I got onboard the SotM train during the Infernal Relics kickstarter and I've been waiting for my cousin/gaming partner to have some free time to dive right in. In the meanwhile, I've read pretty much every post on these boards and gobbled up every little bit of information about the game that I could. I finally got to play for the first time tonight. Long story short, we loved the game and I'll look forward to playing again, but the first two games brought up a few questions that I couldn't find the answers to. (Forgive me because I don't necessarily know the card names yet and I don't have them in front of me.)
General Comments:
I found the rules to be relatively easy, though we needed to read several cards a few times each to make sure we were doing it right. We definitely messed up Maintenance Level a few times but we were able to backtrack and keep it from having an effect on the game. One thing we had a real hard time with was getting used to drawing at THE END of the turn because most of the games we've played haven't been like that.
Game 1: Baron Blade vs. Absolute Zero, Bunker, Tempest, and Ra
I know I shouldn't have played Absolute Zero in my first game, but I can't resist a powered armor-type hero. I played AZ and Bunker and let my cousin pick his two but tried to steer him towards Ra and Tempest since he hasn't been reading about the game as much as I have. I knew that those two characters are relatively straightforward and I wanted him to have a good first experience. AZ was basically a non-factor, but I know that's just a possibility when you play him. I managed to get out Cryo Chamber, Isothermic Transducer, and Nullpoint Calibration Unit but even though I thought I knew how to use them on paper, during the game I couldn't figure out what to do to make it work. I'll be posting a whole bunch of AZ questions tomorrow when I have the cards in front of me.
We won the game pretty handily and were never really at risk of losing other than we didn't flip him until there were 12-13 cards in his trash. I'm assuming we played everything more or less right, but I'm not sure so I thought I'd ask.
Questions from Game 1:
1) When a card (it was a Megalopolis environment card I think) says that you can't draw cards, does that mean you can't draw cards during your draw phase or you can't draw cards period. I played it as you can't draw cards at all, but my cousin interpreted it as during the draw phase, so I know at one point he played a Tempest card that allowed him to draw a card and he did. I don't think it affected the outcome of the game one way or the other, but it would be good to know for future reference.
2) Baron Blade has a card ("Devious something") that allows players a chance to destroy any ongoing or equipment cards and then deals damage equal to 3 + the number of ongoing/equipment still in play. Is that damage 3+the TOTAL number of ongoing/equipment to each player or does it do 3+the number of ongoing/equipment cards each player has to that player? I don't think I'm explaining that well, but we assumed it was the former and boy did that sting.
Game 2: Omnitron vs. Tachyon, Legacy, and Haka
We decided to play just three heroes in our second game cause we were short on time. We lost pretty badly. We had Omnitron down to about 22 at one point, but he healed back up and hit us with Sedative Flechettes and that was just about the end of us. A few questions here too:
1) Is Savage Mana as awesome as I think it is against Omnitron? As long as Haka was the one killing the drones, we seemed to be able to keep them out of Omnitron's trash and really limit his Factory side. Of course, I formulated this question in my head long before I knew how devastating Sedative Flechettes could be so I suppose Savage Mana isn't overpowered when it can be destroyed in an instant.
2) Can an incapacitated player skip their turn to destroy Meteor Shower (or Meteor Storm, I forget the exact name)?
Thanks for reading, guys. I'm gonna catch some Z's and think about a few hard fought battles. I'm determined to master Absolute Zero, but that will be a battle for another day.