The Book of Black King

[Good Pig]

Well, could still use some balancing, but I think if you kept his cost around 180 it would make it difficult to field both him and Professor X in the same army. 400 points of cheerleader is a lot to stomach in a typical 1,000 or 1,200 point build.

Also, similar to Kingpin if you're overextending Black King on the battlefield, he'll be destroyed before getting full value of his army boost.

The nice thing about those two powers potentially is that they compliment each other. Providing a constant boost, will mean he's a constant threat. Your opponent will want to take out Black King quickly, but in doing so will amp him up with Kinetic Absorption.

[Hahma]

Fair enough, though BK can get a pretty nice attack and his defense goes up as well to help protect him. But I see what you mean for sure. The only thing though is that the opponent will have to bypass the other activated Mutants to attack BK, and he's not going to go down easily. I think it could work though because like you said, to maximize the Prof X combo, BK would have to get into the mix and risk losing that boost. W/O Prof X, he could sit back with the X on his card and boost away. Even if Cap was in his army to give an extra boost, Cap wouldn't get the +1 from BK, but BK and other Mutants in the army would get the +1 attack/defense from Cap. That would be an interesting army also.

[IAmBatman]

I like that. If we decide it needs any nerfing, we can just make it a revealed OM on his card, so that you only get the +2 attack in a Cap build, for instance, on OM 3, rather than OM 2 and 3.

[johnny139]

I feel like "blanket Mutant attack boost" is sort of... boring, mechanically, though. And it sort of gives him a position as a general leader of Mutants that you can splash into any Mutant army, which seems completely against the character (who only works with the "best of the best" in the Inner Circle).

[Good Pig]

Not saying it's perfect, but how do you show political influence and power over others? Although simple, an attack boost is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Yes.

As far as the selection of Heroes, the issue is how you separate the Inner Circle based on the cards. Mastermind is almost done, a Selene is done, an Emma Frost is done. Unless you plan on making second versions of those cards solely for the the sake of synergy/bonding the ship has sailed. There's no common thread between any of the key members of the Inner Circle other than being a Mutant. You'd have to do an Avenger marker approach. In that case still nothing would be preventing you from using whoever you wanted for your army.

If you ignore the Hellfire Club theme altogether, where it will be missed most noticeably is on the leader's card, Black King.

[Hahma]

I updated the SP with GP's suggested change. I had thought about making Power Play only affect Mutants to bypass or limit possible Deadly Strike/Deadly Aim issues, but perhaps the +1 to Mutant attacks will be better as it will be used more often. I did kind of like the unknowing factor for Power Play where the opponent wouldn't know when it was coming, but perhaps it can be used on another design.

While the new power is a little boring, it does at least show a broader influence than just the once per game for one figure. As GP mentioned, other prominent HC members have been designed already and there isn't a way to tie any of them to HC other than doing second designs and giving them some sort of HC specific synergy. I for one have no interest in going that far with it. I have a lot of stuff I would rather design than even Black King, but he's filling a booster, so I really don't want to get into a HC specific design craze. We don't have enough people to do that anyway as we have DC guys that want to get their stuff done, guys that want to get the Indie figures done, guys that want the newest and shiniest comic characters designed and all the colorful stuff that goes with the Lanterns. There's the off the wall design interest and Event Hero interest. So there is no room for making the Hellfire Club more than a blip in our collection unfortunately.


I'll give this another 24-96 hours for others to check out the SP and make sure it's what they are fine with before sending it out to ERB again or begin testing.

[IAmBatman]

I'm cool with this direction. One nice thing about the current power is that the X-Marker is going to be the best OM to use for his attack boost, which means Prof X and Wolverine, for instance, aren't going to be ideal partners. This means he would work best with Mastermind (who could use the attack boost anyway!) which already means a Hellfire Club faction is starting to work pretty well on paper.

My one suggestion would be to put a clear sight restriction on his Hellfire Club attack boost power, for two reasons:

1. It's clear that you can't just keep putting the X-Marker on his card after he's destroyed and keep getting the bonus, and
2. It makes him better with Emma Frost, since she can enhance his ability to have clear sight. This then links Mastermind, Black King, and Emma Frost together in a way that makes them highly playable together and synergistic. Cuckoos work well with other Telepaths, so they fit in too. Selene doesn't really have a role in this, but she benefits from Mastermind and Black King at least, so that's something.

[Hahma]

Good idea Bats. I updated the SP with the Clear Sight addition.

[IAmBatman]

Sweet.

[Spidey'tilIDie]

My pnly suggestion is to bump his base stats to 4/4 or at least 3/4. He is at least borderline human sans injury.

[IAmBatman]

Hmm, I'd rather see 4/3. I'm less scared of 9 attack than of 9 defense, honestly.

[Hahma]

Well 4/3 would give him more of a better than mere human attack, and he does work out I'm sure. Attack of 4 isn't super martial artist, but someone that can take care of themselves pretty good. Defense of 3 is better to me than 4 because it makes it easier to wound him and bump up his stats, and that's what he wants to have happen anyway. He sandbags early to take some punishment, all the while absorbing that energy and then starts to kick some ass.