top seven cards of her deck, and @players, you can bet she's going to get a fair amount of her crew out on the board right off the bat. Your immediate problem will be: Do we kill the ship so she draws less cards and to slow her roll, or do we kill the minions who are currently hurting us and powering up her other cards? Playing against her should be punishing, but with three four-person teams, I don't think players will have problems defeating her - especially since we're not using advanced rules or nemeses. Not everyone will necessarily make it to the end though.
Picking the Hero Pool
Okay, so the villain in mind. Time to pick heroes! It was an obvious choice to create a limited pool simply to close off OP options and limit the tyranny of choice for players. Ideally, my goal is to create a relatively balanced pool of heroes that allow for multiple paths to victory. I prefer that the winning team win based on clever play or a really synergistic comp as opposed to one "must pick" hero.
With this in mind, my main picking criteria:
1. Nobody who is a must-include in a winning team comp/dramatically more powerful than others.
2. Nobody who is super user unfriendly/confusing for people (Absolute Zero - who I think is also probably the strongest hero in the game).
3. Good balance of the four archetypes (I'm aiming for 2 tanks, 2 supports, 2 control mages, and 2 damage, with the secondary focuses of the main eight heroes being somewhat balanced as well).
4. Eliminate or downplay damage mitigation abilities (Haka's Ground Pound, I'm looking at you).
5. Multiple sources of healing (3-4 would be ideal).
6. Multiple decks with "Kill Cards" that can remove "Ongoing" cards (2-3 would be ideal).
So, here's what we got:
The eight I settled on are:
Haka
Ra
Wraith
Omnitron-X
Scholar
Fanatic
Legacy
Tachyon
We ended up with 2 from each category, but with four secondary control heroes and no supports. Eh, not ideal, but I'm not unhappy with it. I doubt my players will mind. We have three healers, and four heroes with self-healing ability. The only one out in the cold here is Tachyon. Wraith, Fanatic, Omnitron, and Tachyon all have "kill cards." The concession I had to end up making was on damage mitigation, i.e. - cards that block all enemy damage for a turn. Tachyon has Hypersonic Assault and Haka has Ground Pound. I don't like these cards, but I love these heroes and I think it would be very sad to not have them int he competition when their kits are otherwise fine. I debated removing one or both instances of these cards from their decks, but held back out of fear of nerfing them too hard. Instead, I am going to institute one picking restriction:
Your team can only have one of Tachyon/Haka.
I don't want this game to be a story of combining the two and endlessly blocking damage.
I ended up with a good difficulty spread too, although I think the website I'm using as a guide overrates Scholar's difficulty, and is better thought of as a "2." At any rate, we have a good spread of simple and intermediate heroes for people to work with.
Before I get more into the heroes who made it, let's talk about the ones (that I have) who didn't and why they didn't.
1. Skyscraper
- Generally too complex of a hero, and her massive focus on AOE is a hard counter to La Capitan (ask Amanda how she carried our first game against Maria Helena with this hero).
2. The Visionary
- Way too strong in four player team comps, and would likely be a must-include. I also didn't want the players to have the ability to fuck with my deck stacking, or render the already fragile La Capitan impotent through card manipulation.
3. Tempest
- I think Tempest is just the strongest or second strongest in the game (compared to Absolute Zero with Visionary on the team). Moreover, her ability to do strong consistent AOE damage and retrieve trashed cards for players would likely make her a must include for all winning team comps.
4. Absolute Zero
- Fully powered up, probably the strongest character in the game. And hard for new players to use at that, I thought it best he sit this round out.
5. Captain Cosmic
- La Capitan has a lot of cards that deal damage to the highest HP hero target, and little in the way of AOE, so his constructs would likely last forever (short of me using an environment like the Dok'Thorath capital). Too strong, he had to go.
6. Chrono-Ranger
- I love this character's design, although our players sometimes struggle to make him worth. He's also probably particularly susceptible to La Capitan's deck since she plunders ongoing and equipment cards and he only has one example of each weapon. Still, I almost swapped out Wraith for him.
7. Bunker
- Nobody really likes Bunker and Haka does essentially the same things. The choice came down between these two for that slot and I felt like people would prefer Haka.
As for the heroes who actually made it, some brief thoughts:
1. Haka
- Really good all-rounder, and he has the Ground Pound. Went back and forth on him for awhile but ultimately included him because of his popularity in our games.
2. Ra
- I knew I would include this hero from the very beginning. You want damage, you take Ra. AOE, single target, he's got you. He also has four examples of his staff in his deck and four cards that summon it so even if he gets plundered he won't be out of it for long.
3. Wraith
- If I had to drop one champion from the pool it would be Wraith, I think she just has a boring deck. She's also probably more susceptible to La Capitan than most. However, she has really strong AOE damage once set up against the La Capitan's crew, and her smoke bombs are naturally really synergistic with Legacy or the Scholar.
4. Omnitron-X
- Probably my second favorite hero in the game. Pretty susceptible to La Capitan, but X scales super hard and also has more kill cards in their deck than anybody else. Probably your best option short of Visionary for trying to control what La Capitan is putting on the field. I look forward to seeing how people use their plating.
5. Scholar
- My actual favorite, ultimate support tank. I look forward to seeing if anyone can get out double flesh to irons this game.
6. Fanatic
- I almost didn't include Fanatic, as she gets a lot weaker without someone making her draw cards. Unlike Ra and his staff, she has no card that retrieves Absolution for her. However, with her good mix of tanking, damage, healing, two kill cards, two (limited) damage mitigators and a massive burst card, I think Fanatic may be the most well-rounded hero in this game. However, outside the right team comp, she just may have some difficulty getting INTO THE FRAY.
7. Legacy
- I like encouraging team play, and if a four-person team is not the perfect place for Galvanize, I don't know what is.
8. Tachyon
- Another one of the most popular heroes in our pool. Tachyon is probably one of the better designed heroes in the game, with her deck and gameplay very accurately convey her character. Lots of good support options, and massive end-game burst. The key question will be if players want to use one of their Lightspeed Barrages early to clear out a critical minion, or save it for late game to start pummeling Maria herself. Either way, I expect to see a lot of Tachyon picks. Just maybe pair her with a few healers. XD
Finally, it's time for...
Picking the Environment
My primary picking consideration with environment was to find one that didn't do the hero or the villain's job for them. I want a low impact environment that merely alters the conditions per turn and doesn't give damage debuffs or buffs that stick around for long periods of time. I considered the Dok'Thorath capital for awhile, as I love the theming of that deck, but the massive AOE damage coming out of it every turn would have been too much to track.
After looking through all the environments I settled on Time Cataclysm, appropriate in a lot of ways for La Capitan. The essence of this deck is lots of temporal anomalies phasing in and out, and no two cards in this deck are the same. There are a couple high impact cards in this deck, but in general I find its a more neutral deck that doesn't especially favor anyone and provides some fun turn conditions.
I am seeding the top two cards of this deck as well, once again in the name of smoothing out the difficulty curve and making sure each team faces similar starting conditions. How they fare after that though remains to be seen. This game will likely end up being decision by RNG more than anything else, but I expect it to still be very interesting. Perhaps more than anything else, I'm excited to see what people end up picking and the comps they devise :D
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