C3G Promotions Dept. | Wave 53: The End?

[IAmBatman]

Woo hoo! So much stuff I really love in this release

[Splash]

Epic!

[Ericth74]

Pretty Large sized release right here. Great job to all envolved.

[Tornado]

[MegaSilver]

Always cool to see new lanterns!

[fret_gurglo]

Epic start for the year

[Alexandros]

Advanced Look at C3G 2.0

We (The C3G news team- Alexandros and @Shiftrex ) were recently offered an opportunity to interview some of the C3G Heroes ( @IAmBatman @Mr. Nobody ) about the new card designs for “C3G 2.0”. 2.0 will bring on a new style of army card designed to fit on a “poker card”, which consumes less table space and generally has a more intuitive flow than traditional HeroScape cards.



So, the first thing that stands out to me is that there’s no mini picture on the card. What gives?

Mr. Nobody: So I think the answer there is twofold. One, it’s just a heck of a lot easier on our art department, lol. They had to cut out every mini photo, find the right background, and then had to do twice the work (comic art, mini art) to move the cards around. When we were making the decision to make this leap, dropping mini cards was a big request they had. Secondly, we’ve decided to come at things from an angle of what we call “mini agnosticism.” Every C3G design is still going to have a suggested figure listed in their thread - that guideline will always be there for people who want it - but as a project we’re not enforcing Batman sculpt #068 as the “correct” Batman for a particular design or what have you.

I know losing the mini art is something some people will be bummed about - I’ve personally always been a mini art user myself. But we’re also a hobby project with limited resources, and this felt like the best step to maintain a quality product while also respecting the people who make this stuff happen. (Our amazing art team!)

IAmBatman: In addition to streamlining the process for the art team, going mini agnostic on the cards does a few things for us. It allows us to explore the visual space of the cards differently without the baggage of hit zones on every card (something that an overall rule covers just fine for gameplay), which both opens up more space on the card and also lets us establish more of a unique SuperScape aesthetic as part of really becoming its own thing. The awesome look of the cards is a big thing that sold me on this overall direction for the project.

You call out aesthetics and the “look” of the cards here. One interesting change I noticed is that HeroScape traditionally uses "coins" to help convey points as a currency you spend to build your force, but this has been switched up to a “diamond” icon on this new card design. What motivated the change?

Mr. Nobody: To be honest, I think we’re so far removed from the Classic card template that we didn’t even think about it! lol
But I do like the diamond. Coins as a symbol of worth makes sense in a fantasy world like Valhalla, but a massive diamond feels like something you might run into in a comic book.

Scrooge McDuck notwithstanding.

IAmBatman: We wanted symbology that would really "pop" and be instantly recognizable to the end user without additional text to explain them. After viewing the options, the diamond stood out as the best one for this.



Tell us a little about the power iconography at the bottom.

Mr. Nobody: Symbols!

These are shorthand for powers, right? What powers are you most excited to see given symbols?

Mr. Nobody: This is something I was hesitant about at first, but I’ve grown to really love. We’ve taken 9 really common game concepts and turned them into symbols, similar to how the Flying and Super Strength powers worked in C3G 1.0. This allowed us to take a lot of boilerplate out of ability text in a way that really lets us streamline.

The part I’m most excited about is Weaknesses and Resistances. If you look at Human Torch, you might notice a special triangular symbol and some special language in his abilities. I can’t say too much, but this was a system that took us a minute to hammer out and I’m glad we did.

IAmBatman: Symbols for common abilities really help streamline things. Too often we had to decide whether to cram a thematic effect awkwardly into another ability, leave it off, or feel cards like magic users or water dwellers were restricted to one unique thing they could do because they had necessary "baggage text."

Very cool stuff. Speaking to your point about designs being restricted, currently, aspiring designers are encouraged to keep a design to be light on powers so that designs feel "elegant." Since the change to power iconography should reduce game crunch, do you think there are any powers represented by iconography that will be easier to fit into designs as a "freebie" that doesn't count towards the number of powers a design should have?

Mr. Nobody: I think in 1.0, we’ve used a lot of arbitrary rules as a sort of shorthand to describe elegance. “Try to avoid 4 powers.” “This is too much text.” Etc. With so many symbols, there’s a lot more chances to sneak extra little bells and whistles onto a card. I think on one hand that’s a really cool way to represent a theme that wasn’t there before, especially with the Resistances and Weaknesses.

On the flipside, I think there’s a chance to overload a design with complexity. Not everybody needs Disengage and Mental Shield, y’know? Lol

So it’s going to be more of a balancing act than it was in 1.0, I think.



Mr. Fantastic's card has a tag that says "Science" at the bottom of the card. Can you help readers understand the purpose of the tag system?

Mr. Nobody: Some cards will have tags (or Keywords, as we’re calling them) down there in that bar. Other cards will be able to call out and synergize with these Keywords, just like they would with Species, Class, Personality, etc. Part of that is that some synergy callouts that were on other parts of the card are going to be shifted to be Keywords. A good example is Cap here, where his Patriotic Personality is now a Keyword at the bottom of the card.



IAmBatman: Yeah, that's a keyword. These are thematic groupings that don't fit well in other categories like Class or Personality or Faction, but that are useful for synergy call outs.

I've noticed the usage of the term "d20" here, on Mr. Fantastic’s card. Have a lot of basic game terms been changed, and was there a focus on developing more structured syntax?

Mr. Nobody: We’ve definitely switched up some game terms, yeah, with a focus on making the most common terms and phrases more concise and clear. It’s something that’ll probably take a bit of relearning for the average Heroscape player, but Heroscape players are a smart lot!

IAmBatman: Yes. One of our motivating factors in the move to 2.0 was that a lot of the terminology of Heroscape is a bit muddled and can be confusing when you start stacking up the abilities present on 1500+ cards. The basic system is really strong, but had a few areas where we felt like it could be strengthened to provide better infrastructure for the game we want to build on it. To that end we've sought to really create some more distinct things that more clearly separate vague concepts like moving, attacking, turns, and so on. And then some other things we just changed to be either more succinct, more fitting for a superhero theme (like defeated instead of destroyed), or both.



“Attack 7. Heat.” That’s interesting. Can you expand a bit on what that means, mechanically?

IAmBatman: Damage types are a design space we are exploring in 2.0 in a way that we hope feels like a light touch but that is more thematically consistent than in 1.0. Heat is one example of that in practice, along with the Heat Resistance symbol on Torch.

I’ll try to end this on something a little more open-ended. What is an element of the new card design that you might like to highlight for players who may not otherwise spot it?

IAmBatman: Three things stick out to me on this one. First, I really like how we got that little book under the publisher name. Just a fun themey thing. Second, the faction tag in the upper right has been huge for opening up how we can design. Finally, in the left box we moved uniqueness to the top of the order, which I really like as that's often the first thing you consider in gathering your team.

Mr. Nobody: I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to just take a closer scan at the power text! There’s lots of minor differences just in the way things function, which have all been really well discussed by the C3G team. I’m proud of pretty much every alteration we’ve made to a card so far.

We'd like to thank the C3G Inner Sanctum for this invitation to keep the public up to date on C3G 2.0. For more news on C3G releases, make sure to sign up for the C3G newsletter.

[Ericth74]

Nice! Great job.

[Splash]

Awesomesauce.

[IAmBatman]

Big thanks to Shifty, Alexandros, and Nobody for spearheading this news drop! Hope y'all (in the public) are as excited as we (in the Sanctum) are. Let us know!

[Arch-vile]

Great interview!

[MegaSilver]

I notice that you are saying attack action now.