Knight of Scape's Customs: The Prisoner 2020/12/31

[Knight of Scape]

Hey friends! Thanks for checking out my thread!

I've been making customs for a long time, but I've never gotten around to posting any of them, mainly for reasons like "I really stink at image editing/making cards". Thanks to @superfrog 's tutorial and @Xorlof 's tool, though, I finally managed to put together a somewhat presentable custom card last night (although I still haven't figured out the hitzone and "blending into the mist" stuff) for the first time ever. So I guess I have a customs thread now.

I have designs for around 100 figures written up in various places in notebooks and hard drives and cloud storage, so for the foreseeable future this will probably be me periodically posting touched up versions of old custom designs (a lot of my old customs are not worth sharing, so I'm just going to post the highlights).

Word of warning, the playtesting these customs have received mostly ranges from "less than 10 games" to "none at all." Sadly, I have a lot more time to design customs than I do chances to actually play with them. If any of you readers want to help me test my units, let me know, and I'd be very happy to play with you online (I can also help you test your customs ^_^ ).

I don't think that any of these old customs are anything close to SoV material (at the least they all fail on the figure availability front. Most of them don't even have figures). Nevertheless, I think they're still fun to play, and have some creative power ideas that might be inspiring.

MOST RECENT CUSTOM(S)

After a long delay, I present my third and probably final custom from my really old binge of making "cooler" units using official figures. This one was from back when the Capuan Gladiators didn't exist yet, so Spartacus was pretty terrible, and I wanted to try to use his sculpt for a more interesting concept.

Spoiler Alert!

The Prisoner

Einar
Unique Hero
Human
Soldier
Rebellious
Medium 5

Life 5
Move 5
Range 1
Attack 6
Defense 4
-30 Points

“Liability”
You may not include The Prisoner in your army if it contains any other figures with a negative point cost. You may not place any order markers on this card. Figures you control may not attack The Prisoner. The Prisoner is not affected by any special powers on any other army cards that you control.

“Escape”
At the end of any turn, if there are no figures you control adjacent to The Prisoner, choose an opponent. That opponent immediately gains control of The Prisoner. Place a brown negation marker on this card. For the rest of the game, all of The Prisoner’s powers are negated.

This is my attempt at a negative point cost unit. I don't really think that negative cost units should ever exist in VC, but if they did, I'd make them something like this. Being unable to draft the Prisoner with other negative cost units is entirely superfluous, since I haven't made any other negative cost unit, but it future proofs him in the sense of preventing min-maxed builds that use a bunch of negative cost units who mitigate each other's downsides.

The Prisoner's own downside is pretty significant. He gives you an extra 30 points to build with, but someone has to stay behind in the startzone to guard him, and if your opponent manages to sneak past and kill the guard, they gain unit who'd probably be worth about 80 just from his solid stats. The fact that the prisoner is taking up a hex also prevents some common heavy armies from making the most of the extra points he offers. You can guard the Prisoner with a filler unit like Isamu or Marcu, but using the extra points from the prisoner to include Marcu in your army so that he can guard the prisoner is a bit of a waste. Generally this guy works best when there's some fairly expensive army card you really want (whether it be a key hero or another card of your squad) and you're just a few points short.

PREVIOUS CUSTOM(S)
Ithariel:

Spoiler Alert!

My focus is on creating thematic characters and mechanics that give the player tricky decisions. I like to stretch the limits of the Heroscape system and make really strong powers with pretty hefty drawbacks. My first custom here is a pretty good example of that:

Spoiler Alert!

Ithariel

Jandar
Unique Hero
Human
Champion
Reckless
Medium 5

Life 5
Move 5
Range 1
Attack 5
Defense 5
170 Points

“Blue Sword of Power”
When attacking with Ithariel, you may roll up to five additional attack dice.

“Blue Sword of Speed”
When attacking with Ithariel, you may attack up to three additional times. Ithariel cannot attack the same figure more than once in a turn. Ithariel cannot use Blue Sword of Power and Blue Sword of Speed on the same turn.

“Life-Force Powered Blue Sword”
After taking a turn with Ithariel, roll a 20-sided die. If Ithariel added 1/2/3/4/5 to his attack with Blue Sword of Power, add 1/3/6/10/15 to your roll. If Ithariel attacked 1/2/3 additional times with Blue Sword of Speed, add 3/9/18 to your roll. If you roll a 21 or higher, immediately destroy Ithariel.

This design is probably at least ten years old, and it's the oldest custom I have that I'm still proud of. This was part of a series of customs I did reinterpreting official figures, and thematically it was based off my frustration that Finn is a champion with this cool magical blue sword, yet somehow has the same attack as an ordinary Tarn Viking.

I'm not a huge fan of the power names, but I still really like the dynamic of the character. Ithariel can give you more guaranteed attack dice in a turn than any other hero, but the cost is that he almost certainly dies that turn.

When he's down to one life, you might as well go out with a bang and either attack one figure with 10 dice or four of them with 5. Before he's in that predicament, however, Ithariel has a constant tension of exactly how much you want to use his powers. Going from 5 dice to 6 is pretty nice, and attacking with 6 every turn only leaves you with a chance of imploding that's the same as Hawthorne's chances of stabbing you in the back. Double attack every turn is even nicer, but is it worth the 3/20 chance of a critical existence failure? There are lots of interesting decisions with this character.

He bonds with the knights and MacDirks, but he's probably not replacing Gilbert any time soon. Ithariel is kind of a win-more character who helps the knights with what they're already good at: throwing lots of dice in a turn from melee normal attacks, and he suffers from the same weaknesses that they do (he's slow and has no special, so it's relatively easy to tie him down and keep him from unleashing his ultimate attack on a worthy target). Nevertheless, Ithariel's solid statline and chance to throw down ten dice on his last attack give him solid chances in a 1v1 with most other heroes in the game.

The Caller:

Spoiler Alert!

Next up is another custom from my "remaking official figures to be cooler" phase 10+ years ago (edited a bit since the original wording was a mess). This guy takes Ithariel's mechanic of "hugely power with huge drawbacks" even further. Ithariel can reliably throw down 20 dice in a turn (at the cost of almost certainly dying), but the Caller can potentially roll over one hundred for a single attack!

Spoiler Alert!

The Caller

Ullar
Unique Hero
Elf
Archmage
Disciplined
Medium 5

Life 5
Move 6
Range 1
Attack 3
Defense 2
160 Points

“The Call”
At the start of each round, before placing order markers, you may place a Glyph of Calling on any space within ten spaces of The Caller. At the end of each round, remove every Glyph of Calling from the board.

“Call Down Fire Special Attack”
Range 10, Attack Special
Choose a Glyph of Calling within 10 spaces of The Caller to target. All figures within 7 spaces of that Glyph of Calling are affected by this attack. Roll 8 minus X attack dice for each affected figure, where X is the distance of the figure from the chosen glyph. Roll attack dice separately for each affected figure. Each figure rolls defense dice separately. The Caller can be affected by his own special attack. You may not use this attack unless all your numbered OMs are revealed and on this card and The Caller has not yet moved or attacked this round.

(If it's not clear, the Glyph of Calling is a permanent power glyph with no effect besides its use on this card)

The Caller is a very map dependent unit. I like to think of his special attack as the Z-bomb on really strong steroids. And just like Zelrig, The Caller really likes maps where he can bomb the opponent's figures in the start zone, before they have a chance to spread out. His special attack affects an insane 169 spaces (although most of them only get hit with one or two dice), but you have to telegraph where you're attacking a whole round in advance, which gives your opponent time to plan his order markers and moves in a way that will get his most important figures out of the center of the impact. Furthermore, you don't get to do anything besides attack with the caller in a round where you use his special attack, so if you opponent is able to develop his figures, while also getting them out of harms way, then he may quickly get an edge over you. For this reason, positioning your glyph of Calling a bit in front of the opponents army is usually more effective than actually putting it under and opponent's figure, even if you have the option to. Getting a few less attack dice is usually worth it if you can prevent the opponent from advancing into key areas of the map.

The Caller is best against armies that fill up the whole start zone with common squad figures. The more figures the opponent has, the more targets Call Down Fire can affect, and the harder it is for your opponent to get them all out of the way.

Against any army, The Caller is mainly only useful in the first round or two, before your opponent's army has a chance to get moving. After that, his squishiness tends to catch up to him. If your opponent sees that you've put three OMs on The Caller, they can focus all of their resources on assassinating him. Setting up a screen to protect against this is only moderately effective, because the more units you put in front of the Caller, the more of your own figures will be affected by his special attack. Fortunately, The Caller can frequently kill enough units in the first round to already earn back his point cost, and later in the game the free glyph placement can occasionally be useful for slowing down the opponent's army (particularly on maps with narrow roads).

Any comments and criticism are appreciated! I'm happy to hear about ways to improve my wording, ways to improve balance, or things that just don't do it for you, thematically or mechanically.

[flameslayer93]

Itharial looks cool, but is probably a touch undercosted. Being able to sling any amount of dice on a bonded turn is already good, but being able to sling up to 20 dice in a turn is massive, and I personally wouldn’t care to have him leave engagement with a few figures to pull it off against something that really doesn’t like getting hit. Who cares if he dies when he basically obliterates a big expensive hero?

Personally though, I’d drop his life and/or defense to 4 to make it less unfun fighting him. It’s good that he’s fun to play, but not good if he’s unfun to play against.

Great design overall! The drawback mechanic is cool!

[Knight of Scape]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

Itharial looks cool, but is probably a touch undercosted. Being able to sling any amount of dice on a bonded turn is already good, but being able to sling up to 20 dice in a turn is massive, and I personally wouldn’t care to have him leave engagement with a few figures to pull it off against something that really doesn’t like getting hit. Who cares if he dies when he basically obliterates a big expensive hero?

Personally though, I’d drop his life and/or defense to 4 to make it less unfun fighting him. It’s good that he’s fun to play, but not good if he’s unfun to play against.

Great design overall! The drawback mechanic is cool!

It's certainly possible that he should cost more. I'd need to get more testing to have a strong feeling one way or the other. While 20 dice in a turn is theoretically great, the issue is that he can't attack the same figure more than once with Blue Sword of Speed, so he has to be able to get next to 4 figures worth killing, which can be tricky in practice, particularly since he only has 5 move.

The single attack of ten dice is better for taking out an opponent's big expensive hero, but even that attack isn't likely to be a one-shot on anything around Ithariel's point cost. You might put 4 wounds on your opponent's dragon, but you're sacrificing your own 170 point hero to do it. And dying to Life-Force Powered Blue Sword is worse than dying to enemy attacks, because your opponent doesn't even have to waste a turn dealing with Ithariel, he can immediately use the hero Ithariel engaged to go attack someone else.

The better case is when you can sacrifice an Ithariel who was already almost dead to deal massive damage to an enemy hero who isn't, but that's where the disengaging becomes tricky. If Ithariel only has one or two life left, taking a couple of disengagements might kill him and prevent him from getting a final attack off at all.

Your opponent definitely has to think about how to deny Ithariel good opportunities to use his sword, and if their army is all really high price figures, they might have a bad time. But most armies have some cheap commons who can block Ithariel from getting to your higher priced figures, and they also aren't going to have that hard a time putting their key figures far enough apart that Ithariel isn't going to be able to hit 3 or 4 of them at once.

If he does prove to be a bit too good, though, I like your suggestion of dropping his life or defense instead of raising his cost. That would fit with his Reckless personality, and his willingness to throw everything he's got into a suicidal attack.

[flameslayer93]

170 points? He’s listed as 100 on the card?

[Knight of Scape]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

170 points? He’s listed as 100 on the card?

Oh dear. That would explain the confusion :P. Sorry about that o///o

Yeah, he would be incredibly undercosted at 100 (there's no way you would ever want Denrick over Ithariel, even against an army consisting solely of huge figures).

I made a typo on one of the abilities the first time I generated the card, but it looks like when I input everything again to fix that, I got the point cost messed up. I'll get a fixed card up soon.

~KoS, who apparently needs to proofread his cards better.

[Knight of Scape]

Ithariel's card is finally updated to use the correct cost, and I have a new custom for you all, even more ridiculous than the last one!

Next up is another custom from my "remaking official figures to be cooler" phase 10+ years ago (edited a bit since the original wording was a mess). This guy takes Ithariel's mechanic of "hugely power with huge drawbacks" even further. Ithariel can reliably throw down 20 dice in a turn (at the cost of almost certainly dying), but the Caller can potentially roll over one hundred for a single attack!

Spoiler Alert!

The Caller

Ullar
Unique Hero
Elf
Archmage
Disciplined
Medium 5

Life 5
Move 6
Range 1
Attack 3
Defense 2
160 Points

“The Call”
At the start of each round, before placing order markers, you may place a Glyph of Calling on any space within ten spaces of The Caller. At the end of each round, remove every Glyph of Calling from the board.

“Call Down Fire Special Attack”
Range 10, Attack Special
Choose a Glyph of Calling within 10 spaces of The Caller to target. All figures within 7 spaces of that Glyph of Calling are affected by this attack. Roll 8 minus X attack dice for each affected figure, where X is the distance of the figure from the chosen glyph. Roll attack dice separately for each affected figure. Each figure rolls defense dice separately. The Caller can be affected by his own special attack. You may not use this attack unless all your numbered OMs are revealed and on this card and The Caller has not yet moved or attacked this round.

(If it's not clear, the Glyph of Calling is a permanent power glyph with no effect besides its use on this card)

The Caller is a very map dependent unit. I like to think of his special attack as the Z-bomb on really strong steroids. And just like Zelrig, The Caller really likes maps where he can bomb the opponent's figures in the start zone, before they have a chance to spread out. His special attack affects an insane 169 spaces (although most of them only get hit with one or two dice), but you have to telegraph where you're attacking a whole round in advance, which gives your opponent time to plan his order markers and moves in a way that will get his most important figures out of the center of the impact. Furthermore, you don't get to do anything besides attack with the caller in a round where you use his special attack, so if you opponent is able to develop his figures, while also getting them out of harms way, then he may quickly get an edge over you. For this reason, positioning your glyph of Calling a bit in front of the opponents army is usually more effective than actually putting it under and opponent's figure, even if you have the option to. Getting a few less attack dice is usually worth it if you can prevent the opponent from advancing into key areas of the map.

The Caller is best against armies that fill up the whole start zone with common squad figures. The more figures the opponent has, the more targets Call Down Fire can affect, and the harder it is for your opponent to get them all out of the way.

Against any army, The Caller is mainly only useful in the first round or two, before your opponent's army has a chance to get moving. After that, his squishiness tends to catch up to him. If your opponent sees that you've put three OMs on The Caller, they can focus all of their resources on assassinating him. Setting up a screen to protect against this is only moderately effective, because the more units you put in front of the Caller, the more of your own figures will be affected by his special attack. Fortunately, if there's a good target space within ten range of your start zone, The Caller can frequently kill enough units in the first round to already earn back his point cost, and later in the game the free glyph placement can occasionally be useful for slowing down the opponent's army (particularly on maps with narrow roads).

[Knight of Scape]

After a long delay, I present my third and probably final custom from my really old binge of making "cooler" units using official figures. This one was from back when the Capuan Gladiators didn't exist yet, so Spartacus was pretty terrible, and I wanted to try to use his sculpt for a more interesting concept.

Spoiler Alert!

The Prisoner

Einar
Unique Hero
Human
Soldier
Rebellious
Medium 5

Life 5
Move 5
Range 1
Attack 6
Defense 4
-30 Points

“Liability”
You may not include The Prisoner in your army if it contains any other figures with a negative point cost. You may not place any order markers on this card. Figures you control may not attack The Prisoner. The Prisoner is not affected by any special powers on any other army cards that you control.

“Escape”
At the end of any turn, if there are no figures you control adjacent to The Prisoner, choose an opponent. That opponent immediately gains control of The Prisoner. Place a brown negation marker on this card. For the rest of the game, all of The Prisoner’s powers are negated.

This is my attempt at a negative point cost unit. I don't really think that negative cost units should ever exist in VC, but if they did, I'd make them something like this. Being unable to draft the Prisoner with other negative cost units is entirely superfluous, since I haven't made any other negative cost unit, but it future proofs him in the sense of preventing min-maxed builds that use a bunch of negative cost units who mitigate each other's downsides.

The Prisoner's own downside is pretty significant. He gives you an extra 30 points to build with, but someone has to stay behind in the startzone to guard him, and if your opponent manages to sneak past and kill the guard, they gain unit who'd probably be worth about 80 just from his solid stats. The fact that the prisoner is taking up a hex also prevents some common heavy armies from making the most of the extra points he offers. You can guard the Prisoner with a filler unit like Isamu or Marcu, but using the extra points from the prisoner to include Marcu in your army so that he can guard the prisoner is a bit of a waste. Generally this guy works best when there's some fairly expensive army card you really want (whether it be a key hero or another card of your squad) and you're just a few points short.

~KoS, who will hopefully not wait another six months before the next update