Oakwolf
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Posts posted by Oakwolf
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p.4 of the rulebook says:
Prepare the Star Player Decks:
Take all Star Player cards (identified by the ✪ symbol on both sides of the player’s name), and separate them into two decks, based on their card back – OWA and CWC. Shuffle each deck separately and place them facedown near the Highlight deck.
I've put the important part in bold and underscored. So yes, all star players from the division the teams are in, including out-of-race ones. I do wonder why they did this, to be honest, as the tabletop game has a far stricter star player ruleset (each team can only hire certain star players, so you'd never see a wood elf playing for a dwarf team..ever (which would no sense at all if you consider the lore of the game), but team manager allows this. It makes "ogres" really too common on the pitch and with such wild skills. As a side note, that's why we came up with house rules to reflect the tabletop version better.
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Dam is correct I believe.
Bombardiers blowing themselves up is a relatively common occurence on the tabletop game and so in theme with the goblin team mindset that i am pretty certain of that interpretation. The bomb ability is great in team manager, so it has a downside to balance it out by being unreliable
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Hmm, i hope for 1 more expansion, and then i'd consider the game complete.
Given what we currently have, there's apparently one spot left : 2 cunning, 2 willpower and 1 strenght Nemesis.
So that leaves 1 missing strenght Nemesis to give equal odds for to the character/heroes when randomly determining the nemesis. Right now, strenght focused characters have higher odds than others of facing an uphill battle vs nemesis.
Orks would be a fairly obvious strenght nemesis, although i am not sure what new mechanics he could have. We already have "swarming" Nemesises and "brute" style ones. An ork kommando nob (stealth and undercover mechanics (à la Mister X maybe) or flash git boss (gear based or being a gun for hire for everyone). One thing going for orks is that they are already in the story/system so the mechanics could benefit from the existing threat cards.
That being said, a strenght based dark eldar Wytch is also very possible (normal DE would be cunning, and haemonculi would be willpower). It could expand on the webway portal mechanism which i find somewhat lacking. There could even be some rivalry between it and the current eldar nemesis if they ever are on the board at the same time (6 player game). Unlike orks though, there's no other dark eldar cards showing their presence in the game so far.
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It comes from the HoT expansion but it's a red threat card, just in case you put it in the wrong deck.
It's en Encounter with Special Timing. So once drawn you place it on a space with a blue threat icon.
As stated in the rulebook (p.10), encounters typically remain in play unless stated otherwise. In this case, when resolved, a character must pass a cunning test (13) to get a relic.
Nothing else is mentionned so by the rules it remains in play. Note that it doesn't have charges like many encounters do.
We've not had it spawn yet in our games, but it seems like a pretty good way to get relics for a high Cunning character with evasive abilities (to evade the blue threat icon's card).
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I'll take a look when i get a chance (next time we crack open the game). What color is it just to quicken the search?
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Yeah it's a buzz, also with the movies coming out, it's just logical that they get the most of their license to go along with the hype. I haven't played it yet, but X-Wing seem to be like a good game system at the moment, and i think it's taking a chunk of miniature game players that FFG didn't use to get. It's gettng bloated out, so it will eventually slow down, but they have a lot of things to exploit if they want, in fact they haven't even touched the clone wars yet.
That said, the print-on-demand thing is our best bet, and i hope we are heard. Just like Space Hulk: Death Angel (awesome game btw).
The thing with team packs is that they will only sell for 2 types of Team Manager players:
1- completists who will want all the teams anyway
2- fans of that specific team
The real question is if that will be enough to justify the resources? depends how much it costs to develop.
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Bought the whole game (including expansions). It's a great alternative to the tabletop (miniature) game, especially when travelling. The solo play is great as well as with others.
Would love to see space wolves or ultra marines, although my favorite being deathwing, i am really happy with it
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We succeeded against the scenario, albeit we only got to play it once.
One of the big deal, i think, is that we had my wife playing the Canoness (she always does) and another player got the Navigator at random. Both those can toy a bit more with corruption than other characters, so this may explain our success.
Obviously, with a Nemesis on the board, the scenario is completely nuts as mentionned above, and i wouldn't introduce a nemesis unless there was 5 characters already. The scenario is co-op for a reason.
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For us they didn't improve that much over time, some of the busts are just too tight, especially those that came with the original box, so i used a modeling knife to widen ever so slightly the holes inside the busts. Going slow and precise, it worked wonders and now they are all snug-fit and easy to remove.
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I think the game is fleshed out in terms of game mechanics, but yes, team expansion packs (maybe in-house printing?) would be great.
Main races we don't have atm:
Amazons
Norse
Halflings
High Elves
Khemri
Necromantics
So there's enough variety in there to make a few interesting teams with the existing ruleset, although to be complete, some might require either expansions of the game to use all the skills/abilities.
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It's maybe an avenue to look at.
I'd agree with the statement that all teams are not equal and some are particularily outside the norm.
Dwarves, Vampires, Undeads and to a lesser extent (based on our games) dark elves.
Dwarves really don't need much to start being viable, and from what we've seen it's not linked to their ability to tackle (block) their opponent, but rather the fact that they are stuck with whatever hands they get in rotation. Lack of sprint is what makes it a problem when playing vs teams with sprint, and the lack of a 4 power player cuts them down when facing orcs for example. So i wouldn't add a death roller to the team from the get go, it's overkill. We did test the team with a free team upgrade (the free sprint for the use of the guard skill) and they had more success.
It's why we decided to change the sprint/foul skill in the end, solved that issue for teams who don't get access to it, while still providing a nice bonus to those who do. However, even after this change...it does seem that the Vampire and Undead team are still respectively under and over the crowd.
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Indeed that's one thing that always bugged me a bit with the vanilla game. In the tabletop game, each team(race) has its list of available star players. Course guys like Morg play for almost all teams, but that's not the case for Griff Oberwald or Count Luthor Von Drakenborg. Maybe they made it so to add flavor, or maybe they did so to allow for a different star player mechanism down the road,who knows.
We use a different system here; Each coach's 5 team star players are shuffled and put into a "star player deck". The top card is put face up, showing which star player is currently available for hire at the time. Each time a team get a "star icon" (star player) payout, they get 1 token. At the end of each scoreboard phase (when they collect payout), they can either spend tokens to hire the available star player, or send it to the bottom of the pile. This creates a bit of a "build up" as people either go for the big guy (5 star) or try to hire 2 or more lesser heroes.
So what to do with the rest of the "ogres"? We simply made an Ogre team called the Freebooters with its own set of rules.
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I'll probably buy everything they produce for Relic, considering the success it has with my wife and family.
I really wish they'll make an Ork nemesis at a point...i hoped it would show up in the next expansion, as that race is great material to explore for a "Strenght" nemesis.
That said, concerning the terminator my initial thought was also "could this be a Deathwing terminator?"
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Hello, we've sorted out a new set of house rules. Putting them here in case some would like to test try them out. We played a few games so far and like how it turns out to be.
Some may have read my house rules to re-balance the teams down in the forums, and they do work well enough, but i always like to have the least amount of house rules for the most balanced games possible. With the Foul Play expansion, things started to get ugly and the game was getting less fun for us. The Foul skill easily illustrated the problem: players cards toying with coaches strategy (and potentially critically so) was not fun. The issue with Foul is the same as with Sprint: they sort of unbalance the game by messing up with card cycling. Sprinting teams were always favored, while fouling teams are despised due to the "unfun" mechanic. Fouling out your newly recruited Star Player meant a really bad turn of event...out of complete randomness and without risk. Sprinting your linemen out of your hand created super-teams randomly and there was nothing a coach could do about it (or else Sprint as well).
1. I believe that players should have an impact on the match up (or tournament) where they are played, not on the coach's hand, and even less so on an opposing coach's hand.
2. In the tabletop game, sprinting is not too risky, but gives a slight edge to move about (tactical, and can give you a shot at scoring). Fouling is quite risky, but can get rid of a downed player.
3. I found that teams that relied on tackles or cheats were far more prone to bad luck streaks than teams who relied on sprint. (The Ball skill is ok, imho, with its own little game going on).
---House Rules---
1. Sprint : Optional skill. The sprinting player rolls 2 block dice.
1. Success: If any of the dice result in a (POW), the player adds 1 to his star power at the beginning of the scoreboard phase (2 POWs don't add 2, just 1). Place a team counter (or any marker) on the sprinting player to remember that bonus.
2. Trip over: If the dice result in 2 (X)s, then this player is downed or injured (representing him tripping over during his effort). (Note: the most common reason for injury would be a player using sprint as a Downed Skill)
3. Failure: Any other results (Blank+X, Double Blanks) does nothing.
So this means that some players will be worth more if left around, even if downed. It represents their ability to be threatening due to their speed. The added risk to sprint is relatively minimal (1/36), and has 3/4 of adding a +1 star power to win the match up. (and 1/4 to have nothing happening).
Example: A Wardancer successfully tackles a player, then uses the Sprint skill, rolling two dice. A double POW comes in, so she will now be worth 4 at the start of the scoreboard phase.
I evaluated that the former sprint skill was worth much more than 1 Star power point per Sprint skill used, so while at first you may be surprised to see the value of some players at the end of a round, imagine back what it was when that Lineman (1) turned into a Treeman (4) every turn. So this gives a new tactical incentive to injure sprinting players or protect downed sprinters with the Guard skill.
2. Foul : This optional skill can only be used on a downed player. Roll 1 block dice.
1. Success: On a (POW), the targetted player is injured.
2. Spotted!: On a (X), draw one penalty card. (note: if you're not playing with penalties, eject the fouling player). Remember, penalty cards drawn this way are kept face down until later in the scoreboard phase as normal.
3. Failure: Any other result does nothing.
The result is highly cinematic, you can imagine the gang trample action that goblins like to do. Basically the big thing going for it is that it affects the match up and not the opposing coach's ability to play the game. The risk vs reward factor is interesting here, penalties are nasty, but getting rid of some downed players is quite useful. Of course...fouling a treeman is nice, but you do have to get him down first!
3. Recycling the teams!
Coaches of Dwarf, Vampires and some non-sprinting teams know what it is to get 6 players then the 6 others in turn, for the whole match unless they spice it up with star players. With this variant of sprinting rules, all teams are now equal in this affair, so it's worth looking into. In order to keep things interesting and players on their toes:
Roster shuffle: After every 2 complete turns (so typically, at the end of turn 2 and 4), the whole team roster is reshuffled (discard and deck).
What this means is that, unless you have more than 12 players in your roster, all players will get to play before you recycle again, and then it's new lines. This will ensure that if you're fielding a crap hand while your opponent has his top notch group, it doesn't bog down into a I-win-you-win affair for the five turns (like it can currently happen when vamps and dwarves play vs each other). It also means that no one knows what's going to happen for the Blood Bowl itself (5th turn).
Star players and some other team upgrades mess things up slightly, and some odd things can happen (like having a player not participate in the 2 round bouts, due to more than 12 players being on the roster). So this means that star players are not just a bonus now, they can sometimes "overshadow" your normal stars, but there's more chance of it taking the place of a weaker player.
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So there you have it, a variant to try out if you want the sprint and foul skills to impact match ups where the players are played, rather than the team rosters.
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We've clocked well over 30 games with them and they're in our bottom pit of strenght for a reason...if you come to other conclusions, it's all cool, but we're not "weak" players either...
Sure they are harder to play because you have to think a bit more than other teams, that i am all cool with, but their effectiveness, even taking all skills included and even giving them to our best player, still get them crushed time and time again. Basically the risk vs reward ratio is under what we get from other teams...meaning they will be against the odds a lot.
That said, we play 1v1 often, and as stated above, this does affect one's experience, your mileage will vary...etc.etc.
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It sure would give the "sprinting" team coaches more things to think about. Right now it's pretty clear that the sprinting skill dominates, or at the very least dictates the game. The sad consequence of this is that some teams just never play their linemen.
That said, the fouling skill is almost just as bad in a reversed manner towards your opponent...potentially making him play with an incomplete team roster.
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I think he didn't check or went for personal imagination.
The only "fae" stuff that amazons teams had some time ago was a pegasus and it was removed in the later books. They currently have linewomen, catchers, throwers and blitzers, like humans, but play very differently.
So far FFG generally stuck to the official selection, but they went vaguely creative with certain teams. Say vampires got "veteran thralls", nurgle have "clinging rotters" that are basically skilled versions of the linemen. I think Chaos dwarves also got an hobgoblin stabber or thrower too and wood elves got a bonus wardancer. But yeah they didn't add "races" or re-invent positionals in there.
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Yeah i suspected something like that was going on since we had such different results in our group. We've done some tests for study purposes only, allowing assassins and runners both their skills instead of a choice set. Results shown that they were propelled to top tier simply because they could cycle their deck so fast (4 sprint players+downed sprints from runners). Just like the wood elves, you'd not see those linemen anymore, and those witches were coming down every turn to great effect.
So we've removed that, although it did allow us to put the finger on the problem imho. Loosing 1 star power for a sprint doesn't compute for me. My point of view is that the team is already 2 power below most right from the start, so there's a bleeding effect...plus those downed players often get injured right away.
Next time we'll test with just the runners having Ball and Sprint, and a downed sprint, leaving the assassins as designed.
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Thanks for the insight. When i get them, i play rather aggressively although i don't tackle 2D against as a rule, but i'll 1D tackle if i need to (odds are still with me even though it's far worse than a 2D tackle).
I agree with you, some of their team upgrades are exceptional (deathlace, seething hatred). Sneering assistant ain't always useful unless you're being tackled, but combines with the "risk" of tackling Dark elves with downed skills. But when you get deathlace -and- sneering assistant, tackling any of your player is quite a gamble...in fact i wonder if it's not worse than using a 1D roll.
I take it that you play multi-player games often, wheareas here we often play 1v1 when we can't get more players. I think their flaws are really emphasized in 2 player games.
We've made a test with the 2 power players getting both skills rather than a choice, but it was too good. We'll try it next time with just the runners having the 2 skills.
Thing is, other teams have good upgrades as well, but they just start out better...those extra star power points in the beginning, or access to a bunch of skills that are not downed often give them a headstart vs dark elves, who then play a risky catch up game just to try to keep heads over water.
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1 - Wood elves and Skaven win games through their roster management (sprint) over here. They are perceived to be in the top tier of the teams, especially once they get star players to cycle.
2 - Yes a part of the team is seen as more "work" for the player in order to get results that other teams achieve rather easily by simply managing their players correctly. The concensus here is that this "work" comes from the assassins and runners. These same guys also give you a choice in different skill sets, which while making them more flexible, don't always help winning the match up themselves (partly because the Dark elf team starts with low power in the roster). Admitedly the witches and blitzers are far less of an issue and are good players, but like vampires, they have only 4 of them.
3 - The Dark elves seems to be guided toward a risky game in order to have a shot (at least that's what we've seen) at winning even regular match ups, the most obvious part of it is the dauntless 1D block by the assassins to try and get an edge in star power. Perhaps we should play them even more risky...
But this leads to the downed skill issue. A downed skill is less valuable than a standard one, first because they are not always useful (or even used). Second, downed skills are hardly worth planning for use, because they imply a loss of star power that handicap them winning the match up in the first place...and puts the player prone to being injured. Rarely have i seen a downed skill helping enough to compensate for that loss (again, dark elves have less star power from the start). They are fun, and personally i think it's a good mechanic, but it's not enough for the team to get wins vs the top teams. Franky we'd be ok with them being just average, but as it is...they fail to even achieve that.
4 - I'm not sure myself what is the correct decision when it comes to upgrades or payout to hunt in general for this team. I typically go depending on the situational needs, unless a team has a real advantage to go for a payout (ex. wood elves and star players). Their team upgrades seems to be okay-ish but some have a random factor which doesn't garantee their use. Drawing Sneering assistant ain't a cause for much glee on the third turn.
You seem to be a cheerful dark elf coach, perhaps the only one i've read of...so please give us insights on how you get that success.
So far we've tried house rules:
- Giving a downed Tackle skill on the assassins, proved to be useless given dauntless doesn't work once downed.
- We've then switched to a free Sneering assistant, but even if it came into play once per turn in some of our games, it was still not enough to bring the team even close to a fair game (let alone win).
- We'll now test giving the runners and assassins a full line of skill instead of a choice of skill set. For example, an assassin would get Tackle and Sprint, while the runner would get Pass and Sprint. We believe this should help the team alot.
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We're in a little bit of a lull with this team. It's one of the favorite team around but whoever plays with them looses almost every time (they never won in multiplayer), plus they get especially crushedin 2 player games (something they may not be designed around, but just for emphasis).
They were (again) beaten badly tonight and it's getting some negative play experience burn on us because we all want the players to have fun. The goblins mauled them so badly they set a new record (64).
We've given them a Sneering Assistant at start up to try and balance them up, but to no avail, they still loose the individual match up their players are in.
So what do you do with them to win those match ups, how do you fight off other rosters who have 4 power players, more sprint and/or typically more ball.
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For the record, the downed skills interrupt sequence of the active player and are resolved immediately after the player is knocked down, so in that example above, the dark elf assassin would use his downed skill "Pass" and then normal sequences would resume and the human blitzer could trigger his response.
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Mmm i don't know how you get that much success, here they've been on the suffering end of the spectrum many times...we suspect that this is due to some players being too weak (assassins or runners), making dark elves struggle to actually win match ups via star power, and are prone to loose that star power quicker (SP 2 is easy to tackle out). Downed skills are fun, but imho they do not compensate for the lack of pure star power of the roster (i.e. there's no reason why this team has less overall star power than others, afaik). Witches and Blitzers are pretty good of course, but not better than the opposition's specialists, and that's only 4 players on the roster.
But as i stated earlier in this thread, it's the team we've had the most trouble finding a way to balance. So far we've been giving them a Sneering assistant right from the start. We need to play more to know if it makes a satisfying difference or not.
P.S. i wonder what would have happened if the team had access to 3 blitzers.
Modular Set difficulty
in Marvel Champions: The Card Game
Posted
Some sets also tickle a hero's personal bane...A mess of things can be very tough on She-Hulk, who is particularly affected by Stunned.
Don't know about Goblin Gimmicks, it seems to work better with Mutagen formula than with Risky Business (as far as The Green Goblin pack is concerned).