The Book of Beam Struggle

[Arch-vile]

C3G STANDARD PLAYTEST FEEDBACK FORM

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: Beam Struggle

Army Test
Map: Sewer Labyrinth
Units: Beam Struggle (50), Goku SSJ, Goku base (730) VS Superman II, GL John JL (730)

Spoiler Alert!

Superman targets Goku with his heat vision early, and base Goku elects to Beam Struggle.

Beam Struggle (Goku VS Superman): Goku wins. 3 rolls, the +2 helped twice, 4/4 skulls so 4 wounds to Superman.

Goku elects to use his Kamehameha against Superman next and force a beam struggle again.

Beam Struggle (Goku VS Superman round 2): Goku wins, 11 rolls, the +2 helped once, 2/4 skulls so 2 wounds to Superman.

Base Goku gets Superman to 7 wounds before falling and transforming into Super Saiyan. Green Lantern manages a respectable 4 wounds on SSJ Goku before falling.


Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): SSJ Goku (4 wounds) wins.

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Extra Beam Struggles:

Spoiler Alert!

I ran a few more Beam Struggles just to test the odds of winning. I’m not sure how to mathematically calculate the actual odds, so I figure just brute forcing it with tests would be helpful. In these games, Goku gets the +2 bonus, while the Enemy does not.

Trial 1: Enemy wins, 7 rolls, +2 helped 0 times.
Trial 2: Goku wins, 9 rolls, +2 helped 0 times.
Trial 3: Goku wins, 7 rolls, +2 helped 0 times.
Trial 4: Enemy wins, 15 rolls, +2 helped 1 time.
Trial 5: Enemy wins, 3 rolls, +2 helped 0 times.
Trial 6: Goku wins, 3 rolls, +2 helped 1 time.
Trial 7: Goku wins, 3 rolls, +2 helped 1 time.
Trial 8: Goku wins, 9 rolls, +2 helped 1 time.
Trial 9: Goku wins, 11 rolls, +2 helped 2 times.
Trial 10: Goku wins, 6 rolls, +2 helped 1 time.

Certainly variable results and this is not enough data to accurately judge the odds, but winning roughly 70% of the time seems pretty good for what I’m looking for here.

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Army Test
Map: Sewer Labyrinth
Units: Beam Struggle (50), Vegeta SSJ, Krillin, Vegeta base (800) VS Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Miss Martian (800)

Spoiler Alert!

The Titans go after Krillin first, using adjacent attacks to avoid Beam Struggle. But then Vegeta uses his Galick Gun to beam struggle Nightwing.

Beam Struggle (Vegeta vs Nightwing): Vegeta wins, 6 rolls, +2 helped 2 times, 2/4 skulls so 2 wounds to Nightwing.

Vegeta heavily wounds Starfire, then the Titans kill base Vegeta and Krillin. Vegeta kills Starfire. Raven and Nightwing try to avoid hitting Vegeta with a ranged attack, as the defensive beam struggle is still on the table, and they want to avoid the autowounds. So at the next opportunity, Miss Martian throws Vegeta to low ground, then attacks Vegeta from range and he instead elects to beam struggle.

Beam Struggle (Vegeta SSJ vs Miss Martian): Vegeta wins, 9 rolls, +2 helped 1 time, 2/4 skulls so 2 wounds to Miss Martian.

But after this, Vegeta can’t hit his autowounds and his attacks are blocked, and the Titans pepper Vegeta with ranged attacks and Raven’s Soul Self wounds to easily win.


Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Nightwing (2 wounds), Miss Martian (2 wounds), Raven win.

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Army Test
Map: Sewer Labyrinth
Units: Beam Struggle (50), Godzilla (1050) VS Goku SSJ, Vegeta SSJ, Krillin, Bulma (1050)

Spoiler Alert!

Krillin starts the game by attacking Godzilla with a ranged special attack, and Godzilla triggers a beam struggle. Best of luck, Krillin. (Note that only Godzilla gets the boost here since he drafted it.)

Beam Struggle (Godzilla vs Krillin): Godzilla wins, 8 rolls, +2 helped 0 times, 3/4 skulls so 3 wounds to Krillin and it stops his 2nd Destructo Disc attack.

Godzilla steps on Krillin to kill him. He then kills Bulma before she can do any Dragon Ball shenanigans. Goku brings Godzilla to 9 wounds before Godzilla kills him. Godzilla uses his Atomic Breath against Vegeta, but it can’t trigger a beam struggle since it doesn’t target anyone (and Godzilla wouldn’t even want it to). Vegeta nearly kills Godzilla, but the mighty kaiju charges a second Atomic Breath in time and vaporizes the Saiyan prince.


Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Godzilla (16 wounds) wins.

THOUGHTS ON THE TESTED UNIT'S COST, BALANCE, & DRAFTABILITY: Definitely a useful bonus, especially since whoever drafted it won every Beam Struggle in my actual games! Ended up with a 12/15 win rate for whoever drafted it, overall. It never took too long to complete the beam struggle, with 15 roll-offs being the max, and the average number of roll-offs being 7. The +2 boost on average helped once per game, so your mileage may vary there.

Something to consider in public testing is making the Beam Struggle once per game max (so you have to choose between using it offensively or defensively). It’s a big swing when you win both of them. Taking it down to 3 unblockables for a win is another idea. That said, it never felt overpowering. I’m fine just going up on points too if needed. With a 2/3 win rate and the wins being fairly close I’m not sure any changes are needed yet. I'd rather err on the side of caution with points here, though.

A neat mechanical synergy is that both base Goku & SSJ Vegeta have defensive powers against melee attacks, thus encouraging a ranged attack to activate the Beam Struggle. It really is a nice deterrent against ranged attacks for figures like Nightwing who do not want to deal with potential autowounds.

Overall, I think it feels good enough to go to public testing.

[IAmBatman]

Looks good! Pre-yea

[MrNobody]

Pre-Yea

[Dr. Jekyll]

Pre-yea I think the once per game suggestion is a good one.

[Arch-vile]

I made that once per game change. I think that really helps to clean up the wording too.

I'll propose for public testing.

[Tornado]

Yea

[Arch-vile]

This passes

[Soundwarp SG-1]

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: Beam Struggle@50 points


Set 1
Map: Island Plane Crash (No E-Glyph)
Units: Beam Team: Beam Struggle (50), Goku (Super) (380), Krillin (150), Skrull Infiltrator x2 (20) - 600 total vs Iron Moon: Luke Cage (190), Iron Fist (260), Moon Knight (150)- 600 total

Spoiler Alert!

Results:
Game 1: Goku with 2 life and a Skrull.
Game 2: Moon Knight with 1 life


Using it with Krillin since he can use it instead of his second disc attack by my reading. And he's cheap enough that gambling on getting some wounds on Cage on a beam struggle Krillin instigates isn't too big a deal. So I just used it with him ASAP.

Also I realized after building this army that Goku doesn't have a ranged attack that targets and couldn't actually use Beam Struggle even if I wanted him to.

First game he got a hit on Cage but only resulted in 1 wound.

Second game he botched it and took two himself.

It wasn't really a huge game changer either way. Like the big show here was Goku trying to blitz people before he took too many wounds. The struggles of beams were sadly not in the public conscious. But a big hit on Cage wound have been a big deal and the wounds it landed did effect the game.

Set 2
Map: Sewer Labyrinth
Units: Team Beam: Beam Struggle (50), Vegeta (Super) (380), Krillin (150)- 580 total vs Holly Marvels: Ms. Marvel (350), Charlene Dupre (140), Angel (90)- 600 total

Spoiler Alert!

Results:
Game 1: Ms. Marvel with 1 life, Charlene with 3.
Game 2: Vegeta with 3 life.


Trying out against a ranged team to maybe get something from the 'counter strike' option. Also now both dudes can actually instigate a struggle if needed.

One point I'm not clear about, can Krillin roll for Solar Flair and then use Beam Struggle if he fails the roll? That seems a decent combo.

Having the counterstrike option is interesting since I'm not really sure what the best play there is. Like if you do it in response like that you're not wasting resources and potentially protecting yourself, but you're probably not in as good a match-up as you could be if you instigate.

I never really found myself wanting to use it with Vegeta, but I'm not a gambling man. So I just played by the rule that if someone tried to hit Krillan before he had a chance to do it himself I'd use it, but otherwise I'd instigate with him at the first opportunity so I'd get some potential use out of the points without risking my big dude.

Just ended up with Krillin instigating in the first game. Since he resists ranged attacks anyway and Vegeta resists melee, so any early shots went towards Vegeta. Did 2 wounds on Ms. Marvel, which was pretty good. Took a lot of rolls to get there though, so I was hoping for more. After that, the Z squad's rolls turned to ice water and the other team ended up coming back anyway.

In the second game I figured I'd try it when Vegeta took a hit.... and naturally it resulted in him getting 1 wound. Which at least wasn't a lot of wounds.

My luck is perhaps not the best for testing this.

Didn't end up mattering though as Vegeta eventually cleared out the opposition with the power of non backfire-able beams.

Overall:

Seems fine to me. It's a total gamble it does anything at all, and what it does could be a negative. I can't really see a way to do anything too tricky with it, so it's more a fun gimmicky thing than anything all that competitively dangerous. Which is fine, that's what it should be IMO.

50 points seems good, anything more than that would be kinda pricey for what it does I think.

I do kinda wish it had some sorta out for if you're rolling over and over without a winner. Like after the 12th time it fizzles out or something (maybe have both figures take a wound so it still does something). Felt a bit tedious at times and I'd worry it would be annoying for an opponent that didn't get any say in playing a dice roll mini-game in the first place.

[Arch-vile]

Thanks SW! Both Solar Flare and Beam Struggle activate when targeted, so since you control both effects I believe you'd get to choose which activates first.

I feel like including a maximum amount of rolls is just going to make it take longer, since then we would require players to count exactly how many rounds it takes. For me the most it took was like two minutes max, and that was an outlier (and with me recording the rounds).

[MrNobody]

Story Card things are technically "rules" like a scenario has, not special powers. So not sure how we handle that.

[IAmBatman]

Do we classify Story Cards as Army Cards? (They're cards in your army, after all). If we do, I'd personally classify what's on them as "special powers."

[MrNobody]

We do not. Spell Cards are also not Army Cards.

I think what I'm realizing here is that the Story Card rules were not 100% cornercased before they went out and that's already causing issues. (Although tbf, not feeling particularly guilty about that. ) I think in the future, when we add a new addition like Story Cards or VDOs, it would be smart to keep them in-sanctum until we have 2-3 of them designed under the new ruleset and ready to release.

(This is probably not the thread for this conversation. Main takeaway is that we specifically made Story Cards have "rules" instead of "special powers" to handle various issues, and I don't think we have a clear understanding of what happens when a special power and a rule trigger at the same time.)