Also, any reviews or suggestions for improvements, or thoughts on the effects of the rules changes you'd like to comment on?

yeah id like to call this ...im in pretty bad shape there...and its unlikely it would last much longer with thing and manthing pounding on me....


thoughts:

the good- the mobility of your rules is far superior...and makes for a faster action game...probably about 80% of the rules work seamlessly and are very good....its well thought out and easy...

the bad- i dont care for the RCE rolling....it fairly neuters some figs. having the option to add 2 to the av...is good but not enough to offset the chance that you may not do anything. (or near to nothing)...instead you might try and say that RCE can raise your damage 2 to a maximum of 4 or raise you av 2 players choice...or do something like pulsewave and say it only raises your damage to at half range.....or something like trick shot...(ranged combat expert)...ignores hindering...or line of fire...just anything but take away the +2 damage...theres already enough luck or unluck in the game

the ugly- i thought the outwit rules were a little severe. as were the leadership rolling for the perplex. im ok with the range thing on both powers...and pc...it makes sense. but not being able to outwit defense powers...ummm not good...what id propose is a to hit roll to outwit defense powers...all others are automatic...that gives the bricks a fighting chance. and for leadership...roll for the extra action...or + 1 auto to any ability its harsh enough to make it you have to take an action rather than immasculate it further...the mandatory action to use the ability means youll not be abusing it anyway..and with the range cap..theres a built in balance...

my thoughts anyway

I still have some powers that I want to discuss, but I can't get around to it just yet.

Thanks for the Feedback. I appreciate it. I have a couple follow-up questions:

I didn't understand what you wrote about your objections with Leadership. Could you clarify.
What I was shooting for with Leadership was a power that would be useful for all figures with Leadership. Under the official rules for leadership, there are high point value figures which really have no use for the extra actions most of the time, so on them Leadership is just driving their point cost up while providing little to no value. I thought the benefit that perplex provided was actually a good model of a Leader enhancing his team's performance. Perplex itself was a alittle too powerful, and I didn't want to replace one unbalanced power with another, so I only made it work basically 1/4th of the time. (Only when the leader takes an action, and even then only 50% of the time) The effects of Official Rules Perplex on the game are very profound, I had to tone this down to keep things balanced. I didn't want a new version of "Hooker Bombs" comprised of a bunch of low cost Leaders to be a viable strategy. The unpredictability of the 50% die roll I think keeps that in check as a possible Exploitable power. It's useful, but not overly powerful. At least that's what I was shooting for. Please explain what bothered you about it more clearly if you could.

RCE - There's a lot to contend with in fixing RCE. The problems are the figures which exist. I didn't want to Fix it for some figures and wind up breaking it for others.

Here are the problems:
1> Incapacitate Costs more than RCE (in figure cost terms), so any solution you come up with when compaired with any solution you come up with for Incapacitate, needs to be slightly less effective than incapacitate if you want to balance the figures.

2> Quasar vs Firelord - In a late production rule change, Wizkids changed RCE from being a strait 1d6 damage roll into a +2 damage thing. They had already made the figures for IC at the time, this rule change lead to some really weak figures like Quasar and Kang and also a grossly over powerful figure in Firelord. So any solution you come up with needs to bring these figures back into balance. Since at the time those figures were designed RCE was a die roll power like BCF, it ignored the damage value of the figures with the power, and you can see that a power that ignnored the damage value would actually serve to balance Quasar and Kang relative to Firelord. Also this change would need to produce an effect which is better than a strait 3 damage or else Firelord won't use it and will just go with his strait damage.

3> There are Zero Damage RCE figures out there, so any change to RCE has to cause something to happen with the damage value of RCE or else those Zero damage RCE figures will be worthless.

4> There are high damage RCE figures out there (4+ damage with RCE). RCE needs to provide some benefit for these figures or else these figures will be paying for an ability that they won't use.

Okay, so those are the four parameters that I had to work within and what I came up with (after several versions), is what we used in this game. It's not perfect but thus far it's the best solution I could come up with. The solution you came up with I'm not sure satisfied all these issues. I am open to suggestions which would. I think the biggest problem is that Wizkids based the point cost formula and the cost of some of the figures out there on a model where all RCE figures did an average 3.5 damage using this power. I can see where under a 1d6 damage the figures from IC in particular are much better balanced. I suspect (and this is just a guess) that Wizkids didn't like the idea of a possible 6 damage at range. Frankly I don't either. So I used the more toned down model which still produced an average damage of over 3 and less than 4. Which is very close the original design.

New Business: Are any of you interested in participating in another one of these? I want to get it started maybe next monday.

sorry i did that early in the morning and i wasnt the most lucid at the moment

my issue with it was it was less valuable to me then leadership has been in previous games. The idea beind leadership being something that makes "swarm" teams viable...my proposal- you can make a leadership check for an extra action every round regardless of your figure taking an action. on turns in which you take an action you may choose to "modify" a score on the clix dial if you make the check....of someone within range...with clear lof to...or take the extra action if successful.

how about no d6 roll...but instead with RCE either +2 to the hit or +2 to the damage to a maximum total damage of 4 or add 2 to your range player chooses to do one at the beginning of his ranged combat action.

the 2nd roll took it away from the idea of RCE and more into BCF from range....

Okay I follow you on the Leadership thing now, thanks. Yeah what you say is true. You would get half as many chances at the extra action under this system. This system does provide cool "Swarm" feature however.

5.1.3>Non-Named figure actions - When a Non-Named Figure takes an action that does not use a combat superpower then this action does not count as an alloted Team Action. The following abilities my be used and not use up a team action: Willpower, Leap/Climb, Phasing, Plasticity, Flight, Water movement, or Serpent Society team ability. The Skrull team ability or Shape Change may be used for movement purposes but if the attack bonus is used then this figure's action counts as a team action. If a Non-Named figure uses any other ability it takes a Team Action.

This makes swarm teams of generics very viable. Swarm teams of all low point named characters is hurt however by my rules. Skrull, SHIELD, Moloid type teams though play pretty well.

Your suggestion for RCE still leaves RCE more powerful on Firelord in comparison to Quasar or Kang. The original design for RCE at least made those three all do identical damage, which actually made Quasar and Kang more valueable than Firelord due to thier near identical front end and longer more sustained dial. Which is as it should be since Quasar and Kang cost significantly more than Firelord. Your suggestion still leaves Firelord packing more of an initial RCE punch than Quasar or Kang. I realize I can't fix make all the figures properly balanced, but I wanted a rule that at least beat down some of the problem figures, and breathed some life into some of the ones that really got hosed by the late change to RCE. Due to the snowball effect that first click is pretty significant. A figure which does more damage and costs less on the first click is probably going to play better than the longer dialed lower damage higher cost figures. Without a radical change those figures don't become balanced. To achieve balance Kang and Quasar actually have to become better than Firelord.

The other thing is, I know that making the damage a die roll like I did removes value from RCE. This was actually one of my goals. Incapacitate is a more expensive power (in figure point cost) than RCE. So if there were two figures with identical everything on their dials except one had Incapacitate and one had RCE, I had to make a change that made it so that most players would pick the Incapacitate figure. With this change to RCE, now RCE has a 1 in 3 chance it won't damage an Invulnerable figure even if it hits. Impervious is even worse. Whereas Incapacitate is reasonably effective against both. Incapacitate may be a better option against those types of opponents under these rules. Against foes without damage reducing powers, RCE is still a little better even though you can't move and attack with it. But the +2 to hit on Incapacitate makes it more relyable. What I'm saying is that putting the randomness in RCE makes it less desireable, and balance wise that is actually a good thing. It needed toning down to bring it in line balance wise relative to Incapacitate.

I have a lot of feedback to give, but no time for it just now. I WILL be posting it sooner or later though.

For the same reason, I feel I must decline from being in the next game. Just got too much on right now. Thanks.

Well thanks for playing in this one Wakanda. And thanks to everyone....except maybe GreenStranger who was more trouble than he was worth.

Oh and I don't mean to sound argumentative about the feedback. I'm just explaining the logic I put into the changes which you're questioning. I do appreciate the feedback, it makes me look at those areas with a more critical eye to see if there isn't some way to make them better.

Clixhunter - I'm a little surprised that you catagorized 'Outwit' under Ugly. Are you sure that is were you feel it should be? Yes- I did make outwit not the beast that it was against defensive powers. But I didn't remove the number of options it had, I just substituted one for another, instread of being able to outwit a defensive power, you were able to outwit a team ability. Is it possible that you are just used to how overly effective outwit is in the Official Rules? After all, in the official rules, Outwit is so effective than nearly every tournament level team has outwit on it. If you review the winning convention constructed tournament teams nearly all of them have Rookie Black Panther on them since they started having constructed convention tournaments. In this game asside from the turns figures were out of range for one another, I didn't see many turns where an outwit figure took a turn and didn't find some use for that power. My team was severely inconvenienced by outwit. Deathstroke and Mysterio's outwit lead directly to Spiderman's demise. You and Super_Member made very effective use of the Outwit/Plasticity Combo to keep Spidey and Warbird trapped. I was thinking that had our team had Outwit, we may have been able to counter you by outwitting Plasticity. What didn't happen this game was outwits of Super Senses and easy kills on Super Senses figures. You were able to circumvent some of the Super Senses via Energy Explosion attacks, but that was a slow 1 point at a time death rather than a quick Outwit/Blast kill. I thought it made for a much more back and forth interesting game, where figures weren't just instantly killed because their defensive powers were magically stripped away prior to them being attacked. Same goes for Invulnerable figures. Invulnerability actually reduced damage delt to figures in this game. I find that in Official Games, Invulnerability and Impervious don't generally reduce damage taken, they usually just cause attackers to add and outwit step to their attack plans then the defensive powers do nothing.

The thing with outwitting a defensive power VS outwitting any other power is: When you outwit a Non-Defensive power, it causes the outwitted player to change his plans, it takes away options from that player. But when you outwit a defensive power, this is generally followed by crippling a high cost figure. Forcing a player to change their plans is inconvenient and causes stratigic problems for the other team. Outwitting a defensive power and crippling that figure can be a game ender. If someone is playing a high cost figure like KC Superman for example and you outwit Impervious and hit him for 3-4 clicks, you've just crippled 80+ percent of his team in one action. Without those high cost defensive powers many figures are just not effective to play, and sadly many of those are big name popular superheros and villans like Superman, Thor and Dr. Doom. To have these figures totally crippled by such a low cost power is just unbalancing and the reason we see Outwit on nearly all Constructed Tournament stylye teams under the official rules. I think if you want to make this game balanced then you shouldn't have any powers that are so powerful relative to the rest of the powers that it is nearly mandatory to have that power on your team to be competative. I believe under these rules Outwit is still useful, just not useful to the point where you have to have it on your team to keep up with the Joneses. You can play other strategies that don't involve using outwit and still be as effective as a team utilizing outwit in their arsenel. The same goes for Support/Healing. I toned it way down. On tournament teams you see nearly every side "Needing" a medic to compete, because their opponent is certainly going to have one, and they can be game breakers. You heal 5-6 clicks of damage to KC-Superman and you've just breathed new life into a 200+ point monster figure. Under these rules, Healing works, but it works at such a slow pace that it can be countered by pressing your attacks, so it's not such a huge tactical advantage. It's a niceity, but not a nessesity. This allows for more diverse team constructions that are all competative with one another.

Brazil- i'm not faulting any of your logic. I do not think measuring the first click of a dial is the end all be all of a figure. comparing that first click on firelord to that first click on kang....and not taking into consideration the effectiveness of pulsewave with a monsterous attack...and having invulnerability to boot is asking for trouble.

yes Firelord for his cost was a nasty to put up with...in the initial sets when wizkids was first doing dials...so both hypertime and infinity challenge are by and large unbalanced.

as time goes on though more and more figs are far more playable and it seems like theres a braoder depth going to tournements now.

rookie black panther is non-tournement legal now....to further stress this issue.

i like the vast majority of your rules. especially the mobility. however, i also like the rules in place by heroclix now (except trickshot...which is the new borken cheese....)

i just think that doing all of what youve done is taking it a little too far.

outwit has been changed in three aspects
1. it only functions on turns you tak an action (so now is only usable 50% of the time)

2. its range has been greatly shortened...so its easy pickens vs guys with 10 range....unless your mandarin...who under your rules would be a monster...12 range outwit.

3. cannot outwit defensive powers

its not a viable defense of a rule to say "well you found a use for the power under my system anyway" im the guy who still finds IC Vet Cap worthwhile...i daresay...i can play a bad fig better than most. the true challenge to me is not to find the best figs and always play the same...but to play all figs and enjoy it.

yes its true that a cheap outwitter can take down a hogh powered brick...and i understand the idea for not outwitting defensive powers....i just fail to see where it makes the game better...it just makes the focus go back to building teams with bricks on em.


and dont worry its not personal with me like many of the "haters" on this site....id like to see many of your ideas implemented. and if all of were id still play heroclix...though i would have to really re-learn the rules.

by the by....as an afterthought part of my issues very well could be because of my having to look up each power before taking a turn...lol sooo much changed

hehehehe

You've got some good points. I may stress the initial click of a figure more than most. Under these rules where figures don't nessesarily get outwitted and wacked in one turn I should probably look a little more at a little more of the dial. In the official rules , when you're looking at a figure like Firelord, once he's hit a figure, that figure is highly unlikely to be able to hit his 18 defense. IC was pretty bad in it's statistic ranges....Antman and Yellowjacket were nightmares all on their own. Anyhow that snowball thing where one figure gets hit and is hence highly unlikely to get in a successful counter attack is where I get my first click bias.

Bricks I think suffer from other problems besides just Outwit vs Defensive powers. That was a pretty big kick in the groin as far as them being playable, but they have other shortcomings as well. Them making horrible use of actions, is a problem, and perhaps even worse of a problem under my rules since all figures can move and attack independently, that means a player is likely in a 300 point game for example to be able to make 3 attacks. Under the official rules, where you need to TX most figures into position, you were likely to only get 1 or 2 attacks per turn. Since most bricks represent about half your build total in a 300 point game, and since most of the time pushing isn't good, you're only looking at 1 action every other turn with the Brick half of your team. If your opponent takes figures averaging 50 points or less, the Brick team could be facing 2-3 times as many attacks per turn as they are able to deal. Another drawback of Bricks is the "All your eggs in one basket" problem. If your opponent hits your brick, thats half or more of your team that just got hit and that's a big deal (See earlier rant on snowballing). Bricks have so much stacked against them already. Giving them defensive powers that actually work as advertised doesn't push teams over into the Unblanced range in favor of the bricks. Acutally under my rules, the only teams that we've so far found that have won much more than 50% of the time have been the Hydra swarm teams, which take good advantage of my swarming rules. If they face a team without Impervious, or Invulnerability they are pretty brutal on them. In local playtesting the Hydra teams are winning somewhere around 65% of their games against assorted teams.

which is why i do see the point of "not outwitting defensive powere" however balance it out a little more...as it stands...i would find less value in outwit than in pc or perplex.

the reason....lowering a defense is better than outwitting plasticity...as an example.

what i am saying is either do 2 of the 3 or make outwitting a defense require a to hit roll.....many bricks have decent to high defenses as well...and that in and of itself would be a balance setter...also allow the super sense guys to avoid the outwit...and the mastermind guys to pass the outwit on....and the barrier guys to...well the barrier guys are just screwed...

i think the to hit roll would balance it even further

Okay, time for me to make some comments.

First, the good:

My FAVOURITE thing about your rules is the way that terrain affects mobility. I absolutely love it- costing 2 movement points to go through a hindering square and so on. That makes much more sense that the official rules, and I wish they would adopt it now. Very snazzy.

Secondly, I appreciate that the costings are a lot more balanced on most figures...especially ones that had those lousy overcosted powers and team abilities- I'm talking about MoE and Incap mostly. Much much better.

Now, the Bad:

I find that with a lot of the really good powers, you went the overkill route with them.

I completely agree with clixhunter about Outwit. Far too killed. Sure, whenever I moved Black Panther I tried to find a use for his Outwit, but most of the time it was on something minor. Being able to Outwit TAs really didn't do much either, since TAs are generally much LESS useful than defense powers. You definitely need to take out one of those restrictions, and I'd suggest the range one. Character with high range values already have an advantage- why should those with high range and Outwit have an even higher one? Perhaps you could make it that all Outwitters/PCers/Perplexer/etc work at a range of 8 instead of 10? At least Doc Ock and Deathstroke got to use theirs at 6 range, but Panther only using it at 4 was very weak IMO. Perhaps only give damage-reducing powers the Outwit immunity? Or maybe even have the old suggestion of Outwitted damage reducers become the next one down (Impervious becomes Invul, Invul becomes Toughness). There's some ideas anyway.

Second, that F4 TA is terrible. I've already gone into why, but to put it concisely, I'd prefer to have Hydra or Police (which clearly cost less) than the TA you gave them, and I'm sure they cost less too. I think the old F4 TA was excellent, and could easily be left as it was (all you need to do is push your figures to make it worthwhile). If you wanted to improve it (which I think was your intention), maybe you could make it that F4 members get a click of healing whenever one of their teammates are dealt 3 clicks of damage or are KOed.

Finally, I actually don't like the 'move and attack' rules from a strategic standpoint. It does make for a quicker, more fast paced, and possibly more 'comic-book like' game, HOWEVER, I don't like it from a strategy game standpoint. Normally when I play these online games I can spend hours thinking about my moves, analysing my opponents, looking at figure placements and predicting the next few turns. That's why I like playing online as opposed to in person. But in this game, that just wasn't possible. Since EVERY figure can move anywhere and attack, there are too many variables to predict what they might do. So, instead of analysing it, I just came and made my move when it was my turn, and didn't bother thinking about it in advance. There was no point.

I also think that Running Shot/Charge figures got robbed a little. Sure, it's nice to be able to move your full speed and then attack, but it's not that big of a bonus over moving half, and those powers tend to be very pricey.