There were six people interested in playing (thought T/S was in) and since I am in most of the forum games I volunteered to sit out.
But you are in now, correct? I think you're up first for choosing a hero, if so.
I'll take Bunker, but I don't really care, I'll run anyone.
The game thread will be here; I was starting to set up turn 1, but then I realized that with the heroes having choices in their opening hand, I need to not reveal Omnitron's card plays until after the hands have been posted. So I need everyone to select their hero - I had said that the last in could be the first out, but at this point I don't want to wait for anyone, so just grab whoever's left as soon as you can post - and create your opening hand, then we can get started. With the Shattered Storyline on hold, I figure now is the perfect time to get this ball rolling.
Remember also that the two cards you don't select from your opening hand, and each card that you don't select when drawing a card, should be tracked in a "Deck" field. (Use a "?" to represent the still-shuffled part of your deck; eventually when someone's playing Visionary or fighting Kismet, you'll be able to learn topdeck as well as bottom-deck cards and can list those in front of the "?".) If you play the same hero for two games in a row, we will try the "don't shuffle between games" thing, with your trash from game 1 being stacked on the bottom of your deck in the order of your choice. If this proves to break the game in half, it can be dropped eventually…about that time we'll be bringing in more characters, so normalizing the game will make up for the restricted character selection being improved.
Ready to start round 2 yet? I have thoughts about appropriate villain/environment combos if you need them. :)
Question: Is one game only 1 movie?
Also, I'd be up for a game, but I don't have too much time.
RL is busy, so it's probably not starting until this weekend. I also have such thoughts, but wouldn't mind hearing yours.
I would like it if we could change out players periodically, but it carries the consequence of shuffling the hero's deck, whereas the same player can resume a role and have their deck partially stacked. (Not too useful for Wraith, since I hadn't instituted a fix to her deck-shuffling…if we are to rotate a new player in, she'd be the best one to change out.) Yes, my thought is that each game is a separate movie. (Probably not exactly the movie we played out in our game…I'd want to do a bit of a rewrite on the exact events, as they didn't have a great narrative flow, what with not having been fully planned out in advance. Doing that would obviously have made for a terrible game, but not doing it made for a pretty bad script…I could keep some of the little moments we had, but they'd need to be restructured considerably.)
My thoughts about bench characters are to make some combnation of Ra, Haka, and Unity the next three on the bench. Sticking with the core set for now, I'd use Baron Blade as the next villain in the Ruins of Atlantis and then bring in Cosmitron in one of the next two games after that.
Should not be too hard to re-constitute a player's deck from the last turn of the previous game - they generally had a track of what the in-hand, bottom cards, in-play cards, trash, etc. were for each player. For the (?) cards they are supposedly in an unknown/random state and those being shuffled by a new player shouldn't really be an issue since in the abstract their order was not known anyways.
Was there a ruling or suggestion for how the end-of-game trash, in-play, and hand would be put onto/into the deck for starting the new game?
Prime Wardens first (possibly excluding Argent Adept), then Visionary and Ra in some order, and then Unity.
Sticking with the core set for now, I'd use Baron Blade as the next villain in the Ruins of Atlantis
Ennh…not feeling it. Blade is kind of a tool, I want to think more about how to make him interesting.
and then bring in Cosmitron in one of the next two games after that.
Not happening. I want to put off repeat villain matches for a good bit (probably not the full 18/19 games, but at least several), and the next match vs. Omnitron will be regular Omnitron on Advanced. Only then will he get the Cosmic upgrade.
that's cool, too. Your movies, your scripts. I was thinking of the way that Harry Osborne came back as the Green Goblin in Spidey 3.
If you're willing to branch out beyond the core set, especially if you're bringing in Prime Wardens, then I'd probably go with (Advanced) Ambuscade in Insula Primalis. Ambuscade in Insula is one of my go-to combinations for teaching new people the game now.
Off this topic: The Grasshopper (age 8) and I played two games yesterday morning, getting CRUSHED by Akash'bhuta in the Tomb of Anubis and then having a tough-but-fair fight against Ambuscade in the Final Wasteland. It's the first time I've ever seen Ambuscade's traps go off, and he set two of them off in a single turn.
Baron Blade and Ambuscade would both gain a lot from this style. Esp. if you used the traps play a card rule, revealing two each turn would bring them up much faster, and make his play the top card engine way more powerful and frequent.
With 6 of his cards being Quick Stim/Run&Gun/Armed&Dangerous, and another 4 being traps that is 10 cards out of 25 that would play the next card of the deck. That gives you a 65% chance of hitting one first turn or after a re-shuffle.
When you are burning 2 cards each time that plays wicked fast. Plus with how much he shuffles the trash into the deck you wouldn't even have to be concerned about stashing some of them, since the ones that get trashed will get shuffled back in. It might make Ambuscade fun.
The Baron would give you a better chance of hitting his actually good cards, but he still might need more help to be threatening, mostly on his second side, because you don't want him winning on his first side, that isn't how these things go.
(You could have the end of turn card discard start high and taper down to represent the countdown timing used in films where you can't do more than walk up a flight of stairs in 8 minutes if there are 15 left on the timer, but can drive across town, discuss the nature of the universe, cure cancer, take an online bomb defusing course and make up with your ex in the last 30 seconds before cutting the wire and saving the day with one second left.
Thinking about the next match, I'm finding that my favorite candidate is actually The Matriarch, but with a twist. I don't like the idea of most of the major villains coming onstage before their hero nemeses do (I'll likely make a few exceptions for ones where the rivalry isn't especially personal), so with Vengeance not quite here yet, I'm limited to the enemies of the F5, and Bunker and AZ don't have any. Wanting to save Baron Blade just a bit longer, that leaves Matty or Spite, and aside from the fact that Spite isn't precisely second-movie material, we just got done with him in the Episodes and I'm sick of his stupid face. But even given that the heroes can't really lose, Matty is way too hard for a fight this early, still using an experimental houserule (one which goes exceedingly pear-shaped with her; I may simply decide to not have her use it, which will give you guys a bit of an edge against her). But what I'm really thinking is, she's not really villainous so much as misguided, and so in the first part of the "movie", I'm thinking she's not Matriarch yet, just Tachyon's annoying brat cousin Lilian, who's tagging along while you fight some B-threat.
So here's my idea, although I don't feel I have it fully cooked as yet. So far I'm just brainstorming, but tell me what you think of this. We'll go with one of the more dangerous Environments, not quite Rook City or Time Cataclysm but something close to that, and the first turn of the game will be an Environment turn, while Villain turns will happen at the end of each round. Until some goal has been achieved, Lilian is not a target, does not have the Mask of the Matriarch in play, and can only play a single Fowl card per turn, none of which affect the heroes. At some point when the heroes are done fighting the dinosaurs or the kraken or whatever, Lilian wanders away from the heroes and finds the Mask, at which point the Fowl who've been milling around harmlessly in the sky suddenly attack at her direction. At that point, Matty is fully in play and the game proceeds normally.
Yeah, the Raimi Spider-Mans are not what I consider a standard of writing to emulate.
Again, this is not a trope I strive to uphold. I prefer to deconstruct, lampshade, or otherwise deal with the cliches that are least overtly stupid, and the rest I try to throw out altogether. (I actually think it'd be neat to do a movie where there are maps and chronometers and stuff in the margins to give you a better factual sense of where everyone is, and avoid the ability for the writer to play fast and loose with the reality of the setting.)
Or simply have people looking at clocks every now and then like in High Noon.
A fitting environment for what you describe is probably the Tomb of Anubis, which lets you put Ra onto the bench (I know he's not a Prime Warden, but I think he gets mentioned on some of the environment cards). When the heroes first recover a relic, the Mask of the Matriarch comes into play.
How's that?
Thought about that, and I may decide to go that route, but I kinda feel as though Ra ought to be in the game before Anubis is, although I'm less committed there than I am with the Ennead. I'll keep thinking it over a bit more.
Well the Ennead starts out attacking cities, the tomb of anubis would be more fitting as an end to that series.
With as easy as the first fight ended up I'd say it was a proper first movie, they all come together despite their different backgrounds and all that drama, and go save the day.
Now the second fight we need to kill someone.
Could do Voss with an added rule that the last non-voss villain target is indestructible and immune to damage. That would up his deadliness a good bit. Would also need to flip with that one in play.
This looks like an interesting...thing!
I would be interested in joining in a game of this...if you guys would be willing to take me. I am not super familiar with all of the perceptions of each hero's personality, though I do have some idea (I've played the game, after all). I am pretty good at role playing, writing the flavor text, etc, though, and I'm all right at playing the game too.
I read through the first one you guys did, it looks like fun!
I'd also be up for joining a game.
Well, the plan was that there would need to be at least one more F5 game before we expanded the series, but maybe I should just say "screw it" and start two new games in tandem so that everyone can play. i wasn't really feeling the "don't shuffle your deck between games" rule anyway.
Anyway, one of our games is definitely F5 vs. the Matriarch, and I'm strongly leaning toward Insula Primalis as the Environment. Last chance to argue the point....