The Book of General Zod

[quozl]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

I think I made a suggestion earlier that could work, when johnny first brought this concern up...

It was a good suggestion too. Here's my tweak on it if we want to make bigger changes:

GENERAL OF NEW KRYPTON
After revealing an Order Marker on this card and instead of taking a turn with General Zod, you may:
* take a turn with 1 Unique Kryptonian Hero you control;
* move 2 Kryptonian Heroes you control ; or
* one at a time, for each Kryptonian you control, choose a figure engaged with that Kryptonian and roll 1 unblockable attack die against that figure.

This doesn't tie him down to just soldiers or infiltrators but lets them be cheap options for heroes to control. This also makes the move option and unblockable attack option more powerful.

[Lazy Orang]

Hmm... I feel like that falls back into the trap of the Soldiers being something you don't get much out of and being a bit crap. Does the same for the Infiltrators soon, and looses a lot of the unique theme of his Army. I don't like the idea of making it more homogenous, and the theme the auto-wounds is meant to get across kind of vanishes if it's not Infiltrator specific. It also doesn't help with what I see as the primary concern of a Zod build, which is efficiency.


Here's a thought... what if we keep the three options the same as they always were, but, you get to do two of them each turn, so you get to do any two of 1) full turn with any Kryptonian, 2) movement with two Soldiers, or 3) the weird auto-wounding stuff with Infiltrators. That deals with the efficiency issue, keeps the roles distinct and keeps any one bullet point from dominating, because combined arms then becomes the order of the day. I don't think any of them is particularly good enough to make a turn of both of them seem OP, certainly not any stronger than most OM hub builds out there, such as Mutants.

[IAmBatman]

Solid idea, LO.

[MrNobody]

We should also keep in mind that when you take a turn with a Kryptonian you can also move Krypto. Not a huge deal, just a bit more efficiency you can squeeze out of the build. But other than that, I like LO’s idea a lot.

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by MrNobody

We should also keep in mind that when you take a turn with a Kryptonian you can also move Krypto. Not a huge deal, just a bit more efficiency you can squeeze out of the build. But other than that, I like LO’s idea a lot.

Hmm... didn't know that. Most powers like that require an OM reveal to work... maybe Krypto's should, unless there's a specific reason to avoid that?

[Arch-vile]

I'm not really a fan of the heroes agreeing on a change, testing that change with all the playtesters supporting it, then changing the design again afterwards so we go through this process again. It feels like a huge waste of limited testing resources.

Zod could certainly be improved upon (few designs can't), though I think the current version works well. A couple people played mixed armies and liked him. It might not be the strongest option, but (for example) you could ignore most of the Teen Titans if you only wanted the strongest options in a Nightwing build.

[IAmBatman]

Is that really an issue? With what LO put above, you'd still only be taking one Kryptonian turn per Order Marker, so Krypto would move once. And he's only moving, not attacking, so it doesn't seem concerning to me.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Arch-vile

I'm not really a fan of the heroes agreeing on a change, testing that change with all the playtesters supporting it, then changing the design again afterwards so we go through this process again. It feels like a huge waste of limited testing resources.

Zod could certainly be improved upon (few designs can't), though I think the current version works well. A couple people played mixed armies and liked him. It might not be the strongest option, but (for example) you could ignore most of the Teen Titans if you only wanted the strongest options in a Nightwing build.

While I agree completely with the spirit of your post here, to be fair to all involved, johnny did not agree on the change. He was out-voted and doesn't seem to have been convinced any by that out-voting to change his position.

[Lazy Orang]

I understand Arch-vile's position, but the more I think about this, the more I think johnny has a point. I still feel that the reevaluated version is massively preferable to the existing one, but if we can create one who acts as a proper general for the Kryptonians as a whole, that has to be preferable to prioritising one bullet point and a single unit to pair with him.

[MrNobody]

Yeah, I’ve generally felt a bit frustrated by the amount of “post-plyatesting design phase” situations I’ve seen crop up recently, but I don’t think “we already playtested it” should get in the way of making the best end design possible.

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by Arch-vile

I'm not really a fan of the heroes agreeing on a change, testing that change with all the playtesters supporting it, then changing the design again afterwards so we go through this process again. It feels like a huge waste of limited testing resources.

Zod could certainly be improved upon (few designs can't), though I think the current version works well. A couple people played mixed armies and liked him. It might not be the strongest option, but (for example) you could ignore most of the Teen Titans if you only wanted the strongest options in a Nightwing build.

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by MrNobody

Yeah, I’ve generally felt a bit frustrated by the amount of “post-plyatesting design phase” situations I’ve seen crop up recently, but I don’t think “we already playtested it” should get in the way of making the best end design possible.

We're not make a new card design from scratch here, we were trying to do the smallest amount of tweaks possible from the original design to make it more play-able. You haven't been part of the 3 year on again off again discussion concerning 'fixing' under-powered cards via the reevaluation process rather than just reigning in over-powered ones. It was difficult enough just to get to a point where people agreed we could make any changes to Zod at all. Now we suddenly can't stop making new changes?