The Book of Nico Minoru
 

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Character Bio - Nico isn't the sort of person who volunteers to be the leader. She's not supportive, she's not confident, and she's never been the "team mom" type. But when you discover your parents are actually evil sorcerers and members of the Pride, run away from home with five other teens in a similar predicament, and find out the only one of you with any leadership skills (and your kinda-sorta boyfriend) is actually evil? You learn pretty fast. Thankfully, Nico also happens to wield the Staff of One - her bloodright, this powerful weapon lets her cast any spell she can imagine. The catch? You can never use the same spell twice. Because even the bright side is never that sunny.
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-Rulings and Clarifications-

• N/A

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-Combinations and Synergies-

Incoming Synergy:

• As a Human with the Magical Defense special power, Nico has these
  • Human Synergies and
  • Magical Defense Synergies, and
  • may be chosen for Wong's Loyal Manservant special power.
• As a Runaway, Nico has these Runaway Synergies.

Outgoing Synergy:

• Nico may use her "Try Not to Die" special power to move Runaways you control. Current Runaways.

Immunities, Benefits, and Weaknesses:

• As a Human, Nico interacts differently with these special powers.
• As a flying figure, Nico interacts differently with these special powers.
• As a figure with the Magical Defense special power, Nico may bypass opponents' Magical Defense and have her own Magical Defense bypassed by opponents' figures with Magical Defense. Current figures with the Magical Defense special power.
• As a figure with the Magical Defense special power, Nico interacts differently with these special powers.
• Nico's Staff of One special power does not allow her to cast a Spell that shares a name with a Spell she's already cast this game, preventing her from casting multiple copies of a Common Spell in one game. Current Common Spells.

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-Strategy, Tactics and Tips-

• N/A

-Heroscapers Community Contributions-

• Initial playtest: johnny139
• Second playtest: Lazy_Orang
• Third playtest: Ronin
• Fourth playtest: Arkham
• Art: Comic Art/Mini Art/Background
• Art by japes

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

NICO MINORU

HUMAN
UNIQUE HERO
RUNAWAY
RELUCTANT

MEDIUM 4

LIFE 4

MOVE 5
RANGE 1
ATTACK 2
DEFENSE 3

200 POINTS

STAFF OF ONE
Start the game with 6 black Mana Markers on this card. Before Nico moves, attacks, or defends, you may remove any number of Mana Markers from this card. For each marker removed, you may choose either the Move, Range, Attack, or Defense number on this card, and add 4 to that number until the end of this turn. You cannot choose the same number more than once per turn. Nico cannot cast a Spell that shares a name with a Spell she has cast this game.

"TRY NOT TO DIE"
Instead of moving with Nico, you may move a Runaway you control, or you may reveal an "X" Order Marker on this card and move any four Runaways you control. Nico can be one of the Runaways.

MAGICAL DEFENSE
When Nico is attacked by an opponent's figure that does not have the Magical Defense special power, the most wounds Nico can take for this attack is one.

FLYING SYMBOL

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

Comic Art:


Background:

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

Cool design. :up:

Any specific reason for 5 Life?

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

So, we've got the last Runaway here. A few points:

--- The big benefit here is that she'll be giving movement bonding, something that the Runaways desperately need. The current version is pretty bare bones and simple, but we can tweak it (and strengthen it) if need be. One idea I have is to have it trigger based on the OMs you have on Runaways you control. Something like this:

"TRY NOT TO DIE"
Before revealing an Order Marker on this card, you may move one Runaway you control for each unrevealed Order Marker on a Unique Runaway Hero you control. If you do, Nico Minoru cannot move this turn. Nico may be one of the Runaways moved with this special power.

That would give you a maximum of NINE figures per round, but only if you take a turn with Nico all three turns.

(By the way, the name is a reference to THIS PAGE.)

--- We could fold Curse of One into Staff of One but I couldn't find a way to do so without it feeling tacked on (which it is).

--- I'm hoping that she comes out to 180-200, depending on where Gert/Old Lace end up. Between them, the full army will look like this:

Nico (180-200)
Gert/Old Lace (150-170)
Chase (130)
Karolina (130)
Molly (180)

The total there is 800, nice round number. And it leaves headroom for Alex, Xavin, Victor, and whoever else is designed in the future. Is this Nico worth that much? No idea!

--- Also open to personality suggestions. Dedicated works but I'm kind of liking Sardonic? But that might overlap with Gert's Cynical a bit too much...

--- Also, while I'm here - the original Nico figure is linked in the first post, and we have pictures of it, but it's nightmarishly ugly even by Heroclix standards. The new What If? set had the Runaways but most of them were in weird superhero outfits - we did, however, get a new normal Nico:

https://i.imgur.com/55CqkMt.jpg

Unfortunately, it's $10+ and I can't find any good pictures of it. We should be good to go, but if anyone wants to pick one up and see how it looks, be my guest.

Keeping her points up. :lol: Realistically she should probably have less Life and more base Defense, though. She's absolutely a normal human without the staff.

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

Edit

STAFF OF ONE
Start the game with 6 black Magic Markers on this card. Once per turn, before moving, attacking, or defending with Nico Minoru, you may remove one Magic Markers from this card to increase Nico’s Move, Range, Attack, or Defense number by 4 until the end of that turn.

Can't see myself ever burning one of the 6 markers to make a ranged attack of 2 over a melee attack of 6 or roll 7 dice on defense, but don't have a problem keeping it in for the theme.

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

Fair enough! I guess there was that one time in Avengers Arena where she died (?) and then just got better for reasons that weren't clear to me.

I lean toward the simpler version of "Try Not to Die", if only because she's a four-power card.

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

I'd personally go with 'Mana Markers' or whatever over 'Magic Markers', that way no one tries to throw a bunch of Sharpies on her card.

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

Love it! Great how you captured the Theme of the Staff of One! :)

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

I think you can pretty easily tack Curse of One on the end of Staff of One. I mean it's effect literally comes from the staff. But this design looks great!

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

I like her, she looks like fun, but I question whether as the leader she does enough to make the Runaways competitive. I mean, sure, movement bonding's nice, but the Runaways are a low-power faction anyway, and I fear that without anything in the order of full turn bonding they'll never get much use because they'll just be ripped apart by anything half-decent that looks at them funny. :shrug:

Re: The Book of Nico Minoru (Design Phase)
 

In a sense, that's kind of what I'm going for. The Runaways have some heavy hitters (Molly's 7 Attack, Nico's 6 Attack, Old Lace's two attacks of 5), but they all have limited uses or built-in weaknesses. They need to move in, hit hard, and break the opponent first.

Karolina and Chase are safety valves just in case they don't succeed immediately, but you shouldn't have to bend them far before they break. They're a bunch of teenagers - the only time they should take on the Avengers head-to-head is when they keep them on their toes.

That being said, if movement bonding isn't enough to make that strategy work for our testers, I'm more than happy to tweak things.

As far as future designs go, I see Alex Wilder offering OM flexibility, with Victor as crowd control and Xavin as an alternate to Molly as a beatstick.