AOA: Playing The New Factions

['Scaper94]

Originally Posted by boromir96

While that’s possible, is Killian not a Dawn Raider Hero?

Yes, he is a Dawn Raider Hero so he would qualify for the turn bonding. It just seems odd to me that, at the moment, he doesn't qualify for the Captain bonus.

[chas]

You're right, we have 3 Pirate squads.

[Blue Trails]

Originally Posted by 'Scaper94

Yes, he is a Dawn Raider Hero so he would qualify for the turn bonding. It just seems odd to me that, at the moment, he doesn't qualify for the Captain bonus.

Couldn't "Dawn Raider Hero" have been a placeholder for an undecided, uniform factional class? There are many suitable classes for the Dawn Raiders, such as Pirate, Buccaneer, Raider, Mercenary, or even Dawn Raider itself, and we've seen no indication of a faction designation on the prototype army cards; therefore, there could just be a class-based division of Dawn Raiders into Captains and Pirates. We could expand on this idea by declaring Vane, Bonny, and Bok-Bur-Na to be our lower-ranking or "plain" pirates and leaving the Widow and the Admiral as our Captains (technically, the Vorid Air Captain could share that class, but this is unlikely due to the Dawn Raiders' promised tight synergy ties). These last two units also happen to be those that explicitly or implicitly buff their fellow Dawn Raiders.


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Speaking of our Jandar-following friend, I took a few minutes to mock up a card for him in the X-2 creator, complete with proxy sculpt. Surely I can't be the only one looking to sneak him into home games, right?

[mee likey]

Originally Posted by Blue Trails

Should I say it? No, don't. I'm gonna say it.

Ahem. Am I the only one who gets more excited looking at this card than the official prototype card showing the animated-3D-style art?

Yeah? No?

I'm sure the dev team had plenty of internal discussions about this, and that some graphics employees worked hard on the new card design, but since they say they are listening to feedback from fans, here goes. If you want to change to a complete-hex-shaped card, great. Eliminate empty space, enlarge the font, enlarge the photo. Cool. But the benefits of keeping the rest of the card in the classic 'Scape style is:

• Nobody has to guess at iconography. I know which numeric value is for range and which is for move because, well, it says so . . . with words.
• The design still looks great.
• It's familiar to all the old fans.
• Having a mix of old cards and new will look weird. Even if it is mechanically compatible, it's visually jarring.
• Having a photo of a painted miniature just makes more sense -- for sanity purposes and for gameplay purposes.
• -- many of the card powers use the wording 'figures' anyway. We are moving figures around and we understand that. The name on the card refers to a specific plastic figure, which we can immediately look on the board and say "oh, that's that one". Even if that miniature is painted slightly differently than on the card, there's no denying that the shape on that card matches that figure. Any abstracted imagination of "woo! Kaemon Awa is a badass!" is done completely in my head.
• The 3D artwork is going to turn off a lot of fans. New and old. Not everyone, but a lot. If the argument for using new 3D-cartoonish artwork is to target new fans, I get it, but is that really the aim of this project? (if so, I still don't see a single video posted on the BGG game page, or any of the dev/publishing team responding to questions in the forums over there, where all the potential new fans are looking. I should see some banner ads there.)
• That said, I love you guys for trying to bring 'Scape back and I'm on board 100% either way.

I know that this thread was not necessarily the best place for this post, but this card elicited a strong emotional response from me. I actually got more excited for this card (It's your fault, Blue Trails), like "This is a custom I want to play with! I already have that miniature!" (Pathfinder Skull and Shackles, Kerdak Bonefist)


P.S. Actually, I still think Grithog's playing-size cards are the best. And folks can still print them out on ArtsCow after all these years. My game group combines them with the Random Draft Deck style of drafting.