Shadowking's Customs v.2 - 02/18/24 Bike Ninja!

[Son of Arathorn]

Interesting cards! I threw some notes together for the Rangers (I'd like to think some more about the Cultists):

It's a little odd that they're called Rangers but their class is Scouts, only because Ranger is already a class in HeroScape (although only Brandis Skyhunter uses it). Others may not notice and/or be bothered, and I'm not sure I'm even bothered by it.

Even though they don't bond with him, I think the Venoc Warlord would be worth the price to take with the Rangers. +2 Move is nothing to sneeze at, and he's a sturdy cleanup figure, once you run out of Rangers.

I like the tradeoff of Scout Strategic Bonding, especially given the shenanigans you can get up to with semi-regular activations of Theracus, Kira Jax, and the Clawfoot Interceptors.

I like the +1 attack die in melee; my only note is that "Hand-to-Hand Specialist 1" (the power name, not the text itself) is a bit of a mouthful, compared to, for example, the 10th Regiment of Foot's conditional +1 die powers "Melee Defense 1" and "Bayonet Attack 1." Similar to my first point about Ranger/Scout, this may not actually matter much.

I think this is a nice, restrained design that promises some neat builds!

[Shadowking]

Ah yeah I think you're right, I should probably change the name (even though the game is generally quite inconsistent with these things) - Vanguards of Ashra isn't a bad one. Same with the power name, it was just called "Melee Specialist 1" at some point I think, I can go back to that or maybe even just "Melee Attack 1" - it's cleaner overall. Venoc Warlord is really good with them if you can afford the points - makes the melee attacks plus bonding option a lot easier to trigger reliably with the +2 move. These originally used to have a take on Hide in Darkness that got bonus points on the roll for being adjacent to trees and bushes and while that was pretty thematic, it added a ton of extra clunk (and half the time the trees/bushes were jungle ones that added +1 defense anyway), so I dropped that and just went up to 3 defense dice base which I think works out better overall in terms of both play and being able to drop a very wordy power.

[Shadowking]

Ironclad Valiants are a two-figure squad.

Another new unit on the worktable. One of my favourite things to design for is new options for Bonding, and Knight Bonding seems like a cool (and not particularly powerful/game-breaking) thing to go with. None of the options are that strong - Sir Dupuis, Prince al'Kahora, and Viceron the Blood Knight - but they are fun and thematic; a 2-squad seems like it's able to keep Dupuis mostly in check due to making it harder to set up his Knight's Courage consistently, and Shield Bash is another potentially powerful ability tempered by the fact that it's hard to consistently position into with a 2-squad. I haven't got designated minis for these yet but it's super easy to proxy them with Knights of Weston. 50 points might be a little conservative, 45 or 40 points might be fine honestly.

[Shadowking]

After having the idea in the back of my head for a while, finally got something I quite like for a concept I wanted to deliver on: Musketeers!






They currently have the names of the "real" musketeers from the novel, but I think would be better served with custom "inspired by" names ala Agent Carr etc; was just easier to leave them this way for concepting purposes at the moment. Unsure if it's possible to find suitable minis for them, especially prepainted, but I'll see what I can do in the future.

[Myriadite]

Fantastic! The individual flair of each character's bonding is very fun. The bold D'Artagnan can spur another musketeer on to a greater move and attack - very clever! I also like how they are split up between different generals; in a way, a neat reflection of their unlikely relationship in the book.

Out of curiosity, what is the design intent behind D'Artagnan's special attack? Does the D20 represent the unreliability of the weapon?

[Vydar_XLIII]

This might just be a me thing, but you have 4 powers there that are very similar and easily confused. Instead of your 4 different All for One powers, let me suggest the following

MUSKETEER BONDING (on all 4 cards)
After revealing an Order Marker on [NAME], before taking [NAME]'s turn, you may take a turn with one other Musketeer hero you control.


ALL FOR ONE...
If you revealed an Order Marker on this card this turn, until the end of your turn, Musketeer heroes that move are never attacked when leaving an engagement.


...AND ONE FOR ALL,...
If you revealed an Order Marker on this card this turn, until the end of your turn, if you roll the 20-sided die for a special power on a Musketeer hero's army card, you may add 3 to your roll.


...UNITED WE STAND...
If you revealed an Order Marker on this card this turn, until the end of your turn, Musketeer heroes add 1 to their Move and Attack.


...AND DIVIDED WE FALL!
If you revealed an Order Marker on this card this turn, until the end of your turn, when a Musketeer hero attacks normally, they may attack one additional time.

Perhaps the 4 power names get rearranged somehow of make it fit better? IDK, I'm not terribly familiar with the 3 Musketeers.

[Shadowking]

Originally Posted by Myriadite

Fantastic! The individual flair of each character's bonding is very fun. The bold D'Artagnan can spur another musketeer on to a greater move and attack - very clever! I also like how they are split up between different generals; in a way, a neat reflection of their unlikely relationship in the book.

Out of curiosity, what is the design intent behind D'Artagnan's special attack? Does the D20 represent the unreliability of the weapon?

Yeah I liked the idea of splitting the generals up, it makes them good with Ranjit but I made sure to make one of the more powerful ones Einar (also Einar seemed like a natural fit anyway to be a general included) so you don't just get to freeroll Ranjit with them. Pretty much that was the intent behind the d20 special attack; I wanted to design a special that could benefit from the boost from one of the "All For One" powers and that felt like a thematic and mechanically easy way to go about it.

Originally Posted by Vydar_XLIII

This might just be a me thing, but you have 4 powers there that are very similar and easily confused. Instead of your 4 different All for One powers, let me suggest the following. . .

I think you're not wrong, those current power names were sort of placeholdery (although I'm not sure if there's a super elegant way to do it). I like the method you proposed with the caveat that I'm not sure it ends up as clean if it has to say "Whenever you take a turn with another Musketeer Hero using <this Hero's> Bonding Power..." for the sub-powers (since with that wording the hero with the OM would also get the extra bonus, which is unintentional - they aren't supposed to be able to benefit from their own effect and only pass it to the others, for more decision-making/balance/theme reasons). It honestly is probably OK though? So they'd all get the Musketeer Bonding and then the extra power can just have that text at the front, so like:

ALL FOR ONE...
Whenever you take a turn with another Musketeer Hero you control using <this Hero's> Musketeer Bonding special power, during that turn, that Hero is never attacked when leaving an engagement.

[Vydar_XLIII]

Ahh, I did misread that. I thought they were supposed to get the benefit of their own power. "Why can I give someone else Disengage if I can't disengage myself?" was my thought process.

Yeah, that wording would be fine.

[S1R_ART0R1US]

Cool idea - I love alternate bonding strategies (and since my wife and I have been watching the Musketeers show from BBC via Hulu I've become a fan of the subject matter too).

The Aramis/Athos combo seems potent. I can attack with two heroes (one with a 30% chance of removing their ability to roll shield, and the other ranged) and also have a 55% percent chance of seeing exactly what order markers are going to be used.

[Shadowking]

Been working on a new hero I'd love to get some thoughts on:



The figure is #037 Elektra from Heroclix Wheels of Vengeance, and I think it's basically perfect for Heroscape so eager to continue to refine this one:



Has synergy with both Death Chasers and Ninjas; after having played with her I think the way to think about her mechanically is like a ranged hero that generally has a low "actual range" of around 2-4 spaces, but with the restrictions of still needing to have open melee positions and movement paths to use her attack. She's been pretty fun so far!

[Myriadite]

This is such a great idea! Everything about the design works very well. The colours make me think more of an Utgar ninja, but that is a minor factor. The Death Chasers synergy is quite amusing.

[Shadowking]

Originally Posted by Myriadite

This is such a great idea! Everything about the design works very well. The colours make me think more of an Utgar ninja, but that is a minor factor. The Death Chasers synergy is quite amusing.

Yeah the color scheme thing is the only thing currently "tripping me up", so to speak; I think thematically both the card and the figure fit well as a Valkrill addition otherwise (especially because she works with Chasers, and because Valkrill doesn't currently have a Ninja). I'm not sure how adherent to things like this the figures tend to be; several non-matching color scheme examples come to mind but I'm not sure if there are any that have something that's both not their general's colors and is pretty close to those from a differing general. I feel like it's probably ultimately fine this way though?