Spider-Verse/Spider-Family Workshop

[ALEXAN2507]

Originally Posted by Ronin

I was thinking of representing the communicators something like this:

And Spider-UK might have Dimensional Watch 1 while Pavitr has Dimensional Watch 2 or whatever. (And some figures might just bring one for themselves - Octavia Otto would probably have some power that cheat her way into having one)

It doesn't rep the teleportation aspect of the watches, and just treats them as communicators, but in my experience they don't really teleport once they're in the right reality.

Yeah, my idea was essentially them teleporting in/out of that universe like they do in Spider-Verse when needing to escape to the "safe" universe- but this works

[Qualizium]

Aren't the Secret Identity rules likely to cause an issue here? We can draft AoA Nightcrawler alongside regular Nightcrawler because they happen to have different in-lore names. No such luck with (e.g) the existing C3G Spider-Man and Spider-Man noir.

Edit: Just noticed Master Weaver. I guess the question then is: is it desirable to require that kind of solution every time this comes up?

[ALEXAN2507]

Originally Posted by Qualizium

Aren't the Secret Identity rules likely to cause an issue here? We can draft AoA Nightcrawler alongside regular Nightcrawler because they happen to have different in-lore names. No such luck with (e.g) the existing C3G Spider-Man and Spider-Man noir.

Edit: Just noticed Master Weaver. I guess the question then is: is it desirable to require that kind of solution every time this comes up?

I'd say no but no-one seems to have a practical solution to this

[Qualizium]

I'd slap something in parentheses after the secret identities of the alternate universe versions where necessary. Something as simple as "Peter Parker (Noir)" for example.

[ALEXAN2507]

This is something I'd argue for too tbh

[Ronin]

It's been suggested before. I sympathize, but I get why it didn't go over.

I do think there's enough of these situations cropping up that I'd like to see us figure something out.

Maybe just a simplified version of that idea - a little "alternate reality" symbol to tag on the end of a character's secret identity to indicate that they're co-draftable with other non-identical army cards that share the same name.

EDIT: I know technically that's not simpler. But I think it feels more elegant and less like a hack of the existing ruleset.

[japes]

Well, the reality is that without a tournament does it really matter. If you want to break that rule and have a mixed reality battle with your group then go for it. The rule really at this point just keeps us from having to test a few weird interactions that may happen.

For instance with uncommon figures we word certain powers with "...this xxxxx". However, that's not the case with some unique hero powers. That's just one possible weirdness there may be more.

[Ronin]

Originally Posted by japes

Well, the reality is that without a tournament does it really matter. If you want to break that rule and have a mixed reality battle with your group then go for it. The rule really at this point just keeps us from having to test a few weird interactions that may happen.

For the most part I agree with this. 99% of the time, it doesn't matter at all. I'm not worried about my Age of Apocalypse Cyclops write-up not being playable with regular Cyclops. And if you wanted to 'cheat' and play em together, that's probably not gonna bust anything.

But there are cases where it matters a lot, which is more what we're concerned with here. Namely, it matters for these factions that are made up of a bunch of different versions of the same character. You kinda need to be able to officially balance those characters together.

And there is a surprising number of these sorts of teams. A few examples:

Spider-Verse stuff (Karn is sort of an okay-but-imperfect solution)
Kang and alt versions of Kang
Deadpool Corps
Evil Deadpool Corps
Dark Knights

There are also some versions of this that are less likely to be designed or have a little more variance in membership, so they aren't quite so bad off. Captain Britain Corps, Weapon X, Council of Reeds, Thor Corps all fall into that category.

Is it a little weird that there are so many versions of this? Yes.

Is there a Legion of Howards created solely to poke fun at how weirdly recurring this is?

That's also a yes.

But still, they exist.

And for fans of those teams, it would be nice to be able to, y'know, draft a couple members of those teams without always needing some intermediary unit that makes them co-draftable for you. (And also without each team member having to spend a bunch of text space just saying that they can be drafted with their thematic teammates that they usually hang out with)

[MrNobody]

Honestly I feel like the "You can just house-rule it" idea goes against the general C3G philosophy, but maybe that's just me. I'm not saying it needs to happen, but it feels like a precedent is going to be set sooner rather than later either way.

If something were to be put in place, I'd much prefer a symbol to a listed alt-universe in parentheses. Not all properties have the numbering of alternate universes that Marvel or Dc does. The only problem that would arise then is if you wanted to do a vII of an alternate universe character, but I don't exactly see that happening very often.

[Ronin]

Originally Posted by MrNobody

The only problem that would arise then is if you wanted to do a vII of an alternate universe character, but I don't exactly see that happening very often.

Yeah, that occurred to me, but it feels like kind of a corner case where you'd have a specific AU character that merited a second card. Even rarer that it would be a real balance concern if it were co-draftable with the first one. I'm okay with a set of designs that narrow having to do some heavy lifting to solve their design hurdles.

[MrNobody]

I agree with most of what Ronin says. When you have a group like the Dark Knights that are most well-known for all being Bruce Waynes that team up with each other, it feels off that they can't do that without some sort of aid. Or more specifically, most of them can't but the gender-swapped Bryce Wayne can do whatever she wants because 1 letter in her name is different. And it's also weird, I think, that two Kurt Wagners can't be played together, but a Kurt Wagner and a Kurt Darkholme can because they have different last names. In-universe that doesn't make any sense really.

[Lazy Orang]

I wonder if it's worth re-implementing the idea of Homeworlds from Classicscape into C3G? Obviously doing Basic Card sides for over 700 units is out, but we could add it to the Books under their cards as a bonus designation - make it Planet of Origin + Universe/Reality of Origin and call it a day. Then you could say two characters would need to have the same Name/Secret Identity and Homeworld to not be co-draftable. I kind of think that implementing a Homeworlds concept would make a lot of things a lot simpler, and it'd be irrelevant 99% of the time anyway, so no big concern about whether it's on the card or not.