Several Questions after 4 games tonight

Other Games SotM Game Engine
1

First Id like to say great game and that my group loved it and Im sure a few orders for more copies will flow from tonight’s session. Everyone loved it. However, we did have several questions. A few were answered by the FAQ or looking around in the forums, but we still had several questions. A few of these may seem obvious, but my gaming group is made up of long time gamers comprised of 2 engineers, a logistician, a contract lawyer, and an anthropologist…so as a result, we tend to get hung up on wording from time to time…Anyhow, here are the questions we had.

  1. The first is on card wording when getting rid of environment cards. In the Mars environment deck, one card says all players may discard to get rid of this card, another each, while others say 1 player may discard a card. Our question was whether this was just inconsistent wording or if they mean different things. “one player may” is very clear. What isnt clear to us is “all” and “each.” To get rid of the environment card, does each player have to discard? This would also seem to be the case with all. We just played it that all and each were the same thing and we all dumped cards of suffered whatever effects to clear environment cards. We figured the “one player” meant only one person had to do it, everything else meant the heroes as a group had to suffer to get rid of the cards. We just wandered if we were right.

  2. Is Wrest Mind (I think thats its name) really that insanely powerful? We were redirecting massive damage back onto the boss. The Boss would take his two, Vis her two, and then the boss would take whatever crazy damage he was putting out. It just seemed crazy overpowered. The other heroes were chipping away for 2-5 pts a turn and Vis was cranking out 10-20 with that card…each turn.

  3. If the villain gets a card at the end of their turn, do they in effect get two cards…once during the draw phase right after the start phase of the villain turn, and then once again at the end? Thats the way we played it since the end of the turn was a distinctly separate phase from the villain play a card phase… If this is right, then do any cards that come out after the card drawn during the end phase get to go off since it is still the end phase? Say for example, that Omnitron gets to draw acard in the end phase, would any minions/devices still get to attack that end phase?

4.We were a little confused by Omnitron during set up. Does he set up as a rampaging robot, then immediately flip to the factory at the start of the game during the first start phase? Also, when shuffling his trash, if he has no devices out yet, is this part just ignored? We assumed that this was the case, as it wouldnt be too long before he was cranking out minions for us to keep killing over and over. This also came up…we assumed shuffling his trash meant just dealing devices out of his discard pile and not actually shuffling his trash back into his discard.

  1. Also, for a group of smart people and competent gamers, we really had trouble getting Absolute Zero to do anything other than heal himself a little or peep out a bit of damage here and there. Can someone briefly describe how he’s supposed to do the consistent and decent damage I keep reading about. It was the first time we played him tonight, and it was after three game of Sentinels and one of Arkham Horror, so we might not have been thinking too clearly.

Sorry for the wordy questions, we just really loved the game and wanted to make sure we were playing it right. Thanks!

2

  1. It is exactly as you assume. “All players” and “each player” has the same meaning. Any inconsistancy would be due to not setting up a defined method for all termonology, or at least not being disciplined enough to follow such a plan. Basically, the writer just wrote down how he had it worded in is mind at the time.

  2. If Wrest The Mind is consistantly dealing 20 damage each turn and you aren’t having a problem doing that each turn, you may not be playing the card correctly. You say you played the card on the villain. If you really are dealing 20, then the villain is likely dealing multiple attacks (say, deal 2 damage to each hero target). Those cound as individual attacks, and each redirect deals two damage to Visionary as well as the target. Thus, Visionary should only be able to last two or three rounds with this stratagy. Also, only damage dealt by the villain character would be redirected this way; damage dealt by minions and such are separate targets, and thus can’t be redirected when Wrest The Mind is played on the villain.

  3. If a villain card has an end of turn action that says “Draw a card,” that action is completely separate from the draw phase. The draw phase is basically a part of the turn with a single action of “draw a card.” Any other actions of drawing a card is independent from the draw phase. Second, when firing off end of turn actions, it’s always ordered by the play order of the cards. As the card which had the end of turn action to draw a card has certainly been played before the card being played because of that action, if the card played has an end of turn action, that card will always have it’s end of turn action when it’s turn comes up.

  4. All cards are to be read exactly as they are printed. Omnitron’s on start game says to start on one side. On the start of the turn, the start of turn action occurs, which states to flip the card if it hasn’t flipped this turn. As the turn has just started, he in fact flips immediately after the start of the game. Once flipped, the start of turn states to flip if not flipped this turn. As he has already flipped this turn, he doesn’t flip again. Also, the discard pile and trash are the same thing, I find it difficult that you can shuffle trash and not discard when they are in fact the same exact pile. The idea is you at least check the trash for any devices, and if none are found, shuffle afterwards anyway.

  5. Absolute Zero is all about absorbing fire damage and spitting it back out as cold. Isothermic Transducer and Coolant Blast are necessary for this. One immediately attacts with cold damage equal to the fire damage taken in to any target (possibly even himself, for a quick heal if you have Null Point Conversion Unit), the other is a build up, where all fire damage taken in since the end of his last turn is added up and that much cold damage is dealt to any non-hero target. Also, Focused Apertures helps out by adding an extra damage point for all cold damage dealt, allowing a bit more damage to be dealt by these devices. Also, a few one-shots for Absolute Zero deal a certain amount of cold damage to a target, and then an equal amount of fire damage to himself, which then can set off the events of those devices, allowing further cold damage to be dealt. Absolute Zero works best with villains that specialize in fire (or at least have somewhat consistant fire attacks) as well as playing with other players that specialize in fire (such as Ra), as well as rely on any global damage modifires available. If a “all damage +1” and “all heroes damage +1” and maybe even “all heroes take +1 damage,” and Absolute Zero has all three devices mentioned, then he will deal a non-hero six cold damage (three cold damage +1 all damage +1 hero damage +1 Focused Apertures cold damage), then deal himself six fire damage (three fire damage +1 all damage +1 hero damage +1 damage to hero). Isothermic Transducer will then activate, and deal 9 cold damage (six from the fire damage taken in +1 all damage +1 hero damage +1 Focused Apertures cold damage) (if dealt to self for healing with Null Point Conversion Unit, +1 damage to hero for 10 healing points). Then, during the power phase, Absolute Zero can use Coolant Blast, which will deal a non-hero target for 9+ damage (six from the fire damage taken earlier, as well as any other damage taken prior, +1 all damage +1 hero damage +1 Focused Apertures cold damage). With Ra, if damage modifires are out that will cause Absolute Zero to turn around and deal more cold damage than Ra can deal fire damage, and Absolute Zero has enough HP to take the attack, Ra can attack Absolute Zero, who can then increase the damage as cold, acting as an amplifier of sorts (maybe you could call him an “amplifire,” hehehehe).

3

Great answers, JayMann. All right.

4

“Feel the amplifire!” sounds like a great catch phrase for Absolute Zero to me.