HelmAverse Supers - Reinforcements Arrive

[Matt Helm]

Thanks guys, it was just so weird seeing it as blue for so long and now being shown the light, or the dark... you know what I mean.

[Matt Helm]

The Helm family is still hoping that we can make the 100th superhero card in the HelmAverse a crossover with C3G. Therefore, some of the new designs we are working on have been put on hold and certainly won't make it to the Helmsgiving Day battle this weekend.

We do continue to tweak, adjust or down right reinvent other cards already existing in the HelmAverse with the intent of trying to get every card feel loved as much as one of Andy's toys in Toy Story. This next one is unique because I never thought I'd do this but some discussions with the now designing happy boys led us down a path to create a card that essentially replaces one of the A3n originals that was adopted into the HelmAverse. Make no mistake, A3n's version is still 100% compatible and does play nice with others in the HelmAverse. It's just that the ideas we played through evolved into a completely different card and so, here we have the new HelmAverse version of....

-------------------------------------------

DC

RAVEN



AZARATHIAN
UNIQUE HERO
EMPATH
STOIC
MEDIUM 5

LIFE: 8
MOVE: 5
RANGE: 6
ATTACK: 2
DEFENSE: 6

POINTS: 230

EMPATHIC HEALER
Instead of attacking with Raven, you may choose a wounded Hero figure within 2 clear sight spaces of Raven. Remove up to 2 Wound Markers from the chosen Hero’s Army Card and place 1 Wound Marker on this card.

SOUL-SELF ATTACK
When rolling attack dice, if Raven rolls at least one skull, she may attack the same figure one additional time. Count the number of shields rolled by the defending figure in the first attack and add this number of dice to Raven’s second attack.

TELEPORT 4
Instead of moving Raven normally, you may choose any empty space within 4 spaces of Raven and place Raven on the chosen space. When Raven starts to teleport, if she is engaged, she will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

-------------------------------------------

So what we have here is a healer who takes on the pain from those that she helps. I know Raven can heal herself too but so can many superheroes including folks like The Flash, Wendigo or the Hulk. During play testing, we found it more fun to jack up her Life and not let her heal herself. It turned out we didn't want to waste turns healing Raven and now you have to manage who is worth using the power on and who is not. The trade off of 2 Wound Markers for 1 works out nicely.

As for her attack, we decided to start with a low number of dice to trigger what we really wanted to happen. Since Raven's real combat style seems to be attacking the mind and emotions of her victims, we felt that she should have a similar chance of wounding Superman as she would of Robin. We could have tied it to a 20 sided die roll but that seemed to play too conventional. Instead, we decided to experiment by making the Defense dice of the opponent work against them. Spend too much focus (aka defense dice shields) trying to defend what appears to be a physical attack from a big black energy bird and you'll end up getting caught off guard with the emotional blast that was the true intended power (the extra attack dice in the second attack). It might seem like a theme stretch but Lil'Helm and I play-tested it a bit and we both really liked it.

Hopefully she will continue to play as we intended.

[IAmBatman]

Very cool. I'd theoryscape she's about 100 points undercosted, though.

I'd also put your Cyclops around 170, fwiw.

[Matt Helm]

I highly value your opinion on costing. The play-testing we did isn't quite as extensive as C3G by any stretch so normally we do sometimes change point values over time.

You might be right about Cyclops as we originally had him at 180 but ultimately I think we need to experience him more. He has done well but the requirement to stay without moving in order to maximize his attack does get tough when he gets surrounded. With that said, his Initiative bonus gives his team the first shot enough times that he seemed more valuable than some of the other 170 to 180 cards in the HelmAverse.

Raven is an interesting one and we could definitely use more experience with her in various armies. In battles on small maps we had her hold her own for a bit but the second attack wasn't producing many extra dice to reveal her true potential and so she wasn't doing much damage at all. Ranged attackers pecked at her enough and she couldn't heal others as much as you might think. I had her at 230 with testing but dropped her as I could never see choosing her over Captain America. I just may go right back there based on your feedback though.

[japes]

Originally Posted by Matt Helm

Thanks guys, it was just so weird seeing it as blue for so long and now being shown the light, or the dark... you know what I mean.

I'm color blind so I see it as black but I always assumed it was blue.

[A3n]

I like this approach to Raven. Nice.

[Matt Helm]

Originally Posted by A3n

I like this approach to Raven. Nice.

Thank you, sir, and I love the art on the finished product. And done so fast, you are amazing. Raven is being printed right now and will be ready for the HelmAverse Scapesgiving bash tonight.

Oh Yeah!

[Matt Helm]

The first annual HelmAverse Scapesgiving happened this year and it was a blast. Normally when the Helm family plays, we play either 2, 3 or 4 players on a reasonably sized map depending on that number. With other people now interested, I prepared for the after dinner festivities by setting up three different worlds designed for 2 player games. The boys were shocked that we weren't going with a free for all but I thought it would be better for player engagement if I had three matches going simultaneously right next to each other. And boy I was right.

So we had six players to start (Matt Helm had to sit out the first match because my niece was sick of her boyfriend's begging and wanted to try it out herself). The maps included a lava flowing volcanic atoll with waterfront, a narrow snowy mountain path, and a heavy vegetation filled swamp. We had a draft lottery for 1000 point armies with each player not knowing which map they were playing on or which opponent they were facing. after drafting, I drew placements randomly.

Surprise rule right before the first games began... any figure that is destroyed cannot be played again by any player. Only surviving figures can make it to the next fight.

GAME 1
Map 1: Volcano Island - Helm Jr. v. Lil'Helm (brother v. brother)
Map 2: Mountain Pass - J-Strikes v. Boyfriend (of niece)
Map 3: Bushy Swamp - Nephew v. Niece (brother v. sister, long time veteran v. first timer)

Map 1 saw one of the best battles of the night.
Helm Jr. - Dr. Strange, Venom, TNMT, Black Lightning, Nightcrawler
Lil' Helm - Moon Knight, Professor Zoom, Flash, Hellboy
Flash went down real early. Moon Knight and Hellboy picked off the Turtles. Figures fell for both sides until ultimately it was Dr. Strange facing off against Moon Knight. M.K. was wounded enough to die but his Pain Tolerance kept him alive long enough to drop Dr. Strange down to 2 life left. One more hit could have done it but Strange landed a pretty good one on Moon Knight and on the next turn he had too many markers on his card to successfully roll to live. Moon Knight dropped and Dr. strange was the only figure making it to round 2.

Map 2 - J-Strikes mopped the floor with Boyfriend. I cannot even remember who was battling there but the dice rolls heavily favored J-Strikes and it was a massacre. I know Boyfriend's last figures were Super Skull and a few Skull Warriors but they went down like the rest.

Map 3 was unfair from the start. I tried to help my niece but with my Nephew's team building and play experience combined with an unfair amount of dice luck, this one was ugly to watch.
Nephew - Thanos, Captain America, Green Lantern, Falcon
Niece - Ultron, Dr. Doom, Scarlet Witch, Merlyn
It was an unfair match up. GL had no Special Attacks to mimic but that also meant that my niece had no weapons that could penetrate the Emerald Shield. She had chosen the team hoping to end up on the lava map but instead she got beaten down in the swamp. She did successfully steal Cap with Ultron but didn't get to use him because Thanos crushed Ultron returning cap to my nephew. Dr. Doom Mind Exchanged Cap several more times in the game but every time his attacks on his allies failed with bad rolls. It didn't take too long for my nephew to crush his sister leading to her forfeit from the tournament. We offered her seat to my other niece's boyfriend but he was just content watching the battles.

[Matt Helm]

GAME 2
Map 1: Volcano Island - J-Strikes v. Nephew
Map 2: Mountain Pass - Lil'Helm v. Matt Helm
Map 3: Bushy Swamp - Boyfriend v. Helm Jr.

Map 1 again saw Nephew's team dominate.
Nephew - Thanos, Captain America, Green Lantern, Falcon
J-Strikes - I don't remember the team other than Aquaman because I laughed my butt off when Thanos got too close to the shore and Aquaman wounded him with a single fish to the face. Someone on J-Strikes team did take out Falcon but that was about the only success had.

Map 2 was the best battle of Game 2 and went three times longer than the others.
Lil'Helm - Batman, Silver Surfer, Raven, Wonder Man
Matt Helm - Cyclops, Magneto, Storm, Supergirl
This battle looked like it could go either way. The dice was unlucky for both players with skulls very hard to find. There were times where I thought one player was about to win only to find the tables get turned. Silver Surfer faced off with Cyclops, Storm and Supergirl each for a bit and was lucky enough to get healed by Raven. Storm eventually said enough of that and took out Raven only to get payback from Wonder Man who hit his confidence level and rolled 8 skulls in one attack. In the end, Batman survived many blows with his defensive power and was in position to finish off both heavily wounded Magneto and Cyclops.

Map 3 was an unfair match where Helm Jr. out strategized Boyfriend.
Helm Jr. - Dr. Strange, Namor, Deadpool, Beast
Boyfriend - Hulk, Quicksilver, Green Arrow, Sabretooth
Every time Hulk would Super Leap close to Helm Jr., Dr. Strange would just swap out someone else and take him apart. Boyfriend did not learn from mistakes and rolled really poorly again. It was over real fast.

[Matt Helm]

GAME 3
Map 1: Volcano Island - Boyfriend (0-2) v. Matt Helm/Niece (0-2)
Map 2: Mountain Pass - Helm Jr. (2-0) v. Nephew (2-0)
Map 3: Bushy Swamp - Lil'Helm (1-1) v. J-Strikes (1-1)

Map 1 was embarrassingly painful to be part of. Boyfriend played his worst game yet.
Boyfriend - Superman, Joker, 2 squads of ESS-1 Police, ????
Matt Helm - The Torch, Mighty Thor, Invisible Woman, 2 squads of Agents of SHIELD
Matt Helm only lost 1 SHIELD Agent while Boyfriend lost everything but Joker and 2 ESS-1 figures. When the second squad of SHIELD AGENTS dropped around Joker, he forfeit the game and said "uncle".

Map 3 was a terrible game for Lil'Helm.
Lil'HElm - Batman, Black Manta, The Thing, Darkseid
J-Strikes - Solomon Grundy, Rasputin, Bucky, Union Jack, She-Hulk
Grundy was a beast destroying everyone with his Special Attack. Even Bucky did damage putting wounds on Darkseid. The game was over quickly.

Map 2 - This was the championship of undefeated players.
Helm Jr. - Dr. Strange, Deadpool, Black Flash, Lex Luthor
Nephew - Thanos, Cap America, Green Lantern, Shocker
Unfortunately the third lopsided victory for Game 3. Nephew crushed it with the dice and the game turned into a bloodbath.

So in the end the rankings went like this:

Nephew (3-0)
Helm Jr. (2-1)
J-Strikes (2-1)
Lil'Helm (1-2)
Matt Helm/Niece (1-2)
Boyfriend (0-3)

It was a great time had by all with the only downside being Matt Helm having to drive people home at 2 am knowing that I had to get up and make the long drive to visit Grampa Helm later that morning.

[IAmBatman]

You’re living the good life!

[Tornado]

Awesomeness.