New Player with Questions

Hello all!

I just got this game in the mail yesterday. I may get a chance to try this out with friends tomorrow; looking forward to it. I just leafed through the rules, and I have the obligatory questions/clarifications a new player brings.

If any of these were already asked and I missed them, I apologize in advance!

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Powers: I get that one power cannot be played twice in the same turn, but are MULTIPLE powers allowed to be played in a turn, or is the standard "One Turn/One Power"? If it is just once a turn, then what exceptions to that rule are there?

Decks: If a deck eventually runs out of cards, do you just reshuffle a new deck and keep on going? (I ask because I play another game, Netrunner, where if the Megacorp loses all of his deck he instantly loses)

Targets: Targets just means anything with an HP listed on it, right?

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I will very likely have more questions as I actually try the game out. Thank you in advance!

You typically only get to use one power per turn, but there are cards that let you do more. So if nothing says you can do extra, you can only use one power. 

Shuffle a deck's trash to make a new deck only when you need to draw a card and can't because there aren't enough cards in the deck to do it. You don't just shuffle when the draw deck is empty. 

You're right about targets - it's anything with HP. 

You may want to check out the Clarifications doc on my website (URL in my post signature below). It answers lots of these types of questions. 

 

One other note on power use - you can only use each instance of a power once per turn, but if you have multiple copies of the same card and get an extra power use during your turn, you can use both copies of the card. So for example, if Fanatic has played Embolden (which lets a player use an additional power during their power phase) on Ra, who has two copies of Living Conflagration out, he can use both of them because they're two different cards. If Legacy was Emboldened and had his Ring out, he'd be ableto use three powers (if available) - his normal one, one for the Ring, and one for Embolden. Which would be cool, although he doesn't have a huge amount of power-cards. Someone like the Adept can really take advantage of extra powers, though :D.

Slight clarification on shuffling decks - you do this when you need to draw a card or discard one, not not when you need to reveal a card. Example - the Adept has a one-shot called Arcane Cadence in which he reveals the top five cards of his deck. If he only has three left, you'd only reveal those three. Contrast with, say, the Scholar, who has a card which tells him to draw five cards then end his turn - he he only had three cards left, he'd draw those three, then shuffle his trash to give himself a deck again from which he could draw the final two cards.

Thanks for the feedback all! I managed to get three games of SotM in, and so far it's been a success with my gaming buddies.

First round was just a quick practice bout against Baron Blade; we had no idea what we were doing, and we played quite a few rules wrong, so after we beat his first form we called it there and moved on to a second round against Omnitron in Atlantis. That one turned out to be a close match; I was playing Legacy, and the others were playing as Ra, Visionary and Bunker. We did well up until a point: Bunker did a great job whittling down the smaller drones that kept popping up while Ra smote single targets (a real beast that one) and Visionary picked off whoever was left, while Legacy simply kept everyone's damage buffed. Didn't do so well after all of Bunker's abilities got short circuited by one of Omni's cards, and eventually it fell to Ra to ignore everything and simply burn the factory down. Damn good fun, though in hindsight putting the Sun God in the middle of underwater ruins was probably not the best idea...(loved how Legacy can simply shrug off environmental damage though)

Our last game was against Citizen Dawn (is her group somewhat inspired by the Brotherhood of Mutants from X-Men? Was definitely getting that vibe from all the Citizens, but I might be missing something there), and there we stumbled quite a bit. The lineup was Wraith, Absolute Zero, Tempest, and Fanatic. Here we just simply tried to grapple with what our characters were best at doing and who they might work the best with. Poor Zero (me) took a LOT of damage from the prehistoric environment as well as the citizens, and I didn't get to draw the right modules for him (the ones that let him absorb/redirect cold and fire damage) until the later half. Tempest's player was complaining that he didn't get to do much (though this is likely as much his preferred playstyle than anything); Wraith and Fanatic had no real difficulties as their jobs were pretty straight forward. It ended up being a juggling game of how to avoid the "end of turn" effects a lot of the citizens had, and we lost a LOT of cruical ongoing cards we needed until we could smack them down. Eventually we settled for alpha striking Citizen Dawn herself (she'd already burned through her invulnerable state by then), and then the T-Rex in play from the environment finally decided to try and eat HER instead of us. Fanatic finished her off, but she had us on the ropes for quite some time (Obsidian Fields playing right before she went didn't help matters).

One gameplay question I do have: Absolute Zero has a card that allows for Villain end of turn effects to occur at the beginning of their turn instead. My friends and I scratched our heads at this, as we tried to figure out how and when exactly this becomes useful. I'm sure there's a very good reason (or maybe different cards villains have are vulnerable to this), but as we're just getting started today, we were far from sure (still at that stage, honestly). Can someone explain how this might be useful?

Thanks a ton again for the feedback, especially for the "two separate but identical cards can be played one after the other" bit! I'll definitely remember that in the future! I'm really happy with the game so far, and I'll definitely be returning to it when I get the chance.

The use of Absolute Zero card is that a villain brought into play this turn cant do his end of turn effet before the next turn, so you have basically one full round to kill him.

The trick is that sometimes end of turn effect are less lethal when played last than first. And sometimes it just dont matter because villaine cards enter play at other time.

 

Playing identical cards (rather, using their powers) only works if you have an extra power use granted to you - you can't just use both cards during your power phase automatically. You still only get to use one power normally. It's just that if something lets you use a second power during that phase, you can use the power of a second copy of a card if you have both out.

Sub-Zero Atmosphere is less useful against some villains (like the Matriarch, all of whose Fowl act at the start of her turn anyway), but can be quite nice against others - Voss, for example, who has a ton of minions who all act at the end of his turn. If he plays a minion on his turn and Sub-Zero Atmosphere is out, that minion can't act till the start of Voss's next turn…if it lives that long ;).

Well, if you're playing Voss on Advanced, then the card he normally plays at the end of the turn is played at the start of the turn, and that can lead to bad results. But in general it's useful against any Villain who either (a) doesn't get extra cards plays on their turn or (b) has no cards that take effect at the start of the Villain turn, provided they aren't going to destroy Sub Zero Atmosphere and cause everything that happened at the start of the Villain turn to happen again at the end.

Thanks again for the feedback! I have yet to play against Voss; hopefully I get another game in and we'll get to see what you mean.

One more question: When it comes to priority of who acts first in a given part of the villain turn, does the supervillain act first, THEN his/her/its cronies follow? (Such as with "At the end of the turn...")

The Villian acts first for End of Turn effects, as Villians effects go in order of play. Since the Villian will always be in play before anything else, they always act before anyone else.

I've never played on Advanced, so that's never been an issue - I don't even know what most of the villains' Advanced rules are 'cause I've not looked at most of 'em.

Basarin - Villain and environment cards act in the order they were played. In the case of the villain, therefore, the villain character card acts first in the phase before anything else. If there are multiple actions that need carrying out during the end phase, you work your way through each card - start with the character card, then go through each of the other cards that are out, in order, carrying out any actions on those cards that take place during the phase you're in (start or end phase, in the case of the villain). It's the same for the environment, which while it obviously doesn't have a character card, still will have cards that act during the start or end phases of the turn. With heroes, you're supposed to do the same, but personally I keep my equipment and ongoings laid out in a logical order (eg the Adept's instruments first, then his Harmonies, then Melodies, then Rhythms, regardless of what order I actually played them) so it's easier to keep track of, plus if you stick to that rule you can end up inadvertently buggering yourself up due to having played stuff in the "wrong" order and causing some cards to be less good than they might be because of the way they interact with other cards, or whatever.

I think learning to play cards in the correct order is part of the skill of the game/luck of the draw.

Well yeah, but it messes with the fun when you're sat there going "Arrgh I can't play this because such-and-such a card might come up later, so that means I just have to sit here and do bugger all so I don't mess up my game later on". Besides, if heroes can decide what order "simultaneous" effects happen in order to gain an advantage, they might as well be able to decide which order their own cards take effect in ;).

It's not like it is a common situation... Shielding Winds and any other damage reduction mainly. Also Legacy has to worry about it in his own deck Fortitude and Super Human Durability.

 

The order of play of Electrical Storm and Subwave Inducer decides what type of damage Electrical Storm will do.

 

The order of Unity's bots will decide what order they deal damage in. Same applies to Omni-X's components...

 

Most heroes don't have to worry about it, thankfully!

Honestly, in those cases I'd just play the other card.

There are a few others where it matters. Chastise vs. Divine Focus, Impale vs. Impale.

Impale versus Impale? Do you mean Cold Snap or something?

You might have put two Impales on two different Targets.

Thanks again all. I'm now at the point where future games will be able to flow pretty smoothly without too many rules hiccups. :)

All I have to do now is find more people willing to play this game more often; incidentally, there aren't many people here in my area who even know this game...doing my part to spread word about it.