OblivAeon Kickstarter Update #37: Scions and more!

Now I'm extremely curious about what it means to flip a Scion, and why they use the template of "this villain turn" rather than "the villain turn". Are there multiple villain turns?

@ Arcanist Lupus

My guess is that it has to deal with the 2 Battle Zones. If Dark Mind is in Battle Zone 2, it will not act when dealing with Villains in Battle Zone 1.

I just want to comment on the art layout of the Scion panels. This is my first look at the art pannels and I love how they are laid out. They have some flavor text and an extra art bar that adds to the character. I can't wait to see the other Scions and I especially can't wait to see whats on the flip side of the ones shown on the KS.

They explained turn order at some point in the past, although I don't remember when.  Depending on how many players are in the game, it's villain turn 1, then two or three heroes, then villain turn 2, then the remaining heroes, then the environment.  And I believe the villain's two turns aren't the same, depending on zones and whatnot.

Yeah, I noticed a reference to "here", so obviously the two zones are going to necessitate some interesting new rules.

These guys looks great, though. The entire Celestial Tribunal as a character? :D I can't wait for that episode of the Letters Page!

Yeah, this has gotten me really looking forard to OblivAeon

So we now know that there's an entire Aeon Men deck, which consists either in whole or in part of Aeon Men.  Seems like it doesn't just consist of a whole stack of identical cards, or there'd be no point in shuffling it.  But I can't tell from this whether all Aeon Men are the same.  They sure look the same in the picture, but maybe they have different abilities, or maybe that's just the "generic mook" model.

Dark Mind has an interesting mechanic, triggered on ongoings being revealed or destroyed.  I assume "reveal" means through the "reveal" event and not being effectively revealed by being played or even "looked at" (e.g. Inventive Preparation).  But that could stand to be written more clearly.  It's also interesting that she's an "Unhinged Voidform" but doesn't have the Voidform keyword.

I'm dying to know the OblivAeon mechanics.  Not least so lynkfox and I can start working on how to handle the stats pages!  If there's only one Scion per game (perhaps each with their own deck), or it's something like "Choose H-1 Scions" and those are the scions that are in the game, period, that'll be easy.  If they keep coming out, that'll be harder.

The tribunal is an AI, yes? My guess is that it did something similar to Omnitron's transformation into OX.

And I'm guessing that the Aeon Men are something like the gene bound minions - unique, but all very similar.

So each scion has their own deck? O.O I'm still not sure I understand the whole thing yet... really looking forward to more info. 

From the kickstarter update: 

So one deck, for all Scions.

Ninja'd

I'm curious of the canonical explanation, given that all games are canon, of how things are fighting themselves, like Dark Visionary fighting Dark Mind, or Sanction fighting in the Celestial Tribunal, or I guess any of the new heroes fighting the villain versions of themselves.

Time travel/alternate realities.  It's possible all the way up through the end of the OblivAeon fight.

Don't know how they'll explain that short of shenanigan in Tactics, but fortunately that isn't possible yet.

Nightmist became a gate and pulled alternate versions of all the heroes in. This includes alternate versions of Dark Visionary who weren't helped by AA, I guess.

Is the Void also the afterlife of the Multiverse? It seems like we keep getting presumably dead people being reanimated as voidforms.

You know, the Setback Letters Pages mentioned that the Dark Watch was able to turn one of the Scions back into its uncorrupted form. I wonder if that's what flipping them is about.

I don't think so.  The flip conditions all look like the results of the heroes allowing Bad Things to happen, not some sort of success/reward situation.  I think the flip sides are escalations of some sort.  Redeeming a Scion may be an Objective/Reward card.

ah I see. That's neat. Assuming this is still accurate, this is helping me make some sense of it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse...

itll still make more sense once I'm actually doing it though. 

I wonder if the extra art bar for the Scions (where the HP is located) is a clue to what might be on the flipped side?

If so, Sanction's flip side might be bad news. (Also note GtG's tendency to treat trash piles as doomsday countdown timers)

Given the way things can change in comic books, not to mention this game, I wouldn't be surprised if Oblivaeon was like, "Hey, giant sword ship robots, you help me now" and smooshed the whole sword into a being that looks like the Celestial Adjudicator. Except instead of being 20 feet high, she's like, 200 feet high. :B

I just says "Reveal". So any "reveal" mechanic triggers it (eg. Inventive Preparation). "Being Played" is not "revealing". Since "reveal" is a specific mechanic already widely used throughout the card game, It should be familiar to you and others by the time you play Oblivaeon itself. To me, this is already pretty clear and consistent with other uses of the term "reveal".

Did anyone else notice that the link to the Celestial Tribunal went to the Wiki? That's pretty awesome. 

That could be it too... which feels even more creepy in a way, really.

Indeed, but there's a certain extra element of creepiness to "You're mine forever now that you have a connection to me, even potentially if you never asked to have one."

I already have buckets of questions for Argent Adept's Letters Page, to be sure. (And I bet Nepycros also does too.)

I seem to recall them saying there would be a Void Interlude, but [citation needed]. :B

Uh, sure it is...I have to reveal the card to play the card. I can't hide what card I played, therefore I revealed it =). This is a rare moment where the rules are too counterintuitive for their own good, like the difference between "play a card" and "put a card into play." I see the nuance, but I do not like it, haha. I assume that the Reveal here is any time an Ongoing card is turned face up...

Considering that the video game had both open and closed hand options, I'd say that you can choose whichever option sits your group the best.

I actually don't find the "play" vs "put into play" distiction to be nonintuitive at all, but I come from a background of MtG, where wording is extremely strict, and there are several very similar nuances. I can see how other people would view it differently.

Cards are revealed whenever the rules text says "revealed". No more, no less. Even if you are technically revealing cards while taking other actions, that isn't the same as the game action of "revealing" (just like you wouldn't say that you "walked to the store" if you walked to your car, drove to a parking lot, then walked into the store). The one exception may be that I think there are older cards that say "Look at..." which was later standardized to be the same as revealing. I'd have to check the Fireside Chats.

Also, I'm not a playtester, so the above paragraph is deduction, not fact.

Reveal is a specificly mentioned mechanic in SotM. Since it's specificly definined in the game, you have to understand it in the game-sense and not the general sense of the word.

I understand why this is confusing to new players. It's similar to the huge mechanical difference of "playing a card" and "putting a card into play" which are two totally seperate and different things in SotM terms, but should mean the same thing in a general sense.

But this is OblivAeon. I think the assumption here should be that if you playing OblivAeon, it's likely not your first game of SotM and that you are more or less familiar with these fairly common mechanical terms and the rules behind them.

I don't think it's safe to assume anything when it comes to player stupidity.  I've been at conventions where the booth managers are demoing their own games and making significant mistakes in basic mechanics.  I agree that "reveal" certainly means just when a card says "reveal," but I can see how players could easily get it wrong.

Even so I don't think the wording on Dark Mind will change since this is a standard mechanic.  If people play it wrong on the tabletop it won't be the first nor the last time anyone got it wrong.  

Right. It's a standard SotM mechanic. Given that fact there isn't really a cleaner way to say it, which I think was the original point I wanted to make.

heres a quote from a past update. 

The Scion pile is full over oversized villain character cards that will enter the Battle Zones to hinder the heroes and be generally terrifying. They’re very powerful. It will be rare to see more than 2 or 3 over the course of a game, though in Advanced more they come out more quickly. You’ll need to work together and probably even use Mission rewards to take them down on the path to OblivAeon.

...Oh geez, you're not just fighting one at a time? D: Or do they come out one after the other?

It sounds to me like the Scion Deck will have a couple cards that have, as an effect, "Put a Scion into play." Or possibly OblivAeon's deck or character cards will do so.

I could see OblivAeon deploying one after his shields are knocked out, for instance, or if X amount of Aeon Men are destroyed.

Oh bloody hell. I didn't even think of the whole Statistics thing with the Scions... gah... gah... gah.

Looking at the pictures of the case in the update, I'm not sure there's enough room for every card to be sleeved. Admittedly, I worry (and get pessimistic) when estimating these things, but from the very hurried maths I just did, it looks too small. Take this all with a pinch of salt though :D

My working, so that people can see if I've missed anything.

Using a standard hero deck with just the base character card included and basic Ultra Pro sleeves, I got the following;

At 'standard' compression (i.e. the deck was lightly compressed to make it slightly thinner); 27mm (the deck) x 37 (the number of expected decks by my count) = 999mm / 2 (the number of trays in the case) = 499.5mm needed in each tray for just the decks.

At 'tight' compression (i.e. ramming all the cards together as best I could); 24mm x 37 = 888mm / 2 = 444mm. At this compression, however, getting the cards out was... difficult.

None of the above includes dividers, either the cardstock ones or the ones coming with the case.

Taking out the character cards will create space equal to roughly one hero deck, so that's an option.

Mostly I just want to know if I'm getting worked up over nothing (which is what my partner keeps telling me).

If this box can't fit all the decks sleeved GtG may have a riot.

You have to understand that "will the box hold all the cards sleeved" is THE number one most frequently asked question for this kickstarter, to the point that is become a running joke. This is not a feature that they're going to just forget about.

I'm not sure where your numbers are coming from, though. By my count there are four drawers for decks, and far more than 37 decks, of several different sizes.

Sorry for the miscommunication. 37 hero decks divided by the two trays intended for hero decks. I haven't sleeved anything else because of cost at the minute, so that's where my primary interest lies.

Edit: I'm not doing this to troll anyone. I'm just seeking reassurance, as I said, I worry a lot. About stupid things.

At worst case, some of the hero decks have to migrate into the environment tray.  The sleeves should protect them from the varied and dangerous environments found there.

A fact I've considered. It would be extremely irritating, but I'm aware it's stupid to feel like that.

Hats off for the sleeves joke though.