HelmAverse Supers - Reinforcements Arrive

[Tornado]

I would be really careful with the triple normal attacks. That scales up quick and becomes something you will always have to design around in the future. Extra scary if he can bond with someone.
How many attack boosters do you have?

[Matt Helm]

Thanks Tornado, that's the kind of solid input we needed. We've played with him several times and never paired his with a Captain America type. We're fine with scaling due to height or glyphs but we don't want him to be boosted by other character bonuses as (1) you are right it gets too scary, and (2) we don't see him as always pairing up with the same characters.

We've altered the wording to make it that he cannot be adjacent to any figures to use the triple attack. I know it doesn't solve all of your worries but it should definitely help.

[Tornado]

Triple normal attacks is like the one thing I have fought against in C3G.
My suggestion is a SA. Then you can set the power level and it does not change.

[Matt Helm]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Triple normal attacks is like the one thing I have fought against in C3G.
My suggestion is a SA. Then you can set the power level and it does not change.

You know what buddy? After sleeping on it, you've convinced us that we need to change him. Unfortunately with the original designer, Helm Jr., usually away at college, the testing comes down to only Matt and Lil'Helm which means the games only have our 2 perspectives. Therefore, there is the risk that our blind spots could potentially overlap. In this case I think they did.

We're taking Red Hood down from the site as "under construction". We have a few tweak options in mind but that would require more testing and therefore Red Hood is not going to be available for tomorrow's annual tournament. Hopefully Helm Jr doesn't notice that we temporarily shelved him.

Thanks again Tornado.

[Tornado]

No problem. It is your design so ultimately make it how you want it.
I think in a meta with limited attack boosts and bonding it is totally fine.
Also think it would be fine on higher point figure or really like your favorite figure.
I am always a little more open minded about a big name or just a character I really like being a little better.

[Matt Helm]

I think this is our final update before the tournament tomorrow because I don't know if we will finish off the play testing on the other designs we have.

We've updated the Captain Cold card to the newer template. Lil'Helm did such a fine job on the original one that the edit may be too slight to notice. But trust us, it's way better thanks to A3n's help.

We also updated the wording slightly on Devil Dinosaur. We notice a slight capitalization error and then swapped a sentence around to make it more clear. The bottom line is, we thought it important enough to reprint.

And now for something completely different. I had a shark like figure that my brother gave me from a tube of plastic toy figures. It looked way too much like Eric Larsen's (pre- King Shark) character based on the exaggerated fists and thinner legs. It started as a pink plastic figure and with a little bit of paint, he now comes alive as Mako:

[Lord Pyre]

Hah nice, Savage Dragon supporting characters don't usually get much love.

I think the Shark Bite conflicts a little bit with the rest of the design. Since its a really tough to hit roll, and you get a bonus for not attacking, and it only does 1 wound, I think I'd just never use it. There's not really a reason to give up a decent 6 attack for a 40% possibility of a single wound. So you're just ignoring the bonus typically. Might be a little more fun to get that +5 bonus if you choose a wounded figure, in my opinion. Goes all in on the shark theme, he already is using that mechanic for the tracking. So he'll be only okay in general, but once you have a wounded figure, he becomes quite a bit scarier.

But that's just my 2 cents, just having the change for the 17 getting a wound every turn might be fun to hit sometime too.

[Matt Helm]

Originally Posted by Lord Pyre

Hah nice, Savage Dragon supporting characters don't usually get much love.

I think the Shark Bite conflicts a little bit with the rest of the design. Since its a really tough to hit roll, and you get a bonus for not attacking, and it only does 1 wound, I think I'd just never use it. There's not really a reason to give up a decent 6 attack for a 40% possibility of a single wound. So you're just ignoring the bonus typically. Might be a little more fun to get that +5 bonus if you choose a wounded figure, in my opinion. Goes all in on the shark theme, he already is using that mechanic for the tracking. So he'll be only okay in general, but once you have a wounded figure, he becomes quite a bit scarier.

But that's just my 2 cents, just having the change for the 17 getting a wound every turn might be fun to hit sometime too.

Thanks for checking out the latest design and for weighing in with some feedback. I get where you're coming from on the bypassing an attack for just a 25% increase in a single wound attack doesn't seem like a choice you'd make most of the time and that's kind of the point. Mako is a guy who goes in with his fists but will absolutely take a bite when he gets the chance. Therefore, most of the time we want him punching with his normal attack and then occasionally getting the extra wound.

Where the choice comes in is against squad figures. Since they only have 1 life a 40% chance of instant death can be quite enticing. Against a swarm of low defense common squadies, Mako probably punches one and bites at another. But when it is a unique squad figure with a tough to bypass defense power like the Green Lantern Corps or the TMNT, then I'm probably going for the no initial attack option to increase my chance of an unblockable kill.

In fact, during our recent tournament I had Mako engaged with both Dr. strange and Green Lantern. Despite his 6 attack, he would be hard pressed to get through Dr Strange's defensive power aided by GL's power. Going in for the bite was my way of trying to chip away. Unfortunately I wiffed on defense against a large GL lucky attack roll and I didn't get many turns at it.

In the end, think of it as Mako's Special attack designed to help against squads.

[Matt Helm]

Speaking of Mako, my brother asked me to post a picture of the actual finished paint job. Since he's the one who donated the little pink figure I decided to oblige him. I'm not half the custom figure painter that he is but I am proud enough of the few I've done to also include these picks in a spoiler window on the original post of this thread.

Well, for my bro, here are the HelmAverse custom figures, thus far , and where they came from.

SAVAGE DRAGON from Despero Heroclix (complete paint job and custom knife work to feet)

SPAWN from slightly modified Nightwatch Heroclix (repainted cape and added cowl from Dr. Strange)

MAKO from "Monsters Vs Military" by Blip Toys, comes completely unpainted pink plastic

[Tornado]

Nice. That Spawn is really cool.

[Matt Helm]

With Helm Jr. getting home from college today, we can hopefully finalize the edits to his Red Hood design and have that card reposted soon. But until then, I'd like to share a Matt Helm design brought to life by Lil'Helm artwork. We've wanted to get this guy finished off for a long time now.

[Tornado]

Some solid static powers there.