I suspect that is the case. I've been "told" otherwise (by somebody I have reason to believe, but who isn't GtG staff) that an order of oversize cards only would not qualify for hero promos. Disappointing to me, only because I'm not in a financial position to pre-order Villains this go-around.
According to the product descriptions you only get the SotM promo cards with VotM, the power pack of cards for Broken City and For Profit with an order of Broken City, and alternate character panels for Ambuscade and Operative with an order of For Profit.
It's not every day you spend over $1000 on GTG gear. But today was one of those days. The Halifax group buy is in =)
Making the numbers go up: 11 copies of VotM, 3 copies of Broken City, and lots of other stuff! And only $65 total in shipping across the two orders.
Impressive!
tomorrow is the last day for preorders? what fun thing should we do for it?
Ugh. My payday is next Friday and I haven't been able to afford the preorder this month due to some unforseen expenses (tow fee + new tire = owies).
I have a freelancing check coming in at some point, but unless it arrives tonight or tomorrow, I'm going to miss out. 
I'm right there with you, PW. The pre-order came at the second-worst possible time of year for me.
I got villains preordered but I don't get paid till Friday. Might miss tactics and that sux since I can never get to cons for promos.
On the plus side, my check arrived today! I can get my pre-order in just under the deadline...
However, I'm probably only going to be able to back Villains right now. While I'm really excited to see Dark Watch hit the table, Tactics just isn't seeing enough play time at our table to justify the cost right now. That said, I'll likely order it through my FLGS once it's out (and things are more financially stable...).
i still vote we have a party for when the preorder is over tonight.... and then start poking the greater than games team to find out a release date lol.
I'm not going to pre-order, I can't get enough friends together to make the UK shipping tolerable, but I've been watching the numbers tick by (just hoping to see it do well). Is it just me, or has there been a late run on Broken City? It seemed consistently to be about 1/5th as many copies as VotM, but since PAX East, it has caught up by a small amount (maybe to 2/9ths as an estimate) - did anyone else see that or am I imagining things?
Paul did say that they sold a good amount of pre-orders at PAX East, so it is porbably those folks redeeming their code on the website
I'm still looking forward on details for this year's Gathering of Heroes/WotC celebration and possible volunteering at a local children's hospital. That sounds like a blast.
Has there been any news for a release date? Seems like I pre-ordered forever ago.
Villains is in the process of shipping; the Tactics stuff seems to have hit unexpected development delays.