The Book of Civilians

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by Karat

After looking this over and chatting a little with Bats, I think I'd recommend 2 changes here. The first is restricting Panic to attacks on your opponent's turn (which is clearly what the intent was). The other is to restrict the attack portion of Swarm movement to just Common and Uncommon Human Civillians.

I believe this would fix the current issues succinctly and still leave the units tested with them relatively untouched.

Except for Billy Batson, who was tested with them.
I wouldn't want to be too restrictive with the synergy blocking here. I always took the synergistic swarming to be intentional, and how many strong Citizens are there going to be anyway? The only option that gives any half-way solid attack potential is Meggan, and she's... not exactly amazing.

I also have a design planned that's dependent on Citizen synergy, so...
The Panic change I'm down with, though. Hell, I'd kind of be in favour of just making it so it can't trigger on your Civilians own turn - if you want to have your own Bullseye gun down a Civvie to incite a panic then I'd be okay with that and it'd feel kind of thematic, but if that's considered problematic then it's still not worth keeping. If not problematic, though, I'd say it's worth considering.

[Karat]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

Except for Billy Batson, who was tested with them.
I wouldn't want to be too restrictive with the synergy blocking here. I always took the synergistic swarming to be intentional, and how many strong Citizens are there going to be anyway? The only option that gives any half-way solid attack potential is Meggan, and she's... not exactly amazing.

I also have a design planned that's dependent on Citizen synergy, so...
The Panic change I'm down with, though. Hell, I'd kind of be in favour of just making it so it can't trigger on your Civilians own turn - if you want to have your own Bullseye gun down a Civvie to incite a panic then I'd be okay with that and it'd feel kind of thematic, but if that's considered problematic then it's still not worth keeping. If not problematic, though, I'd say it's worth considering.

I do understand that, but I do think that part of it is the largest point of concern competitively and is what is seriously restricting the design space. I mean, it's not like we can't design units to help fill in the gap it creates.

[johnny139]

I think the no friendly fire change is workable... that being said, I do think it has a place in theory. I've had "thematic" armies where the bad guys have some Civvies as a screen and fires into the crowd to cause chaos. That's a perfectly reasonable way to include it.

I think we could reign them into clear intent by boxing the first power into free bonding for common Citizens only. Boxes out Billy Batson, though, since that's a nerf for him.

It's always bothered me that Citizen is the class, though. The card should be Citizens, the class should be Civilian.

[Karat]

Originally Posted by johnny139

I think the no friendly fire change is workable... that being said, I do think it has a place in theory. I've had "thematic" armies where the bad guys have some Civvies as a screen and fires into the crowd to cause chaos. That's a perfectly reasonable way to include it.

I think we could reign them into clear intent by boxing the first power into free bonding for common Citizens only. Boxes out Billy Batson, though, since that's a nerf for him.

It's always bothered me that Citizen is the class, though. The card should be Citizens, the class should be Civilian.

It also boxes out Scourge of the Underworld. Hence the whole Uncommon inclusion.

[quozl]

I don't think we need to make any changes yet. New citizens should just always be tested with Civilians (of course) and then we'll see if we need to make any changes.

[IAmBatman]

If the CRB says it isn't broken, I guess it isn't broken. I hate the cheese and it's against the intent of the design, but it's thematically justifiable. I don't like the design space feeling closed off, but I also have no personal plans to design anyone who has or can take on the Citizen Class. So I guess I've said my peace and will move on.

[Tornado]

So the end result is do nothing?

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by Tornado

So the end result is do nothing?

I think that would be a mistake. I'd at least close the loop hole of allowing you to panic your Civvies by having them attack each other. I wouldn't do anything else, necessarily, but that I would close.

[quozl]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

I think that would be a mistake. I'd at least close the loop hole of allowing you to panic your Civvies by having them attack each other. I wouldn't do anything else, necessarily, but that I would close.

It's not a loophole; it's a calculated risk as you have almost a 50% chance of KOing that civilian. And if it's not broken, we don't fix it.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

There’s like zero calculated risk as long as you attack some random figure like Superman or whatever. Seems like ‘We attack Superman to scare ourselves forward!’ Should at least be fixed, since it’s super cheesy, not originally intended, bizarre at best thematically, and borderline broken.

[quozl]

True. We could do this (and streamline the wording a bit):

PANIC
After a figure you control rolls defense dice against a normal attack from a figure that is not a Citizen, you may move any 2 Citizens you control within 8 clear sight spaces of the defending figure up to 4 spaces each. When a Citizen moves with Panic, it will take any leaving engagement attacks.

[Karat]

Maybe restrict it to attacking a common Civilian?