Is it allowed to use Omnitron, Onmitron IV, and Omnitron X all in the same game? My daughter and I tried this, and we had troubles deciding what to do with cards that affected drone cards and components, as all three have cards of the same type. For example, Converyor Panels is a component from the environment deck that states "Drone cards are immune to melee damage." Would this apply to all drones from all three versions, or just the one from the environment deck. Then there's the S-83 Assault Drone from the villian deck, that deals x melee damage, where x = the number of drones in play plus 1. Would that apply to all drones, or just the drones from the villian deck?
As long as it has the correct keyword to interact, it doesn’t matter what deck it is in.
There is a similar interaction with Voss and the Mobile Defense Platform. The Battalion Brute, Battalion Mechanic, and Battalion Mechanic all have the minion keyword which means they apply towards his win condition, whether he would flip, and DR he gets for minions in play.
That makes sense. What about my first question? Is it even allowed officially to have them in the same game, or is it akin to multiple of the same hero? Technically all three are the same being, just different incarnations of him.
Looking at it from a game designer's perspective, there are clear signs that Omnitron-X and Omnitron-IV were both built with the explicit intention of having interesting interactions with other Omnitrons.
See also Grand Warlord Voss and the Dok'Thorath Capitol. The keywords Minion and Thorathian suddenly become much... denser when both are in play.
By contrast, the game designer does not sanction having multiple variants of the same hero deck in play at once. If you want Legacy, Young Legacy and Old Legacy all in the same game, you need to use house rules (and have extra copies of the Legacy deck!). You can, of course, have any one version of Legacy go up against Iron Legacy, just like you can have Visionary fight The Dreamer.
Whatever the timeline fiction says, the real restriction is that you can only have one copy of a given DECK in a game. As long as the 'alternate' version has its own unique deck (not just a variant Hero card), it's allowed.
You can play Omnitron X against Omnitron or Cosmic Omnitron in the environment Omnitron IV. The only piece you can't do without house rules is play multiple copies of the Omnitron X hero deck.
So because they are in fact a hero deck, a villian deck, and an environment deck, they affect each other in terms of "drone" and "component" cards, but they are all allowed in the same game?
Yes, Omnitron X can even destroy Components he doesn't control but are in play with the card Self Sabotage.
Good to know. Thanks for the help!
We actually tried that a week or so ago - Omnitron IV was the last of the nvew environments that we hadn't tried yet, and out of all the possibilities available, the random roll to pick the villain gave us Omnitron, so I decided to "complete the set" and play as Omni-10. We got destroyed because of all the drones that do "drones +1" damage while there were about six drones in play across both the villain and environment decks :P. It also didn't help that on one of his play-two-cards turns Omnitron played Technological Singularity (when I had about three equipment cards out, so that was nine damage right there though I don't think the other two heroes in the game really got hit as they didn't really have anything out) and then Sedative Flechettes (which did hurt the other two a lot) :P.
I remember Christopher saying that you could have multiple variations, but that you could only have one of each limited among all of them. No stacking multiple copies of Inspiring Presence. I can’t remember what thread it was but it was on the forums.
Here's a thread discussing multiple Legacies. Paul (Bender, not Parsons) had a nice comment at the end that there shouldn't be multiple versions of a hero. I have no recollection of Chistopher ever making a comment that you can have multiple versions, although he might have said they don't care what we actually do, but that officially you aren't supposed to (as Paul did).
The one cool thing that allowing multiple versions of a deck with variants would be the "Flash of Two Worlds" aspect, where the Legacies team up to fight La Capitan or whoever. It would make for a cool story, but I'm not sure how fun the game is.
Limiting the "Limiteds" sounds like a good balance. I get why the restriction is there, and I'd only be interested in it as a "story mission" or some kind of goofy house-rules match.
By the way, the "Jan Brady" game ("Omnitron, Omnitron, Omnitron!") is a lot of fun, and super insane. I didn't even realize that O-X could blow up the other decks' Components with Self Sabotage!
Yup - it only specifies the type of card it can affect (components), not which deck said cards must belong to. It's like attacks which hit "a target" can hit anything, even the person using the attack, and stuff which occurs "at the start/end of each turn" do so at that point in every turn, not just that deck's turn (missed this for a while with that card in Fanatic's deck…Divine Focus, I think? Every turn, not just hers!) :D.