The Book of Beam Struggle

[Arch-vile]

The Book of Beam Struggle

C3G SHONEN JUMP WAVE 48
DRAGON BALL C3G

Front PDF


Back PDF


Energy Clash Card PDF

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Story Bio - The beam struggle is a situation in which two energy-based techniques collide and compete to consume one another and proceed to their targets. For example, the user will utilize the Kamehameha technique while the other user will use a similar energy wave attack, and they proceed to fire their beams on opposite sides. The energy waves will eventually collide with each other, and begin clashing. As each user begins to pour more of their energy into the attack, one attack will eventually overwhelm and overpower their opponent. One notable beam struggle took place in the first battle between Goku and Vegeta, where Goku’s Kamehameha narrowly defeated Vegeta’s Galick Gun.
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-Rulings and Clarifications-

• Story Card: This card requires the Story Card rules.

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-Combinations and Synergies-

Synergy:

• This Story requires at least one Hero in your army is a Challenger or Kaiju.

-Strategy, Tactics and Tips-

• DBZ faction strategy guide

-Heroscapers Community Contributions-

• Initial playtest: Arch-vile
• Second playtest: Soundwarp SG-1
• Third playtest: Toyhandle/Splash
• Fourth playtest: IAmBatman
• Fifth playtest: Arch-vile
• Art by Dr. Jekyll

[Arch-vile]

NAME = BEAM STRUGGLE STORY CARD

POINTS = 50

STORY PROLOGUE =
- At least one Hero in your army must be a Challenger or Kaiju.

STORY SETUP =
- The blue Energy Clash Marker starts on the middle space of the Energy Clash Card.

STORY RULES =

ENERGY CLASH
Once per game, when a non-adjacent enemy figure would inflict one or more wounds on a Hero you control that is a Challenger or Kaiju, you may ignore those wounds, choose those two figures, and use the Beam Struggle special power.

BEAM STRUGGLE
Each player must roll the 20-sided die for the chosen figure they control, and you add 2 to your roll. Move the Energy Clash Marker one space towards whichever player rolled lower, then each player rolls again. When the Energy Clash Marker is placed on an End space of the Energy Clash Card, the player with the Energy Clash Marker furthest from them rolls 4 unblockable attack dice against the other player's figure, and the attacking figure’s turn ends immediately.

[Arch-vile]

Art:

Spoiler Alert!

This is my example card for beam struggle. I think it'd be cool to get into the Poker Card format so we can add it to the deck.


I'll find some Beam Struggle images shortly for the actual story card art.

[Arch-vile]

So this is meant to be the thing where two opponents fire their energy beams at each other, pushing back and forth until someone wins and the other takes the full force of both blasts. It's pretty common in DBZ (Goku vs Vegeta & Gohan vs Cell are the two most iconic ones), and apparently Godzilla does it pretty frequently as well, hence the Kaiju callout.



It’s a really nice one-time defense/deterrent against special attacks for the Challengers and Godzilla, but it’s also not a guarantee they’ll win (they just get the +2 to their rolls). I originally had the boost at +4, but that was too much in some early trials, it was pretty much a guarantee that the Challenger/Kaiju would win. +2 makes it a much more fair fight while still giving a solid boost. It felt pretty fun in my early tests, there can be some good back and forth while it doesn't go on too long.

[Dr. Jekyll]

Dope! Excited for this, it sounds like a lot of fun!

[Arch-vile]

Any other thoughts before I propose to initial? This is a more out-there concept so I want to make sure it's tracking for everyone.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Fair warning, I'm tired and can't see out of one eye at the moment so this is probably disjointed and rambling:

--

Are the once per games shared across the powers? (as in you can beam struggle exactly one time per game)

Kinda reads that way when the second power is referring to something explained in the first.

But then it wouldn't make much sense to have them be two powers, so I assume the intent is two uses.

--

I think it would be a good idea to restrict what SAs can trigger this a bit more. Since like part of the deal with SAs is they're where you put weird stuff that shouldn't be messed with too much (granted C3G has already messed with that a bit by having a normal attack that should be a special attack and such).

Maybe like:

ENERGY CLASH
Once per game, when an enemy figure targets a Hero you control with a special attack, you may choose to beam struggle.

You definitely don't need the 'if at least one skull is rolled" thing. Its once per game, who cares if you start a tug of war on a botched hit. And when we don't care about skulls rolled you can safely move the whole thing to the targeting step. Which would dodge a ton of potential places for weirdness to happen.

--

Whole thing feel kinda off themewise right now IMO.

Like you need a Challenger or Kajui to draft this. But then once you do Hulk can "Beam Struggle" Punisher's shotgun blasts back at him? But not any actual beams that happen to be normal attacks? (like from Ms. Marvel or whatnot)

There's nothing about special attacks that make them more laser beamy than normal attacks, they both represent tons of different things.

Feels like it should just work on any attack, but only Challengers and Kajiu can respond. Seems way more on point thematically.

[IAmBatman]

I feel like a Kryptonian could/would beam struggle too. Some good notes, though. Overall concept is really nifty.

[tcglkn]

Feels like it should only work on non-adjacent attacks too.

[IAmBatman]

100%, which, if you keep specials, also cuts out any melee specials, which hews closer to thematic stuff (still have some gunfire related specials and explosion type specials, but it's closer).

[Arch-vile]

Yeah, all that makes sense. I originally had it avoiding the targeting language because Jekyll’s Perfect Cell draft had a non-targeting special attack. (And one of the two biggest beam struggles in DBZ is Perfect Cell vs Gohan). But if we make it any non-adjacent normal attack, we can still make that interaction work. And I agree it makes it a lot cleaner thematically and mechanically.

Each option is meant to work once per game. Not sure how we can word that more clearly.

We can add Kryptonians as well. I do recall Supergirl doing the beam struggle thing with her heat vision.

[IAmBatman]

I'd make it any non-adjacent attack and not specify normal or special.

If you want to reduce the figures it affects to try to weed out unthematic ones, doing Unique and Event Heroes only makes sense to me, and cutting Humans also cuts out a ton of non-thematic ones (though Green Lanterns contradict this, so maybe Humans without SS?).