Sherman Davies' Marvel customs - Starshine

[hextr1p]

Oooh, nice change to Spidey. Might have to do something like this myself...

[Balantai]

Sherman,

That's the best idea I've seen for Spidey, yet. The only problem you're going to have is looping. If Spidey is attacked in a middle of a double attack and succeeds on his roll, Spidey first takes an immediate turn before the second double attack. Then, if Spidey attacks someone else with a similar power, a train quickly gets created that can be hard to keep track of. This was brought up by Grundgebob in NM24 thread during the Namor debate. Apparently, the creators don't like to allow a character to take a turn in the middle of some else's turn.

The one way I've gotten around this loop is to force the ability to immediately end the turn of the attacker and then allow Spidey to take an immediate turn.

[Sherman Davies]

Balantai,

Thanks for the input! I like your solution, but it seems like it would be unfair to squads. What happens if the first figure in a squad attacks Spider-Man and Spidey's ability triggers? The rest of the squad loses their turn? I want Spidey to be effective against squads, but not that much.

If I correctly understand the "looping" problem you're describing, it's what would happen if Spider-Man used his free turn to attack someone else with a power that interrupted a turn, right? For example: Spider-Man, Venom and Captain America are having a free-for-all battle. Cap attacks Spidey with his first Shield Throw, Spidey dodges and attacks Venom. Venom dodges and attacks Cap. Finally Cap gets another Shield Throw (his second). While that situation might get confusing to keep track of, I don't know if it would come up often enough that I would want to "fix" it by ending an attacker's turn prematurely. That just seems to me to be a very powerful ability, particularly against squads.

In the end, I guess it just comes down to the fact that I make these customs for my own personal C3G project and share them for anyone who's got no interest in designing their own customs. Personally, I can live with the above situation coming up every 100 or so games. It's not a big deal to me if this version of Spidey doesn't make the cut for NM24 or C3G because of the potential looping problem.

[Sherman Davies]

Okay, here's another retooled custom of one of the official Marvelscape figs, the Incredible Hulk:



This was an easy custom to come up with, as 'Scapers have been saying ever since Marvelscape was released that Hulk should be able to use his Stomp Special Attack after leaping. It just makes sense thematically and makes him much more dangerous to squads, which gives him more of a chance to "earn his points back" against massed commons; although I'm not a huge fan of judging a figure's effectiveness by counting kill points, I've never once seen Hulk defeat a 370 or 400-point army of common squads. With some characters I wouldn't mind so much, but the Hulk fights the U.S. Army on a regular basis!

I also dropped the "Incredible" from his name, because it always bugged me that he was the only figure with an adjective in his name. Besides, I think just "Hulk" is punchier and more direct.

[Elginb]

With regard to the looping problem with Spider-man: what if you had a special power that combined counter-strike with move? Give Spider-man, say, 6 or 7 defense, then say "When Spider-man rolls defense, all extra shields count as unblockable hits on the attacking figure. If Spider-man takes no wounds, then he may immediately use Swing Line 4." Or something like that-- it would avoid the looping problem, give Spidey a good counter to weaker squads, but not too much advantage over incredibly powerful super-villains.

[Sherman Davies]

Originally Posted by Elginb

With regard to the looping problem with Spider-man: what if you had a special power that combined counter-strike with move? Give Spider-man, say, 6 or 7 defense, then say "When Spider-man rolls defense, all extra shields count as unblockable hits on the attacking figure. If Spider-man takes no wounds, then he may immediately use Swing Line 4." Or something like that-- it would avoid the looping problem, give Spidey a good counter to weaker squads, but not too much advantage over incredibly powerful super-villains.

Interesting solution, Elginb. A friend of mine came up with something similar for his Mr. Miracle custom. I kinda like it, but I can't use it because my goal with tweaking the original Marvelscape cards is to slightly alter the existing powers, not to replace them with different ones.

As I said, the looping problem is not a significant one to me in casual play, which is the exact environment my custom Spider-Man (and all my other customs, for that matter) is designed for.

[Sherman Davies]

Since I've already posted my tweaks of Spidey and Hulk, here are their Marvelscape counterparts, Venom and Abomination, with the same tweaks:





I increased Venom's cost to be the same as my custom Spider-Man's because I always thought the official Venom should've cost the same as Spidey. In my mind, the two extra attack dice pretty much exactly makes up for the less reliable Spider-Sense. This impression is reinforced by stories I hear about Venom being drafted in tourneys (at least those which allow Marvelscape) far more than Spidey.

Finally, since I know some of us around here consider the official Silver Surfer fig to be a bit on the nerfed side, here's my take on the first herald of Galactus:



Again, I didn't want to drastically change the Surfer, as I think he's one of the most thematically accurate translations from the original Marvelscape set. I just wanted his power level to be closer to what I imagine it to be, which is on par with characters like the Hulk or Superman. In this case, I simply upped his normal and special attacks by one attack die and increased his cost 40 points to reflect that.

[artemiscorso]

I really like what you've done with the Silver Surfer and Spider-Man. I always thought their heroscape figs(Dr. Doom's as well) were underpowered according to their comic personas. Nice fix. Good call on equaling out the points with
Spider-Man and Venom. Spider-man taking a turn again is one thing, but
Venom taking a turn with 6 attack probably at least levels the difference
between 14 and 11.

[IAmBatman]

Sounds like your playtesting thoughts are dead on there, Sherman! After doing some playtesting with Batman and Superman together, Batman versus Superman, etc., I'm starting to worry that Superman is an A to A+ unit at 400 points. He has counters, but man is he hard to kill!

[Sherman Davies]

Having your Superman be an A+ figure wouldn't be the end of the world. After all, he IS Superman.

If I have any qualm with my own Superman custom, it's that he's probably an A- figure at best, and a lot less useful if he's alone with no one to boost.

[IAmBatman]

6 Life seems a little low for a Superman, so that might be part of it. Also, now that I'm looking at it, you might want to glance at "Gladiator Inspiration" to make your Inspiration text conform a little bit more to Heroscape convention. You took a couple linguistic short cuts in that text as compared to Sparty's card, but you have the room to go longer on that card.
I feel pretty similarly about my own TNT Superman, btw. For what he costs, he dies to squads far too easily. I really do enjoy the C3G Superman, though, because he's so friggin tough, he manages to feel worth 400 points even with a single attack per turn, and he zips around the map so fast to boot.

[Sherman Davies]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

6 Life seems a little low for a Superman, so that might be part of it.

Maybe, but I took my cue for that from the Silver Surfer and Thanos cards. Their 7 defense and 6 life defines, for me, the upper limit for toughness when it comes to Heroscape. The Hulk and Abomination are roughly the same with their 6 defense and 8 life. I see Superman at the same power level in terms of invulnerability.

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

I feel pretty similarly about my own TNT Superman, btw. For what he costs, he dies to squads far too easily. I really do enjoy the C3G Superman, though, because he's so friggin tough, he manages to feel worth 400 points even with a single attack per turn, and he zips around the map so fast to boot.

Mine doesn't do well against squads either if he's alone. I don't mind so much because it makes drafting figs somewhat thematic - you don't bring Superman unless you're facing something big, and if your opponent drafts Superman you're forced to consider countering with something big yourself.