The Book of Red Lantern (Bleez)

[IAmBatman]

Which is why it might be more aesthetically consistent to just give her three with her card and start with two on her card and not mention the third. I'd also be OK with that approach.

[Karat]

Heh I always played it as a cap.

[johnny139]

I don't have a problem with just sticking a third Battery Marker on this card, physically, to print out, and running with the assumption that there is an endless pool of Battery Markers out there to be created. I think that's how I've always intuited the rules, at least. We should probably nail it down either way going forward (and I'll poke around and see if there's any weirdness caused by the "pool of markers set at the start of the game" logic).

[Scapemage]

Originally Posted by Scapemage

BLOOD OF YSMAULT 3
Start the game with 3 red Battery Markers on this card. Add one to this Red Lantern's Move and Attack for each Battery Marker on this card. Whenever this Red Lantern receives one or more wounds from an attack, if there are fewer than 3 Battery Markers on this card, you may choose any red Battery Marker that is not on an Army Card and place it on this card.

TREACHEROUS RAGE
After placing Order Markers in the first round of the game, set one red Battery Marker aside. Once per round before moving this Red Lantern, if there are fewer than 3 red Battery Markers on this card, you may move a red Battery Marker from an adjacent figure's Army Card onto this card. For the rest of the round, whenever this Red Lantern or a Ravager within 4 clear sight spaces of her inflicts one or more wounds on a Hero and that Hero is not destroyed, you must roll 1 unblockable attack die against that Hero.

Here is my proposition that makes it as clear as possible. Blood of Ysmault stays the same but upped to 3 for consistency with other reds, while Treacherous Rage simply removes a preexisting marker at the beginning of the game rather than starting with it off the card.

[Ronin]

Not a fan of the 'put 3 markers on this card' 'whoops, no, take one off' approach. That's just the current version with an extra step.

If we just have a third marker on the card with no reference to it in the text, will people intuit what it's for, or will they just think we're bad at counting?

[Ronin]

Originally Posted by Scapemage

if Bleez is on her own without a spare marker, her power is a detriment more than a benefit which defeats the purpose.

Are we sure about that? I'm asking because it would not have made a difference at all in my tests, and I felt I was getting pretty good value out of her. Bats said it wouldn't have been big in his games either.

I don't have a problem with kicking this around and trying to figure out the perfect solution to the 'Bleez stealing up all the markers from her fellow Reds' problem. Just... the more I think about it, the less sure I am that this problem exists.

My experience was that once Bleez steals a marker, she tends to burn them off quickly. She's usually trying to take advantage of Treacherous Rage herself, because she's often better situated to do that than anyone else (once she steals a marker, she probably has 7 attack, it's her turn, and she needs to stay kinda close to the battle in order to get the boost from Treacherous Rage anyway), and that means she ends up taking attacks and using Raging Plasma.

Even if 'Bleez is hogging all the markers' were an occasional problem, I don't see it outweighing the benefit of Treacherous Rage. All those Treacherous Rage unblockables are still nasty (she felt like a pretty serious threat to the Heroes for Hire by herself), and they'll only get nastier as the Reds get built up and start looking more like a faction.

[johnny139]

We could always just toss a FAQ in there - "Hey why are there three markers on this card?" "If Bleez steals a marker from one of your units, you might want an extra around in case that unit needs to recharge. Units can create markers mid-game, so it helps to have redundancies."

[Ronin]

Originally Posted by johnny139

We could always just toss a FAQ in there - "Hey why are there three markers on this card?" "If Bleez steals a marker from one of your units, you might want an extra around in case that unit needs to recharge. Units can create markers mid-game, so it helps to have redundancies."

Yeah, maybe that's the best we can do.

I agree with most of the logic behind the 'just put an extra marker on the card' approach, I just worry that people won't pick up on it.

[Scapemage]

I’m okay with an FAQ and just including the extra marker. If people don’t figure out what it’s for there’s no harm done, but if they read the FAQ or figure it, then it works out in the end.

I’ll concede that it may not be a problem following your logic Ronin. If an FAQ is all we need then from my understanding everybody is good to go?

[IAmBatman]

Well if we're doing the FAQ version, we're cutting the set the marker aside language, right?

[Scapemage]

Originally Posted by Scapemage

TREACHEROUS RAGE
At the start of the game, set one red Battery Marker to the side. Once per round before moving this Red Lantern, if there are fewer than 3 red Battery Markers on this card, you may move a red Battery Marker from an adjacent figure's Army Card onto this card. For the rest of the round, whenever this Red Lantern or a Ravager within 4 clear sight spaces of her inflicts one or more wounds on a Hero and that Hero is not destroyed, you must roll 1 unblockable attack die against that Hero.

The only needed change would be to cut the line in red here and add an FAQ.


Q: Why does Bleez come with three red Battery Markers?
A: Since Bleez steals red Battery Markers from other Red Lanterns, Bleez comes with an extra marker allowing those figures to gain new markers with special powers such as Raging Plasma.

[IAmBatman]

I dig it.