Re: Sabretooth - Finalizing Phase - need votes
OMG, that looks good.
Question for Hama, how does a +1 to defense and a +1 to Life only mean a +20 to the points of Wolverine? Are you confident in this cost and the balance of the design? Are you worried at all that maybe he is too difficult for lots of units to kill off? Are you sure a life of 7 is balanced or even Thematic for the character?
~ Griffin, nervously
Wolverine is 280 - he's only +10 to his points. I'm guessing that he wouldn't have the same offensive potential against other heroes that Wolverine has and Heroes are most of our game. He does seem to have more survivability, but Devastating Pounce wipes a good deal of that advantage out by tempting you to take a lot of wounds to use it.
He's healing the wound that he takes by not destroying the figure at the end of his turn. The only danger for him is that he is now adjacent to someone who may attack him next turn.
Well Griff, I understand your concern. Here's what happened, when Sabretooth started with 4 def and 6 lives like Wolverine, he was totally getting destroyed by Wolverine, Colossus and Green Goblin. I upped his defense to 5 and it got better by not great. So I tried bumping the life to 7 and things got more balanced. I figured either bump his stats or lower his price down to 250ish.
Sure he does great against squads, but we adjusted Bloodlust so he can't move as far and can't use Pounce after the first attack. This helped and spreading squaddies out helped limit the effects to a degree, but it's still pretty nasty at times.
The thing was to try to balance him vs so that he wasn't getting owned by heroes at lower cost all the time just so that he wasn't too good vs. squads. Squads with bonding though will have better chance as Sabes will also have to face the attack of a hero as well as multiple attacks from squads.
The difference between Sabes and Wolvie lies in Wolvies offensive nastiness that allows him to destroy a figure he engages much easier than Sabretooth. Sure Sabes has a ranged attack and special power that bypasses special defenses. The ranged attack is a plus over Wolvie but they do have to have their differences as we don't want clones, and Wolvies -2 to opponent's defense helps a lot against some special defenses like Counter Strike etc. Wolverine will heal a wound off every time he takes a turn, whereas Sabretooth will often not because of failed kill on Pounce. That 1 wound healed off could make the difference when facing a 3 or 4 wound attack. Also, when Wolvie is engaged with an opponent, even his unwounded single 4 attack with -2 to defense to oppnent is better than Sabes' 5 attack, as Sabes can't use Pounce vs. an adjacent opponent (though he can leave engagement for possible wound and Pounce for another possible wound). Wolvie with 2 or more wounds is
so much more likely to kill a HH opponent than Sabretooth.
I had tested him at 270 and my army tests were fairly balanced, particularly the second one where Hawkman survived with 3 wounds for the opposing team. The first army test had Sabes with the Outcasts vs. Prof X and X-Men. Outcasts just don't match up as Wolvie and Prof X survived with 0 wounds to win for the opposing team. So with Sabes at 270, his team lost both army tests for me. Now he didn't go against a bunch of squaddies for easy pickings, but that's not likely to happen often in Superheroscape anyway.
I don't know what else to say, I had made my adjustments to his stats to keep him from getting owned by every hero out there at 200 + points.
Yeah, but that's a wound that stops him from healing other wounds he's accumulating is my point.
Exactly what was happening. Sure he'd heal off the Pounce wound, but he wouldn't heal off others and they'd accumulate faster, especially when he used his pounce vs. heroes a lot. So you'd either not use Pounce and lose it's potential and heal wounds off or use Pounce and hope to kill the opponent before your wounds accumulate too much and then heal later perhaps.