The Pre-SoV Workshop

[caps]

Originally Posted by superfrog

I think it's very helpful for aspiring SoV creators to have a customs thread. I'm always a bit suspicious when somebody springs a custom on us that hasn't hit the boards earlier, or only a place like this thread. If you have an idea, throw it up to your personal thread. Raw ideas can be the most interesting to look at. And that way, different people, including judges, can help you know if it's likely to be well-received.

Also, nobody is stopping you from playing your balanced (or unbalanced) customs that the SoV thinks are non-canonical. If you like it, play it.

I completely agree with superfrog (yet again). Ideally, customs submitted to SoV should be customs that have already matured in a thread somewhere (like a good wine matures in a cellar) and endured commentary on the site as well as the test of time in casual play.

If a submission is a good one, the time and energy spent in its creation should have been enjoyable enough to be its own reward. I would generally discourage custom designers on the site for only making customs with the intent of submitting them to SoV, just as the great map-makers do not make every map for submission to the BoV. Playing around with your ideas and sharing them on the site allows you to refine and mature them in ways that coming up with them on your own and submitting them after running some private tests does not.

[Ixe]

I also agree. I always try to keep up with designers' threads and help comment on their new units. Even for lone custom creators, you don't need to face everything alone. I would also highly encourage going through some of the resources listed in the Index to the Customs Forum to help through the process and further temper your unit.

[Rÿchean]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

If a submission is a good one, the time and energy spent in its creation should have been enjoyable enough to be its own reward. I would generally discourage custom designers on the site for only making customs with the intent of submitting them to SoV, just as the great map-makers do not make every map for submission to the BoV.

I agree that custom creation should be its own reward, but I also beleive none of the creations should begin with SoV being the goal.

Dignan has the most maps in the BoV. He makes maps because he loves it and is good at it. A very large percentage of his maps are made for all kinds of tournament play, which makes quite a few compatable with BoV guidelines. However, I feel confident in saying that getting a map into the BoV was never what he was trying to accomplish.

[Kinseth]

Well it goes along the lines of, you can't tell me what is fun. It is subjective.

Fun for me, is designing a squad/figure with the goal in mind that is good enough to submit to SoV. I am a very competitive person, competing at the highest levels is fun for me. I don't play casual Heroscape, only tournament level Heroscape. Competing in events to win, that is fun to me.

With that being said, I think if there certain areas that C3V does not wish to go, and has made clear. There should be some way of relaying that to the SoV crew so that SoV creators know that traveling along this path will almost certainly end in doom!

[Dad_Scaper]

Kinseth, there have been a couple times when we quietly tapped an SoV-nominated designer on the shoulder to ask for (or to recommend) a tweak to bring something in conformance with a design in the pipeline. We really do try. . .

[ollie]

I agree with Rÿchean completely.

I think that both BoV for maps and SoV for customs have come with downsides: they started to pick out the best from vibrant map-making/custom-making and became so successful that they're now influencing those communities to the detriment of more diversity. I don't think there's any doubt that the good outweighs the bad, in both cases, and by lots. But that doesn't mean that the downside isn't there.

(Knocking around the place somewhere are a Playgrounds of Valhalla thread for trying to keep the other side going in maps, and I have an unsaintly customs thread somewhere too for my creations that are consciously designed not to be canonisable.)

Great customs should not be confused with canon-suitable customs. There is obviously plenty of overlap but I believe there are (and should be) units that fit one category and not the other.

On the subject of more blanket VC guidance, I don't think we're set up to do that, and nor should we be. As D_S says, there is occsaionally communication when there is obvious benefit. But there's no hard and fast rule about what we will and won't vote for in the unified votes. There are 20-odd of us voting and we all have our preferences and visions.

I can tell you that I will vote against anything that adds noticeable synergy to an existing stand-alone unit. While I wouldn't want to play down the cantankerousness of my colleagues, I suspect that I'm the one who holds this opinion most strongly and that it's a minority opinion at most.

And I hope you don't really consider time spent developing excellent customs to be wasted if they're not inducted Kinseth. I'm firmly of the opinion that it's not.

[Kinseth]

Originally Posted by dok

Heh. I realize most people will reject this out of hand. But truth be told, I actually like this power a lot.

• Setting aside gameplay, the "rushing forward to the aid of our hero" feels quite thematic.
• It encourages playing the knight hero in a heroic fashion, putting him at the point of the attack. More thematic goodness.
• It is far, far easier to avoid triggering this power than the Deathreaver power. When Deathreavers tie your figures down, you have to attack them, and trigger more scatter, and the cycle repeats. That feedback loop does not exist here, because the free movement is triggered by attacking a different figure. You can kill the knights themselves as usual.
• This squad is going to take Order Markers. Part of what makes Deathreavers so annoying is that they can maintain board position and block stuff up without taking Order Markers.
• Moreover, when you're attacking Deathreavers you're not attacking the thing that is killing you. In this case, the squad is the thing that's doing the damage (probably).
• Still more differences from the Deathreavers: the lack of disengage, and the limitation to use unengaged figures, means that the knights can't use this power to slip through your ranks.
• Gameplay-wise, this allows them to have a move of 4 without feeling slow.

I realize anything that looks like scatter sets off alarm bells, but I think this type of power on a squad like this could lead to fascinating - and fun - gameplay.

This ability has really grown on me. Feels like your Knight/Paladin heroes are calling for reinforcements. And given how I want the design of these guys to go , I think them protecting the heroes this way is pretty cool.

The Changes I am making to the unit is bringing along a lot of synergy and dependency on having Knight/Paladin heroes in the army. Opponents will want to kill the Heroes to take some of the Bite out of the squad, so this feels natural.

*Bracing for Impact*

[Sir Dendrik]

Here's something I came up with after buying some Blastoise-like AT-43 Mecha-Gorillas off Miniature Market:

GORILLINATORS ALPHA - 4 Figure Unique Squad
Primadon/Unique Squad/Agents/Tricky/Large 5

1 Life/5 Move/8 Range/4 Attack/3 Defense

GORILLINATOR FRATERNITY
When a Gorillators Alpha member you control is destroyed by a normal attack you may immediately replace it with a previously destroyed Gorillinator you control, if able. When taking a turn with this squad you may activate 4 figures. These figures may be
from this squad or any Gorillinator squad you control.

TITANIUM TOUGH
When rolling defense dice against a normal attack, Gorillinators Alpha always add one automatic shield to whatever is rolled. When rolling defense dice against a Special Attack, Gorillinators Alpha always add 2 automatic shields to whatever is rolled.

Gorillinator Fraternity is what I want the most feedback on. Is there any way to do this without having to come up with rulings for corner cases on the fly? I want to refine this to fit better into heroscape language, but if there's really no way to do it, c'est la vie.

[dok]

Go beat waterd and I'll answer the question.

[Sir Dendrik]

Originally Posted by dok

Go beat waterd and I'll answer the question.

Psh, you Summoner Wars people are lame. Heroscape is the superior game.

[flameslayer93]

Originally Posted by Sir Dendrik

Psh, you Summoner Wars people are lame. Heroscape is the superior game.

I'm not sure about "lame". The second sentence is always to be held true, however.

[Scytale]

Originally Posted by Sir Dendrik

Gorillinator Fraternity is what I want the most feedback on. Is there any way to do this without having to come up with rulings for corner cases on the fly? I want to refine this to fit better into heroscape language, but if there's really no way to do it, c'est la vie.

Gorillinator Fraternity is really two powers combined (and should be separated) so I don't know which half you're referring too. I'll comment on both.

Replacing a figure when it dies with another figure has already been done, so it would fall under those rulings. No problem there.

I am 100% against mixing members of different squads into a single turn.