That I did not know. Been playing it wrong for years now.
As for Skyscraper: while I can understand the argument against switching her size, I don't agree with it. Keywords are not part of a character's name, they are just tags for effects to trigger off of. Skyscraper is not Skyscraper-Huge or Skyscraper-Tiny, she is just Skyscraper. Extremist Skyscraper is a variant of Skyscraper regardless of keywords. Since Guise allows you to select a variant of an existing character you get to pick whichever one of those 3 cards you wish because they are all variants of Skyscraper.
Of course I've been wrong before and won't be mad if I'm wrong now. And since we don't have an official ruling and won't really until Completionist Guise makes his way to the video game (which won't be until after Oblivaeon and all other variants are in there) I'd say play it how you feel is right.
You don't select a hero, you select a hero character card. You can't just take any three of the six Sky-Scraper cards and play her deck. You have to have a Normal, a Tiny and a Huge. If you replace an active Huge card with a variant tiny card Sky-Scraper now has 2 tiny and a normal. Sky-Scraper is not intended to play like that, and her deck doesn't work right that way.
Still, "hero" and "hero character card" are considered synonymous per Christopher. Unless there's a more recent, contradictory ruling that I don't know about?
Not necessarily true. When you're instructed to change her size, nothing says where her new card has to come from. It could come from under Guise just as well as it could come from the usual not-in-play-but-not-out-of-play limbo they usually come from.
Since "variant" isn't an official game term, I don't see any resolution to this other than Christopher answering it.
Okay here's a list of questions that I think if you can answer you can have a homebrewed ruling (and if Christopher answers these we'll have an official ruling):
1.a. Do regular Sky-Scraper character cards always swap to regular Sky-Scraper cards? i.e. b. is there some sequence of events that causes explosive reveal to switch regular tiny Sky-Scraper to extremely normal Sky-Scraper? If so describe it. (I've implied yes to a. and phantaskippy has stated no, at the beginning of the game you put Sky-Scrapers other sizes into the limbo space and only switch with cards in that space)c. In addition, if you somehow end up with regular N-ormal under Guise can you switch to it from regular Tiny?
2. Exactly which of Sky-Scrapers cards are variants of each other?
2.a. Is regular Tiny a variant of extremely Tiny? (I believe we've all said yes)
2.b. Is regular Tiny a variant of extremely Huge? (I've said yes in order to comply with my answer to question 3 and phantaskippy has said no so that 2 cards of the same size can't end up in the limbo space together)
2.c. Is regular Tiny a variant of regular Huge? (I think most of us agree no, but we could all be wrong, who knows?(Christopher does))
3. Are the cards under Guise still in play? If so, do they add to the count of cards in play for the hero they belonged to? Do they count for the ruling which is specific to Sky-Scraper (may not have made that clear earlier) that states "you can never have more than one of her character cards in play at the same time."? (I think that ruling may need an update since the introduction of the variant to have it apply seperately to her variant) (my answer to this is yes, and that puts a restriction on what card you can swap to because, if extremely normal is under Guise you can't swap to a different extreme as that'd put two of the same variant in play so you must, if swapping Sky-Scraper, use the card under Guise. Phantaskippy has said no, you can, by switching her size yourself, end up with all of one variants sizes under Guise)
Those are all the questions I want to see answered here, but I do have one more:
4. What are the mechanical differences between switching a card and replacing it? (I believe that the only difference is that replace is used when the game wants to refer to one of the 2 cards involved in the switch because Guise's first incap ability says to switch a card and doesn't reference any switched cards afterwards. That ability points somewhat towards the ability to switch Sky-Scrapers cards from under Guise)
#1: Here's the thing which makes me pretty confident that Sky-Scraper can never, on her own, swap between vanilla and Extremist: Simply owning a set of promos should not make a character objectively stronger. That's pay-to-win and is very much against the concept of this sort of game. If she has the choice of becoming either normally normal or Extremely normal (I love that turn of phrase), it's going to be flatly better than if she doesn't have that choice. So #1 should be No.
As additional evidence, Christopher has stated that it's not intended that Sky-Scraper can choose any combination of cards to play with. She has access to all three vanilla cards, or all three Extremist cards, not a mix.
#2: My opinion is that each of Sky-Scraper's same-size cards are variants of each other, and not of different-size cards. This is just my opinion, but I'm pretty confident about it.
#3: Yes, cards under other cards are considered to be in play, and to belong to the character whose deck they come from. So this would require a slight revision of that wording. Again, there's no restriction against swapping to a card that Guise took for himself. Guise could potentially end up with as many as 3 cards under himself, and they could even be of different variants, but there's no way he can have both cards of the same size collected.
#4: Now, this is interesting. First, I don't think there's a difference between "replace" and "switch". Neither is a defined term, so that's just my opinion. But the incap language is very different: "Switch a card under your card with a character card in play with the same hero name." Not a "variant." So on one hand, that suggests he could use this power to switch Sky-Scraper's size for her. On the other hand, a literal interpretation would allow him to swap the Sentinels for their Void Guard equivalents, if he could somehow get ahold of them, which he could do if one player were playing the Sentinels and another was playing a member of Void Guard--and it would even be a really good idea in an OblivAeon game.
Christopher has stated that? I remember hearing they were designed to work best with the matching sets, but players are free to mix them as long as there is 1 and only 1 of each size. So a game could totally start off with Base Normal Sky-Scraper, with Extremist Tiny and Huge Sky-Scrapers in the wait. I could be remembering incorrectly though.
This is inaccurate, we have a single ruling that has Hero mean Hero Character Card, we have no ruling anywhere that Hero Character Card can mean Hero. They are not synonymous, because if they were The Sentinels would be infinite heroes.
Ultimately, it will be answered, most likely when Completionist Guise joins the Video Game. You are arguing intent vs. semantics here. You can interperet the wording on the cards to have an effect that ruins an entire character, no tradeoff, no gain from it, no reason other than Christopher wants a card he made let players ruin the game. I mean sure, there's absolutely no way to look at that and gain any insight into what direction he might go with that.
Related: If Sky-Scraper has a variant underneath Guise, and Sky-Scraper changes form, would the card underneath Guise change as well? I would assume so if it's intended to be treated as one card with three states, rather than 3 separate cards.
Also, great potential for audio clip if Completionist Guise has Huge Sky-Scraper go to Tiny Sky-Scraper. "Whoops...umm...hope you weren't planning to switch back."
I rather like the idea that Sky-Scraper is considered "one card" for both versions, just one card with six sides. She is either Extremist Sky-Scraper or she is Sky-Scraper. If he switches out Extremist Huge for a variant Sky-Scraper, she goes to Regular Huge.
If he then changes out (after she switches stuff) the Extremist Huge card he has under him for her Regular Tiny, he hands her back the Extremist Huge card... and she puts Extremist Tiny out, because she's being switched card-for-card, but the card is just Extremist or Regular; the size she's in is up to her, and she's considered one card.
That's how I plan to treat it at my table, anyway. It makes the most coherent sense, especially based on the above question-sequence, where it says "explain how SHE chooses to be Extremist in one size, then Regular in another" and I don't have a good answer. Therefore, clearly, she shouldn't be able to, because she must JUST be Extremist or Regular, and so... that's that. She's Extreme or she's not. The rest is up to her.
And while just letting Guise eat five of her cards (Extremist Tiny, Extremist Normal, Extremist Huge, Regular Tiny, Regular Normal, leaving her with Regular Huge) probably works as written from a certain perspective, that breaks how her deck works.
For me, those are the two choices that make logical sense:
each card can be considered a variant separately,
her cards are all considered one and are a set of one variant, and a set of a second variant, and sets move together
Since option 1 could potentially ruin her entire gameplay mechanic, I'm going with option 2.
I see a third option, where Huge, Normal and Tiny are only variants of her other cards of the same size. So Huge can only switch to huge, tiny only to tiny, and normal to normal. In this interpretation Guise could get 1 of each size under his card.
That was definitely how I saw it at the start of the thread! But the question of "how does Sky-Scraper herself switch between versions of herself, not just sizes?" above made me rethink it.
Ultimately, so long as the official ruling isn't "she gets to have only one card, as the rest get farmed by a trolling Guise" I'm happy.