This gave me an idea for a SotM variant, where any or all of the decks in a game are two decks combined. Here is how I think it would work:
Setup
Decide whether you will be playing with a Combined Villain or a regular Villain.
Decide whether you will be playing with a Combined Environment or a regular Environment.
Each player decides whether they will play a Combined Hero or a regular Hero.
If you are playing with a Combined Villain:
Select two component Villains. Put both of their Character Cards into play. Shuffle their decks together to form the Combined Villain Deck. Follow the setup instructions on both component Villain Character Cards.
If you are playing with a Combined Environment:
Select two component Environments. Shuffle their Decks together to form the Combined Environment Deck.
If you are playing with a Combined Hero:
Select two component Heroes. Put both of their Character Cards into play. Shuffle their decks together to form your Combined Hero Deck.
Gameplay
If you are playing with a Combined Villain:
Treat both component Villain Character Cards as one Combined Villain Character Card with the Setup text and Game text of both combined Villain Character Cards. Treat it as one Villain Target with a Maximum HP equal to the average of the two component Villain Character Cards.
Treat all instances of both of the component Villains’ names as referring to the one Combined Villain, except when you are instructed to flip one of the component Villains. When one of the two component Villains is flipped, only flip that Villain’s Character Card, not both of them.
If you are playing a Combined Hero:
Treat both of your component Hero Character Cards as one Combined Hero Character Card with both of their powers on the active side and all of their incapacitated abilities on their incapacities side. Treat it as one Hero Target with a Maximum HP equal to the average of the two component Character Cards.
Treat all instances of the component Heroes’ names as referring to your one Combined Hero.
All other rules are the same as in standard SotM.
These rules work both for solo Villains and team Villains, as well as with The Organization, provided you choose either The Chairman or the Operative as the Combined Villain (I would suggest The Chairman for thematic reasons). I can’t think of any way for it to work with the Ennead or the Southwest Sentinels, though
Thematically, I picture this variant representing characters (and locations) from other realities/timelines that are “mash-ups” of Main Universe characters. Canon examples include Luck Break (Legacy + Setback), Cursor (Captain Cosmic + Parse), Tempest + Sky-Scraper, Lucky Strike (Setback + Mister Fixer), The Chairman + Citizen Dawn, The Ashen Heir (The Argent Adept + NightMist), Unity (Tachyon + Omnitron-X), and MistFeather (The Harpy + NightMist).
You may be interested in checking this out. It’s essentially what you’re suggesting, but more curated so that the different decks work well together (Theoretically. I don’t use TTS much, and so haven’t tested it myself).
The problem with just mashing two decks together is you may be stuck with a bunch of cards that don’t do much together. Curating the combinations can solve this issue, but definitely takes more work on the front end.
Oh, how could I forget?!
Lucky Break = Setback + Legacy
And if you wanted you could do the heroes from team La Capitan’s ¿Quando? ¡Ahora!, even though we haven’t seen a version of character cards for them.
Ashen Heir = Argent Adept + Nightmist
Lucky Strike = Setback + Mr. Fixer (although IIRC Pete was just trained by Slim, who still exists in that reality)
I don’t remember names if given for the other combos there. Are they Omnitron + Tachyon and Tempest + Wraith?
If I had more time, I’d be very interested in working on a carefully calculated version of this project. It definitely seems like something that’s implied in the game’s ruleset, but would require too much adjustment and playtesting to be easily accomplished.
This isn’t a “mixed deck” so much as “mixed mechanics”, but I think it’d be interesting to see someone make the magical version of the Freedom Five by applying Nighmist’s magic number mechanic to their decks.
This is an interesting idea, bit the decks are already so highly curated and tuned that I think it would work best only if you were willing to select card-by-card.
But thanks for reminding me about “I’m calling you out!” Hee hee, that was fun.
To be clear, I reposted the link as an invitation.
But I will admit I just mentally flip-flopped several times on whether to continue in the original thread or start a new one, basically: (1) I do think it’s appropriate and it keeps everything in one place, but (2) maybe it makes more sense to start fresh to better integrate with the new forum’s tools, (3) goto 1.
