Soldiers of Valhalla - nominations and discussion

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Astroking112

I admittedly don't know much about Arctorus or post-humans, but I'm not sure why they would hail from that planet.

That said, the race doesn't bother me much anyway (if it's really a problem, just update it to be some failed experiment or a new race on Marr or the like), and the design looks very different from what I generally see suggested. There are some minor problems that I could see with just outright adding skulls to a roll (mostly how it works with powers like Maul), but I'm sure that all of that can be ironed out. Good job, Lazy Orang!

Arctorus was intended to be a blend of Cthonic horror, vast marshy wilderness, and steampunk class structure, with isolated urban pockets of wealth and, importantly, a Star Wars cantina-like blend of oddities. Dagobah, but with a few wealthy Mos Eisleys, and horror instead of Yoda in the swamps. With some steampunk, and without the traditional tropes of fantasy (elves, orcs, etc.).

[flameslayer93]

Psychic Attacks of range 3 were already done by the Mindflayer(s), with the exception being they were special attacks.

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Arctorus was intended to be a blend of Cthonic horror, vast marshy wilderness, and steampunk class structure, with isolated urban pockets of wealth and, importantly, a Star Wars cantina-like blend of oddities. Dagobah, but with a few wealthy Mos Eisleys, and horror instead of Yoda in the swamps. With some steampunk, and without the traditional tropes of fantasy (elves, orcs, etc.).

That sounds very interesting, but I probably still wouldn't make the association between post-human and someplace other than Earth very easily. Specifically using the word human makes me think that the figure is from a future version of Earth, especially since I don't believe we've seen any human-related figures from other planets so far.

[superfrog]

I still want to hear from Lazy Orang if she has an alternate species in mind from Posthuman. I like the theme and story of it, but I think Posthuman is a little too open-ended for a Classic 'Scape card.

I think Transcendent Human as a class/species combo is still pretty telling. Or Consciousness as a species.

[flameslayer93]

Originally Posted by Astroking112

That sounds very interesting, but I probably still wouldn't make the association between post-human and someplace other than Earth very easily. Specifically using the word human makes me think that the figure is from a future version of Earth, especially since I don't believe we've seen any human-related figures from other planets so far.

Arctorus has humans, as Prince Puma-Strike dude is from there.

Future Earth is a cool concept too.

[caps]

Originally Posted by superfrog

I still want to hear from Lazy Orang if she has an alternate species in mind from Posthuman. I like the theme and story of it, but I think Posthuman is a little too open-ended for a Classic 'Scape card.

I think Transcendent Human as a class/species combo is still pretty telling. Or Consciousness as a species.

On the flip side, Human as the species might be a deal-breaker for me.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

I have no issues with 3 range (fits with other mind blast ranges) or post-human as a species. What I'm not a fan of is having an 'X' reveal power and a once per round power on the same card. It feels very discordant, especially when it's the minor 'ribbon' power that requires an 'X' and not the actually powerful one.

I like seeing something a bit more off the wall compared to the standard random generic fantasy guy stuff we normally get, even if Vogt's powers are all pretty heavily derivative of C3G powers, but the 'X' vs per round thing just doesn't work for me. A light for now.


Non-judgey sidebar, glad to see someone is getting some use out of my custom generals.

[Ixe]

Dr Gudruna Vogt

I like the core concept of this card but I'm getting caught up on some of the details. Since we judge the whole unit and don't modify designs, even seemingly small things can sink a design. Post-human is passable for me but I'm really not liking transcendent for a personality. I See it All and Instantaneous Calculation has a few too many knobs on it for my liking and feels overdesigned to offer two once per round powers like that. Particularly for Instantaneous Calculation, manipulating blanks seems bizarre and most often you'd manipulate the defense die to try to defend against or add an additional wound. I'm okay with range 3 for a psychic attack but I would prefer for it to be a special attack a la the Tul-Bak-Ra.

Individually any of these qualms might not be enough for me to vote it down but it adds up. I vote NAY to review the good doctor.

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

Arctorus has humans, as Prince Puma-Strike dude is from there.

Future Earth is a cool concept too.

That's very surprising to me. The figure doesn't seem to have a bio, and I rarely check the basic side, so I had always assumed that he was from a historical version of Earth, like the knights or Samurai... That makes me very curious about Arctorus, now.

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Astroking112

That's very surprising to me. The figure doesn't seem to have a bio, and I rarely check the basic side, so I had always assumed that he was from a historical version of Earth, like the knights or Samurai... That makes me very curious about Arctorus, now.

I hope the SoV judges will not mind too much if I respond.

We struggled to make Arctorus a fully-formed world, because the Heroscape canon only had so many worlds and we didn't want to add to that fixed number lightly, or frequently. So we probably have a more complete vision of Arctorus than there ever was of, for instance, Grut.

For a window into life on Arctorus, I turn your attention to this story. That story, of course, is set in a marshy wilderness; an urban and wealthy Mos Eisley would be a very different setting.

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

I hope the SoV judges will not mind too much if I respond.

We struggled to make Arctorus a fully-formed world, because the Heroscape canon only had so many worlds and we didn't want to add to that fixed number lightly, or frequently. So we probably have a more complete vision of Arctorus than there ever was of, for instance, Grut.

For a window into life on Arctorus, I turn your attention to this story. That story, of course, is set in a marshy wilderness; an urban and wealthy Mos Eisley would be a very different setting.

Thanks for the insight on designing Arctorus and directing me towards the Ebon Armor. I was completely unaware that humans were a normal part of life there (at most, I would have expected human-like figures like the Mariedians), but it seems like this was always the case.

As a quick tangent, my friends and I used to always joke about how anything remotely fantasy-related (be it elves, giants, wolves, or even mummies) came from Feylund, but there were only Orcs on Grut. It is interesting to see the lesser-used planets be more fully fleshed out, especially since they are entire planets, and I'd agree that some planets seemed to mostly contain a single faction.

[Ixe]

Bear in mind that Heroscape was billed as the "battle of all time." People have been pulled from multiple different eras from Earth and C3V although that space has been a little less explicit for other planets. C3V has played around in that area a bit with units like the Havech Eradicators (farther future Marr cult built around Ne-Gok-Sa).

I've felt that Arctorus falls a bit more into this time space where you can have knights of their more distant past and a sci-fi element from their future with the Mos Eisley setting. These things don't necessarily need to be contemporary.