The Book of C3G Destructible Object Rules

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Sounds like Wolverine would like a car. Should we up the wounds received from crashing your car to balance the advantage some?

Maybe. Could be a reasonable measure, but I don't know that it's necessary yet.

 

[IAmBatman]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

OK. Sounds good. Thanks for tackling this.

 

[quozl]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Just curious because of the Rip Hunter discussion, are you allowing figures in vehicles to use special powers?

 

[Lazy Orang]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Sounds like Wolverine would like a car. Should we up the wounds received from crashing your car to balance the advantage some?

Slightly more significant tweak to the existing rules, but I'd be in favour - it's thematically justifiable and it might help balance it more.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Just curious because of the Rip Hunter discussion, are you allowing figures in vehicles to use special powers?

I wasn't in the first two games. It would have been a non-factor in the two games I played (because I planned armies around not being able to), but I might plan some slightly different armies for future games, with special powers on the table for figures in vehicles.

"Zombies driving cars" strategy gets a boost from figures in vehicles using special powers, since Lurkers can chill in cars and command Walkers outside the cards.

 

[quozl]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

This line will need to be changed:

After revealing an Order Marker on one of your Army Cards, before taking a turn with a figure you control occupying a vehicle, you may move that vehicle.

You can't take a turn with a figure not on the battlefield.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Yeah, I noticed that some of the language needs tweaked. You wouldn't control a figure occupying a vehicle.

Let me know if you catch anything else that needs an update.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Lost my notes on my first three games, but my basic impression was that the Sports Car was fine at 150 and went 1-2. I'll run two more and formally type those up and then we can move this along.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

C3G STANDARD PLAYTEST FEEDBACK FORM

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: Sports Car

Army Test
Map: Green Lantern (Mogo)
Units: Sports Car @150, Mantis, Zombie, Larfleeze, Alien Drone, Atom (1000) vs Captain America, Bucky, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Iron Man Mk IV (1000)

Spoiler Alert!

Mantis uses the car to mobilize herself and the Alien Drone here. She also pops out of the car to make some attacks, but pops back into it to protect herself. Eventually the Heroes for Hire managed to punch through the car, and Mantis and the Alien Drone both popped out, taking a wound in the process.

This one ended up going the New Avengers' way, partially down to just solid luck on their part, and a little more efficiency. It looked like things were going Team Sports Car's way at one point, but then the Heroes for Hire took out Larfleeze in one turn.

Unit Summary:

• Figures Carried: Mantis, Alien Drone
• Hit and Run 11: 1 wound to Cap in 2 rolls, 1 wound to Luke Cage in 1 roll
• Damage Taken: 0 wounds from Cap in 1 normal attack, 1 wound from Bucky in 1 normal attack, 1 wound from Iron Fist in 1 attack, 2 wounds from Luke Cage in 2 attacks (destroyed)

Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Iron Fist with 1 wound, Bucky with 1 wound

___________________________________________________________​

Army Test
Map: Mountain Spring
Units: Sports Car @150, Star-Lord, Mantis, Nebula, White Tiger (1000) vs Fantastic Four (1000)

Spoiler Alert!

The Sports Car goes down hard after repeated assaults from the Fantastic Four, but it does a bang-up job getting Star-Lord and White Tiger past Reed to get at Sue. White Tiger and Star-Lord are ejected from the car without taking wounds.

Immediately after being ejected from the car, White Tiger assassinates Sue on an initiative swing double-turn, making the Sports Car Assassination strategy a huge success. Taking out Sue with so little fuss sets Team Star-Lord on the path to victory.

Unit Summary:

• Figures Carried: White Tiger, Star-Lord
• Hit and Run 11: 0 wounds to Reed in 1 roll, 1 wound to Sue in 1 roll
• Damage Taken: 0 wounds from Reed in 1 attack, 0 wounds from Human Torch in 1 attack, 4 wounds from Thing in 2 attacks (destroyed)

Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Mantis with 2 wounds, Nebula with 2 wounds

THOUGHTS ON THE TESTED UNIT'S COST, BALANCE, & DRAFTABILITY: The Sports Car feels okay to me at 150 - it went 2-3 counting the games that I lost my notes for.

Its greatest tactical advantage is probably the protection it offers for its occupants, but the mobility and auto-wounds ain't bad either.

I think further testing should probably focus on ways to leverage figures in the Sports Car being able to use special powers - that was used a little bit in the later games here, but I didn't set up the armies to really try and juice that. Also, more multi-car games and games with squads driving cars would be interesting to see.

 

[IAmBatman]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Great job on the tests!

Any tips on figures that might be good for abusing the car with special powers?

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Not immediately. I wasn't looking for that when I was initially looking for figures to test the car with. Any thoughts from @dok ?

 

[Scapemage]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Awesome stuff! Glad to see this moving.

 

[dok]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Where do I look at the actual designs of the vehicles?

If you are allowed to reveal OMs as usual, can you use "instead of taking a turn" powers while on a vehicle card? Can Nick Fury or Mad Thinker use their bonding powers (which do not have clear sight requirements) from inside the vehicle?

The same questions apply to figures on Kang2's card, as I noted before. But Kang2 is expensive and demands a certain sort of build. The "hide your Joker/Ozy/Silk Spectre/Destiny/bonding hub/etc" strategy works a lot better when you're hiding them in a relatively cheap vehicl, that spits them out when they die, as opposed to an expensive Kang that doesn't.

Basically, I think the biggest competitive use for vehicles will be as a suit of armor for figures that don't currently need to be in the fray.

But that's without seeing the vehicle cards themselves.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Where do I look at the actual designs of the vehicles?

If you are allowed to reveal OMs as usual, can you use "instead of taking a turn" powers while on a vehicle card? Can Nick Fury or Mad Thinker use their bonding powers (which do not have clear sight requirements) from inside the vehicle?

The same questions apply to figures on Kang2's card, as I noted before. But Kang2 is expensive and demands a certain sort of build. The "hide your Joker/Ozy/Silk Spectre/Destiny/bonding hub/etc" strategy works a lot better when you're hiding them in a relatively cheap vehicl, that spits them out when they die, as opposed to an expensive Kang that doesn't.

Basically, I think the biggest competitive use for vehicles will be as a suit of armor for figures that don't currently need to be in the fray.

But that's without seeing the vehicle cards themselves.

Sports Car and Mole Machine (untested as of yet). And the current vehicle rules.

Agreed on the 'car armor' point.

I think unlike Kang (II), vehicles could allow you to use 'instead of taking a turn' powers. I started testing before we flipped that Kang (II) ruling, though, so I wasn't really hitting that at first.

 

[Lazy Orang]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Where do I look at the actual designs of the vehicles?

If you are allowed to reveal OMs as usual, can you use "instead of taking a turn" powers while on a vehicle card? Can Nick Fury or Mad Thinker use their bonding powers (which do not have clear sight requirements) from inside the vehicle?

The same questions apply to figures on Kang2's card, as I noted before. But Kang2 is expensive and demands a certain sort of build. The "hide your Joker/Ozy/Silk Spectre/Destiny/bonding hub/etc" strategy works a lot better when you're hiding them in a relatively cheap vehicl, that spits them out when they die, as opposed to an expensive Kang that doesn't.

Basically, I think the biggest competitive use for vehicles will be as a suit of armor for figures that don't currently need to be in the fray.

But that's without seeing the vehicle cards themselves.

Sports Car
Mole Machine


We don't have any others yet.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

We have some flexibility in that we're gonna be updating the Vehicle Rules to make em draftable anyway - if you think it would be worth specifically shutting down special powers for figures in vehicles, in order to keep them from just being Joker Armor or whatever, I think that would be a reasonable tweak to keep their costs from being inflated too much.

 

[dok]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Yeah... this needs to get addressed. When it was just Kang2 and a few opponent's abilities, it didn't really matter from a competitive perspective. But if we allow "instead of taking a turn" powers, or even more general synergy powers (e.g. Destiny Probability Manipulation, Joker(I)/Ozy OM stuff, etc) to be done from inside the vehicle, then it's a very big deal.

I believe the ruling is still that you can't take "instead of taking a turn" powers from Kang's card. See the Nick Fury ruling:

Q- Can I put Order Markers on Nick Fury and use his Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. special power to take a turn with a unit on the battlefield while Nick Fury isn't on the battlefield due to not yet being placed by his Helicarrier Drop Team special power?
A- In short, no. While you can legally place Order Markers on Nick Fury's card while he is not on the battlefield, you can't actually take turns with him. And since Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is "instead" of Nick Fury's turn, it requires that he be able to take that turn for him to be able to give that turn to a different figure.

You can reveal the OM on a non-destroyed off-battlefield figure, but you can't take a turn, is the way I interpret it.

Possible solutions in the next post.

 

[dok]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

If we don't want the costs of these things to be driven by the ability to provide armor to support/bonding/passive power figures, then here are my suggestions:

• Go through the the relevant powers of passive non-LOS support figures like Destiny, and probably Joker(I) and Ozy, and add a "while you control Destiny" to powers like probability manipulation. This sets it such that they can't use the powers unless the figure is physically on the battlefield.
  
  
• Change the way OM reveals on figures in vehicles works so that it's clear the figure doesn't take a turn in the normal way. There's a lot of ways to do it, but the gist of it is you need to cut off the ability to use "instead of taking a turn" powers.

Nulling all powers while in vehicles would obviously work, although it might be overkill (I think it's OK for Healing Factor X to work inside a vehicle, for example).

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

Nulling all powers while in vehicles would obviously work, although it might be overkill (I think it's OK for Healing Factor X to work inside a vehicle, for example).

I don't mind healing factors not working in vehicles, if only because it means there's that much less reward for turtling inside them.

(And no special powers really simplifies testing)

Obviously you'd need some kind of carve-out for powers like Lady Blackhawk's that are specifically meant to work inside vehicles, but that's not a ton of language or anything.

 

[IAmBatman]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

If figures can't use special powers at all while in vehicles, will that really dull the desire to draft them? Or do you feel they bring enough else to the table?

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

If figures can't use special powers at all while in vehicles, will that really dull the desire to draft them? Or do you feel they bring enough else to the table?

I was under the impression that figures in vehicles couldn't use special powers back when I started testing - the Rip/Kang stuff didn't come up until mid-initial - and they definitely still felt draftable. It makes them inherently a little more niche, but it puts more focus on the mobility aspect and the vehicle's powers as opposed to the protection aspect.

 

[IAmBatman]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

I think that works. More of a sanity check than anything. I wanted to make sure that if we go in this direction we aren't tanking the whole VDO thing in general.

Sounds good, though. If y'all can figure out just the right wording for this and if I retain time and sanity once I have my first set of papers in tomorrow, I'll put this next up for testing after I finish Psimon's initial.

 

[dok]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

It makes them inherently a little more niche, but it puts more focus on the mobility aspect and the vehicle's powers as opposed to the protection aspect.

The goal in my mind would be to make it so that vehicles can be priced for competitive drafting based on these aspects. If we have to price them based on the assumption that Ozymandias and Mad Thinker are chilling out in the sports car, then those sorts of builds end up being the only way the vehicles are useful. If we dismantle that sort of combo then we let them be vehicles instead of a stationary containment pod.

 

[Lazy Orang]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

If we don't want the costs of these things to be driven by the ability to provide armor to support/bonding/passive power figures, then here are my suggestions:

• Go through the the relevant powers of passive non-LOS support figures like Destiny, and probably Joker(I) and Ozy, and add a "while you control Destiny" to powers like probability manipulation. This sets it such that they can't use the powers unless the figure is physically on the battlefield.

I'd do this... it eliminates the ability to exploit them with Joker, Ozymandias, Destiny, while causing the minimum of collateral. I'd rather not gut too much - it kills a little too much theme and too much strategy to me, makes the game less interesting. I vote for using a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

 

[Ronin]

Re: Draftable Vehicles Discussion Thread (Initial Testing)

If we don't want the costs of these things to be driven by the ability to provide armor to support/bonding/passive power figures, then here are my suggestions:

• Go through the the relevant powers of passive non-LOS support figures like Destiny, and probably Joker(I) and Ozy, and add a "while you control Destiny" to powers like probability manipulation. This sets it such that they can't use the powers unless the figure is physically on the battlefield.

I'd do this... it eliminates the ability to exploit them with Joker, Ozymandias, Destiny, while causing the minimum of collateral. I'd rather not gut too much - it kills a little too much theme and too much strategy to me, makes the game less interesting. I vote for using a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Pretty sure dok meant that you'd have to implement both of his bullet points there, not either/or.

I'd rather have simpler vehicle rules that didn't hugely affect design space than make a bunch of card updates so that in the future we always have to work around vehicles when designing support powers.

That said, sure, let's poll it out.

A. Make card updates and vehicle rule updates necessary to allow figures to use special in vehicles
B. Bar special powers from being used by figures in vehicles