My custom hero contest entry

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Rev. Glad you liked the visual, and it's great to have your help in honing in on the weakest parts. Since you're not a customs kinda guy, I appreciate you going the extra mile.

Crikey, I forgot about that — we had tried a vengeance marker early on, but I think it was hard to fit it in without making the font even smaller. However, things are a little less tight now, so I'll give it another shot. I really do want to get rid of that race-hate business.

As for the melee attack, I'm a bit hesitant to change that, but I would love to hear more from you on this. What do you see as the main benefits of a ranged Swoop and a cost of 15?

Excellent! I was counting on Professor Cranky showing up.

That was kind of bothering me too; you hit the nail on the head in noting that there's no precedent for a character mounted on a fixed platform. In fact, I also worried about the goofiness of the dragon carrying two massive granite blocks around the battlefield, but I got over that. Even without the platform, though, the problem would still exist due to the animal's tail.

I think you are correct on the rules interpretation. I didn't do a good job of mentally separating size (the conceptual storyline bigness of the unit) from height (gameplay tallness for determining adjacency). So it would seem that SMALL does what I want it to do for story purposes, but I need to increase the height.

The discrepancy is actually worse than you suspected, due to my blurry photo and its lack of "character references" (hah). I've actually made two Sonlen's Dragons, and they aren't even the same size:



I now think I should have chopped the ruins down to the bone:



The question is, can I get away with height 3? Probably not. Looks to me like those digitally hacked dragons are both height 4. I guess I'll just have to live with that. I don't really want to modify the tail — it lays onto the ruin so beautifully.

And potentially offensive to some.

I don't mind the +1 to all units of the same army, but in every two-player game this would boil down to a +1 against every opposing unit. I guess what I'm thinking is that the concept of "every unit from the same army" might seem a little weird to a player who has never played a multiplayer game, and also has the potential to be misinterpreted as "every unit from the same general". Maybe I'm just looking for trouble here.

Another possibility is to create three Vengeance Markers and say you put them on the killer's army card plus any two other opposing army cards. Thus you can decide for yourself whom you also want to blame for your master's death, and your opponent now has to consider not only which unit he wants to try to kill Sonlen with, but also the impact on other vulnerable units he has in the area. So maybe your archmage was smashed by Krug and you don't feel like spending the next six turns pumping up the troll one wound at a time, but his Life-1 Deathwalkers are looking rather tasty!

Everything else you guys are saying seems workable, but if this unit is going to essentially require Sonlen, I'd rather just say so and make its cost 0 — it's cooler that way. But actually, I really like the fact that I can use it without him if I want to, and I'd like to preserve that if possible.

Now, tell me why 15 points appeals to you guys. I can't seem to shake the image of an MKSentinel post in the Book of Sonlen's Dragon that goes "Not a bad unit; shame it wasn't a nickel cheaper. B–."

I was hoping the combination of Stealth Flying plus move-after-you-attack would make it harder to kill him. In fact, we just finished a playtest about an hour ago in which the dragon could fly out three spaces over a fortress wall, attack, then fly back inside the fortress — it was striking with impunity. I started to wonder if that was a bit too good.

From your lips to Taeblewalker's ears! That is the goal. Thanks for you excellent comments. I'll do some rework this evening and post a revision.

Yeah, I think I'm comfortable with that little "cheat".

That's what I'm after. Think Isamu: I want it to look broken on first glance, but in reality it's sometimes overpowerful and sometimes almost pointless (other than psychological value).

I think I can live with the 15 if the horsepower is there to make it exciting.

That's a great thought, and I would probably do it in a heartbeat if I wasn't trying to win my daughter some HLD. But I've made the assumption that the more work we put into creating an actual fully-realized unit, the better our chances are. I'm pretty sure Hasbro/WotC would not release a unit with new markers in a color we've already seen, and one of my self-imposed design constraints is to go for 100% pausible authenticity.

You could easily be spot on here. But I think I really need the flexibility to counterbalance the fact that my opponent has 100% control over whom I can use this ability against (and indeed whether I can use it at all). I'm no expert on Heroscape psychology, but I do know that CCG players are reluctant to use units (cards) whose functions are dependent upon the opponent's "cooperation". We always had to make those things very powerful or they wouldn't have legs.

If that's true, then I have missed the mark. Certainly you need Sonlen if you want to get the sexy, but I want you to be able to use this without the archmage and still get the useful. In fact, this comment makes me feel like maybe I should go back to 10 points. I wouldn't want every build to want the dragon, but I would want people once in a while to say "what the heck, let's fill in with Swoopy this time instead of Isamu".

But, the only way I can do that is if you use the Major to attack Sonlen. You control it. In fact, it's possible that the dragon's real value is not in the attack but in the discouragement. On my old design team, we would say "the threat is stronger than the execution". I'd almost bet real money that within a month of this unit's "release", some player will be lamenting that "I waited all game for my opponent to attack Sonlen and he never did — this thing is useless!!!"

Originally this thing only worked against the card that killed Sonlen, but I started thinking about how unexciting and underpowered it would be for you when your Sonlen gets knocked down to 1 or 2 life by my Krug or a Major and then finished off by some cheap, disposable unit like a Viper (or worse, a DW7K self-destruct). I already controlled so much of your destiny with this unit, that it seemed like you needed at least a little bit of tactical flexibility in how you apply it. And you still have the burden of accurately predicting which opposing unit(s) will still be alive and you'll most need to pound on after Sonlen falls.

Your comments led me to another interesting thought (which eliminates the rounding, still gives me a chance against big baddies, and better aligns to the original DRAGON SWOOP function): "The targeted figure cannot roll more defense dice than your attack dice." I worry that this is too weak, but if the possibility of 4 Attack against 1 Defense is just plain broken, then this would be a clean way to rein it back in. Does that accomplish the same kind of goal from your perspective?

I'm not sure that rolling 4 vs. 4 is actually a better deal for me than rolling 1 vs. 1 — if my statistics muscles aren't completely atrophied here, the expected result is probably the same (0.33 wounds), but I would guess that the possibility of multiple wounds has to be offset by a greater chance of no wounds.

More than you know, my friend. I appreciate the time you're putting into this, and your willingness to put it on the line even when you aren't quite sure yet where you think it should go. It is exactly this kind of "creative conflict" that leads to excellence. Thank you very much.

Thanks for your kind words and encouragement. It does seem like a fun concept, and if we can get all the gameplay balanced right then I'm hopeful it may have some legs.

Professor Cranky is always welcome here. Thanks again for the encouragement and the criticism.

Yeah, when the contest is over I'd like to do a tute. I didn't take pictures as I went along, but I do have one last Sonlen left that I can chop up, so I'll probably do this one more time and document the process. No promises on how long it will take me to get there, though.

I tried that a few days ago and just couldn't get it to look like it belonged there naturally (and it would probably have to be chopped down), so I abandoned the idea. Perhaps I'll give it another shot if I have time.

Thanks!

No worries ... there's still time to chime in if you have some thoughts on this.