So I would have posted this in the other topic, but that one got locked. Looks like the prediction I had - that the villian bios would be released halfway through the preorder period followed by the environments on the last day - was a dud. It's too bad, because I think the more hype that could have been generated during the preorder time, the more copies I would think they could print in the first run. Sentinels has been notoriously plagued by unavailability.
As it stands now, I personally haven't preordered. I was close when they released the heroes bios, but at this time it doesn't make economic sense for me to do so. I have amazon prime membership, and since the distributors get their copies at roughly the same time as preorders I can save ten dollars on shipping and have it within two days of the arrival at whatever amazon seller.
When do you guys think we will get more delicious character backgrounds?
Just noticed this on Pro's bio page. Didn't pick this up the first time:
"In 1949, as part of a highly-classified and controlled experiment, Tsarev was exposed to cosmic radiation from a lump of otherworldly material the Soviet scientists had been experimenting with for years."
Parse had a similar situation with cosmic stuff giving her powers as well.
I asked a question of Christopher about one of the Villains and I got a reply that said there will be (minor) changes to that particular bio, so don't think what the kickstarter released is set in concrete.
I've heard it suggested that the new mode of play (somehow featuring five villians) will have a villian taking actions between each hero turn. It would be cool to see some cards from the new environments that recognized this. For example, there could be a card that forces one-on-one combat between the villain (that goes immediately before your hero) and your hero for a period of time. Or one that focuses all damage from all villains on one hero.
The villain and environment writeups will be put on the website as soon as we have a chance. Right now, we're gearing up to leave for the UK and Germany, so that has been occupying much of our time.
How do you think that work out in a non-vengeance game though?
Well if it said, "each hero may only do damage to the most recent villian to play a card" then it wouldn't have as much of an effect on a non-vengeance game. All heroes would be doing damage to the single (only) villain who played the last card. It might preclude them from fighting at all if that villain did not play a card that round for some extraneous reason, and it would make any environment targets untargetable.
Of course in a vengeance game it would have the one on one effect I described earlier.
Another interesting interaction would be to dissect or designate by turn order, which the game hasn't done very much in the past. Say there was a ice environment that had a card called "Rolling Snowball," which causes 1 damage to the next character card to have a turn, then 2 to the next, then 3 to the next, and so on. It would hit villain, hero, villain, hero in a vengeance game, but in a normal game it would be 1 damage to the villian and an increasing amount to each of the heroes. If someone skips their turn, you could end the chain. You'd want to have the first hero skip a turn in a normal game but in a vengeance game you might find it attractive to let that it go (say the heroes have high DR) and injure more villains.
I don't see how that would preclude them from fighting though; on the first turn of the game, a villain will play a card, and thus you can attack them. Whether or not they play cards on subsequent rounds, if they are the only villain then they will be the last villain to have played a card, and if they are not then some villain must be.
That is not an extraneous reason. Stopping the villain from playing cards, eg with Mistbound, is a major strategic initiative.
Derp. Extraneous as in unrelated to the subject being dealt with. As in something else besides the card I'm talking about would need to be played to produce that result. Never said that would have any bearing on anyone's strategy or evaluations of said strategy. Yep, mistbound would be an example. Good job.
I don't see how that would preclude them from fighting though; on the first turn of the game, a villain will play a card, and thus you can attack them. Whether or not they play cards on subsequent rounds, if they are the only villain then they will be the last villain to have played a card, and if they are not then some villain must be.
I'm not here to do word by word analysis of my own hypothetical imaginary cards, but you're right in a sense. I would question if the card would see/could reference the last round before it itself was played, however. Obviously if we wanted to produce that result unambigiously it would need to be rewritten.