The Book of Squirrel Girl

[Qualizium]

One more idea:

SQUIRREL SWARM SPECIAL ATTACK
Range 6. Attack 3.
After attacking with this special attack or Squirrel Girl's normal attack, you may remove a Squirrel Marker from this card to attack again with Squirrel Swarm

That way if she had (for example) 3 markers, she could either Swarm x4 or Punch x1 then Swarm x3. Thematically you could look at this as her fighting side by side with her squirrel friends.

[Yodaking]

I don't feel that is necessary.

[Ronin]

Yeah, I'd stay the course.

[Scapemage]

13 days since last Squirrel Girl post sighting.

[johnny139]

Yeah, last weekend got busy. As a fallback, though, this coming week is a vacation for me - so zero excuses if it's not in by Tuesday night!

[johnny139]

C3G INITIAL PLAYTEST FEEDBACK FORM

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: Squirrel Girl

Army Test
Map: Ravaged Ruins (Custom Map)
Units: Squirrel Girl @160, Songbird, Absorbing Man (600 Points) vs. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Phoenix (600 Points)

Spoiler Alert!

Summary

ROUND 1: Absorbing Man is a Crime Fighter. Absorbing Man absorbs Songbirg's... sonic construct, I guess, and moves forward. Squirrel Girl springs in and, with two Markers already, attacks Scott from afar three times, inflicting two wounds on the final attack. He falls back and blasts her, but deals no damage. Songbird flies in to attack Jean, dealing one wound. Jean takes a turn, throwing Songbird away and attacking her for two.

ROUND 2: Cyclops takes the first turn, falling further back and letting Jean attack Absorbing Man - he taks three wounds, and thus loses three Markers. He charges in and attacks with his Ball and Chain, dealing no damage. Jean throws Songbird even further, dealing an extra wound, then fails to damage Creel. Creel successfully absorbs her. They trade back and forth all round, successfully being thrown away once, but neither deals any damage.

ROUND 3: Bad news for the Crime Fighters - Creel goes down in the third round after a strong psychic hook from Jean Grey. Cyke blasts Doreen from afar, letting her jump over a small river after taking two wounds. Songbird manages to zoom in and engage both of the X-Men. She does no damage and takes no damage.

ROUND 4: Cyclops attacks Songbird, dealing a wound, bringing her up to 1 remaining Life. Squirrel Girl charges in - she now has 4 Markers, and decides to attack Jean Grey. One wound on the first attack; Phoenix Fire burns Cyclops. Another wound on the third attack; Phoenix Fire kills both Songbird and Cyclops. She burns her last two Markers on the attack, but does no additional damage.

ROUND 5: Jean throws and attacks Doreen, dealing one more wound. She runs in and uses her new Marker to attack Jean twice. First does no damage, second takes her out! The Phoenix is born! She attacks again but fails.

ROUND 6: Squirrel Girl attacks three times with her Swarm, but does nothing. Phoenix takes a turn, and her Psionic Blast finishes the Girl off.

Who won?: Red & Slim win; Phoenix unharmed, all others destroyed, 6 Rounds.

Thoughts: Songbird was unfortunately shut down pretty hard by Jean here, which made their team a lot limper than it could have been. Squirrel Girl was actually the highlight, though - pretty much killed Cyclops single-handedly and dealt a ton of damage to Jean. Punched way above her weight class here, enough so that I think toning down the rate of Squirrel Markers might be wise. Or maybe just their attack power.

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Army Test
Map: Ravaged Ruins (Custom Map)
Units: Squirrel Girl @160, Commander Rogers, Dum Dum Dugan, Spider-Woman, Ant-Man: Eric O'Grady (780 Points) vs. Doctor Doom: Victor von Doom, Arnim Zola, Doombot x2 (765 Points)

Spoiler Alert!

Summary

ROUND 1: Doom comes in, as Rogers, Dugan, and Drew all move in to engage. It's not a great round for Doom - he takes five wounds and deals none.

ROUND 2: Rogers punches Doom, but does no damage. He can't wound Jessica Drew. Ant-Man comes in, but can't quite engage him. Doom hits Drew for two. Squirrel Girl tries to attack, but is Pit Trapped into the water near Doom and receives a wound. But Doom loses his turn to Pheremone Distraction.

ROUND 3: Rogers attacks Doom, who receives a wound and... oh. He dies. And fails his Decoy roll. Thank god for Zola! Hopefully.

ROUND 4: The Clone roll fails. A Doombot flies at Rogers, but takes a wound after dealing no damage. Rogers moves toward Zola, and the second Doombot does his best to blow Squirrel Girl away (she takes two wounds, going up to 3, but hops into a nice little corner for defense). Ant-Man engages the Doombots. The Bots attack him, but he Vanishes. Rogers makes it toward Zola, shoots at him, and deals one wound.

ROUND 5: Clone fails again. Zola shoots at Rogers, but he receives no wounds. Rogers engages Zola and both Doombots... dealing three wounds to Zola and destroying both bots. Oh. Squirrel Girl gets the next turn - she burns all 8 markers on Zola, dealing one wound in total. Rogers finishes the job.

Who won?: Anti-Latverian Black Ops wins; 3 Wounds on Squirrel Girl, 2 Wounds on Spider-Woman, all others unharmed, 5 Rounds.

Thoughts: Commander Rogers is... really good. Wow. Even after re-evaluating! Really bad luck all around for Doom's team - they put all their chips in the Doom basket and it spilled really, really early. Squirrel Girl wasn't much of a factor here, since the Commander cleaned house, but she built up markers REALLY fast despite only taking two turns. Thankfully, the dice weren't super kind to her, so it didn't feel unbalanced.

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Army Test
Map: Ravaged Ruins (Custom Map)
Units: Squirrel Girl @160, Captain America: Steve Rogers, Bucky, Guile, Comedian, Dum Dum Dugan, Donald Ferguson (1000 Points) vs. Iron Man MKI, Iron Man MKII, Iron Man MKIII, Iron Man MKIV, Iron Man MKV (1000 Points)

Spoiler Alert!

Summary

ROUND 1: Everyone but Comedian is an Avenger. Tony and MKIII and MKIV move in opposite Cap and Bucky. MKIII blows Cap into the water with a Repulsor Ray. Dum Dum gets onto height, but deals no damage to MKIV. MKIII flies in and blasts Cap again, for two more wounds. Donald Ferguson engages MKIII, deals a wound, and helps guide Cap out of the water he was moved into.

ROUND 2: Ferguson is blasted for 3 Wounds, but Cap takes the next turn and brings MKIII up to 3 Wounds. Bucky follows up at melee range and destroys him, but Circuitry Reroute saves him. Dugan takes no wounds from MKV, but MKI arrives, throwing Cap into the water and then attacking him, dealing one wound, bringing him up to 4. Guile and Bucky do nothing, but MKV and MKIV tag-teaming also manage to not kill Cap. Dugan kills MKIII.

ROUND 3: Cap leads off again, but can't do much to help. MKV and MKIV spend their turns failing to harm him or Bucky, as Donald flies in to attack MKIV - it succeeds, dealing two wounds. Again, Cap and Bucky take nothing, but Dugan takes his double shot, killing MKIV. However, MKV finally takes out Captain America, and MKII comes in, throwing Donald Ferguson around and taking him out.

ROUND 4: Squirrel Girl jumps in - she now has 5 Markers, but uses her normal attack to punch MKI. Now that it's the MKI and MKII, though, there's a lot of throwing going on - the USAvengers are tossed around, to the four winds. They can't strike back as MKV brings Dugan up to 2 Wounds.

ROUND 5: MKV and MKII bully Bucky, bringing him up to 3 Wounds. But Squirrel Girl sneaks around back, jumps into an engagement with MKV, and unleashes her Squirrels - 7 markers, 8 attack, two wounds in total. Bucky gets a turn and attacks him as well, bringing him to 3. MKV blows Bucky away, while MKII tries to pull Doreen into the drink - she takes three wounds, but retaliates by jumping back into an engagement with MKV.

It looks rough, but Dugan has a clutch turn - he charges in and gets two attacks on MKII, dealing three wounds with each, despite not being on height! MKV and MKI both come in, miss their attacks on Squirrel Girl, and throw Dugan away. But Guile comes in... and, with the boost from being next to Doreen, manages to kill MKV!

ROUND 6: MKI puts on a great show, taking one wound from Guile while Dugan misses twice. He finally takes out Squirrel Girl in return. Comedian finally climbs onto height and finishes the game with his Auto Shotgun.

Who won?: USAvengers win, 2 Wounds on Dum Dum Dugan, Guile and Comedian unharmed, all others destroyed, 6 Rounds.

Thoughts: Great game all around here. I think it would have gone the other way easily if Cap hadn't hung on for dear life, but Squirrel Girl was a great bridge piece for the Soldier-Agent factions. She laid low for the first half, building up markers, until her surprise appearance tearing into MKV toward the end. Her Leap was also hugely effective, helping mitigate the strength of figure movement and generally act as an annoyance for people trying to force other figures away. Definitely did her part here.

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THOUGHTS ON THE TESTED UNIT'S COST, BALANCE, & DRAFTABILITY: It's tough to say. She's definitely a mid-high 100s unit, mostly used for one big attack late in the game in larger armies. It was really effective in Game 3, not so much in Game 2 (but it wasn't really needed, since Commander Rogers could easily have done her job). The small point first game, though, was a bit more dynamic. In that one, she started strong and had a few multi-attacks throughout. She punched above her weight there, but I'm not sure if that's always going to be the case.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON THE TESTED UNIT: Not sure. Squirrel Girl is a really flexible character, and until recently was more of a cameo type than anything else. So in that sense, she played perfectly in Game 3. I can easily picture an Avengers comic where, when everyone's on the ropes, Squirrel Girl leaps in out of nowhere as their secret weapon and sends a swarm to tear up the enemy.

But in modern Squirrel Girl, she's more dynamic, trading punches, hopping around, and using her Squirrels strategically. Game 1 sort of scratched that itch, enough that I'm not going to advocate for any huge changes, but I'd like to see more small point tests to make sure she's viable being played

A FEW CHANGES THOUGH! For one, I'm going to knock down the Range on her Swarm to 4. 6 Range encouraged you to camp with her and stay out of the fray, which felt wrong to me. I'm going to move her "each round" marker to the end, to slightly slow her rate. I'd also like to add Fighter to her repertoire, just to tie her a bit more closely to that faction. Right now she doesn't have much of a place there, but if it develops I'd hate for her to be boxed out by that quirk. It was great letting her bridge Agents and Soldiers, and it'd be equally cool to let her act as funky paste for Fighters and Crime Fighters.

Surprisingly, her survivability was great here, so I won't make any changes there. Her Life or Defense could tick up one if testing shows it as necessary, though.

[Scapemage]

4 range, the round change, and the Fighter inclusion all seem just fine to me after looking at these games. I'm glad she's scratching the itch of the older comics sometimes and the newer comics other times. Pre-Yea to Public Playtesting.

[Ronin]

Seem like good games and well thought-out changes. Pre-yea to public testing.

[Arkham]

pre-yea

[MrNobody]

Was there a change in the points of Iron Men? I always thought Mks I-V added up to 970? It doesn't matter for the playtest at all, I was just wondering.

[johnny139]

I believe we've gotten rid of the wait period, and I haven't seen any criticisms yet, so I PROPOSE WE MOVE TO PUBLIC PLAYTESTING!

Originally Posted by MrNobody

Was there a change in the points of Iron Men? I always thought Mks I-V added up to 970? It doesn't matter for the playtest at all, I was just wondering.

Yup, you're correct! Definitely should have double checked there - the Iron Legion is one of my go-to armies, but I forgot I usually sub out the 220 Iron Man for the 240 Hasbro one. Wasn't a factor, like you said, but still good to note.

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by johnny139

Yup, you're correct! Definitely should have double checked there - the Iron Legion is one of my go-to armies, but I forgot I usually sub out the 220 Iron Man for the 240 Hasbro one. Wasn't a factor, like you said, but still good to note.

I just knew there had been a change to V recently and was wondering if there were any others that had slipped past me.