King Kong (Event Hero)

[MrNobody]

Yea

[IAmBatman]

Looks like this still needs @Yodaking and @Tornado

[Yodaking]

Yeah, I have a King Kong match set up for my MM testing that I was thinking I would be able to knock out quick before voting here. Then March Madness kind of took over. I should get the game done today though, then I'll drop in a vote afterward. I just didn't want to vote yea, then run the test and suddenly have a new thought after the vote passes. Promised T I would run a game with him.

[Yodaking]

I just finished up my MM test and I'll post it shortly in that thread. Just to sum it up though, it was a total beat down by Kong. I now understand what T's concerns are here. He can smash right through your army. The high attack dice + auto wounds + defense subtraction = quick deaths.

[Yodaking]

I don't know if this is all it would take, but here is something that stood out to me after facing him. The 6 skull effect of not being able to ignore any W's inflicted is the one thing that had no bearing on my match. Only something like 5-10% of our designs can ignore wounds, MD and undead types top the list. So I'd make that the 2 skull effect, since 2 skulls on 6+ attack dice is going to be happening fairly regularly.

Then I'd leave the auto W for the 4 skull attack, with -2 defense being the big 6 skull you're doomed effect. I rolled just 3 skulls vs Angel, and that -2 defense effect dropped him down from 4 to 2. 2 dice to try and stop 3 hits wasn't a good situation for him and that was Kong's weakest attack roll of the game.

The -2 defense played a big roll in Black Canary getting dropped in one attack as well. Kong won initiative, was engaged with Angel but that didn't stop him from going after a card with multiple OM's on it. He just threw Angel out of the way, then moved next to Black Canary and rolled 5 skulls on 6 dice. The auto-wound knocked her down to 3 life right away, then the defense reduction left her with just 3 dice to stop 5 hits, so 2 more W's were coming her way no matter what. She needed a perfect defense roll in order to survive, which she didn't get.

[Arkham]

I'll have to think on that, because this was tested and nothing was being changed here. I played him a ton and was more than happy with where he landed. The power you're referring to was a re-use fwiw, as well. And since it was your first usage of him, only one game played, and he went up against an army I'm not familiar with, it's hard for me to think that's a sign things should be changed, thus needing testing and all that.

[Arkham]

Ok. So for comparison sake, since the issue stated mostly revolves around Ferocious Strike's effectiveness.

The power originated on Battle Beast, who is 400 points, has an Attack of 7-8 depending on height, and gets to re-roll any or all of those dice if attacking his Foe(the enemy with the highest Attack).

Kong is 1000 points, has an Attack of 6-10, depending on the OMs revealed and height, starting lower and culminating higher towards the end of the round. No re-roll.

One could argue, a re-roll where you can choose to just re-roll the non-skulls, is about on par. Granted, that's just against his Foe that round.

But it's a 600 point difference. Kong is an Event Hero so lacks a lot of support options like Valkyrie saves, can't be carried by Angel etc. Battle Beast can't receive stat boosts either from teammates, but can receive support.

All is to say, if the issue comes with Ferocious Strike, I just can't agree. Looking at your test, Kong rolled max skulls on his first Attack against Martian Manhunter. Then his attack on Canary was 5 out of 6 skulls. You said a 3 skull Attack was his weakest of the very quick game, then with the -2 to defense it was hard for Angel to defend, but that's no different than Wolverine rolling well in that case. So to me, it looks like a matter of rolling hot with a big hitter type, and that happens. You can have squashes. There's also bad matchups, and it's possible that army was a bad matchup?

So all that said, it's hard for me to buy into it being problematic.

Now, if we want to make a lighter nerf, I could see lowering how far he can toss figures. Huge down to 2-3, and smaller 4-5 instead of 4-8? This would mean him not being able to disrupt bonders and aura based abilities as easily, as well as cutting down his own mobility/threat range. That I'd be on board with.

[Tornado]

I would just drop the healing.

[Arkham]

Then do we bump his Life? And to what?

[Tornado]

Two, maybe. Kong is really hard to put down. Most teams get weaker as they take damage, generally from losing key pieces.
Kong gets stronger with an extra activation and healing to boot.
This is on top of figure movement, auto wounds, enhanced attacks and defense negation.
I suggest everyone use him in their next playtest and go from there.
Maybe he is fine.

[Yodaking]

My game was such a quick blow out that I never reached the healing stage, but I will say that I had a chance to burn one of GA markers to attack Kong from LG when he was close to the healing threshhold. I opted not to due in part to the fact he was on LG and in part because I was legit worried about just damaging him enough so he could heal and get a 4th activation in R2.

[IAmBatman]

When Eric and I used him the other day I did manage to pile up a bunch of wounds on him but then, yeah, that heal/double turn came in and he wrecked me. I think Kong won with like 9 wounds in that one.