The Book of Red Skull (II)

[Yodaking]

This passes with 7 votes! Thanks for the quick responses.

[Yodaking]

Maybe replace Catwoman & 1 Yakuza with Bronze Tiger in that last army? Not sure I need two Yakuza since it's not a full Merc build, and Bronze Tiger can already re-roll blanks, so comboing that with the ability to re-roll one skull/shield you don't want could be pretty good.


*edit* Of course at 210 points I could also just go with Punisher or Judge Dredd.

[Karat]

Thay could be a pretty significant Dredd boost.

[Yodaking]

If I test Dredd's double SA out, then I'll want to drop Diamondback from the test as that would just be testing the same thing more or less. At which point I'd drop the Yakuza then, so that would give me 225 points to work with. Domino already has re-rolls, so testing that seems like over kill unless you all just want to see how it works mechanically. Gorilla Grodd is 225 though.

[Yodaking]

Alright, after thinking about it a bit more I think it's pretty safe to say you can not re-roll bonus effect dice that occur after the attack is resolved.

[Yodaking]

Spoiler Alert!

NAME = RED SKULL
SECRET IDENTITY = JOHANN SCHMIDT

SPECIES = CLONE
UNIQUENESS = UNIQUE HERO
CLASS = LEADER
PERSONALITY = TREACHEROUS

SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM 5

LIFE = 5

MOVE = 5
RANGE = 5
ATTACK = 3
DEFENSE = 5

POINTS = 230-240?

SERVANT OF THE SKULL
At the start of the game, you may choose a Unique Terrorist Hero you control. After revealing an Order Marker on this card, before taking a turn with Red Skull, you may reveal and removethe X Order Marker from this card to take a turn with that Hero. You may not take any additional turns with other figures you control.

NEW WORLD ORDER
For each revealed Order Marker on this card, Red Skull and all Unique Heroes you control within 5 clear sight spaces of Red Skull may re-roll 1 die when rolling combat dice for a normal attack, a special attack, or defense roll.

COMBAT TRAINING 2
When Red Skull attacks an adjacent figure with a normal attack, add 2 to his Attack number. After attacking a non-adjacent figure with a normal attack, Red Skull may attack one additional time.

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NAME OF THE TEST UNIT ( Red Skull II )
Army Test 1
- Give a brief overview. Going to push the normal attack boundaries right away here with the opening test by pairing him up with Punisher to see how 230 feels. Zemo plays a back-up role here as Red Skull & Crossbones will head out with the X & Punisher to start the game, then if Crossbones goes down first then Zemo can start using the X to try and get extra re-rolls out of Red Skull. If Red Skull goes down first, then Zemo steps in and keeps Trigger Man going a bit longer. If Punisher goes down first, Swordplay replaces Assault Rifle for the normal attack boosting test.
Map: X Marks the Spot
Units: Red Skull II @230, Crossbones, Baron Zemo, Punisher (800) vs. WC (800)

Spoiler Alert!

Servant of the Skull Usage: Bonded with Crossbones 3 times.
New World Order Usage:
Red Skull re-rolled 2 dice while attacking, 2 new skulls rolled as a result.
Red Skull re-rolled 6 dice while defending, 4 new Shields rolled as a result.
Others re-rolled 17 dice total, 6/15 new Skulls while attacking, 0/2 new Shields while defending.
Combat Training 2 Usage:
Double Attack used 0 times.
Single Attack used 2 times.
Damage Dealt: none
Damage Taken: 1W in 1 att. from Thunderball on HG, 1W in 2 att. from Thunderball even ground, 0W in 3 att. from Piledriver, 2W in 3 att. from Wrecker, 2W (1 extra) from a Charging Headbutt.
Who won and how many wounds did they have? Thunderball w/4W, Wrecker w/1W, & Bulldozer @full health won.

Recap: Not a lot of skulls were getting rolled in this one early on, but shields were coming up, so not much blood in the water early game. WC eventually took over and then rolled up the Terrorist once Red Skull went down. I ended up moving Red Skull out to engage Thunderball as I thought the bigger attack roll of 5 would be the better avenue to Wounds vs. 6 def. dice, that ended up being a bad idea as Piledriver then engaged him and all focus was on trying to put down Piledriver before he could KO Red Skull. Piledriver never ended up dealing any W’s, but I think I’ll hold Red Skull back and try to use his ranged att. more in the future. This Red Skull army needed a big beat stick as everyone wanted to hang back and shoot at the WC and their high defense.
- Does it pass, Yes or No? Yes, everything felt fine here from a mechanical and theme point of view.
- What should be the unit's point value? Re-rolling a single die was fine, especially when actually needing a shield on defense, but it also felt less impactful that just rolling an extra die. That might be in part due to the lack of overall skulls in general in this game, but Punisher rolling 5/4/3 seems better than 4/3/2 with 1 die rerolled. So I don’t think the points will be trending up after one game, but I’ll stick to my testing plan and see how I feel at the end.
_____________________________________________________________
Army Test 2
- Give a brief overview. This test is going to look at the SA aspect of the design with Supergirl’s Heat Vision being the one I really wanted to see what kind of impact the re-rolls could have. Also wanted to try someone other than Crossbones as his goon, Gorgon is a powerhouse at 300 points and has a SA as well. Then I rounded out the team with Hawkeye I as his SA is one I always felt had a lot of potential but just seemed to struggle landing in the game. Want to see if re-rolls for it will make him seem more impactful. A couple of different effects to choose from lets us look at how the SA re-rolls might impact a few different kinds of SA effects all at once as well.
Map: X Marks the Spot
Units: Red Skull II @230, Gorgon, Supergirl, Hawkeye I (1000) vs. Cyclopes II, Archangel, Wolverine, Banshee, Jubilee (1000)

Spoiler Alert!

Servant of the Skull Usage: Bonded with Gorgon 3 times.
New World Order Usage:
Red Skull re-rolled 10 dice while attacking, 5 new skulls rolled as a result.
Red Skull re-rolled 5 dice while defending, 2 new Shields rolled as a result.
Others re-rolled 10 dice total, 2/3 new Skulls while attacking, 2/7 new Shields while defending, 0 new Blanks to trigger special powers (Supergirl’s def. power).
Godkiller SA impact: Attacking Archangel, rerolled 1 die into a skull, which turned into a W. Attacking Wolverine, rerolled 1 die into a skull, still blocked.
Heat Vision SA impact: Rolled 1 skull & 1 shield to start with, re-rolled the shield, another shield, blocked. Tried it again, this time Red Skull had 2 revealed OM’s on his card, rolled 2 skulls to start, then another 2 skulls, then a skull & a shield, rerolled the shield, another shield, rolled a skull, rolled a blank, rerolled the blank, a skull!, another skull, a blank, total 8 skulls! Full life Wolverine rolls 1 shield, takes 7 wounds and goes down! The first reroll had no impact, but without the second reroll Wolverine would have taken just 5 wounds and survived with 1 life.
Trick Arrows SA impact: Hawkeye died before he could att.
Combat Training 2 Usage:
Double Attack used 4 times.
Single Attack used 0 times.
Damage Dealt: 4W to Banshee in 4 att., 1W to Archangel in 1 att. from HG, 1W to Wolverine in 1 att. (later healed away), 1W to Archangel in 2 att. from LG.
Damage Taken: 4W from Banshee’s SA in 3 uses, 0W from Cyclopes in 1 att., 1W from Jubilee’s SA in 2 uses.
Who won and how many wounds did they have? Cyclopes w/2W won.

Recap: Cyclopes focused in on taking out Hawkeye first since he was the only one who out ranged him, while sending Banshee & Archangel up first. Hawkeye was the first one to fall and Banshee & Archangel were both very effective. Gorgon almost kills Archangel and he has to retreat, while Wolverine moves up. Banshee goes down, then Gorgon. It’s looking like the Mutants might run away with this as Red Skull has 4Ws at this point, when he finishes off Archangel and then Supergirl burns Wolverine to ashes. Red Skull had taken the first two turns so she had 2 dice to reroll, and she rolled 5 skulls before rerolling any dice. That suddenly gave Red Skull some hope, but then he fell to start the next round and it was a full life Cyclopes & Jubilee vs. Supergirl w/1W. Cyclopes & Jubilee retreated across the street and forced Supergirl down off HG and into the street, where he hit her for a 5 skull att., taking 3W! Supergirl drops Jubilee, then wins Initiative and moves to even ground. Supergirl whiffs on def. to take 2W. Supergirl punches back with a 5 skull att., only to watch Cyclopes roll 4 shields! They trade a few more blows, then Cyclopes sneaks 1W in to end it. Too many skulls when rolling def. for Supergirl instead of when rolling on attack.
- Does it pass, Yes or No? Started getting the impression here that rerolling just 1 die wasn’t giving me enough bang for my buck when the Mutants took an early lead, so I was contemplating making a change to reroll 2 dice for each OM revealed. Then Red Skull took the first two turns of a round so I could start rerolling 2 dice and it was felling pretty good. Doubling that to 4 would not have felt right though, when I realized I could just not remove the X OM and increase the rerolls that way without doubling them.
- What should be the unit's point value? Another loss here, even with a huge SA from Supergirl to KO a full life Wolverine. He’s feeling like he needs to come down in price as is, or get a bump up in some way to justify the 230 range. Thinking I’m going to leave the revealed X OM on his card in the next test and see if getting two rerolls when bonding with his goon makes up the difference.
SA Impact Review: Rerolled for 4 SA usages, in two of them the rerolls had 0 impact at all, while it did result in 1 additional W being inflicted in the other two uses, the second having benefitted from 2 rerolled dice in the one SA use. So pretty even all in all.

***Card Updated to leave the revealed X OM on the card for this last tests***
Army Test 3
- Give a brief overview. Bumping up the price for Red Skull to 240 and giving him Crossbones once more to see how that feels as a 400 point block. Testing the defense re-roll mechanic by having Blob and his double shields join the team. Then I wanted to add Nebula in to try and maximize the re-rolls on attack, as she can step in with a second try to score a W using them. The fact that Red Skull & Crossbones do not share a species & class means I could add in Rocket II and really double down on the normal attack assault idea. Rocket gets two attacks when revealing an OM on his card, or a bonus single attack if Crossbones drops early and he can have the X. With Rocket & Nebula in tow, Red Skull could just take all 3 OM’s some rounds, so I’ll try to test the all in Red Skull round at some point too.
Map: X Marks the Spot
Units: Red Skull @240, Crossbones, Blob, Nebula, Rocket Racoon II (1000) vs. Cap, Bucky, Ms. Marvel, Jack Flag, Comedian (1000)

Spoiler Alert!

Servant of the Skull Usage: Bonded with Crossbones 4 times.
New World Order Usage:
Red Skull re-rolled 14 dice while attacking, 4 new skulls rolled as a result.
Red Skull re-rolled 6 dice while defending, 1 new Shields rolled as a result.
Others re-rolled 42 dice total, 10/20 new Skulls while attacking, 8/22 new Shields while defending.
Combat Training 2 Usage:
Double Attack used 4 times.
Single Attack used 0 times.
Damage Dealt: 2W to Jack Flag in 4 att. from HG, 0W to Cap in 2 att., 0W to Comedian in 2 att.,
Damage Taken: 1W from Comedians Auto Shotgun SA in 2 uses, 2W from Cap Shield Throw in 3 uses, 2W from Bucky in 1 SA use.
Who won and how many wounds did they have? Crossbones w/3W & Nebula w/2W won.

Recap: Lots of just moving up to start this one, but then Rocket moves up and drops 2W on Cap. Ms. Marvel then gives Rocket 3W in one att. (whiff on def, re-rolls were also whiffs), Rocket has to retreat. Flag takes one for the team and engages Blob in the middle of the street, hoping to use his X to good effect later. Flag start taking some quick wounds, but the X move pays off and Blob takes some Ws too. Flag didn’t make it to the end of the round though as Blob finishes him off. Ms. Marvel can roll 8 att. dice vs. Blob so she gets locked on thinking she can take him down, but she might have been better served going after Red Skull first as she’s not getting anywhere now that Flag is gone. Bucky scored 1W on Blob though, while Cap keeps throwing his shield around until Crossbones puts him down. Then Blob slams Comedian and KO’s him in 1 hit. Ms. Marvel then takes down Blob and Bucky takes out Red Skull! Rocket puts Bucky down. Ms. Marvel then finishes off Rocket. What a bloodbath! It’s now Ms. Marvel vs. Nebula w/2W & Crossbones, Ms. Marvel has the HG advantage. Crossbones & Nebula pull back and force Ms. Marvel to come to them on even ground since Crossbones out ranges her. Marvel can’t roll but 1 shield on 13 dice and Crossbones takes her out!
- Does it pass, Yes or No? Yes, this game was a lot of fun! I rerolled a lot more dice, and even though the new results didn’t always help out, it felt like Red Skull was now someone you had to consider going for first like you do with Cap & Star Lord.
- What should be the unit's point value? A narrow win that easily could have gone the other way if Ms. Marvel just rolled better defense dice at the end of the game. So 240 seems like the right ball park after making the power adjustment.

[Yodaking]

Initial is now completed. I had to make one adjustment to his card after the 2nd game as he was feeling a little underwhelming, but he's ready to go after that 3rd game.

Side note here, I really liked that Cap/Marvel/Flag Army I put together for the 3rd game, it had a lot of fun synergy going on with several different tools to utilize. Give it a spin sometime.

[Ronin]

Looking good.

[Arch-vile]

pre-yea

[Yodaking]

Feeling pretty good here so I'm going to just Propose Red Skull for Public Testing now and let people vote as they review the results. Wanted to add that future testing should feature some initiative boosters. By the end I was realizing that losing initiative and not being able to reroll any def. dice is the most dangerous period of time for him and his allies. The tricky part will be fining initiative boosters that don't need/want the X, perhaps that is a future design idea for one of his allies.

Arch - yea
YK - yea
Ronin - yea
Tickle - yea
SG-1 - yea
LP - yea

[Ronin]

yea

[tcglkn]

Yea