Vengeance Bios--Revealed!

Possible reason behind Medico's mask? Perhaps they all wear it so they can match?

What about the Sentinels Tactics pic where Wraith doesn't have a mask at all?

Could CON stand for Cosmic Omnitron Nine?  An attempt to learn from the heroes through subterfuge?  Give them a place to heal that also calls monsters for them to fight so he can watch and learn?

 

Also, all the heroes in the expansion are pretty awesome in their niches. I wouldn't worry too much about them being good or meh.  That will be based more on preferences than effectiveness, I think.

My thoughts are as follows

 

K.N.Y.F.E.- I don't know why but she strikes me as a crazy one, maybe it is the implied allusions to Wolverine or maybe it is the joy she seems to take in blasting a hole through the green robot dude (bottom picture of her bio) but she seems like she'd take things too far just for thrills. However, she also is the first hero to be actively searching for the "end goal" and is our look in F.I.L.T.E.R. Plus, I bet she's a lot of fun mechanically, blasting, blasting, blasting I do so love blasting

 

The Sentinels- I was surprised to see Writhe (blew one theory out of the water) but it does raise some interesting scenarios. Why would Tachyon attack a hero, why would a hero attack Tachyon? Interesting theories shall abrew. My favorite though has to be the Idealist, casually defeats a time pirate, then wants to go out for ice cream, I love it. Also, looking at the hair color I think she may be the kid from Argent Adepts healing card, the one standing next to Visionary. My cards are buried right now so I can't check, but she looks close enough? Mechanically, they sound intriguing, perhaps round robin actions? Maybe having cards putting them into formation (Medico covers Idealist who helps Writhe set up the target for MAinstay) but I feel like however they do it, if one goes down they all go down, or at least become much harder to play, and Idealist won't be able to take too many hits I bet

 

The Naturalist- I'm just not a fan. I don't like the costume, I'm not sold by the story, and shapeshifting into African beasts isn't terribly exciting for me. Maybe he'll convert me, but right now this is my least excited

 

Setback- Yes, so many times yes. "I lost my job, but I got a new one where a mad scientist gave me superpowers, oh and I walked right out the front door and when he confronted me a giant robot fell from the sky". I almost hope he has an auto-play mechanic to represent these twists and turns he has no control over, but from some of the other comments I guess that doesn't happen, probably more of a "universal balance" sort of thing. Okay, you're working for Blade now, but you get to survive the otherwise lethal serum and gain super-strength. You walked out the front door? Well, he and his goons tracked you down to your burnt down house. Love the flavor

 

Parse- I'm actually really intrigued by her and her potential power. I thought, from reading the bio, she would end up setting up events and plans, sort of like an inverse visonary if that makes sense, but it sounds like that also might not be. I defintely think she is a very interesting hero, especially with her connection to the cosmic entity and the possibility that when her brain got its upgrade she actually understood said entity's power. Very exciting times. She is also one of the few heroes who I would say is not wearing any sort of "uniform" or "costume" which makes her interesting, just a shirt, skirt, jacket and glove.

I think you guys will be pleased with how the Sentinels function, since iv seen that specific comment a few times. Can't really give specifics to support that obviously, but they have been a blast to playtest. 

You don't read comics much, do you? :grin:

Interesting item of note: the picture that was teased of Parse surrounded by gray images?  Today I played a game in the Realm of Discord, and I noticed that the slowed-down Tachyon in Time Crawls looks just like those gray figures.  So perhaps Parse's powers include ultra-fast mental processing that essentially renders everyone in slow-motion compared to her.  (This is not quite the same as being a speedster, since she couldn't herself move any faster; she could do maneuvers similar to Hypersonic Response, but not run around the world or Lightspeed Barrage anyone.

I think you mean March.  You might be able to give them your money in November, but you won't get the game then.

Hell, you can give them your money now.

Hmm, I don't know… I think maybe not, there are enough differences to make me doubt it, but on the other hand there are several similarities.

I was going to say, if they're taking pre-orders, I'd like to think that they'd process it instead of sitting on it until the product arrives.

This one has a very easy answer: it was a fan request.

Masks are a trope. Heroes should be masked if they have a secret identity.

Weeeee.... Flame war .... I think here is good proof that everyone is different ... and thusly we should never argue on the internet 

but for the sake of arguing on the internet I would like to say why does Parse comes from Melbourne, why not Kulin Alliance or Byron Bay or Wagga Wagga ... people live outside the metropolian areas of Australia

p.s. Christopher Adam and Paul you do not have to respond to this ... i just wanted to make people aware

Because the guys have recently been to Melbourne, at PAX Aus. Yes, I did ask, and that was the answer.

Ah.  Didn't know it'd been pushed back.  Thanks!

It certainly looks like I'm in the minority but I found the bios to be pretty underwhelming.

 

from a mechanics standpoint I'm interested in how the decks play, from a fluff standpoint it feels like way more misses than hits.

 

In my opinion the characters that have been the most successful fluff wise where characters that built off not only the lore that came before it, but the cultural understanding of comic book tropes

 

in a lot if ways, rook city (in my opinion) was the best illustration of that

 

Expatriette is the non mutant daughter of the sentinels equivalent of magneto

The chairman is ras al ghoul to the wraiths bbatman

not only was rook city mentioned in the wraiths background, but they evoked sin city for its imagery 

fixer thematically fits into that world

spite is the joker meets bane

 

Infernal Relics kind of felt like a limp noodle.... I love mysticism more than the average bear but with the exception of Eenad / tomb of Anubis nothing felt like it was tied to its source material, or necessarily to itself aside from "hey, MAGIC!"  

 

Take night mist, cool dr strange character, but when you bundle her up with argent adept it just feels off

 

shattered timelines, like rook city, was also largely tonelly consistent - time cataclysm, iron legacy, the dreamer, la capitan, omnitron x .... All of these played into comic tropes as well as the larger sentinels fluff.

 

this stuff?  Bunch of nonsequiters that feel to "precious" to me.  With the exception of the woefully named KNYFE, nothing feels like it expands on the lore of sentinels... seeing someone who worked for FILTER is neat.  i wanted to learn more about the negative zone prison.  but the rest?  

Setback would be a great mini expansion concept in the same vein as the scholar... But he's a punchline

la captains arch nemesis is revealed to be.... 4 random dudes?

Miss Information, arguably the most personal bad guy with the exception of Iron Legacy,  has their nemesis revealed and its: a random data anylisist with a soft tie to omnitron?  

 

I'm 100% all for diversity, it's great, there are many types of people on the world and there should be representation for everyone.  HOWEVER, I think they could have achieved that diversity and still made their ties to the world be deeper, as opposed to what feels like one off characters (see also: Argent Adept)

have knyfe be a devote Muslim as well as a filter agent.

have your autsitc archer be related to The Operative.

have the sentinels be the blade battalion that rebelled against their employer in addition to being a diverse group

 

im not saying that these ideas are slam dunks or anything, it's just that Rook City and Shattered Timelines had things that felt inspired, these just feel like gimmicks

 

Keep in mind with that Ms. Information was a fan made villain, so most of the stuff about her is going to be a little forced in the mythos. Kismet fits a lot better since Setback was already planned as a luck based hero, so having a luck based nemesis makes sense for him.

Nightmist also the creation of Richard Launius and so yes she can feel a little forced in, but her existence still makes sense in the world. Doctor Strange feels very out of place next to characters like Iron Man and most of the other Marvel heroes, but he still has his niche in the universe that he fills out very nicely.

I don't know if Setback expands the lore, but he certainly fits into it. It makes sense for Baron Blade to want to try and make his own legacy. It's basically what Cadmus was doing in both Justice League and Young Justice, or was it just the light in Young Justice, I'm having trouble remembering. You also had the whole deal with Spiderman and his clones so that fits into the trope of the superhero universe right there.

I actually really like the Sentinels bio. It's a bit of fresh air for me. They're just a family that have superpowers that get drawn in to larger conflicts. Not everything has to be super serious all the time. They just feel very real to me and it's cool that you're playing a team of heroes who already have a history with each other.

I can agree that Parse's bio seems a little weird, but I do think it expands the lore of the multiverse that the effect of the Watcher's interference had other consequences outside of resurrecting Omnitron, makes you wonder what else occured due to his meddling.

Naturalist's backstory makes Akash a bit more relevant to the Sentinels storyline. I like Akash, but outsie of the Adept and his team, it didn't feel like she had much of an impact on the rest of the Multiverse, and so it's nice that her reach has somewhat extended.

I don't know if you were involved with the Shattered Timelines kickstarter, but the Vengeful Five are all characters that have appeared on card art before and have been subjects of speculation on the forum, and so the villains alone expand and build on the lore of the world in a way the other expansions haven't.

I would disagree that these are simply gimmicks if the mechanics of the characters end up being completely different from previous heroes. Shattered Timelines is great, but Chrono and Omni for the most part borrowed mechanics present in other hero decks and found a new way of presenting them, whereas NIghtmist and Argent Adept worked completely different from previous heroes. I imagine the Sentinels alone will be a completely different experience from past heroes and I'm looking forward to the rest as well.

I'm not concerned about how the decks will play, I'm sure the gameplay is varied and compelling.  I'm speaking to the fluff of the characters.  When I say "gimmicky" I mean stuff like Setback's gag of, "he's the hero who doesn't even know it"

 

the issue with IR to me wasnt the addition of doctor strange, I love that stuff... It's that the rest of the back doesn't strongly tie to it.  

Ennead feel like xmen villains, where as gloomweaver feels like a doctor strange villain.... Which is different from rook city where everything in the pack felt like something out of batman.  

These bios for vengeance don't speak of any consistency... They're feeling (to me at least) like isolated wrappers to interesting mechanics as opposed to interesting characters with mechanics to reflect their personality

Wanting an expansion to have consistency with itself is different from the characters themselves being interesting. I think all the Vengeance characters have interesting backstories which will reflect on the decks.

I'm not the biggest fan of Rook City because the world of it feels very small. As many people have mentioned, it feels weird to fight Spite or the Chariman anywhere outside of Rook City or Pike Industrial.

I really like the fact that IR and even Shattered Timelines have this gigantic feel to them. I don't suffer nearly as much cognitive dissonance playing the Enead outside of the Tomb of Anubis or Gloomweaver anywhere outside of the Realm of Discord.

It seems that the differences in opinions is mostly aesthetic, and so even though I don't agree with you, I can see where you're coming from.

Just a thought, and it may be wrong, but this is our first mega expansion. I think this may be a major turning point in the story, and if it's not, it's set up for it. Characters that aren't quite there now, will be very important later. This is stuff that can't be set up any earlier, because there wasn't enough world yet, and any later will force the storyline too quickly. If this is so, I'm very excited.

I personally didn't really feel La Capitan in that one.  She just kinda feels cheap next to Iron Legacy and the Dreamer (Kismet was fan-made so I'm not really looking at whether she fits).  Yes, she's a time traveler and so it's sorta fitting to have her in a set with Time in the name, but next to the villainous turn of two of our beloved core set heroes, we have this random time traveling pirate who shows up for no real reason and tries to kill Our Heroes…why? So she can take their stuff!  It's a rather underwhelming motivation compared to the other villains we've had.

la captains arch nemesis is revealed to be… 4 random dudes?

Yeah, I didn't quite get that part either.  Not to mention, there are probably going to be four times as many hero targets for her to be hitting (granted she only personally attacks once in a while), and she herself is largely immune to damage when on her Split Across Time side, so the nemesis bonus won't really help you.

Miss Information, arguably the most personal bad guy with the exception of Iron Legacy,  has their nemesis revealed and its: a random data anylisist with a soft tie to omnitron?

Another rather weak one I agree, although it's certainly somewhat fitting that the Freedom Five would need help when going up against an enemy who knows all of their secrets.  Having the new helper come completely out of the blue actually sort of makes sense there.  They're both very intellectual and indirect characters; I imagine that the fight between them is like the battle of wits between Light and "L" in Death Note, where they can be standing in the same room and trying to figure out whether each other are secretly the enemies they're fighting, giving each other coded messages to try and bait them into breaking cover, playing an endless game of does-he-know-that-I-know-that-he-knows (with an "s" in front of each "he" in Parse and Aminia's case).

Random thought…Parse got her powers from a transmission from space, so she should have the alternate identity of "Parsec", if we ever get promo cards for non-EE characters (apart from Unity).