SIEGE's AotP Converted Customs

[SIEGE]

Hi @gatormustang . Thank you for the feedback, and I am glad you and your friends and family continue to enjoy the customs! I meant to sort out the inflated Life issue with squads and heroes a while ago, but I became busy with other things in life and never got around to it. I have time now, so I am going to pick up this project again.

Based on our discussion, your and others' play experience, and my own point-cost formula analysis, the Life values are definitely inflated and need reduced to be balanced with classic Heroscape. I think reducing all units' Life value by 1, while leaving the point costs the same, will yield results that are satisfactorily balanced. I am going to playtest this. Have you tried reducing Life by 1 and leaving the point values the same?

Nice work on your AotP customs! Your spell solution is really clever. It allows some of the spell powers to be incorporated without making the spell card mechanic mandatory to use with the AotP customs.

Mind if I borrow your version of Haste for my AotP customs? Your version is less wordy and complicated and functions pretty much the same.

[gatormustang]

@SIEGE glad to see you are still active. It's hard to know who is still active within the community fully understanding that life sometimes pulls us away from it at times. I just printed out the cards that I have posted so far and will be play testing them today. So I should have a better understanding of squads utilizing 1 Life only during play and if it helped overall with them being balanced as a standard Heroscape unit. Key abilities from your previous conversions that were impacted by a squad only having 1 life are the following: Lifelink, Snuff Out, and Scent of Blood. All of these I did some rewording to accommodate the squads having only 1 life. I did do some rewording in other abilities like Trample that seemed to make more sense to me.

I have Liliana Vess, Nahiri, Arlinn, Arlinn Kord, and Sorin completed and posted for the Planeswalkers and hope to have Kiora, Nissa, Gideon, Jace Investigator, Jace Mindmage, Chandra, and Ob Nixilis done by this week. One note is that I am utilizing spells from AotP with the exception of Arlinn and Arlinn Kord because I could not find what I felt was a good spell that synergized between the two. Due to that I used two spells from MTG that is associated to them (Call Pack and Hunt with the Pack).

Thanks for the compliment on the customs. Some time ago I was fortunate to find a High Definition GIMP template for all of the Generals with the exception of Valkrill, which I created and added to the .xcf template. Makes making customs really easy. I added better artwork where ever I could find a better image. By all means utilize Haste or any others as you see fit. Once again appreciate you getting this all going back in the past. I think almost all of us that enjoy Heroscape so much probably have at least one copy of the AotP sets. Its great to add the AotP figures in to the Heroscape game play.

[gatormustang]

I have completed and posted all of the updated AotP Custom Conversions. Key changes made are as follows:

1) All squad units Life Stat updated to only 1 life to be in alignment with standard Heroscape squad units. Due to this on certain units abilities needed to be reworded and point values were adjusted.
2) All hero units Life Stat updated to adjust for what seemed liked an inflated life value. Due to this I adjusted point values to accommodate the Life Stat reduction.
3) Adjusted Planeswalkers Life Stat by one with two exceptions. For Sorin Markov I reduced his Life Stat by two due to Vampiric Thirst. For Gideon Jura it seemed to me that his Life Stat of 6 should remain unchanged due to his protector role. On all of the Planewalkers to accommodate spells from the AotP game I added one additional ability from those spells.

@SIEGE if you have time would you look over the updated cards and provide me with your thoughts. I did change some of your original wording on some cards that seemed to make it a little clearer to me, but hope that the rewording still captured you original intent. I have play tested some of the units in two separate games. One with just AotP figures and one with a combination of AotP and Heroscape. Both games were really fun and seem to be pretty balanced.

[SIEGE]

@gatormustang , your updated cards are very well done! The artwork is a major step up, and the Heroscape-style hit zones look much better. I read through the cards, and I am going to be incorporating some of the changes, such as changing Pummelroot Elementals, Flamewing Phoenixes, and Blazing Firecats to Elementals, changing Rebirth to work for Elementalists, and removing the "X" order marker requirement from Focused Thoughts.

I ran several playtests with all of the units' Life dropped by one. Here are the results.

Spoiler Alert!

6 games
Both armies included only Unique Heroes and Unique Squads. One team was all classic Heroscape and the other team included one unit from AotP (3 used a hero and 3 used a squad). Points ranged from 300 to 400. The AotP team won 3 and lost 3. One win was by a significant margin. Two were by a comfortable, but not outrageous, margin. Two of the 3 losses were close, and 1 loss was by a comfortable, but not outrageous, margin.

2 games
One army was Nilfheim and 3 squads of Greenscales for both games (365 points). The other army was a Blue team of all AotP figures and the other game used a Black team of all AotP figures (roughly 365 points both times). The AotP team lost majorly both times. Nilfheim never took more than 4 wounds each game and they never lost more than 3 Greenscales each game.

1 game
Eldrazi Ruiner (1000 points) and Eldrazi Scions vs Captain America, Hulk, Abomination, and Venom. Marvel won with Captain America (5/6 Life remaining) and Venom (4/5 Life remaining) still alive. My strategy with Eldrazi Ruiner was not very good because I should have focused on destroying Captain America first.

I am satisfied with that spread of wins and losses when dropping all of the units' Life by one. There were definitely matchups where the AotP units were better and some where they were worse, but it felt balanced overall. I'm sure some AotP units will rank better or worse than others which I am ok with. My goal is to strike a balance between staying true to their original AotP versions and staying true to Heroscape, not perfectly balancing their point values (as long as nothing is game-breaking). If you do any playtests, I would be happy to hear the results and make necessary adjustments.

I plan to upload these changes sometime in the next couple days.

[SIEGE]

I uploaded the changes. I also fixed a number of typos and inconsistencies and clarified some of the abilities.

[gatormustang]

@SIEGE thanks for the update on your play testing of your updated cards. I truly appreciate you looking over my versions. Based on your play testing it sounds like your adjustments makes them well balanced with the standard Heroscape units in game play.

I have play tested my versions in 8 different games. The first two games were 650 point armies with a combination of AotP with Heroscape units on both teams. My son teamed AotP with the Marro (still one of the best fictional species ever created) and I teamed AotP with Samurai and Agents. Close battles in both cases with some change outs after the first game. Even with the AotP squads with 1 Life the battles seemed balanced for all of the units. The next two games were AotP vs AotP swapping out heroes and squads. Once again fun matches with good balance. The next four games were AotP vs Heroscape. In these four games the AotP won three matches and Heroscape won one match. With that said it did not have anything to do with the units being unbalanced. The matches were close and came down to good or bad dice rolls.

Overall I feel that the AotP conversions work well with the Heroscape standard units. One issue I did run in to is the Ghoul Vanguard with "Wake the Dead". The issues that I have are that it affects any squad regardless of size. It also affects any squad regardless of type including Undead, Elemental, Magic, and Soulborg. From my perspective he destroys a living figure and turns them into a Zombie, which would not include the unit types I mentioned. The final issue is brining the same unit back in to the battle, but as a zombie. When the opponent still has the same units in play it gets confusing. With that said I plan on looking at rewording his "Wake the Dead" to only include small and medium squad figures and exclude Undead, Elemental, Magic, and Soulborg. In addition, I created a Ghoul Vanguard Zombie card and am using some zombieish figures I have from Warhammer Age of Sigmar (Nighthaunts). Below are some pictures of the battlefield we used, the Ghoul Vanguard Zombie card, and the Nighthaunts that were used with "Wake the Dead". Based on your play tests and mine I feel that your custom conversions or mine work well for standard Heroscape game play.

GHOUL VANGUARD ZOMBIES


PLAY TEST BATTLEFIELD


WAKE THE DEAD ZOMBIE PROXIES

[gatormustang]

Here is my alternate version of Ghoul Vanguard. This version would require the Ghoul Vanguard Zombies card I created and posted.

GHOUL VANGUARD ALTERNATIVE

[SIEGE]

@gatormustang Ghoul Vanguard was one of the units I playtested with, and I noticed the same issue when an opponent has the same units still in play. I didn't think of the theme issues with size and species. Technically, the AotP rules allow for this, but I agree with you that from a Heroscape perspective, your design makes more sense thematically and is more elegant. I am going to adopt a similar design for Ghoul Vanguard.

I noticed your Ghoul Vanguard Zombies are Unique. Is there a reason you made them Unique instead of Common? Unique would limit Ghoul Vanguard to only creating 3 at a time and abilities that are strong against Common Squads (like Zelrig's Majestic Fires Special Attack) wouldn't be as strong against them. In AotP, Ghoul Vanguard has no limit, but in the games I've played with him (both AotP and Heroscape), I've never created more than 3 at a time and usually only ever 1 or 2 at a time. I think for my own design I am going to go with Unique as well. Something about that feels more elegant than allowing for multiple commons.

I've also been reconsidering multi-life squads. It made sense before reducing all units' Life by 1 when nearly all squads had 2 or 3 Life, but now only 11 squads have 2 Life and 1 squad has 3 Life. While I still like the idea in theory, it no longer makes sense to me to introduce a custom rule with major design and metagame implications when the squad designs no longer take full advantage of the new design space. It's just not worth it for bumping up only a few squads' Life from 1 to 2 even if they are balanced. I am going to drop all squads to 1 Life and adjust their point values accordingly.

[gatormustang]

@SIEGE I honestly did not think about the Unique Squad vs Common Squad. It was more of trying to get a card completed and the first thing that usually comes out is Unique. Now that you put some logic behind it I feel that it could go either way. I will follow your lead on what you think best fits both logically and strategically. In my play tests Ghoul Vanguard was played in 4 games. Each game he only woke the dead 1 or 2 Ghoul Vanguard Zombies at most. Let me know if you feel that the Ghoul Vanguard Zombies should be a Common Squad and I will change it.

[SIEGE]

I updated the squads to all have 1 Life, modified Ghoul Vanguard's Wake the Dead ability, and added the Ghoul Vanguard Zombies unit. I also made a few other small adjustments.

@gatormustang , I decided to keep the Ghoul Vanguard Zombies as Unique mainly because of how I designed Ghoul Vanguard's Wake the Dead ability to work in conjunction with Ghoul Vanguard Zombies' special ability. The design works better if they are Unique. I also like that they don't have the weakness to certain special abilities that Common Squads have.

[gatormustang]

@SIEGE I really like the rewording for Ghoul Vanguard and also like the addition of “Ghoul Vanguard’s Army” for the Ghoul Vanguard Zombies. Personally for me I feel with the updates these units are well balanced for play with standard Heroscape units.

Did you like the incorporation of one spell for each of the Planeswalkers that I added? If you did like one spell being added did you think the spells I added worked well for the respective Planeswalker?

Lastly I see you are a part of C3G Customs. Do you think these should be presented to the C3V group to see if they would add them to the play test list. I am not familiar with the process, but you did a great job with them and since the units are readily available it would be great to see them made official by C3V. I know that C3G is not the same group as C3V, but figured there was some overlap with the members. Just a recommendation either way I enjoy playing with them and once again truly appreciate you getting this project underway and updating it to where it is now.

[SIEGE]

@gatormustang , I am glad you like the updates! Thank you for your feedback along the way because that helped balance them.

Speaking of balancing, I just updated the Event Hero versions of the Eldrazi Ruiner by reducing both by 50 points. In the games I played recently, Eldrazi Ruiner plus the Eldrazi Scions were more evenly matched against 1000 and 1500 point armies instead of 1050 and 1550 point armies. So now Eldrazi Ruiner plus the Eldrazi Scions fit within a 1000 point or 1500 point army. Technically, they are 5 points over, but I don't think anyone will complain about going 5 points over in a 1000 or 1500 point game.

I do like the incorporation of one spell for each Planeswalker. Like I said before, it's a clever and elegant way to incorporate some of the spells without incorporating all of the spells and spell rules. A while ago, I pondered converting the spells and spell rules to Heroscape, but I decided against it because of the time it would take to convert each spell. Your solution bypasses that problem. For my own customs, I am going to leave them without the additional ability because my goal was to keep the figures as true to their listed abilities and stats as possible while fitting Heroscape conventions.

I think the spells you picked are good because they match the Planeswalkers thematically and are archetypal spells. Chandra's Fury and Gideon's Phalanx are good examples of this. I can see why you skipped Jace's Scrutiny since it relies on the spell mechanic and instead went with Project Self and Twisted Image which are the better options.

I am not sure whether or not they should be submitted to C3V. In my mind, AotP customs occupy a weird place in the domain of Heroscape customs because AotP is so similar to Heroscape to begin with. It seems like there is no clear cut answer as to what to do with them as evidenced by the number of custom projects in the AotP Blender Forum and the AotV project. I suspect C3V hasn't used the figures already because of AotV. I see three options one can take with AotP customs. One is to make totally new stats (AotV). Two is to convert the AotP stats as faithfully as possible into Heroscape mechanics while dropping all of the Magic-specific mechanics (Spells, Summoning, Mana Colors, Planeswalkers) (my project). Three is to convert the AotP stats into Heroscape in a way that is balanced while including the Magic-specific mechanics. I see room for official projects for all three on this site. I think it would be neat if my project became the official project for option two.