So last night we played a game via G+ against the Matriarch, we didn't win, despite our valiant attempt but we did learn an interesting thing.
Team Leader Tachyon's incapacitated powers are
One Player draws 1 card now
One Player plays 1 card now
Shuffle a trash into its associated deck
The Matriarch's flip condition is "when the villain trash is shuffled into the villain deck" flip her.
An incapacitated TLT, the nemesis of the Matriarch, can cause her to flip at will. If that was not planned it's an amazing coincidence, if it was, that's a whole new level of design to respect.
Yeah, seriously, I'd just assume anything like that in the game was on purpose. They love it when we find this kind of stuff, too.
Sick bastards… (I definitely understand how this builds interest - as a GM, I'm constantly tormenting the players with similar little things they don't realize meant something / mattered until later.)
Thematically, wouldn't that be cool? Let us pretend for a minute that TLT is "regular" Tachyon, a.k.a. The Matriarch recognizes her as her cousin in full.
The stage is set. The Matriarch, her birds swirling all around her, keeping the other heroes at bay, stares down at her cousin's unmoving body. Is she dead? Or merely unconscious? It doesn't matter. After years and years of being compared to her cousin, she has finally beaten her. For all the accolades, awards, praises, and gifts she had, the Matriarch had beaten her.
Lillian has won.
But.. what now?
For the longest time, all she wanted was to be better than her cousin, to beat her and humiliate her, so that people would fear and respect Lillian. Now that she's done it... What now?
The birds around her start moving erratically, the psychic emanations from the Mask start coming out in bursts and waves. After everything, after all, The Matriarch, for all her power, was just a teenager.
The other members of the Freedom Five look at each other, noticing the increasingly imbalanced villain before them.
Whispering a silent thank you to Tachyon, they charge.
(I definitely understand how this builds interest - as a GM, I'm constantly tormenting the players with similar little things they don't realize meant something / mattered until later.)