This is just a fun thought experiment I did at the bus stop, and I thought I’d share. C&A indicated during the very beginning of the long Disparation lead-up that they expected about two more normal expansions after that one, plus a couple of nonstandard boxes. So looking at the 6 slots each for heroes in two normal boxes, and thinking about the EE heroes not yet converted, plus two previously unpublished heroes that were pretty well confirmed to be in the works, a clear pattern emerges:
Space heroes
Sky-Scraper
Fashion
3-6. Void Guard members
Lifeline
Villainous Heroes
Luminary
La Commodora
Stuntman
Benchmark
Rambler
Akash’Thriya
The Naturalist
*Other
1?. The Sentinels single deck
2. The Scholar
3. Guise
The second grouping is slightly questionable, being less the strict “hero deck of a former villain character” and more generally heroes with a darker streak. The Naturalist has never been a villain, but Michael Conteh certainly was almost as bad of a guy as Mayor Overbrook once upon a time. Benchmark is the opposite, Randall Butler the man never had any negative intentions, but Revocorp was another story. And Rambler was repeatedly described as not really a hero, so much as a saboteur of the villains he power-brokers with.
If it were me I’d want the Sentinels to be published an expansion before Void Guard, so maybe throw them in with Vengeance/VOTM as perhaps the only hero deck in that box. And then OblivAeon is the one with no heroes. (But of course I forgot a couple mini-expansion heroes when constructing this list.)
There are supposed to be six boxes. Disparation is the third box. We have a name reveal for the fourth box in the Disparation rulebook that people are currently receiving that also teases two EE heroes in it, a fifth box that is likely space themed, and a final OblivAeon related box. The last box is where I’d expect Benchmark, Luminary, Lifeline, and Stuntman.
What about making a Bugbear hero deck? Canonically he was one for a hot minute during the Dark Visionary era, it’d be a major Retcon to have him come back from Ur-Space and have him fight the Scions and Aeon Men, but it’d be an interesting addition to the perfect set of villain-turned-hero decks, since we don’t have one from Villains of the Multiverse.
I don’t know that makes it any better. The timeframe is very limited and at least from what we’ve been told end badly enough that NightMist feels he isn’t redeemable anymore.
The thing about Bugbear is that (a) he was a murderous asshole before he was cursed, (b) he seemed to really like how the curse let him kill and eat people, and only disliked the fact that it also compelled him through hunger (see the storyline in which the Chairman helps to bring Bugbear’s hunger under control and Bugbear is delighted to be a mob murderer, which only falls apart when he tries to betray the Chairman and eat him) and that the implication is that when Nightmist suppresses the curse, Bugbear is only heroic inasmuch as he feels compelled to in order to keep Nightmist from cursing him again, and he manages to stay good for less than a single trade paperback volume before doing something terrible.
None of that really aligns with “hero”. I supposed we could end up with a really weird Bugbear variant for Alpha, but it seems unlikely.
This is what I came to when I tried to predict it it year ago. We have a pattern of five returnibg heros and one new one per box. We think we know the three new heroes: Fashion, Rambler, and Youn Legacy (Paul let that last one slip on the run up to the core box’s release). And we can assume what the three last boxes were going to be (cosmic themed, villians style, and Oblivaeon).
I predicted that the villians box was next, because it seemed to me that they would want to release the Sentinels beforecthey released Void Guard. So here is what I came up with, working backwards:
Oblivaeon: All four of the villian as hero decks from the original oblivaeon set that are still left to release, Stuntman, and the new hero being the most villian as hero of the new three, The Rambler.
Comic: All four Void Guard, and one addictional retirning hero (my guess would be Skyscraper), with Fashion as the new hero.
Villians: all the remaining returning heroes and Young Legacy.
This keeps the pattern consistent, and keeps the theme of each box close to the theme of the original.
It was a good guess, although it looks like you were a little bit off. Akash’Thriya is one of the villains-turned-heroes, and the silhouettes in the back of Disparation place her and the Naturalist in the Vengeance Returned box.
Oblivaeon: La Comodora, Luminary, Stuntman, Lifeline, Benchmark, (Rambler/Young Legacy)
Benchmark fits in as a hero that starts as a villain ploy, and he’s a very late addition, so Oblivaeon works for him. I’m still back and forth on Rambler and Young Legacy; she’s more “new to the team” and he’s more “villain/hero”, but also he canonically has very little to do with Oblivaeon, being busy in the Realm of Discord while it’s going down, whereas Young Legacy is teaming up with her dad and representing the next generation there.
More inclined to call Rambler an antihero personally, given that it’s more his methods that seem questionable than the end results. Regardless, Young Legacy seems a better fit for Oblivaeon, although she might also just remain a variant hero card and leave room for some other completely new-to-the-game character.
Not that I’m holding my breath on ever seeing another thing for the game. I’ll concede it’s far more likely to get salvaged and put back into production than the RPG is, but after this whole FRG debacle finding a white knight seems optimistic. Whoever winds up with the IPs is going to go where the money is (which is the card game) unless they’ve won the lottery or something and it’s just a rich fan’s whim.
My copy of Disperation comes in the mail tomorrow, so I haven’t seen the teaser on the back on the manual yet. And the thing I think you are all forgetting about Young Legacy is the period where she breifly took over for her father while her father was recovering from a battle with Voss. I think that this happened in the 90’s. I also agree that if Akash’Thriya is known to would have been in Vengeance Returned, than Benchmark would make a good replacement in the Oblivaeon box.
Well they do talk about things that definitely didn’t happen in the 90s. Like GenCon, or Spirit Island. I assume those could each be 40% of the conversations the have.
