Soldiers of Valhalla - nominations and discussion

[BiggaBullfrog]

They do look good on Vydar cards. I like the changes overall, and I'm willing to handle my concerns of 4 attack/Tentacle Grabs/Soul Manipulations in play testing.

to review the League of Shadows.

[Scytale]

Xundar and his Shadows have been recalled by the designer. The new set will be considered a resubmission.

Originally Posted by capsocrates

I am persuaded on the defense of 4 on the Shadow Hound. That sells to me. The defense of 4 on the Binder still feels unrestrained, but is less of a deal breaker.

Is that a to just the Binder, or the whole faction? Each unit is up for individual vote.

[caps]

It is a on Xundar, and therefore on the whole faction.

[superfrog]

Well, it looks like caps voted on Xundar, which basically auto-s everything else.*

I like most of the changes.

As I noted earlier, I don't like that the Binder's class doesn't match the others. I'm happy enough that its personality was brought in line with the others (although I would have been just as happy if one or two of the others were changed from Terrifying to something else).

Fiend -> Minion, Hound -> Hunter, Wraith -> Devourer, Binder -> Binder just rubs me the wrong way. I'd go with Guard, or heck, make them all Constructs.

But, I guess I can't argue against the class-mixing precedent of the common Marro squads.

I vote to Xundar and all of his shadows.

*Technically, somebody could upvote a secondary unit and downvote the primary. Nothing in the rules against it, although I don't see it happening. Perhaps we should set that in stone: A vote against a primary unit by a judge automatically counts as a vote against every accompanying secondary unit.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

The Binder class thing bothers me a bit too, but I guess not enough for a down-vote.

Anyway, to everything but the Wraith. on that due to the turn-stacking potential. I'm not super concerned about the power-level, but mechanically it just feels very messy. Also not digging the idea of using 1 or 2 of them as filler on lava maps to potentially hot lava death a hero, as I feel that's usually something that is purposely avoided at their point cost (and should be in my opinion).

[Scytale]

to review Xundar
I do not like his special attack at 4, but I'm willing to see how it plays.

to review Shadow Wraith
I understand Soundwarp's concern, and I share it to an extent. It isn't actually turn stacking, since each unit ends its turn before the Soul Manipulation turn, but it can certainly become a lot going on for an order marker. (Potentially seven turns for one order marker!) So much so that I've come to feel like this is an unnecessary complication to an already complicated faction. There are lots of ways a Wraith can be anti-hero (if that's what the faction needs), so I just don't see the added complication as necessary. It's a design that feels like it bogs the rest down.

to review Shadow Binder
Something just feels off here. I am still concerned about the triple-pull in a single order marker, but I'm willing to see how it plays. I'm not against 4 defense like caps is per se, but for some reason this highly-useful unit both has higher defenses and is significantly cheaper than its brethren. It's slower, sure (why?), but it feels out of place stats-wise.

to review Shadow Hound
Powers dependent on an uncertain future condition always worry me, but this wisely follows the Charging Assault wording.

to review Shadow Fiend
Changing from "Demon" to "Fiend" was the right choice.

Techinally, these votes allow some units to pass or fail. But I'm going to wait to declare that a bit to see how all the pieces fall out.

[Sir Heroscape]

Originally Posted by Scytale

to review Shadow Binder
Something just feels off here. I am still concerned about the triple-pull in a single order marker, but I'm willing to see how it plays. I'm not against 4 defense like caps is per se, but for some reason this highly-useful unit both has higher defenses and is significantly cheaper than its brethren. It's slower, sure (why?), but it feels out of place stats-wise.

I'm surprised people are so concerned about the 4 defense. Comparisons: 1) operates similar to the Drow Chainfighter who's stats and abilities are significantly better and for just 25 points. Unlike the drow chainfighter, the Binder's sole purpose is to position units for the other Shadows. With 2 attack there is virtually no attack output and with 4 move you have to take the extra time and care to develop them. 2) Other elementals. 3 out of the 4 elementals have 4 defense and they are much less "large", "powerful looking" units. As Bigga mentioned, it's likely the intangibility of the elementals that gives them the higher defense, which brings me to my reasons for 4 defense: 1) like the elementals terrifying, conjured shadows are also fairly intangible, thus 4 defense can be justified. 2) match the Binder's intangibility with the fact that it's a writhing tentacle and you've got a fairly hard target to hit and attack. The difficulty of attacking a tentacle can be seen in LOTR Fellowship where the sea monster attacks them at the entrance to the Dwarven Mine or the movie Sinbad...or ANY movie with a tentacled sea creature attacking. They're not easy to attack because they're "relatively" narrow, very "bendy" and unpredictable. The Binder here is also a Shadow on top of that. So I'm sorry, but I really don't see the hangup with 4 defense. 4 Defense came from the comparisons to Chainfighter, and other elementals and how this was designed along with the reasons I just described.

Originally Posted by Scytale

Techinally, these votes allow some units to pass or fail. But I'm going to wait to declare that a bit to see how all the pieces fall out.

Not sure what that means. But if it means the units could still pass for review despite some of the 2 downvotes, then great...if not, than I'm confused. That all said, The Binder is an absolute MUST in this faction. The wraith has been a fun addition that can help with hero situations, but isn't as necessary as the Binder, Hound and Demon. I'd say that those 3 all need to be reviewed along with Xundar. So unless someone changes their vote on the Binder or they are somehow reviewed anyway...I'll need to remove the submission. Xundar can't be reviewed with just 2 shadows and the Binder is absolutely necessary for the success of the faction.

[Scytale]

Originally Posted by Sir Heroscape

I'm surprised people are so concerned about the 4 defense.

I'm not concerned about the theme of four defense, and I'm not concerned about balance. I'm concerned about it's place in the faction. It doesn't seem to fit with the others. Convince me that this one deserves to be cheaper than the other three (relatively speaking, a lot cheaper than two of them), despite having defense better than most. Yes, it's slower, but it's grab ability partly makes up for that, and I see it's grab as one of the faction's best and most important abilities.

[Scytale]

Originally Posted by Sir Heroscape

Not sure what that means. But if it means the units could still pass for review despite some of the 2 downvotes, then great...if not, than I'm confused. That all said, The Binder is an absolute MUST in this faction. The wraith has been a fun addition that can help with hero situations, but isn't as necessary as the Binder, Hound and Demon. I'd say that those 3 all need to be reviewed along with Xundar. So unless someone changes their vote on the Binder or they are somehow reviewed anyway...I'll need to remove the submission. Xundar can't be reviewed with just 2 shadows and the Binder is absolutely necessary for the success of the faction.

You submitted them as a group with a primary and multiple secondaries. As per the SoV rules, if Xundar fails, they all fail, but any of the secondaries could fail and the rest pass. You could instead designate them all as a single faction to pass or fail, or in groups. The options are in the second post in the thread.

[Sir Heroscape]

Originally Posted by Scytale

You submitted them as a group with a primary and multiple secondaries. As per the SoV rules, if Xundar fails, they all fail, but any of the secondaries could fail and the rest pass. You could instead designate them all as a single faction to pass or fail, or in groups. The options are in the second post in the thread.

Oh I see. I think I misunderstood how to submit them. I think they do need to be as a Faction, though I'd probably just leave out the Wraith entirely at this point since it's not as necessary a piece and there's a lot of controversy. As for convincing you of the Binder, it's cheaper because of it's role in the army. 25pts for repositioning a figure is about right, because that's really all it does. Almost never did I get a kill with a Binder, so it really doesn't get points for how many points it kills, so then it's to how many Binds it gets and there were plenty of times (even with the high likelyhood of success) that I failed the Bind and it really set back my plans and how I needed to position figures to attack. The Bind can be extremely useful, but again you're giving up a third attack (with a much stronger unit) even if you succeed, and if you fail it usually hurts you pretty good, unless you're able to position yourself well enough to engage a unit with a Binder AND attempt a bind on another unit, which, helps mitigate the damage when you do fail the bind. It's hard to price out, but for what it does, I just felt the value of the binder, while necessary, never overshadowed (see what I did there ) the other units.

[superfrog]

If it was 30 points, I don't think you'd get nearly as much pushback. You could even adjust one of the other stats (move to 5, maybe?).

[White Knight]

Why not drop the Attack on the Binder to 1? Or change Tentacle Grab to "instead of attacking"? If they are necessary in the faction for repositioning, keep the low points but make repositioning pretty much all they do.