HoME Brainstorming Thread

[Shiftrex]

2 versions of Boromir would be cool, I made a draft of him a while ago that involved him shielding other units from wounds and being a high life figure

[White Knight]

First, I think we should start new threads for each of the characters for brainstorming. Too much can get lost by mixing comments for all figures in this one thread.

The Legolas and Gimli drafts look interesting. I prefer the version 1 designs, maybe adding the terrain ability to Legolas and Tough +1 to Gimli.

As for Merry and Pippin, I really, really liked the designs we had for them--with the shadowing change I made to Loyalty:

LOYALTY
At the start of the game choose a Human or Hobbit unique hero to be Pippin’s Companion. After revealing an Order Marker on Pippin's Companion and taking a turn with Pippin's Companion, you may move Pippin up to 4 spaces. If Pippin's Companion is destroyed, you may move all Order Markers from the Army Card of Pippin's Companion to Pippin's Army Card.

Without the shadowing ability, there was no reason to ever put order markers on Merry and Pippin. So if their companion was destroyed they were still in their start zone far from the action--practically useless.

My first playtest with the versions of Merry and Pippin I used is here.

I did several more playtests as well. As far as I can tell, only myself and one other person did any actual playtesting on them.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Ninja Status

I like Legolas and Gimli a lot. For Boromir I was envisioning a sort of cheerleader power that would activate when he builds up wounds. Something like..

Courage of Gondor
If Boromir has at least 3 wound markers on his army card, each friendly figure adjacent to Boromir may add 1 to their attack and defense value.

It needs work, but if we were to incorporate something like this I’d make his life around 6ish? Maybe give him an average/below average base defense to start?

This is a cool idea. We might want to pair it with one of the powers that incentivizes or forces Boromir to be wounded by the enemy (either he takes wounds instead of adjacent figures or something like Combat Challenge).

Originally Posted by boromir96

I’d like to see 2 iterations of Boromir. A FotR one with a Horn of Gondor power, and a class of Protector maybe? And a Champion of Osgiliath version that bonds with KoW and Macdirks.

This is a cool idea!

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

2 versions of Boromir would be cool, I made a draft of him a while ago that involved him shielding other units from wounds and being a high life figure

Looking forward to seeing your power ideas posted here!

Originally Posted by White Knight

First, I think we should start new threads for each of the characters for brainstorming. Too much can get lost by mixing comments for all figures in this one thread.

The Legolas and Gimli drafts look interesting. I prefer the version 1 designs, maybe adding the terrain ability to Legolas and Tough +1 to Gimli.

As for Merry and Pippin, I really, really liked the designs we had for them--with the shadowing change I made to Loyalty:

Without the shadowing ability, there was no reason to ever put order markers on Merry and Pippin. So if their companion was destroyed they were still in their start zone far from the action--practically useless.

My first playtest with the versions of Merry and Pippin I used is here.

I did several more playtests as well. As far as I can tell, only myself and one other person did any actual playtesting on them.

I think we should wait to create threads until we're ready to move a design out of brainstorming.

For Merry and Pippin I was thinking we should replace Loyalty altogether with something like Savage Rush. I was also thinking we should way simplify Unnoticed and do away with Barrow Blade and Hamstring.

[White Knight]

We should vote on where to brainstorm
A) Do all initial brainstorming on figures in this one thread
B) Create separate threads for figures and do all brainstorming in those threads

Obviously, I vote B. It makes no sense to me to put all brainstorms in this one thread. What a mess!

Right now we have: Legolas, Gimil, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, and Aragorn all being brainstormed in this one thread. Finding suggestions specific to any one figure means sifting through a lot of unrelated information--especially when someone comments on several different designs in a single post.

Like I suggested before, let's draft these figures and have a lead designer or team lead the brainstorming in a separate thread for each figure.

[Shiftrex]

I created an ability for Merry and Pippin called unnoticed. For all hobbits actually, the idea is that they get disengage and cant be targetted for a normal attack as long as they arent the only ones engaged.

Would anyone care if I dumped a bunch of drafts in spoilers for stuff I've tinkered with?


Edit: I posted at the same time, I vote B

[caps]

We have a whole thread for voting. Let's keep the proposals and votes over there. I went ahead and started this proposal there.

[boromir96]

As far as treasure glyphs for special abilities like Sting or Horn of Gondor I’m not a huge fan. I feel like both of those are integral to their respective characters and I don’t want them to be scenario dependent. I might even be in favor of having the One Ring being a power instead of a glyph. Basically if I choose to draft a HoME figure in a standard tournament style game I want them to feel like they capture all the aspects of that character, and not depend on scenario driven treasure glyphs.

[Shiftrex]

@boromir96 I agree! I think that a lot of powers can be built into the cards and that we should explore that angle.

[Chris Perkins]

I really like Boromir with combat challenge - I think whenever an existing power fits thematically this well we should use it.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to having multiple versions of some figures (Gandalf comes to mind, 'Gandalf the Grey' & 'Gandalf the White') as that does follow classic scape (Drake, Raelin) but I think it's important that it doesn't happen to too many figures and I'm a bit hesitant to use one of those spots on Boromir, since he doesn't change as fundamentally as other characters like Gandalf. I do think Boromir bonding with KoW (& McDirks is fine too) is important.

[caps]

First of all, we don't have to have a one size fits all approach. We can use glyphs for some things and not for others. What I'll say about the idea is that it can give us a way to keep figures balanced for standard/tournament-style play while still having a leg up for scenarios where the fellowship together might otherwise be at a disadvantage against squad scape armies like hordes of orcs.

---

With that said, I mostly just want to point out the tension at play here. If we make a figure like Boromir so that it is balanced and fun to play with/against for bonding with Knights of Weston, it will be more difficult to make him feel right as a "standalone" hero when he is used with the Fellowship. There may be somewhat of a happy medium but it will require sacrifices from both ends.

Concretely, powers that let him move other figures voluntarily step into the design space of Sir Gilbert (which is boring), and powers that let him move other figures in response to being wounded will make the knights *even better* at board control than they already are (and with Sir Gilbert they are some of the best in the business). An example of sacrifice like I mentioned might be a high point cost or nerfing the effect of the power (only once per game, or only one figure, or only 1-2 spaces, etc) but that will make him less useful to the fellowship.

In this context, since we can represent Boromir thematically *without* a horn of gondor power (and in the books he only used it once anyway) hopefully the reason I suggested that it be a scenario thing or treasure glyph makes more sense.

[Chris Perkins]

I like horn of Gondor as a one-time use treasure glyph. Yes, anyone could use it then not just Boromir, but thats part of 'summoning' them all to Valhalla.

As for the fellowship, I don't think people would play the entire fellowship as an army all that often. I'm fine with making some fellowship members interconnected (like Legolas & Gimli) and others (like Boromir) more squad dependent. Then Boromir is like Alastair - best with knights but not useless without (just over priced in points).

[boromir96]

I don’t think it’s very practical to expect to play the fellowship as it’s own army. While it’s a fun concept for it to work effectively the heroes would have to be priced pretty low and then would not reflect their power level correctly I think.

As far as the Horn power not working with KoW I think there’s two easy solutions to that.

1. The two versions of Boromir I suggested earlier. A fellowship version with the Horn, and a Champion of Gondor version.

2. The Horn can only move unique heroes.