When I'm introducing SOTM to new people, I find that the hardest thing to do is to explain the heroes that they have to choose from in a way that will instantly make sense. I tend to fumble through awkward introductions, of which one notable example was me finding myself able to identify Bunker only as "the guy who needs a gun" in slightly more words than this, and having someone choose to play him on that basis. When RC/IR shipped, I was pleased to note that the four heroes in the set did not get only biographical info, but also a little "How to play" section.
I think it would be a good idea to make up little cards or sheets of paper with very brief introduction info for all of the characters, to facilitate these kinds of choices. These would be a nice accessory that you could include in your set if you were big on enrolling new players, rather than just having a steady playgroup. So I'm opening this thread as a brainstorming and copywriting arena for the project. The goal will be brevity, clarity, and immediate grokkability - this will be a way to get people into the game who know nothing about it, who aren't necessarily big on comic books or even familiar with card games (generally they will be gamers of some sort, but very little should be taken for granted).
The Hero Charts that Pydro linked are really great. I think they have the potential to be a great tool to introducing new players.
But some of the info on the stat charts just seems incredibly off to me. Like Unity has more in "Healing" than Legacy, The Scholar, and Haka while Ra has more in "Healing" than Tempest, even though Ra's healing is pretty situational (when his Staff is played) and only heals himself where Tempest has the more "practical" heal (heals your team and is a usable power). Unity also has the same amount in "Deck Manipulation" as The Visionary, which is incredibly misleading.
I'm not sure how BGG got these stats (I'm assuming by counting the number of cards in the Hero deck that had any of those effects and adding them up), but I feel they don't truly represent how each hero really feels when you play them. Again, its a great start and I'm glad someone took the time to put all that info together, but I feel there could be plenty of improvements (especially more newcomer friendly improvements who may be misled picking the wrong hero based on those stat charts)
Deck Manipulation is also refering to how the use their own deck. Unity has Supply Crate, Brainstorm, Swift Bot, Robot Reclaimation, and Inspired Repair, which all allows for her to draw additional card, thus a type of deck manipulation. She also contains Flash Forge, which allows her to deck through her own deck.
Referring to drawing a card as deck manipulation is extremely questionable. Flash Forge is a better example, but still. The fact that Visionary can manipulate decks other than her own makes this a very problematic term.
Meh. If you expand your definition of "deck manipulation" the problems disapear. No reason why it can't include internal manipulation along with external.
Instead of telling us what you dislike about them, you can always go onto boardgamegeek and send him a PM, letting him know of a better word than deck manipulation to describe manipulating a deck. Here, I even got the link to his profile all ready for you. Games | Profile | CalicoDave | BoardGameGeek
But knowing how much a character can manipulate their own deck is sort of irrelevant, really. Take Summon Staff, for example. That, by this definition, is deck manipulation, but what the card really is is a Summon Staff that gives you card draw. More generally, manipulating your own deck is basically just a way to accelerate your doing the other stuff your deck does.
This is more or less the point I was getting at when I mentioned it in my first post. I know that Unity has cards that let her find stuff from her own deck or draw cards, but so do most heroes. So I (personally) would not include that sort of thing in the stat Deck Manipulation, especially if the stat in the chart exists to aid newcomers in selecting the hero they'd like to try.
If I was a newcomer being introduced to Sentinels, I would see "Deck Manipulation" as the ability to control all of the decks/cards on the field (scrying, drawing, discarding, shifting cards from the trash to the deck/visa versa) and I think we all know that if you want that sort of trait, you play as Visionary, not Unity. I think balancing each heroes stats without tightening the definition of what each stat actually means (Healing, Support, Deck Manipulation, Buffing/Debuffing) can lead to newcomers thinking a hero is going to play a certain way only to find out otherwise.
Again, I am very glad someone took the time to create those stat charts and I'm sure it has come in handy several times. I just thought I'd point out where I think the flaws lie and why.
Gives you a card draw, thins your deck, speeds up the chance of getting what you need for a given situation, ect ect.
Yup. Manipulating your own deck is a measure of how quickly you can set-up and/or how quick you can adapt to a new situation. Manipulating other decks (like the villain deck) is a way to slow down villain set-ups to buy you more time to adjust and react.
Where is the issue?
Tightening definitions on these things is really a fools errand. It is much better for everyones expectations to think of those terms generally, specifically because of how different all the decks are. Take healing for example. Unity has some great healing abilities, but they are for her and her bots, unlike Argent Adept or Tempest who can extend those heals to others AoE style. To tighten the definitions, you will ultimatley have to create a multitude of sub-catagories to accuratly describe the pragmatic functionality of these abilities. If the goal here is to be easy on newcommers, this really isn't the solution you want to entertain.
The issue is in using the same phrase to mean two different, non-interchangeable things. Yes, both things give you more ability to adjust. Extra card plays, damage reduction and healing let you mitigate damage and card destruction, giving you more time to adjust. Damage and ongoing destruction let you destroy villain threats, giving you more time to adjust.
And also, Ra has only a little manipulation of his own deck, and he requires no set-up; every card play is just a bonus to him. Unity, on the other hand, apparently has lots od deck manipulation, and yet is hard to set up and is one of the most likely heroes to draw two cards on her first turn. Deck manipulation =/= a speedy setup.
Welcome to the English language. This is quite a common phenomenon.
Not in an objective sence, but you are not measuring a decks "manipulation" ability against other decks (or you shouldn't), its all relative to the deck. Why do you think the decks are balanced internally with themselves and not against each other? Unity's internal deck manipulation absolutley speeds her up. Are you saying it doesn't?
Fun fact, if you look take a gander at where the charts where originally from, it actually has what each stat actually represents.
Also I feel the need to toss then in, send the creater a PM with some ideas with how to make it better. Posting here, where he'll probably not see it, is not helping the charts become a better resource.
I agree; the answer is not in separate categories for the same type of stat (like you said, Self Healing vs Team Healing) as that would get incredibly convulated, very quickly. I'm not sure what the solution looks like yet, but for now I'm simply pointing out the flaws (that I see personally) in the current stat chart, mostly from the eyes of a newcomer. I think when Absolute Zero and Legacy have the same stat for Healing, it can lead people to expect a different performance from the hero they pick.
Again going back to Ra who can heal 3 HP, but is conditional upon a Staff of Ra entering play, where Legacy or AA can heal multiple targets consistently as the ability stems from a power usable each turn. Haka and Scholar can nuke heal with the right hand. All the meanwhile, AA has the capability to heal a ridiculous amount to 3 targets on his turn through Silver Shadow combos, where Unity's is a small heal for her and her robots only. And yet all these characters have nearly the exact same Heal stat. Don't you see that as a little…flawed? If you're going to put all healing under just one stat, that's perfectly fine, but having each of those characters representing the same amount of "Healing" is a problem in my eyes. The healing capabilities of Unity is nowhere close to the self healing of Scholar/Haka or the team healing of AA.
And again, I do not know the method they used to obtain these stats. I'm guessing they went through the deck and tallied up the effects each card grants and put the results on a chart. But this obviously doesn't account for different card combinations or Powers staying on the field and healing consistently over the course of the game vs a one-time effect like Ra's Staff.
I just think the current stat placements paint the wrong picture for a lot of the heroes and am hoping we, as a community, can maybe pull our heads together to come up with something better. Surely you think there's room for improvement?
You're right and I will do that. I didn't even know these charts existed until a few hours ago; I've basically just been spitballing here, throwing in my two cents since the link was posted. I'm not trying to insult anyone or get anyone on the defensive side; these were just things I noticed when I took a gander at them.
But now that I've gotten a comprehensive look at the stats/cards and formulated an opinion on them, I will be sure to PM the creator. He did an awesome job creating them; I just think some things may be a little misrepresented and am hoping the process can be improved (or at the very least, that I can learn more about his initial process in creating the charts).
. Everyone's opinion is of course the best, most important thing in the world, but before you drop your bombs on someone else's creation, just think for a moment whether by doing so, you're also raising the average awesomeness level of the Universe, or just dropping it back down.
Just keep that in mind. Not saying your ideas are wrong, just when you present them make sure you present them in the most constructive and awesome pumping way possible
From what I remember reading when I first downloaded the charts to add to my own cards, the creator counted the cards that had each effect. Simple as that, they were intended to simply be an indication of the proportions of each deck that involve healing, or deck manipulation, or whatever.
I honestly don't see another even vaguely sensible way of quantifying such complicated and varied powers (which as we all know will have different "values" depending on lots of other variables like number of heroes, what other cards are out, whether the Scholar's in play, or whatever).
Say Legacy has an arbitrary attack value of 2. How do you compare Ra's attack value to this? Sure, we'd all agree it should be higher than Legacy's 2, but how much higher? We'd never reach a consensus because we'd be using a fuzzy definition of "attack value". "Number of enemy-damaging cards in the deck" is a concrete value that no-one can argue with.
Some of the decks are deceptive and hard to evaluate. The Scholar is an excellent party tank IF he gets the right cards, and has a good chance of getting them, but if you open on a lot of Don't Dismiss Anythings and Proverbs and Axioms, you're almost as squishy as any other hero. If you have both Know Whens and not much else, you might just go nova on your second turn rather than trying to accomplish anything. So the decks don't always perform reliably, and it can be difficult to pin down exactly what they're good at. AZ is crazy good at healing if he gets an NPCU, but utterly terrible at it without one. And some heroes don't even have a tutor for the card they need to function (looking at you Expat - Arsenal Access into two Ammo with no Guns is far from impossible).
You know, I'd love to see a version of Spiff's deck boxes redesigned to have those diagrams on the back of the box instead of the art. As cool as the art is it'd be handy to be able to just pull out a deck box, have the kickass art on the front to greet you and then flip the box over to get an idea of how that Hero plays. I wish I had the files/knowledge to make that change.
As we've seen though, there's still considerable disagreement about what that information should even be. If there were a blurb for each hero or villain from the designers, I could see adding that.