Final expansion speculation: villains turning hero

Fright Train only becomes Bunker in the Iron Legacy timeline.  It is not for certain he turns a hero in the main timeline.  I do like the idea and I d suspect we possibly get two villains turned hero.  

The Operative's bio in Sentinel Tactics puts her pretty clearly still on the "villain" side, as does the URL:

http://sentineltactics.com/multiverse/villains/the-operative

However, the hero/villain divide seems to be a little less clear in the Sentinel Tactics timeline.

My guess: A scenario book. Kind of a campaign mode with some "Legacy" (as in Pandemic Legacy or Risk Legacy) cards added to the game that adds persistent effect to the campaign. (Example of what I'm thinking about: If a hero gets incapacitated during a fight, for his next combat, he has one fewer card in his starting hand.)

You could still play this expansion with just the base game, but with more expansions, you'd be able to access different part of the overall campaign.

Also a couple Villains turned hero for good measure (Pinion?) and Terminarch with its own weird gameplay (Perhaps a multi stage boss fight with mutliple decks?).

Maybe...?

With the Release of Chokepoint and the Celestial Tribunal, that now gives us 4 mini-expansion villains and 4 mini-expansion environments, but only 3 mini-expansion heroes.  My guess is that the final expansion pre-order will give us one more mini-expansion hero to balance that out (and I'm hoping it'll be Pinion, rather than an all-new character).

Pinion would be a wonderful addition. Then you could set up a story where her old self slips through time from the past, and she must face her former self. Wonder what her nemesis icon would be, though.

You know, I could see Citizen Dawn turning heroic for a time -- in the same way that Magneto occasionally flip flops to lead the X-Men every once in a while.

Perhaps it will a set that gives you all the cards you need to turn any one of the existing villains into a hero, so they can join in the fight against The Big Bad.

I'd also love a Pinion deck.

I don't expect to see new hero characters in the final expansion or as promo. Mostly because at the moment, all the existing heroes have a nemesis in the original Vengeance expansion. Adding an extra hero would unbalance this equilibrium. 

I do however like the idea of heroes working with the villains (probably only the villains of Vengeance and Villains) to defeat the ultimate boss. How this could be made possible; don't know..

It is kind of telling that no mini-nemesis has an unasigned symbol.  Obviously they could surprise us with a hero and do a mini-expansion of a V-format deck for them.

I agree that it is most likely that heroes are done.

That speculation has more or less been in place since Vengeance released. We knew Captain Cosmic, Sky-Scraper, and Guise because they had mini-nemeses on cards in the V5, but there was nobody else not already accounted for.

I wouldn't discount a new hero having the same nemesis icon as another hero.  It would make sense too for a villain who has turned into a hero as the original hero would still be wary of them.  

I'm praying to the gods of the multiverse that something like this be true.

(Villains Spoilers; some people have it, so it's probably cool, but I don't feel like saying it without warning) Gotta go Doc Scratch on this and hilight that white text if you want to read it!)

Because of Heartbreaker, in Miss Information's Deck, I don't think Pinion will be in Sentinels Proper. In playtesting, his nemesis symbols were just replaced with the words [Nemesis: Dark Watch], implying that he was the nemesis of the ENTIRE Dark Watch, but the final version has his nemeses as just the normal 4 of Setback, Fixer, ExPat, and NightMist. Of course, this COULD just mean that she isn't part of the Dark Watch during Sentinels, of course, but I would find that a little disappointing myself.

also, to add to team no more heroes, they said that every hero will have a promo by the end of things.  So if they add a new hero, it would also have the promo version in the same expansion, which seams odd considering that promo's almost always represent changes and progression for the character

*points out Setback variant coming out before the deck!*

Captain Cosmic too, I believe. 

Captain Cosmic promo came with Wrath of the Cosmos and the rest of the Prime Wardens.  So it is not out of the possibility to have new heroes and promos for them at the same time.

We do have this:

True. It just seems odd to me that SotM would end without at least Pinion being a playable hero.  

With the idea that all heroes will have a variant...

That would mean SKy-Scraper, Omnitron X and PArse are getting variants very, very soon. Maybe a new team?

The Outcasts!

You know, it might work something like the Representative of Earth card in the Tribunal -- you pick a villain card out, and it acts as some kind of support role (like, say, buffing his/her nemesis).

I'm kind of surprised we haven't heard of a new pre-order campaign for the last expansion yet. Wasn't it just a few days after WotC released that VotM was up for pre-order? Or am I not remembering that correctly?

I believe you remember that correctly. It was very soon afterward. All things considered I don't think it will be as quick this time around

Nor should it be, in my opinion; give the new expansion some time to sink in before springing another on people.

also, I think they are not likely to do another pre-order set until Broken city at least gets to the printer

Thats gonna be a long while off

True but they really can't afford to PR wise, given how much Broken City is already delayed, plus focusing on the RPG as well.  I would be surprised to see a preorder campaign before late Spring at the earliest

I don't think that the lack of an unassigned symbol means it can't happen, esp. as Pinion becoming a hero would take place after most of the the cards we've seen so far.  Maybe Pinion's nemesis is a character to be introduced in the final expansion.

OR I could easily see GTG trhowing us a curveball with (the hypothetical) Pinion nemesis icon and having her be a hero without a nemesis or doing something with a different mechanic like Greazer where it's set to be a villain in play

So for you play testers what does a long while off mean? 1 month, 2 months, several months, next Christmas? I was thinking I might get my hands on the new expansion for my kids birthdays in April and May. Do you think that is possible from your past experience and where the testing materials you have now are?

Things are looking up. There's been renewed focus on Tactics playtesting as of today. I can't give you any definite timelines, though.

Doesn't it take about three months to get product back from the printer? Even if files were ready to send off right now (spoiler: they're not ready) getting the game for April would be cutting it fine, so my advice is to not get your hopes up.

The renewed focus is really good news. I think that they had a lot going on in 2015 which has made for a long cycle. I am hoping that in 2016 that the team will be able to shorten the production cycle and really crack things out! I will say that for me Villains was worth the wait, so if a little extra time is what it takes, then that is what it takes.

I doubt you're right, but I hope I'm wrong. That would be immense, literally a combination of my two favourite gaming things. Imagine you're halfway through a fight, and suddenly you get a new power to grant to someone, that they get to keep permanently and put out at setup by default? Imagine... Oh god... Imagine you screw up, and for whatever reason have to rip up one of your cards, never to be used again? "Right, choose a character in this battle, and a character in the box, and apply these stickers. They are now Buddies and if they're both being played, once per round, an attack on one can be redirected to the other."

Hell, you know what? I'll ante up. If GTG finishes up with Sentinels (card game, not Tactics) and hasn't made some sort of Sentinels Legacy (hah, just realised how relevant that name would be), I'll start up an unofficial fan project to make a legacy-style expansion, print-and-play. You can quote me on that.

Maybe the next expansion will provide lots of alternate character cards for the heroes : different versions from different universes. In other words, "promos", but they will be part of the expansion. A good way to make heroic villains : give Fanatic's deck to alternate reality Apostate. Maybe even alternate villains, Scion/Cosmic version ? Anyway I want Metal Adept and friends :D

It would be great if the expansion was a "mini campaign" : the final boss can only be fought after succeeding in finding a number of "clues", items or allies through other fights/quests.

Reading through everything from the last few days I'm thinking that the obvious answer is that we are going to get two reformed villain decks, The Harpy and The Ennead.

The non vengence style expansions normally have two heroes, so I can make that fit.

Or and this is my looney theory, we're getting a bunch of team hero decks e.g. (Freedom Five + Unity, Dark Watch + The Scholar + The Harpy, Ra + The Ennead, Prime Wardens) so that all the heroes fight the Big Bad at the same time.

Then my head exploded...

Or possiby that the enemies of that hero are now enemies of the villain becoming that hero's unlikely ally?

While this seems like a great idea... this also feels like the direction of Sentinels; Tactics. I think a scenario book also stops the creativity point of the game. Takes the imagination away from the players and gives it to a book, instead.

The great thing about Sentinels is that the game is very open ended. It allows you to play as whomever you want and make the story yourself. Linking everything to a canon (even though there is a canon if you read carefully) makes the game turn into an RPG instead of a game.

Since we already have an actual RPG in the works, I don't think making those games collide is the best plan of action.

I thought Blade would be fighting Legacy forever too.  I mean, someone prepared to pull the moon into the Earth to hurt/spite/kill their enemy is so far on the other side of rational that I can't imagine how they think.  But maybe the total destruction represented by the cosmic entity is a step too far.

In terms of heroes and villains joining up, I wonder if there's any way to handle that without new decks?  When Vengeance came along with the villain team format, we got new decks, after all, not just a way to configure existing villain decks (which, honestly, would've been a bit of a pain every time one wanted to switch back and forth).  But maybe the Vengeance format is more congenial to villain decks taking on roles in hero teams, because they're more balanced towards the strength of one villain per hero.  Who knows?

I always pictured Baron Blade as a villain that would do anything to achieve his goals. While he is crazy, he's also very cunning. If this helps him survive, then he has a reason to fight with heroes. I would say this is a good reason.

Maybe you add the Villains decks, but change instances of "non-villain target" or "Hero target" to "Oblivaeon target"

I think Baron Blade is very much the type of crazy that says, "You don't get to defeat Legacy, I get to defeat Legacy," or "You won't destroy this planet, that's my job!"

I really can't wait to see hero Blade, should keep the same nemesis icon just so he can hit Legacy really hard (with Galvanize, Inspiring Presence and Nemesis bonus!)

Saving the planet and incapping Legacy in the same game. . . Priceless.

Glad to see my old predictions are coming true! Matriarch and Blade as hero decks were something I though was very probable for a long while now. 

Im very excited to see what we have in store coming up. 

We still have no clue about Apostate or The Host though. I'm kind of disappointed that we got nothing more of that story and that no one asked Christopher during the live arting thing I missed. Maybe we will get more on that.