The forums moved on March 1, 2021. Please read this page for more information.

New game: Freedom Five

147 posts / 0 new
Last post
TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

I actually only watched the playthrough to the end of the first turn, but I really liked what I saw. The big changes I see from my admitted one play of Defenders is giving characters stats rather than making each type of minion take a certain roll to defeat, and making the 'generals' (villains and mastermind) a bit less of a threat overall. I like both of these!

I'm pretty excited for this. :)

dpt
dpt's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 06, 2013

Godai wrote:
Hard to win, medium on play. From my inexperienced eye, they all looked like they made decent to good choices each turn, and they still got stomped on. For scenario 1 of a campaign mode, there was nothing there to feel good about.

They were having lots of fun, but it didn't look like they were making super-great decisions. For instance, they went up and took a swing at Ambuscade at a point that was not set up for success.

Godai
Godai's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 01, 2016

dpt wrote:
Godai wrote:

Hard to win, medium on play. From my inexperienced eye, they all looked like they made decent to good choices each turn, and they still got stomped on. For scenario 1 of a campaign mode, there was nothing there to feel good about.

They were having lots of fun, but it didn't look like they were making super-great decisions. For instance, they went up and took a swing at Ambuscade at a point that was not set up for success.

That’s part of it. It’s session 1. Your’e learning the game. There’s no cushion for “I’m not making the best decision every turn”.
I hope that as more information and videos come out, I’ll have my mind changed about this game. But for now, I don;t see this hitting the table that often with my gaming group, and this not worth the Mega Ultra Upgrades to me.

Jeysie
Jeysie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Nov 11, 2016

Me being the big lore person I am, I dug into the Tabletopia promo to get a feel for the flavor and art bits, and. You guys. AZ's personal tasks are the best. And by "best" I mean "hilarious".

Attachment(s): 

"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."

Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.

Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.

TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

You are correct. :D

dpt
dpt's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 06, 2013

Personally I like losing on my first attempt at a solo game; I also find the intro game for Sentinels of the Multiverse too easy for me. But of course tastes differ. (And a superhero game should thematically have a higher win rate than many solo games.)

MindWanderer
MindWanderer's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Playtester
Joined: Oct 29, 2015

Godai wrote:
Rabit wrote:

Godai wrote:

Have now watched (nearly all of) the Dice Tower playthrough just now, and man, that looks frakin' hard.

Do you mean "hard" as in hard to win, or "hard" as in hard to play?

Hard to win, medium on play. From my inexperienced eye, they all looked like they made decent to good choices each turn, and they still got stomped on. For scenario 1 of a campaign mode, there was nothing there to feel good about.

I was worried about this. When the game was announced, I played Defenders of the Realm on TTS with my friends. We lost. More importantly, afterwards we couldn't think of what we could have done differently that would have resulted in a win.

We took on the bosses as soon as we felt like we had a decent chance to win, and we only barely did, so we felt like we called that well. We took out the dragon pretty early, but by the time we took on the orc, all three remaining villains were just a couple of spaces away from the city, and the demon got there quickly thereafter.

This wasn't like Spirit Island, where was also lost our first game, but afterwards we realized some of the planning mistakes we made, and there were options for making things easier than default, so we were hype for a rematch. This was just straight-up discouraging.


Sentinels Statistics Project -- Statistics updated daily!

Submit your games here!

bobbertoriley
bobbertoriley's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 2 months ago
Joined: Aug 31, 2015

MindWanderer wrote:
I was worried about this. When the game was announced, I played Defenders of the Realm on TTS with my friends. We lost. More importantly, afterwards we couldn't think of what we could have done differently that would have resulted in a win.
We took on the bosses as soon as we felt like we had a decent chance to win, and we only barely did, so we felt like we called that well. We took out the dragon pretty early, but by the time we took on the orc, all three remaining villains were just a couple of spaces away from the city, and the demon got there quickly thereafter.
This wasn't like Spirit Island, where was also lost our first game, but afterwards we realized some of the planning mistakes we made, and there were options for making things easier than default, so we were hype for a rematch. This was just straight-up discouraging.

Having just played the game for two hours, I can mirror this exact sentiment. We knocked out one villain, but by the time we felt comfortable going after a second, the game was basically over. The group wasn't sure what we would have done differently to change the outcome, given the first question was 'okay, what should we have done in the first place?' One player also said they would much prefer a digital version (a-la Handelabra) that would help with bookkeeping while letting the players focus on playing the game, but would probably not play this game physically.

I still hold my opinion on variability and replay. With the current stretch goals, we would need to at least double the current funding to consider the prospect of a new mastermind, if that's even on the table. While there are 8 villains, the color variety means you'll keep seeing the same one or two tech, brawn, mind, or spirit villains. I feel after two or three games, it's going to feel repetitive with few knobs to turn to adjust that. (To me, my comparison would be if you bought the Vengeance expansion of Sentinels and tried to keep playing games with just that content.)

Comparing the $50 version to Spirit Island, which right out of the gate provided a ton of replay value, I don't see the value prospect on this one. Doubling (or Quadrupling) that price for some bells and whistles also misses the mark.

dpt
dpt's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 06, 2013

Thanks for your thoughts, they are helpful to me.

bobbertoriley wrote:
With the current stretch goals, we would need to at least double the current funding to consider the prospect of a new mastermind, if that's even on the table.

They have revealed this: new mastermind at $300K. Current funding is $183K, it seems likely they'll hit it since they just yesterday announced more minis for those into that kind of thing.

Rabit
Rabit's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
ModeratorPlaytester
Joined: Aug 08, 2011

Also, I thought they said there will be multiple scenarios to play against Blade, and each will play differently, so the scenarios will provide that high-level replayability. 


"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal

Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)

bobbertoriley
bobbertoriley's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 2 months ago
Joined: Aug 31, 2015

Based on my first game, those scenarios would have to shake up a lot between sessions to get the replayability you're talking about. Not saying it won't, just watching with a cautious eye.

(I missed the new mastermind at 300k when I posted earlier, since it wasn't in the KS update, but was added to the overview. That should help some.)

Godai
Godai's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 01, 2016

And based on blurry art, the new Mastermind should be Miss Information. 

Rabit
Rabit's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
ModeratorPlaytester
Joined: Aug 08, 2011

DIsappointed in the sexualization of the female characters, to be honest. :-( But the quality of the art is amazing, other than that. 


"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal

Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)

Godai
Godai's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 01, 2016

Good news, everyone! One of the playthroughs managed to beat the first scenario. 
Tantrum House Playthrough with Richard Launius
Bad news is, even with the designer there, rules got overlooked and forgotten a few times, including by Launius himself. Means it's a tad complicated to keep track of. 

TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

So it's like playing Sentinels. XD

Trajector
Trajector's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 13, 2014

Ha!

I see they are very nearly at the second mastermind.

Is it just me, or are the figures almost *too* big? They're probably three times as tall as the Tactics minis. Regardless, the value proposition does look better with all the villains as figures, too, and with the second mastermind and additional scenarios coming up.

Are any of the videos actually reviews of the game, or are they just previews of the content and mechanics? I've seen a few presenters give impressions of the game - generally sounds like it does a good job marrying gameplay and theme, everybody loves playing Tachyon, and there was at least one comparison to Pandemic (a good thing) - but there's not too much about how it plays, how people like it, how much replay is there, do they think it will hit their table often, and stuff like that.

Godai
Godai's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 01, 2016

I have not yet made it through all the videos linked in the Kickstarter. I'm sure some are reviews, and not just playthroughs. 

Jeysie
Jeysie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Nov 11, 2016

To be fair, considering this is an unusual case where you can get to see for yourself how the game plays before backing, the need for pre reviews is lessened because you can just decide for yourself from watching how it plays, if you/your group will like it, etc.


"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."

Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.

Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.

Jimeni
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 10, 2014

Does anyone else here think that Tachyon's Mind ability being a 4 is a tad unthematic? A Mind roll will only succeed 50% of the time for our master scientist/quick thinker? I mean it doesn't.bother me enough to not get the game, but it bothers me a bit. I feel like she should have the best Mind score of the Freedom Five. Probably too good/unbalanced to suggest it to be a 2 (lower is better, if you didn't know), but a 3 seems like it'd be more thematic.

Anyway, just wondered if it bothered any other Sentinels/Tachyon fans?

Jeysie
Jeysie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Nov 11, 2016

I feel inclined to agree with a thought one of the commenters had that it's probably because Tachyon as a hero relies on her speed, and the stats are likely tied more to their hero bit than to their personal life. Hence why Tachyon's best skill is instead Body, because that's what she's relying on most in her hero stance.

Since I think it tracks with how Wraith has a 3 in Mind; she's not smarter than Tachyon on the whole but she relies on her analytical skills as a deliberate part of her hero shtick more than Tachyon does.


"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."

Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.

Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.

Trajector
Trajector's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 13, 2014

Aha, one of the videos is the review I was looking for. I'm having trouble getting a direct link to paste here, but it's helpfully titled "Freedom Five Review." (Sorry, the time and attention investment needed to watch and digest a full playthrough video is...difficult in my household right now.)

Ultimately I'm sure I will back this...I haven't played Defenders of the Realm, but this sure sounds a heck of a lot like Pandemic Legacy with stats that you have to roll against. And the Sentinel Comics characters that we all know and love.

Is anyone else super unclear from their description about whether or not the community voted heroes will be in the Kickstarter box, or whether even Hero+ level backers will need to purchase that as an additional add-on to get it?

bobbertoriley
bobbertoriley's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 2 months ago
Joined: Aug 31, 2015

My read is that the community voted heroes are a separate add-on for $25, probably as an incentive to add more funds to the campaign to push for more stretch goals.

What I'm not sure of is if the figures will be painted or not if you go for the $60 add-on for painted minis, or if you go for the $200+ tier. (EDIT: Yeah, I probably should read the kickstarter rather than reference from memory. Thanks for the clarification below!)

Jimeni
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 10, 2014

The community-chosen heroes add-on says it has pre-printed minis, so they should be painted no matter what level you're at. There has been a call for a version of that to be available with unpainted minis, and they said they're looking into that, so there might be a slightly cheaper option -- $20 -- in the pledge manager to get those unpainted instead.

Jimeni
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 10, 2014

Jeysie wrote:
I feel inclined to agree with a thought one of the commenters had that it's probably because Tachyon as a hero relies on her speed, and the stats are likely tied more to their hero bit than to their personal life. Hence why Tachyon's best skill is instead Body, because that's what she's relying on most in her hero stance.
Since I think it tracks with how Wraith has a 3 in Mind; she's not smarter than Tachyon on the whole but she relies on her analytical skills as a deliberate part of her hero shtick more than Tachyon does.

I suppose that's fair. It was just a little off-putting watching one of the playthroughs and seeing the woman playing Tachyon saying Tachyon wasn't great at Mind challenges.
Wraith's Mind is 3? So I guess you could also think of it like tactical/strategy, so that could fit. I hadn't seen Wraith's hero card/ability cards yet. I was a little disappointed that Wraith wasn't used in either of the playthroughs I've seen.
Thanks for the insight!

Jeysie
Jeysie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Nov 11, 2016

NP! I suppose there is an interesting tug of war here that while Tachyon is smart in the ways we think of when we think of "smart people", Wraith, Bunker, and AZ are also fairly smart in their own respective ways.

(Legacy I think is the odd one out. He's not stupid by any means, but his interpersonal talent is far more in his charisma and earnest nature.)


"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."

Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.

Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.

liarliar
liarliar's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Oct 10, 2016

Having seen the stretch goals being hit, I think having new heroes and new Masterminds is likely to expand on that replayability. Also I totally guessed that Dawn would be a Mastermind - Miss Info, not so much!

Trajector
Trajector's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 13, 2014

I think this game probably offers a format for Miss Information to shine, whereas in the card game she's often frustrating. She can focus the players on non-combat challenges, while deploying other villains to be distractions.

They are really moving along adding masterminds to the game! My guess is the next chunk will be Omnitron. The replay value seems to be going up, and they're rapidly adding heroes, too.

I'm also encouraged to see a lengthy BGG discussion about the grid-but-not-a-grid appearance of the map, including participation from the designers. Looks like they're being responsive in the game design to community feedback, and hopefully the product will be even better!

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

There is a play-through up on To Die For games's Youtube channel, and they also do a 10-15 minute video that runs through the basics. If you want to stop there and watch it, it's about 2hrs 45 as they spend a lot of time explaining what they are doing to show the game off, plus checking a few rules queries. My thoughts upon seeing it are below

I don't touch kickstarter outside of app versions and special boxes, so I was always going to be someone who was waiting for retail, but I'm not convinced this is a game for me despite being a big fan of Pandemic (and that is clearly a big part of the game's DNA). A few things in the playthrough bothered me:
- You can't play a suboptimal team. Their two heroes were both weak vs Blue villains/henchmen, needing 5+ on the dice to score a hit/wound. Add that to the defensive traits and counterstrike abilities and it was no surprise that they were getting butchered by the game's blue villain. You have to question something when the game publisher in chat tells them to pretend they have beaten the blue villain...
-Getting wounded is huge, but happenes frequently. Every wound comes with a penalty like "can't use cards of X colour",  and you can only heal in certain locations. It seems like it is far too punishing. I could understand if the wound tokens were 50/50 or even 70/30 split with tokens that had no impact beyond counting against the wound score, but for all of them to have these heavy negatives? It just adds to the chore of spending actions to get to somewhere to heal, then heal, then maybe do something on the rest of the turn.
-The villains all seem to have a big heal effect if they aren't defeated iin an attack. Not only do they seem to have a big wound effect to serioulsy damage all opponents, they also get to heal back two wounds and move to somewhere else on the board. Now given that some attacks may only generated two wounds to begin with, it just seems to needlessly ramp the difficulty by given them an auto-heal on that scale. Heal one and move away? That might still be annoying, but given the chance that a hero is trying to roll 5+ per dice when attacking, healing 2 just seems to force players to wait, hope they get enough cards of the right colour in to their hand and then try to get together on the villain. I feel like it should be more forgiving on someone trying a heroic gamble.
-It's too busy. I know SotM has a reputation for being fiddly because of the different damage types and modifiers, but this looked far worse to me with the constant spamming of henchmen, the different types of tokens being added, the personal tasks being added... It ultimately feels a bit bland and I'm not sure it helps the feel of the game. I love games against Voss in the card game, where the growing army really feels like a threat, but this didn't give me that impression, it seemed to come across as just a game mechanic to stop players getting to do the cool stuff of fighting villains. With Voss, stopping the emerging army really feels valid, and to an extent it's true with Citizen Dawn too, but I don't want to face that every game.

Some of that might change by the time the game is published, but for me, I'm really going to have to wait to see what the final version plays like as currently I'd much rather play Pandemic or SotM

Godai
Godai's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 01, 2016

That was my impression as well. It's difficult just because we can make it difficult. 

TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

Having tried it myself, I agree that Glamour is really difficult to deal with, which kind of sucks. I was only able to take out Ambuscade, which took a few tries and got me a ton of wounds as well. (Also, I think I should have lost a lot earlier than I did.)

The henchmen also aren't particularly thematic. The mechanic makes a little more sense in DotR, where you can imagine generals using magic to spawn in their monsters or whatever. But either way, keeping up with them is pretty difficult and can really take your attention away from the main things you should be doing. I was only playing two heroes (though Legacy is almost a hero and a half on his own, he's amazing!), and overruns happened rather frequently. I even ran out of colors on more than one occasion!

I do still like the changes they've made to the system. Having a set of stats to roll against rather than it being per-color for everyone is great, it adds a ton of playability and even more reasons to play different heroes. The hero decks, it sometimes feels like you're drawing the same card turn after turn. I definitely miss the deckbuilding aspect. (DotR's a deckbuilder, right?) That said, the Special and Justice cards are really cool. I went through the entire Justice deck, in fact, and the bonuses for rescuing Bystanders are generally great. :) Even if you get the one guy who penalizes you for saving him, you still get a Special card, and those are always worth it.

I'm gonna have to try it with three heroes next time and see how it goes. The difficulty is definitely high, but Sentinels is apparently a rather easy game compared to a lot of other higher complexity board games, so it may just be a question of adjusting to it.

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

TakeWalker wrote:
I'm gonna have to try it with three heroes next time and see how it goes. The difficulty is definitely high, but Sentinels is apparently a rather easy game compared to a lot of other higher complexity board games, so it may just be a question of adjusting to it.

I have a feeling that if you take 4 heroes, making sure that each one needs to roll 3s vs a different colour, then it makes a big difference to taking out the villains, especially if they can set their hand up to have a lot of dice in their strong colour. What really hurt Mandi and Ashley is that between the heroes, any blue die needed to be 5 or higher, so even if they rolled 6 or 7 die, I think they were barely able to roll 2 successes at any point.

It's not that the difficulty seems high, it just seems to ramp it up in ways that just feel needlessly punishing. It's not just about being hard, it's about what makes it hard as I know people enjoy playing Iron Legacy but absolutely hate fighting Spite - it's different types of difficult

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

Morbid curiousity and an Excel spreadsheet later...
If you need to roll 5+ on a certain colour, then on
5 dice you have a 79% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
6 dice you have a 68% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
7 dice you have a 57% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
8 dice you have a 47% chance of rolling less than 3 successes (but only a 26% chance of rolling 4 or more)

Basically, if you attack a villain and you need to roll 5+, you need an absolute bucketload of dice, and even then you're quite likely to not do much damage compared to what they do to you, and if they get to heal 2, the attack may be entirely pointless...

Not sure if they are taking suggestions, but I'd be tempted to test the game where the villains only heal 1 when they move away, but maybe have an additional hit point or 2 in total. I'd also maybe make beating a lone henchman an automatic success, but you still need to spend an action on it. Then add wound tokens that have no additional effect (and maybe a few that count for 2), to disperse the ones with negative effects. I still reckon it'd be challenging, but far less punishing to people who make heroic gambles which feels like the sort of thing you want to encourage in a superhero game

Jimeni
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 10, 2014

ViolentSilence wrote:
Morbid curiousity and an Excel spreadsheet later...
If you need to roll 5+ on a certain colour, then on
5 dice you have a 79% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
6 dice you have a 68% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
7 dice you have a 57% chance of rolling less than 3 successes
8 dice you have a 47% chance of rolling less than 3 successes (but only a 26% chance of rolling 4 or more)
Basically, if you attack a villain and you need to roll 5+, you need an absolute bucketload of dice, and even then you're quite likely to not do much damage compared to what they do to you, and if they get to heal 2, the attack may be entirely pointless...
Not sure if they are taking suggestions, but I'd be tempted to test the game where the villains only heal 1 when they move away, but maybe have an additional hit point or 2 in total. I'd also maybe make beating a lone henchman an automatic success, but you still need to spend an action on it. Then add wound tokens that have no additional effect (and maybe a few that count for 2), to disperse the ones with negative effects. I still reckon it'd be challenging, but far less punishing to people who make heroic gambles which feels like the sort of thing you want to encourage in a superhero game

These are very interesting numbers and a tad scary. They do seem to be taking suggestions, though, so maybe post this in BGG? They seem to be fairly active there and responding to suggestions.

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

Jimeni wrote:
These are very interesting numbers and a tad scary. They do seem to be taking suggestions, though, so maybe post this in BGG? They seem to be fairly active there and responding to suggestions.

Are they taking suggestions on there? I assumed it would just be on the kickstarter page

If you're interested, I don't know if I can send you the Excel file through here, but I could maybe copy the functions so you could create a sheet yourself

Jimeni
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Playtester
Joined: Aug 10, 2014

ViolentSilence wrote:
Are they taking suggestions on there? I assumed it would just be on the kickstarter page

I've seen them comment on BGG on threads related to Anarchy cards, etc. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to comment on the Kickstarter either. They definitely respond to a lot of questions and are quite active there. But the comment section is quite active too, so it might get lost there.

ViolentSilence wrote:
If you're interested, I don't know if I can send you the Excel file through here, but I could maybe copy the functions so you could create a sheet yourself

No, but thanks much. I trust your numbers and I'm not great at Excel, so not sure I'd even know what to put in or whatever. But I do worry about the overall difficulty of this game, especially with regards to two players/heroes as that's what I'll primarily be playing. I was going to bring it up in either the KS or BGG myself. I'm actually curious what the win-rate is for 2 hero games. I might respond/contribute to your BGG thread later.
Thanks again! (I do feel heroes should have a bit better chance at winning than I suspect they do, what being superheroes and all)

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

Well, I'll drop it at the end of the thread if others are interested - it might appeal to some of my fellow oddities who use this site that sometimes enjoy spreadsheets! Though I suspect I might be the only one... (also, it might mean someone lets me know if I've messed up with the maths!)

I think the win rate is going to vary based on the stat distribution between the chosen heroes - if the stats for both heroes is higher than 4 for a specific colour, that colour may be unduly difficult which then leads in to just how brutal failing is. Ambuscade for example, counterstrikes with 1 wound + 1 wound per hero present, so a minimum of two wounds which may also stop you playing cards of a certain colour or take away an action. Then he moves and heals 2 wounds so if you only inflicted one or two in the first place? Now consider that if he is green and if your score in green is 4, you need 11 dice to have a 50% chance of doing more than 6 damage on him. If the other hero is 5? They're just not going to be much help directly. Now if the team have 3s in some areas and 4 in the other? It then means you can use that hero for that villain, but that again feels far too much of an optimisation puzzle, like you're an idiot for making any other choice, and the game will beat you savagely for making it. It's not unique here, I think the same can be said for facing Citizen Dawn with heroes that require a lot of cards set up on the table, and no-one to deal with her aurora, but as there are a lot more superhero games around now, I worry one with a limited interest IP needs to maximise the accessibility if it wants to have success outside of the core hobby audience.

It's possibly a sensibility thing, I'll wait to see how the retail version turns out, it just felt like something worth raising, and yes it is worth noting that cards can mess with the results a bit, so the numbers are pretty much a baseline, but how many kids (or even adults) will have a solid enough grasp of probability to have a realistic estimate of their chances and why they may need to do a lot of manipulation etc?

So for people who are gluttons for punishment, this is the formula at the heart of my spreadsheet:
=COMBIN(MAX($A:$A),$A2)*((B$1-1)/6)^(MAX($A:$A)-$A2)*((7-B$1)/6)^$A2
In A2, I put 0
In A3 I put 1
In B1 I put 2
In B2 I put that formula:
COMBIN(y,x) - it works out how many different ways you can combine x selections out of y objects. MAX() returns the maximum numerical value in the selection, so MAX(A,A) gives me the highest number in the A column. Hence, =COMBIN(MAX($A:$A),$A2) gives me how many ways I can pair up 0 successes out of however many the A column is set to go up to. At the moment, it's the number of ways of selecting 0 out 1, so just 1 way.
((B1-1)/6)^(MAX(A:A)-A2) - This is the probability of the number of dice that need to fail a threshold of B1 to have A2 successes, this is a 1/6 chance of rolling less than 2 on one die.
((7-B$1)/6)^$A2 - This is the probability of the number of dice that need to pass a threshold of B1 to have A2 successes, this is a 5/6 chance of rolling 2 or more, BUT in this case, there is no die that succeeds so this part of the formula will return 1.
The whole formula returns the probability of getting that specific number of successes out of however many column A goes up to.
In C2 I put =100*SUM(B$2:B2) and this gives me the cumulative probability of rolling that number of success or less, as a percentage
In D2 I put =100-C2 which gives the percentage chance of rolling more than that number of successes.

Once all the formulas are in place, those cells can be highlighted, and dragged down using the plus in the bottom right corner to auto-fill down for however many rows you want to work out the probability for (as long as you have a number in column A). This gives you the cumulative probalities in a table. If you edit the number in B1, you can then get different tables for diffferent stat numbers, or you can copy the columns to have tables for stat side by side. I made mine so I have a different sheet for a different total number of dice, and each sheet has the tables for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 as thresholds, which was mostly a case of dragging to auto fill (hence all the stray $ symbols in the formulae...). If it achieves nothing else, it did at least reinforce why I thought the Storyteller rpg system was much richer and better balanced than anything D20 based...

Trajector
Trajector's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 13, 2014

I was looking through some of the comments on Kickstarter today, and there is a discussion there about Glamour, with a consensus that she's really annoying to deal with and exchanging strategy ideas for each hero to increase the chance of success against her. Seems like there's general agreement that she is one of, if not the, hardest villain, and there's some indication from the developers that the demo scenario on Tabletop Simulator is *not* the starting scenario for the campaign, partly due to difficulty. Sounds like there are some effective ways to take Glamour out. I haven't tried, myself...

When I first learned both SotM and Spirit Island, I felt that there were elements of those games that were kinds of adding difficulty just for the sake of difficulty. I got really annoyed that "end of turn" effects revealed during the end of turn also triggered, and I thought Radiant, Infernal, and Lightning damage were extraneous, for example. I wondered why Spirit Island powers had to be Fast and Slow, or why there had to be so many Elements. In the end, though, those all became elements of the puzzle to solve.

Time will tell whether Freedom Five ends up like that, of course, but in the mean time it does seem like these issues are getting some attention.

Trajector
Trajector's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 13, 2014

(I do share some of these concerns about making sure this game hits my table often enough to justify the investment, to be sure. In the end I did decide to back partly because of the sheer amount of content they are offering - if Glamour turns out to be super annoying, I hope I can sub in another villain or play with 2 players/4 heroes to counter her. I think the concerns are valid, though, and do represent some element of risk.)

TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

At least there are more villains now. I'm sure you need to have a blue one in every game, but there should be someone to sub her out with.

The main problem, of course, is that everyone's got a 5 Spirit except AZ, and his is only a 4. :| If we had a hero who could actually roll well on blue, she might be a little easier. (But she'd still be a pain.)

FrivYeti
FrivYeti's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Feb 11, 2016

Legacy also has Spirit 4. I have a suspicion that Unity and Guise are going to have stronger Spirit ratings, but it's definitely an issue. I think they probably should have gone with Legacy as a Body and Spirit 3, Mind and Tech 5 character to balance out the other core folk, but such is life.

In brighter news, the most recent update has three difficulty notes. The first is that some things are still being fine-tuned, especially villain abilities, so Glamour might be less devastating there. The second is that the scenario that everyone is playing is the first one in the campaign, but not the actual introductory scenario for new players, so there's a less complicated story to get people used to how the game plays which you don't play on subsequent campaign runs. And the last is that the game is going to have a few difficulty sliders for people to manipulate so that they can have an easier or harder time. All three of these sound pretty good to me, honestly. 

TakeWalker
TakeWalker's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Feb 26, 2016

I would expect Scholar to have a 3 Spirit also.

FrivYeti
FrivYeti's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Feb 11, 2016

Definitely, but since he's not going to be in the core box fewer people would have him, I expect. I'm not entirely clear if people who buy the game later will have Unity, Chrono-Ranger, or Guise, or whether they're going to be in seperate expansions. 

*EDIT* Actually, looking over the stats of the Freedom Five kind of hurts my sense of symmetry. No one has Mind 5. No one has Spirit 3. Three out of five core heroes have Tech 3. Body is the only one that's decent spread out. I think that if I had been in charge, my change to better reflect the characters while also balancing the game for people who don't have the full range of heroes would have been:

Legacy: Mind 5, Body 3, Spirit 3, Tech 5
Wraith: Mind 3, Body 5, Spirit 5, Tech 3
Tachyon: Mind 4, Body 3, Spirit 5, Tech 4
Bunker: Mind 4, Body 4, Spirit 4, Tech 4
Zero: Mind 4, Body 5, Spirit 4, Tech 3

It's still not perfectly ideal; Spirit is still a little bit behind on average, and Mind tilts more towards the average than Body and Tech. But with five heroes you're not going to get perfect lining up. It also gives you two heroes that are very tilted, two that are slightly tilted, and one that is average. 

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

Mixed feelings about the intro mission and first mission of the campaign being different, I could still see a few people want to dive straight in to the campaign so I'd sound that note of caution. Most of the changes I like though I have some issues about stat augments - they can maybe shift the difficulty too far, and they can make the heroes feel less distinct. Will wait and see if they do playthrough videos with the new set up. Just wish I liked using TTS or TableTopia enough to try it but I find them both horribly clunky

Jeysie
Jeysie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Nov 11, 2016

@FrivYeti

Worth noting that going by the various flavor on Spirit-related things, in this game "Spirit" isn't "willpower" so much as it is magic, psychic abilities, supernatural phenomena, etc. So it makes sense for none of the core Freedom Five to have strong Spirit.


"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."

Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.

Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.

ViolentSilence
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 1 month ago
Joined: Mar 20, 2014

FrivYeti wrote:
Definitely, but since he's not going to be in the core box fewer people would have him, I expect. I'm not entirely clear if people who buy the game later will have Unity, Chrono-Ranger, or Guise, or whether they're going to be in seperate expansions. 
*EDIT* Actually, looking over the stats of the Freedom Five kind of hurts my sense of symmetry. No one has Mind 5. No one has Spirit 3. Three out of five core heroes have Tech 3. Body is the only one that's decent spread out. I think that if I had been in charge, my change to better reflect the characters while also balancing the game for people who don't have the full range of heroes would have been:
Legacy: Mind 5, Body 3, Spirit 3, Tech 5
Wraith: Mind 3, Body 5, Spirit 5, Tech 3
Tachyon: Mind 4, Body 3, Spirit 5, Tech 4
Bunker: Mind 4, Body 4, Spirit 4, Tech 4
Zero: Mind 4, Body 5, Spirit 4, Tech 3
It's still not perfectly ideal; Spirit is still a little bit behind on average, and Mind tilts more towards the average than Body and Tech. But with five heroes you're not going to get perfect lining up. It also gives you two heroes that are very tilted, two that are slightly tilted, and one that is average. 

My feeling is that a hero with two 3s will tilt the difficulty too far, and using two with two 3s will really do so. Can't say for sure, and if the mastermind needs a lot of successes, it still largely pushes people towards choosing a hero with a 3 in the relevant stat, so I could see wanting to have 1 hero with a 3 of each colour in the box for people who want to try that optimisation.

Sea-Envy
Sea-Envy's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 4 weeks ago
Joined: Jul 18, 2018

Edit i let someone on Realm of Discord take my Defender Pledge level
lets unlock the nest stretch goal


The mountain watches the freedom of the sea and cries. The sea looks at the stability of the mountain and sighs.

Pages