The Book of Man-Thing

[Arkham]

How about we open it up a little to 2 wounds being the max, to make the healing not always negating 1 of the attacks, then leave his Life 6, but bump defense to 6 or 7? Or maybe Life is 7 with defense of 6? Not sure.

VEGETATIVE MUCK
When Man-Thing defends against an attack, the most wounds he can take from this attack is two. At the end of the round, if Man-Thing is adjacent to an Evergreen Tree or a Jungle Piece, or on a grass, swamp, or swamp water space, remove a Wound Marker from this card.

[Ronin]

I like that, except I'd keep the Defense where it is and bump the Life as-needed.

[Arkham]

Alright, then I feel 7 life with 5 defense is a decent start. That way he can't be killed in a single round unless it's through multiple attacks/turns/autowounds/auto destroy/leaving engagements(which are still a factor here) etc.

[Lazy Orang]

I like the idea of keeping his defence on the lower end and making his survivability come from life and Vegetative Muck - I feel like C3G could do more to experiment with different types of survivability at times over having balanced and solid life and defence numbers.

[Arkham]

I'm generally not a fan of high life high defense approaches anyways. I botch way too often to think it really shows true resilience and defensive prowess. A truly resistant character to damage should have it built in with a special to prevent complete botching, IMO.

[Scapemage]

I like the lower defense with higher life and the limit to 2 wounds per attack. 5 defense is good for now, 7 life could be a good starting point but might end up going up or down. I definitely agree we should be looking for interesting ways to represent durability. What we had going here with the blanks was interesting, but it seems pretty dang strong from that playtest.

[Arkham]

@Soundwarp SG-1
I believe you mentioned having tests for most in the playtesting thread, do you have any for the up to date version of Man-Thing?

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Yeah, I have a bunch of tests for stuff I’m planning on gettting out tonight.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Ok, my computer is being a flaky loser tonight, so I can’t get my notes written up. Sorry about that, I’ll have everything sorted tomorrow.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Alrighty, finally getting this up. Sorry it took awhile, there was a lot to unpack here so I wanted to double check everything. If a unit ends up competitively broken or wonky the blame is pretty much entirely on me now, so I'm trying to be vigilant with complex units like this.

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: Man-Thing @280 points

Army Test 1
Map: Sewer Labyrinth
Units: Giant-Sized Man-Thing: Man-Thing (280), Ms. Marvel (350), Yellowjacket (Big) (190), Beast Boy (Cheetah) (20), Skrull Infiltrator x1 (10)- 850 total vs Man, Thing: Hasbro Man (240), Thing (325), Mr. F (235), Wasp (I) (50)- 850 total

Spoiler Alert!

Game Summary:

So the basic idea here is Yellowjacket becomes obsessed with Man-Thing's man-thing, bow-chicka-wow-wow, as Man-Thing is both hopefully going to take some wounds as a blocker and can be somewhat 'safely' hit by Yellowjacket's rages. Man-Thing got off to a bit of a slow start, but after the early foreplay of moving up he finished strong by gumming up the other team just enough for Carol and Yellowjacket to smash through them crazy fast. It might have been a bit closer if I'd planned out my Fan 4 attacks a bit more to try and screw with Man-Thing, I was juggling so many balls here that I could have missed a better play somewhere in there and Man-Thing is not the kindest of figures to solo test, but mostly his teammates just had some hot dice here.

Unit Summary:

• Damage Done (Normal Attack): None
• Emotional Provocation: Marker bounced around a lot, discouraged Reed from attacking a few times.
• Acidic Reaction: Got a few moves early on, throwing the other team off a bit as he kept moving between their turns, but didn't really matter after that once he hit into Reed. The LEA bit didn't come up.
• Vegetative Muck: Blocked a few wounds, including 4 from Yellowjacket at one point, the healing never triggered as he got locked on a road space by Reed.
• Damage Taken: 2 from Hasbro Man early on, 2 from Thing, 2 from Yellow Jacket, finished off by Reed

Result: Beast Boy sits in the back as a 4 health Ms. Marvel comforts a 2 health Yellowjacket over his lost Man-Thing.

Army Test 2
Map: Island Plane Crash (No E-Glyph)
Units: Nexus to the Dead Universe: Man-Thing (280), Robot (210), Nova Prime (380), Whirlwind (190), Angel (90)- 1150 total vs Omega Supremacy: Magneto (II) (375), Omega Red (300), Mystique (II) (200), Pyro (120), Toad (95), Destiny (55)- 1145 total

Spoiler Alert!

Game Summary:

The main thing here is Angel can carry up Man-Thing to negate his slowness a bit, as otherwise this map makes Man-Thing sad and droopy, and then they pair up into a funky defense combo. Honestly, this game got a little overwhelming trying to pilot both armies given the number of things I had to juggle. Eventually I just used Mags to chuck Man-Thing away and then focused on only using auto-wound powers so I won't have to deal with as much. It's hard to keep a Man-Thing down though and he kept coming back in every now and again to make things difficult for the Mutants before they finally just focused enough fire on him to put him down. Shortly after that, Man-Thing's team went on a bit of a cold streak and the Mutants capitalized on it for the win.

Unit Summary:

• Damage Done (Normal Attack): 2 wounds on Omega Red (followed by a bonus wound from Provocation).
• Emotional Provocation: The marker didn't jump around quite as much this time, but that's because the other team was playing around it a lot. He did use the attack boost a few times, and managed to kill Omega Red with the extra wound bit.
• Acidic Reaction: Got a lot of moves and just generally made him a nuisance. The LEA bit basically gave him disengage a few times, none of the mutants wanted to do take the gamble.
• Vegetative Muck: Blocked a few wounds, healed twice.
• Damage Taken: I lost track of this, but Pyro was the one to finish him off

Result: A full health Destiny wonders what happens when a 2 Life Toad is struck by lightning as they both make it through the game alive.

Overall: I... think he should be fine? It's hard to get a great read on him as the amount of book keeping/ reactions he has makes for a rough solo game, especially after you pair him with other 'responder' figures like Angel. Like he seemed a smidge strong to me sometimes, but I think if I wasn't juggling both armies the other player would have been able to plan their moves around him a bit better. I did find the constant hoping of the marker from card to card to be a little annoying, but I don't think there's a way to do the mechanic without that aspect.

[Yodaking]

I've been worrying about the provoker marker changing cards on just about every opponents OM reveal in some armies. How would you feel if once the provoker marker was placed it stayed on that card until the end of the round?

[Ronin]

If you want to make some tweaks, Ark, I'm good for another set of games here.