I got my kickstarter yesterday, because I'm lucky enough to live in St. Louis, where all the boxes are. We had a successful game night last night, which featured beatdowns of Apostate (Legacy, Unity, Visionary) and the kinder, gentler, scaled Citizen Dawn (Wraith, Tempest, New Ra). I guess we didn't actually play much with the new Infernal Relics stuff, but I'm already quite pleased with look, feel, and bling of the Enhanced Edition. I packed up all of the first edition cards to be given to my sister, along with a legion of dice and tokens for her to use.
I will say it would have been cool to have different art on Apostate's two Gauntlets of Perdition.
So what do people want to know? I don't do pictures, and I won't type up a whole card list or anything, but I'm happy to tell you some stuff. A bit hollow, coming mere days before you get yours, I guess. But still, if you're in the market for spoilers, I'm finally here to give them. (Spiff? McBehrer? Ketegid?)
What are games vs. Apostate like? From what I've seen of his game text, it looks like you have to beat him down repeatedly but every time you've killed him, he gets to burn a Relic and yell "just kidding! You didn't really kill me!". Does that make for a game filled with irritating false endings, or does it flow more smoothly than that?
Well, it's like this. Apostate has a tendency to slap a bunch of Relics on the table. He has eight of them (unless I missed one just now). Some of them do damage, some of them are hard to kill, and some are just there to cause problems you. If you get them out together, they can be very hard to kill.
I suppose you have seen that his flip condition is that if you kill him while he has a relic in play, he flips. I have never seen him flip. Either he kills me while I try to navigate the minefield of his relics, or I destroy his relics, then destroy him.
If you find it too hard to remove his Relics, it looks possible to kill him to get rid of them - by comparison, he's generally much easier to hurt than they are. I've never tried it, though.
We've actually used his flip mechanic to get rid of Relics, planning to hit him for as much damage as quickly as possible once he flipped. It worked. :)
OK, a question regarding Ambuscade -- how do his traps feel during a game? Seems to me that you could unveil a trap, shuffle it back into the deck and never see it again for the rest of the fight. Or does that not end up happening in practice?
As is, it's very possible to set up a trap, and then never see it again. If this happens, the turn Ambuscade spend to set up the trap is wasted, which is a sad thing. Now, he frequently shuffles his deck and plays several cards every turn, so the traps generally have a good chance to get triggered.
Even so, since I like my games hard, I am having success with the house rule that he starts with all of his traps set.
2: Relics! They both employ relics as lifelinks. (Fanatic has her Aegis.)
3: Double attacks! Apostate's basic attack mirror's Fanatic's Exorcism. This is what makes them kill each other best, really. Double attacks on a nemesis hurt a lot!
4: Mirrored cards. Remorseless Provocation is very similar to Brutal Censure. Fallen Angel is similar to Holy Nova.
Just wanted to throw in that I too picked up my order at their office. Though I am not fortunate enough to live in St. Louis, I did however make a four hour drive there to pick it and stay the night at a hotel where I played it with my wonderful wife. I think I go there about 2:20 and actually stuck around and asked somethings untils a little after 3:30. So any of you who came around then and saw a random guy and gal there that would of been me. Played three games; Redeemer Fanatic, Tachyon, Unity, and drawing a blank on the last one against the Ennead, the second was Legacy, Tempest, Wraith, and Unity against Mad Bomber Baron Blade, then finally NightMist, The Argent Adept, Absolute Zero, and Haka facing off GloomWeaver.
Apostate and Fanatic are similar do to the fact that their cards Apocalypse and End of Days do essentially the same exact thing. Also whenever Apostate is reduced to zero and has a relic in play he will recover HP (or ignore the damage depending on which side he is on) and flip, much like Fanatic's beautiful armor. There are a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head, mainly since I actually haven't fought Apostate since playtesting days.
I've had two games against Apostate, one where he crushed us, and one where he ended up going down relatively easily.
it all comes down to his card draw (and the environment can screw you over too)
The time we were crushed, he first got out a relic that reduced damage dealt to it by 2. Next turn, he got a one shot that gave him two ore relics, one of which instantly brought out a third relic, which made damage to all relics reduced by 2 (so now -4 on that first one). Then the same one shot came up, and he got two more relics, one of which redirected damage dealt to relics to it (and had much more hp than all the others).
Most of these relics were putting out damage or boosting damage, and we were hurting badly.
Then, to add insult to injury, the realm of discord made all villain targets except the one with the lowest hp immune to damage. We just gave up at that point.
Second game, Apostate brought out some demons (minions) rather than a wave of relics. We could kill off his start relics pretty easily, and it meant he never got more than 2 out at a time, and we could spend more time hurting Apostate directly.
The other boss I've fought so far is Akash'bhuta. Word of advice: don't fight her in the temple of Anubis. She can heal when environment targets come out, equal to the hp of the environment target. Anubis has 20hp, and there are cards in that deck that search for him and bring him out, so he can appar more than once per cycle through the deck. We hardly scratched the villain at all.
Meant to add: I'm hoping to find time to go through all the decks and document changed art. Changes to card play and flavour text are documented in the PDFs available on this website, but not art changes. There's some interesting info to be gleaned there
eg: Haka's deck has a lot of changes, making Haka's himself seem a much more playful character and less vicious. Punish the Weak now shows him irritatingly fending off tiny little aliens (from Voss), rather than beating some humans senseless. Savage Mana no longer has Haka's beating a poor fairground entertainer in a hippo suit. Ambuscade also appears in Haka's deck, replacing a featureless humanoid from the old deck (forget the name of the card).
No, but he's no longer on Savage Mana. He's now the recipient of an Elbow Smash!
Even better, the quote is now appropriate to the art on that card: "You are not nearly as fearsome as your namesake." Ha! (I don't remember the original quotes and don't have my cards here; I'm assuming that quote is new.)
This might be another topic entirely, but I think a villain deck for "Hippopotoman" just received my vote for the next Kickstarter stretch reward.
Far more on topic, just hearing about people physically receiving their Enhanced Editions has me refreshing my email every five minutes in anticipation of >G's "They're shipped!" update.
Same here… especially with the Villain contest I have crazy ideas but I'm like "I bet this supernatural dude is similar to Apostate" or "I bet this dudes powers are similar to Akash.
Cant wait for a Sentinels game night with the friends AND to get inspired by the new baddies.
The original flavour text for Elbow Smash is "Hah! This is a cute little toy of war!" -Haka, Battle Unending #8.
If it is now changed to "You are not nearly as fearsome as your namesake.", then which comic issue is it from? What happens to the old flavour text? If we assume that this 2nd ed is canon, then does the old flavour text cease to exist? Or do they co-exist? Then, owners of the 2nd ed will be missing out on "additional lore" from the 1st ed!
How many flavour text(s) are changed in the 2nd ed?
Since I still don't have 2nd ed and IF, I took a quick look at the heroes(optimized) file and compared it to 1st ed. I only looked at Haka.
2 things.
First, I was disappointed that flavour text changes alone does not qualify as "Changed Cards". I.e. The flavour text for Elbow Smash was changed, but since it's game text was not changed (I assume), it was not provided as "Changed Cards" in the pdf update for 1st ed owners. If, 2nd ed is to be canon, I do hope that such changes in flavour text will also be reflected for 1st ed owners.
Second, I spotted another flavour text change. In Savage Mana, in 1st ed, the flavour text was not quoted, i.e. not narrated by any characters. In the 2nd ed, it was narrated by Ambusacade, The Deadliest Game #2. :)
I'm sure there're more but I've only looked at Haka. And those ppl with physical copies of 2nd ed will find even more.
He's now the recipient of an Elbow Smash!
(I don't remember the original quotes and don't have my cards here; I'm assuming that quote is new.)