I'm not going to go searching for a link for this, but I believe what we were told about decks (not necessarily characters) in Vengeance was that there would be either 7 or 11, depending on how you wanted to look at it. I think we were given the impression of 5 villains, 5 heroes, and 1 (now 2?) environments. We were also told the identity of the villains, with some confusion over whether Baron Blade would have an entirely new deck, or what. This gave some level of confirmation to the rumors that there would be 5 villain decks, with an option to play them together.
Going back to templates... I would really love a good outdoorsy Enviroment. A relatively big and neutral area with woods where you do get the occasional rockslide, forest fire or wolf pack but overal it does not affect the battle too much. It would be an ideal place to battle characters like Bhuta or Matriarch who have a nice nature related angle.
wait, where did 2 come from? I calculated 3, after vengeance. If every hero gets a (unique) nemesis and all the expansions are the normal 2-2-4 format, that leaves 3. Which means that, if the above is true, the last expansion or 2 should be in a different format.
If it was stated that there are 6 expansions planned. Rook City, Infernal Relics, and Shattered Timelines are all currently released. So that would be 1+1+1=3, also to count Vengeance in there that would be 3+1=4. So currently 4 expansions are currently known about. So 6-4=2, basic math shows that there are only 2 planned expansions following Vengeance.
I never saw that statement.
If that's the case, then there are 3 possible outcomes:
1.) Vengeance doesn't count as an expansion, leading to 3 more "normal" ones, thus fitting my calculations
2.) one of the remaining 2 expansions is bigger than the 2-2-4 format, so as to accomodate the 2 missing heroes without nemeses (or, alternatively, doesn't have any heroes in it. Or both expansions only have 1 hero.)
3.) Bunker and Absolute Zero don't get unique nemeses. Obviously they have Proletariat and FrightTrain, but since Friction, Ermine, and Captain Blade aren't considered "real" nemeses it stands to reason that they wouldn't either.
There is also the possibility of a villain being the nemesis to more then one hero as well as a hero have multiple nemeses(?). Iron Legacy and Tachyon being an example of each. Tho I would consider Friction more of her real nemesis then matriarch (double entendre!).
There I'd also the possibility of more promo heroes and villians
Vengeance will be bigger than normal.
yeah, I KNOW that. 5 heroes, 5 villains. I was taking that into consideration. It still leaves Unity, AZ, Bunker, the Scholar, and 2 of the vengeance heroes without (unique, mutual) nemeses. Thus, 3 more expansions of the normal size would be necessary to accomodate all of them.
I'm guessing that the final expansion is going to be big...
Two mini-expansion villains would also balance things out.
I wonder if we're going to get a swamp, based off of Nightmist's "calling relics" card… I'm bad at remembering names. But the swampy-viney creature didn't look like a villian, so I figured it would be a creature in the environment.
As for archetypes I'd like to see…
I think most of the ones mentioned in the thread, but also, I suddenly want a swordsman (or woman, which would be cooler)
Villain wise, we need someone or something that thinks it is God (or god-like), I'd love smacking around someone who thinks they have unlimited power
Things I'd like to see...
Heroes:
An archer-type, with varying effects based on arrows (glue/putty to remove environment effects, frost to prevent villain damage, etc.). Primary focus would be debuffs, with a secondary focus on single target damage. Ongoings would focus on changing the number of plays per round vs. single target damage--I.e. you could forfeit your play phase to increase your power damage or forfeit your power phase to play additional one shots.
A "reformed" demon, a la Etrigan or Ghost Rider. Lots of fire and infernal damage, with a base power similar to Penance Stare, allowing him to destroy Ongoings. Each power would have optional riders allowing you to "sell your soul/hp" for greater effect: something like "Deal 2 fire damage. If you take 2 infernal damage, deal a second target 2 fire damage." HP reclamation would be non-existent for this character.
An "unstoppable force" similar to the Juggernaut. He'd deal primarily melee damage, but could "chain" attacks together, provided he dropped the target to 0 hp each time, gaining bonus damage for each foe destroyed. He could potentially chain together a series of attacks, going from lowest to highest hp, taking out each along the way and ending with a huge smash against the main villain.
Environments:
A "city in the clouds" like Zeal from Chrono Trigger or Columbia from Bioshock Infinite.
The Freedom 5's headquarters.
A lost city, like Attilan or Lemuria. Ruins of Atlantis touches on this but doesn't go far enough into the weirdness.
A pseudo-Japanese temple full of Ninjas!
Villains:
A villain with several, varied attacks which depend on the amount of hero cards in play. The more cards in play, the more lethal/more targets he attacks. Villain Ongoings could adjust this number dramatically. I'm thinking of someone like The Mandarin, with his 10 Rings, to replicate this effect.
An honest-to-zombie-Jeebus melee smashing Hulk. He should hit like a Mack truck and have a bit of damage reduction, but with limited Ongoings and no minions.
A mind-controller, like Gorilla Grodd or The Purple Man. He'd have throngs of relatively low hp minions, as well as abilities to force heroes to damage one another. Devices would include a "mind control helmet" or such, which would make a hero flip the top card of the villain deck during their play phase. Very heavy on the psychic damage, too.
I think a teleporter Hero, like Kuroko Shirai from A Certain Scientific Railgun would be cool.
I think the Hulk-smashing villain has already been covered in the shape of Iron Legacy ;).
I would LOVE to see a super hero organization that's way-out crazy, much like the the Brotherhood of Dada from the doom patrol (if you don't know who those are, go look them up; they have some crazy stuff) I would think they would play similarly to those minion heavy foes like La Capitan and Dawn (so perhaps focusing on the mastermind, like a crazy Professor X) but each of the "members would do something interesting, like reverse the play order, or just allow everybody to play cards at once, or make the enviorment targets only target the heroes or something.
Also if there was an environment that was a sentient street. That would be cool.
A shapeshifter villain would be cool, with a lot of different "forms" requiring the heros to adapt their strategies: one might require a lot of damage to get through, another might redirect the first attack each turn so you want a lot of little attacks, one might hit a single hero target for a lot of damage whereas another hits all of them for a little, etc. You could even have a "mimic" form where they count as a hero target while it's in play, or if that's too game-breaking then a form which copies all attacks against it to the hero with the highest hp ("It's the only way to be sure!")
A mentalist/telepath villain. A lot of hand/board control (like maybe an ongoing card that makes you either discard a card or take 2 psychic damage whenever you draw a card?), and some mind-controlled minions: weak attackers but if they're brought to zero hit points all heroes deal themselves psychic damage (because beating up innocent civilians is stressful).
A villain that flips when it first incapacitates a hero? Some sort of death spirit? Special abilities which trigger when incapacitated hero abilities are used?