A New Type of Hero...?

[whitestuff]

Originally Posted by Grungebob

Youn don't need to come up with a new type of hero. You could give the common hero an ability that allows them to last longer. Take Deathwalkers as an example. They could easily be common as they have just one wound. An ATAT could be similar with a high defense or some other ability that prolongs their stay on the battlefield.

For Doombots I can see this as a potential thematic problem.
Doombots are the exact copy of Dr Doom. In the comic books there have been occasions where The Fantastic Four have been fighting Dr Doom only to find out that they have been fighting a Doombot. (The art of deus ex machina is alive and well in the comic book world )

Give Doombots the same stats as Dr Doom with only 1 life and they will no longer be an exact copy of Dr Doom. Give them more defense to counter the 1 life and again, they are broken thematically.

If the truth be told, Doombots have inbuilt programing which Dr Doom uses to make them self destruct. This leads me to imagine that the Doombots would easily be worth more than Dr Doom himself, but, a common squad member that costs 250 points with only 1 life? That just doesn't seem reasonable.

Doombots are common (the fact is that Dr Doom has about 50 Doombots at any time (thanks to the Marvel Database for that useful bit of trivia)) but they really aren't common, if you get my drift.

It leads to a sticky situation indeed.

[Boromir_and_kermit]

That's a good example Grungebob and if you have different sculpts, that would work really well. But unfortunately figures such as Sentinels, Doombots and AT-AT walkers to name just a few are unlikely to have multiple sculpts.

If you were to leave them as Unique Heroes then I suppose the only way to run them would be leave it as one card and mark the card using dots that match dots somewhere on the figure. Then you only need the one card, but all will be named the same and being Uniques, you break the rule that you can only have one Unique with the same name on the field. If no-one has a problem with that then maybe it's the way to go... I'm not sure that everyone would go for it though. There seems to be a hang up with the word Unique. Theme has a lot to do with it as well of course.

Ben.

[GreyOwl]

Originally Posted by Boromir_and_kermit

That's a good example Grungebob and if you have different sculpts, that would work really well. But unfortunately figures such as Sentinels, Doombots and AT-AT walkers to name just a few are unlikely to have multiple sculpts.

If you were to leave them as Unique Heroes then I suppose the only way to run them would be leave it as one card and mark the card using dots that match dots somewhere on the figure. Then you only need the one card, but all will be named the same and being Uniques, you break the rule that you can only have one Unique with the same name on the field. If no-one has a problem with that then maybe it's the way to go... I'm not sure that everyone would go for it though. There seems to be a hang up with the word Unique. Theme has a lot to do with it as well of course.

Ben.

So they would be unique, but called something else, and therefore it won't violate the rule that you can't have more than one of the same unique. I like that part. Now maybe you can explain your dot thing in more detail. Is there way to do it without permanently marking up the cards and figures?

[Boromir_and_kermit]

Is there way to do it without permanently marking up the cards and figures?

Not that I had thought of, but now that you mention it, you could have a small counter/marker with the dots on it. One for the base of the figure and one for the card. They match up and so can be identified easily, yet it doesn't permanently mark the figure/card. That seems the easiest way to do it.

Ben.

[GreyOwl]

That sounds almost TOO simple to work.

So what do we want to call this new type? Some of the ones I liked were "Standard Hero", "Uncommon Hero", and "Special Hero".

[allskulls]

I like Uncommon Hero but would not be opposed to Unique Hero...what's the hang up on the word? It's a custom. Customs are acustomed to altering rules. Actually almost all of the official cards alter the rules in some way with special abilities. With that said, there may need to be an ability made just for this rule if we go with Unique Hero. If we go with another type of Hero, we will need an addendum to the rules like the new object rules.

As for the application, these figures will all need to be rebased so just make the bases different colors then place a colored maker on the card to match each figure's base.

[GreyOwl]

The only reason I'd vote for a new name over "Unique Hero" is because the official cards now have Unique Heroes with the same name (Sgt. Drake, Raelin), but they cannot be used at the same time. I'd like to avoid a situation where our custom rule would have to explain how you can't have two different Unique Heroes with the same name, except in such-and-such case, and then we'd have to figure out how to differentiate the two cases. Since pg. 14 of the SoTM rules say "A player cannot have two Unique Heroes with the same name.", it would be a much simpler custom rule to state "A player can have more than one Uncommon Hero with the same name."

[GreyOwl]

So how about this for a custom rule?

Originally Posted by Uncommon Heroes

An Uncommon Hero is similar to a Common Hero that can have more than one Life. For the purposes of all special abilities, glyphs, and rules they are treated as Unique Heroes. The only exception is that more than one can be used at at time by the same player. In order to track which figure corresponds to which hero, place a number token (any token with a number on it) on the base of the figure and another one with the same number on the corresponding card.

I'm sure someone could word that a lot better, but that's the general idea.

[IAmBatman]

I'm with Grungebob on this one. There's nothing wrong with calling these units "unique". Even robots that all look identical have serial numbers to differentiate them - this is nothing different thematically, in my opinion.
If you have a bunch of the same sculpts that you want to differentiate it's no different then when you want to differentiate your figures from one of your friend's. Just pain the base a different color. Simple as that.
As for worrying about the cards and not knowing how many you'll use, you'll still need the aforethought to print out one of the cards for each one you want to use. It's not a hard task to put a little extra word in the title of the card for each new one you want to make - whether it's color to go with the base (Sentinel Red) or number to be like a serial number (Doombot 1) or so on.
That is, of course, unless you think the unit is fine just having one life, in which case, make it common. I don't think you need to make a new unit type, b/c then you're, perhaps, straying a bit too far into the realm of an entirely different game. Not like we haven't gone there before, but in this case it seems like it's more trouble than it's worth.

[GreyOwl]

Well, I didn't want to paint the base a different color or mark up the figure in any other way (that's just me, I like them to all look as "official" as possible). Plus we don't always have the luxury to modify the card, because it may not be our own custom. If I make 3 Sentinels and someone else wants to play with 5 of them, it's not that easy for them to make a modification to the card.

Sure, we could put the number tokens on multiple Unique Heroes, but you wouldn't want to allow that with all of them (the two different Raelins for example or 2 different versions of Superman). The new type is really only there to clarify which unique heroes you can do that with and which you can't. If it's an Uncommon Hero, you can do that. If it's a Unique Hero, then you can't.

[IAmBatman]

This sounds like something house rules could pretty much cover anyway? In terms of which uniques of the same name you'd allow and which you wouldn't. If a creator intends for multiples of their uniques to be useable, we could always ask them to post several of the card with additional numbers on the end to a reasonable amount, depending on the cost.

I guess the tokens could work - but it seems like they'd flop around a lot in terms of the actual figures. If you're concerned about permanent markings, you could use rubber bands or other nonpermanent marking systems.

[Boromir_and_kermit]

I like the idea of having a new type of Hero as it just makes it cleaner for this type of unit.

However as an alternative I just thought of, you could always put a little sentence down the bottom of the card. Or even have it as a power.

Doombot clones
When drafting your team, you may draft more than one Unique Doombot.

This would also make it clear, without the use of a new Hero type and then just use the tokens (or even dice, 1PiP for Sentinel/doombot 1, 2PIPS for Sentinel/Doombot 2 etc... you can get really small dice.

The other option is a small magnet on the underside and top of the base with dots on it. Then it doesn't move around. Easy fix.

I don't mind either way.

Ben.