The Book of Galactus

[Hahma]

Looks great Bats I remember you telling me about this awhile ago and it's nice to see it.

Now a fortress wall is an obstacle. You'd have to remove any battlements first from the top of the wall because they are DO's. Then do you remove each fortress wall individually or everything that is connected?

A fortress door would have to come off first before the fortress wall connected to it right?

A fortress wall that has an additional level of wallwalk pieces would have to take those off first.

A Warehouse can be both an obstacle and a DO, but in both cases the breakable wall is a DO. So you would have to remove that breakable section of wall first in either case?

I might be wrong on some of that, I'm just not clear on how some stuff would work, but I'm sure it will get figured out.

[Griffin]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

I missed this one before.

To answer - no, they wouldn't be occupied, but the power only allows you to remove one terrain piece, DO, or obstacle at a time. You couldn't remove a terrain piece with Battlements on it, because you'd be removing the Battlements in the process. You'd have to remove all of the Battlements first in order to avoid removing multiple things at once.

Correct.

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

P.S. Many thanks to Griff for helping me figure this out in initial drafts and save a lot of messy wording and clarification attempts from being a part of this power!

Thanks for the shout out. We both worked really hard on this and Silver Surfer together. I traded this design to you because we both knew where it was going but I felt you would do a better job as an LD and you would get this out faster than I would.

___________

HERALD OF GALACTUS
At the start of the game, you may choose one Unique Hero on the battlefield to be Galactus' Herald. Before taking a turn with Galactus, you may roll the 20-sided die. If you roll 8 or higher, you may first take a turn with Galactus' Herald. After taking a turn with Galactus' Herald, you may place Galactus adjacent to his Herald. When Galactus is moved with Herald of Galactus, he will not take any leaving engagement attacks. Galactus may not be moved by any other special power on any Army Card or glyph.

This is essentially a mind control power, and we need to treat it like one with the wording I think. What is our most recent mind control card and aesthetics?

GALACTIC HUNGER
At the end of a round, if Galactus did not use his Devourer of Worlds special power to remove at least one terrain piece, destructible object, or obstacle from the battlefield that round, he receives one wound.

How could Galactus NOT devour something? This could only happen if he didn't take any turns or if he did and the player just forgot to devour something. I am starting to think this power is unnecessary.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Griffin

This is essentially a mind control power, and we need to treat it like one with the wording I think. What is our most recent mind control card and aesthetics?

Yeah, I agree that we should look into that (which might mean for some more text, but I think we can make room. Not sure who our most recent one was - anyone?

Originally Posted by Griffin

How could Galactus NOT devour something? This could only happen if he didn't take any turns or if he did and the player just forgot to devour something. I am starting to think this power is unnecessary.

Well right now the Devourer of Worlds power is optional, but a quick fix would be to make it a "must" "if possible" power and cut this power to save big time on text.

Good stuff. For the record, I'm in no rush on this guy. He's definitely one where I plan to take it easy and take enough time to make sure he's done just right.

Oh, and any thoughts on "minis" from anyone (in quotes, because I think it will probably end up being a pretty big "mini"!).

[tcglkn]

I like the concept of making the first Devouring a must and just getting rid of the Galactic Hunger power. Right now I'm not seeing a reason to skip Devouring the world anyways, so that power isn't gonna help much.

[IAmBatman]

There may be occasions in which destroying a piece of terrain could be disadvantageous to you, but it's your only option, but I'm sold on that direction.

Just need to figure out wording for both of the powers, especially the Herald one for the mind control bits. Is there anyone fresher than Puppet Master I should be looking at?

[tcglkn]

Pied Piper or Joker (II) might help you here.

[IAmBatman]

Thanks! I'll check those out for sure. I'll probably put out some proposed post breathing period language some time tomorrow.

[Griffin]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Looks great Bats I remember you telling me about this awhile ago and it's nice to see it.

Now a fortress wall is an obstacle. You'd have to remove any battlements first from the top of the wall because they are DO's. Then do you remove each fortress wall individually or everything that is connected?

A fortress door would have to come off first before the fortress wall connected to it right?

A fortress wall that has an additional level of wallwalk pieces would have to take those off first.

A Warehouse can be both an obstacle and a DO, but in both cases the breakable wall is a DO. So you would have to remove that breakable section of wall first in either case?

I might be wrong on some of that, I'm just not clear on how some stuff would work, but I'm sure it will get figured out.

I think our FAQ should be something along the lines of "if it is named in the rulebooks, then you may remove it as a single piece". So no removal of an entire castle basically, you have to remove each named piece as you remove a single piece.

Also Bats, I think we need to mention the destruction of glyphs along with figures when the terrain is devoured. Otherwise, a single glyph could hold down the map and prevent Galactus from devouring anything.

Also, I think most maps that have lots of terrain, will prevent Galactus' Devouring power from ever being all that relevant unless we increase how much he can eat. I am thinking that we should let him eat two things per turn.

[tcglkn]

With the third power gone what if we made his Devour a d20 power with a few tiers. One where he takes a wound and can't use it, and then one where he can remove one, two and three pieces of terrain? It might make him more interesting to play. Just keep the initial roll to get at least one really low but also put the element of his insatiable hunger back onto the card in a issuable way.

EDIT: I know I am totally spitballing here but it could go something like this:
1-4, receives one wound.
5-10, remove one terrain piece.
11-17, remove two terrain pieces, if possible.
18 or higher, remove 3 terrain pieces, if possible.

[Margloth]

Sorry I'm late to the party here, I've been busy at events all weekend and wanted to make sure I could post my more drawn out thoughts from my laptop rather than trying to do it from my phone.

First, the Herald power:

Originally Posted by SP

HERALD OF GALACTUS
At the start of the game, you may choose one Unique Hero on the battlefield to be Galactus' Herald. Before taking a turn with Galactus, you may roll the 20-sided die. If you roll 8 or higher, you may first take a turn with Galactus' Herald. After taking a turn with Galactus' Herald, you may place Galactus adjacent to his Herald. When Galactus is moved with Herald of Galactus, he will not take any leaving engagement attacks. Galactus may not be moved by any other special power on any Army Card or glyph.

I guess I would rather see it work so the Herald turn is guaranteed as an instead of taking a turn with Galactus, you may take a turn with his chosen Herald power, with the 'coming of Galactus' aspect becoming the 'chance' d20 part. To me, iconically the Herald arrives first and dirties up the scene, with kind of the overhanging sense of dread of "who or what is Galactus, and how bad is it gonna be when he gets here?" Not to mention, early in game if you get a couple of bad d20 rolls, your team is just gonna sit in the startzone. Booooooring.

EDIT" Suggested change to Herald:

Originally Posted by Suggested

HERALD OF GALACTUS
At the start of the game, you may choose one Unique Hero on the battlefield to be Galactus' Herald. Instead of taking a turn with Galactus, you may take a turn with his chosen Herald. After taking a turn with Galactus' Herald, you may roll the 20-sided die. If you roll an 8 or higher, place Galactus adjacent to his Herald. When Galactus is moved with Herald of Galactus, he will not take any leaving engagement attacks. Galactus may not be moved by any other special power on any Army Card or glyph.

Love Devourer Of Worlds! One quick thought: if we drop Galactic Hunger (which I don't think necessarily applies in the short space of time captured by Heroscape battles), can we add some sort of healing aspect to Devourer? I have to admit that it kind of bothers me that Galactus has less lives than Anti-Monitor. If he could 'replentish' himself, I would be much more on board.

Finally, I'm a little disappointed not to see The Power Cosmic on this card. It's just as iconic on this card as Surfer's, and allowing him that potential boost could really help the fact that he's a single attacker who can't move, so he needs to hit hard when he can (I know he's got range of 12, so it's not as much of an issue).

Great design though, I'm excited to see where he goes!

[IAmBatman]

I like that suggested change to Herald of Galactus, Margloth.

I like Tickle's suggested change to Devourer of Worlds (I'll have to take a look and see how texty it makes things, though).

Good point about the glyphs, Griff. I'll make sure to work that in when I put up proposed post-breathing period changes.

I don't think he needs any healing worked in on the card, Margloth. If we really need him to have more power, we can give him more life. But thematically speaking I believe he should be less powerful than Anti-Monitor. You can feel free to disagree, but that's my position on the matter.

I don't think he needs the Power Cosmic represented outside of his stats on this card, honestly. With Surfer, he only has a sliver of the power, so he needs to really focus to channel it. With Galactus, he uses it with ease, all of the time. There's no real effort involved. It is his stats. So, if anything, I'd rather see us tweak his stats upwards if necessary. But, with a range of 12, I think an attack of 6 is pretty solid. I wouldn't go up past 7.

[tcglkn]

I am also on board with Margloth's suggest change to the Herald power. But I also wonder if there should there be a stipulation that the Unique Hero has to have Super Strength? I can't see Galactus choosing a wimp as his Herald.

With us dropping Galactic Hunger and only keeping Herald of Galactus and Devourer of Worlds, I think you could do bullets easily and not run out of room on the card. I don't think anyone will complain if we have a really wordy Galactus card.

I also do not think he needs healing, as his life is enoungh and if we want him to cost more than Anti-Monitor simply adjust his life during testing. One thing to keep in mind though is Galactus needs a fairly strong Unique Hero to be drafted with him, he can't be drafted on his own, so that should kinda factor into his cost a bit. We don't want him too high or he won't see too much play. Although the long the game goes, the more he will be able to Devour the map.

Something to keep in mind when thinking of his Attack potential too, is depending on the figure, he will rarely have height if he takes up too many spaces as most height is uneven. So I could easily see a bump in his attack to 7 to compensate for that depending on the mini we use.